I'm currently only in one campaign now so my minds wandering as I work up thoughts on potential new campaigns. Forgotten Realms is arguably one of the most popular campaign settings out there and is also one of the most controversial. For years (since 3.x at the very least) there've been people who didn't like the Realms despite potentially enjoying high fantasy campaign settings.
I'm potentially planing on running a Forgotten Realms campaign. Might be online, could be in person. Might be weekly, could be monthly. Lots of details are up in the air. Wherever I run it, it will likely be for a brand new gaming group, so I wanted put together a bit of a player's guide and I wanted to help explain my approach to the Forgotten Realms and how their preconceived notions on how play is handled within the Realms (whether good or bad) may not be true in my version.
So I wanted to know what people's perceived problems (whether from actual play or what they've heard about) and why it causes them to not want to play in the Realms. I'm not looking to debate the validity of these opinions, but I may explain how I would handle it and ask people if that addresses their concerns or if it misses the mark.
I'm looking for things like "the metaplot introduces radical changes to the realms for no benefit that I can see" rather than "I don't like how event X forever changed the realms because it removed Y" (I was talking about the Time of Troubles in both of those examples ;)).
NOTE: This isn't intended as a negative thread designed to bash the realms. I enjoy the Forgotten Realms. My first game of Dungeons & Dragons was set in the Forgotten Realms. I'm simply looking to see what issues people have to see if my playstyle negtates those perceived problems.
This is quite likely a terrible idea for a thread. But I thought it would be worthwhile. If it goes down in flames, what's one more thread?
I think the biggest complaint people have is that they feel like there's no room for new adventurers when you have godlike beings like Elminster and Drizzt who can swoop in and save the day (because they can be everywhere at once).
Lack of current details about the Realms is a perceived issue by some.
FR perhaps has too much established lore. This shouldn't be a problem, since every DM is allowed to reinvent the setting to his needs, but there seems to be this fear of a lore know-it-all joining the group and spot checking any and every setting specific reference, or that the DM might omit canon from his narrative that ought to impact an adventure (Ex: What do you mean that god is dead now?!).
I think this is a handy passage from the 4e Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, emphasis mine:
Over the past twenty years, many rules and ideas
have been presented in game supplements, novels,
comics, and video games, and that glut of information
can be quite daunting at first. The key to running a
successful FORGOTTEN REALMS campaign is to start
small. Each campaign should be unique, reflecting
the personality and gaming needs of the players
and the Dungeon Master. Try not to get caught up in
what is or is not “official.” Toril is a very large place,
with more than enough room for characters and
campaigns to develop beyond what is presented in
this book and other FORGOTTEN REALMS sources.
My advice is pick a timeline and ignore the metaplot. I use FR adventures and set the Realms just after the ToT.
My problem with the Realms, is that there is a lot of established lore, but none of it is written particularly good, or is remotely original. High fantasy is fine, but I want to have immersion in my campaigns. It is hard to immerse my players in a world that feels.... tacky. It feels like a Middle-Earth knock off, but without the depth to its races and characters. That is why I always create new settings for my campaigns, in which the world does not revolve around the cliche humans+elves+dwarves+halflings+orcs. Humans are fine, but elves, dwarves, orcs and halflings are usually the first thing to go in my campaigns.
I also dislike the names of cities in the Realms. Names such as Waterdeep (we have water!), Winterkeep (we have snow!), Daggerford (we have.... pointy things?)....and, seriously... Skullport? They really dug deep for those names! See, this is what I mean when I say that it feels tacky.
I've played several campaigns in the Forgotten Realms, but even then me and my friends never used any of the established locations, and just made up our own. Because any city is better than Skullport! I've also played a lot of Baldursgate, and I loved those games, and I enjoyed Neverwinter Nights. But the locations never felt real to me. They never felt like places where people would/could actually live, and it never felt like there were actual cultures in the Forgotten Realms, apart from the big broad strokes by which the various races were divided.
So, I love the books, have a read a ton. None of the characters in the books are in my adventures. While I may reference an occurance from a book, something in a far off location, a rumor of a character now and again, even go so far as to imply that a well know bad guy, or event, is the driving force behind my adventure's bad guy, they never actually cross any of these characters.
The thing with the Forgotten Realms for me was that it seemed pretty generic and thus lacked a distinct identity. Also, I personally don't like the idea of gods being something you can meet, or know 100% exist or all the races being friends with one another and everything being sort of a melting pot.
This is my problem with the FR: generally, you want a campaign setting to have character. The campaign setting's landscape, history, and NPC population should feel like a coherent whole which plays as much of a role in the story being told as the player characters themselves. FR doesn't feel that way to me. It is a hodgepodge of NPCs that are so powerful they obviate the PCs, and who operate in the same arena (heroic adventurers) as the PCs. Meanwhile, though a few areas in the FR do have quite a bit of character, overall the mix doesn't feel very coherent or memorable. You may as well play in any other generic high-fantasy world. Nothing really sets FR apart and gives it an identity of its own...
I actually feel that early FR was good because it was generic. It was easy for a group to make their own. The problem I have with it now is that the novels make too much of an impact on the game itself. Let the players create the bad stories, not some low quality writers. Also realms changing events just because a new edition comes out is kinda bad for the novels and game. Dragonlance has the same problem(are the gods leaving or staying). I actually feel the current realms is ok to play in over 3rd editions version because it has become more generic again. It just got there in a way that lost alot of its fanbase.
I think a correlation can be made with the settings have a strong novel's brand. FR and DL both have strong novel titles, while Greyhawk and Eberron do not. This makes the former have a more driven metaplot while the latter not so much (and more gamer friendly). Maybe FR (which is my favorite) can do with a return to the greybox and less reference to the novels. That said, I love the FR, It was the campaign setting that I first played in and it holds a place of nostalgia in my heart (the way that Greyhawk does for many 1e veterans). I was first introduced to the FR with the Greybox, and I played in the Moonshaes with the intro module. Since then I have seen some pretty shitty things happen to the Realms, namely, with every new edition some major catastrophe occurs. I choose to ignore these. I am sticking the the Realms that I love and am using the supplement books with no references to the spellplague, abeir toril, sundering, etc. In my Realms beings like Elminster and Driz'zt are legends, and not encountered by my adventurers. In my Realms the PCs are the heroes, not Elminster.
My problem with FR is that it's just dull to me. It's just a kitchen sink fantasy setting with some mary sue NPCs thrown in so you can deus ex machina the PCs. I don't have a particular problem with the realms as they are, but my problem is more with how popular the realms are. Their popularity moves them more and more to the "safe" side of writing. The more time goes by the more the realms are just a stock fantasy setting without any originality or character, but just with good drow (blehk, barf) and undermountain. If I had to pick a real reason I hate the realms its because they take all of WotC's time. There isn't time for any other, more interesting, settings because they spend all their time making safe material that won't appeal greatly to anyone, but won't offend anyone either. When a god, like Tiamat, invades the realms it's honestly just business as usual, it's come to the point where nothing less than earth shattering plots hold any meaning in the realms. Now if a god were to invade Athas people would be like "WHAT?! Are you serious? I have to read this adventure and find out what the **** is going on!"
The other thing is that I honestly don't find much appeal in high fantasy. I like low fantasy, the lower the better. Fantasy races? Throw 'em out, elves and dwarves are boring when they're just elves and dwarves. If you don't have a real reason to have fantasy races why use them? That's my opinion. Magic? Should barely exist, someone playing a wizard should be endangering their life by simply letting people know they have magical talent. Now this is just my personal preference, I'm not saying high fantasy is bad, just that I don't care much for it, and the realms are the epitome of why I don't like it. Things are stagnant and predictable. Dwarves live in mountains and mine, elves sing and dance in the forest, humans build cities and have wars, nothing gets done without planes-shattering magic or some god-created mcguffin; exitement abounds in the land of make believe! The lack of originality is what makes the realms unappealing to me, and the more popular they get the more resistant to change the fans become, just look at the backlash 4e's spell plague metaplot took.
As mentioned above, the FR World-Shattering Cataclysm that accompanies every new Edition of D&D Rulebooks is a major turn-off to me. No other D&D background has suffered similar treatment at the hands of the Company. Those worlds continue to have contingents of loyal fans.
OTOH, making lemonade from lemons, the most fun LFR Battle Interactive metaplot I have played in, involved doing justice unto Shar and Cyric for their treatment of Mystra. A bunch of mortals took on a task that even the gods of Good and War could not achieve! Too bad WotC had already refused to accept any Convention module results as FR canon.
On a smaller scale, my character in Murder at Balder's Gate is trying to figure out how to prevent the re-rise of Bhaal, even though our DM told me there is no material in the module to support my self-appointed quest. 
When D&D Next was announced, it did not take long for a thread to appear asking what we thought the World-Shattering Cataclysm would be this time. I offered the proposal that there be NO cataclysm, just a quiet change that would be noticed only by the powerful few, and likely ascribed to the appearance of a critical mass of Epic-level characters achieving their Eternal Destiny(-ies).
Although I am a font of wisdom and sage counsel, WotC chose not to accept my freely-offered (and free) advice - which might have been worth exactly what they paid for it.
masterfat78 wrote:
Imaculata wrote:
Not everyone likes the Realms and that is fine. THere are plenty of other setitngs. Sad they blew it up to try and appeal to the haters who probably won't buy it anyway.
(Bring back Mystara)
Zardnaar wrote:
We ignored the Time of Troubles right from the beginning. First campaing I ever played was early in 2e. Our campaign started at the same point the Gray Box did. For us, the Time of Troubles was a 'secret war'. Most people knew magic had gone crazy but very few were aware of the greater 'Avatar Crisis' (when mortals became gods).
Eventually, we addressed it in our 3e games (carried over from 2e): Our PC's were basically 'gods' (fantasy super-heroes), brawling all over the Realms. Took a couple of sessions to get it out of our system, then we moved on. Our campaigns never did *match* the published Realms. So, Realms Shaking Events were an issue for us but one we dealt with in our own time.
= = =
I recently DMed some games we refer to as our Forgotten Realms 4dventures 
. 3e lore but with 4e rules. DId the same for Dragonlance 4dventures and Greyhawk 4dventures. The published 4e Realms just rubbed me the wrong way though. It definately helped me to think of 'em as a distinct, parallel world rather than try and mesh the *classic* setting with the Spellplague. Our 4dventure campaigns was my answer in that regard.
I'm very glad to see it being spelled out now days that there are published versions of the settings and there are homebrew versions. They don't necessarily have to match up.
I haven't spoken up, but in addition to those I really really hate the geography - it manages to shoot any sense of disbelief I have out the window and then turn a flamethrower on it.
Sounds like a good summary, JohnLynch. Incidentally, I find some of the criticisms to be what I like about the setting, notably the meddling gods and generic high fantasy feel of the Realms.
Bluenose, what specifically about the geography do you find so appalling?
JohnLynch wrote:
I always felt that some of the cultures and regions in the realms needed an elevator pitch [1]. The books provide a lot of details, but compared to the gazetteers of Mystara they are less memorable. Perhaps this changes when you read the novels.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_pitch
EDIT: I have great respect for Forgotten Realms players and I would be happy to see the setting reprinted, but I will probably not be playing in it :-)
tehsquirrely wrote:
I think everyone who is going to weigh in has done so by now. Thanks everyone for your thoughts.
I'm not going to be addressing the following points:
- WotC puts the bulk of their attention into the Forgotten Realms at the expense of other settings.
- Feels like a standard fare high fantasy setting with no unique hook.
- Don't like the names of settlements.
- Don't like the geography
All of these are fairly personal taste and completely subjective. I don't necessarily agree with all of them, but I can understand the opinion and if you were to come to my table with me running a Forgotten Realms campaign I'd suggest a different campaign then the one I'd intended to run.
But that said, I did want to address the remaining points people raised. When I start a campaign I almost always (there have been exceptions) create a player's guide for the campaign. If I were to run a Forgotten Realms one I'd want to address the remaining points in a "campaign style" page to make it clear how I'd run the campaign so that way people could decide if they'd find it enjoyable.
JohnLynch wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
JohnLynch wrote:
Imaculata wrote:
JohnL,
Sounds good.
Tweak:
The gods send messengers for Impending Doom. They also send messengers when they wish to be clearly understood. (Mortals are notorious for mis-interpreting the signs and portents to match their own wishes / preconceptions.) This may happen as often as once a year per deity; usually much less.
A "Chosen" is the common term for a person who gets more than one such direct message in a lifetime.
BRJN wrote:
If my players don't read Realmslore then all discussion on what has or has not happened, or what famous NPCs are gallavanting around, is irrelevant. I pick a time and locale (currently Moonsea, pre time of troubles) and roll without a care what future authors did to tweak the setting. I believe my players are more concerned with the story hook than in which world I picked to set events.
I use the Realms because it's safe with new players or those who haven't "seen and done it all." It's high fantasy, there's magic and wizards and dragons. There's inns and mead and songs and peasants cheering in the field when the party returns with the dragon's head. It evokes the artwork of the various editions of Player Handbooks and DMGs.
Over time, when players get used to seeing the traditional tropes of elves in the woods and dwarves in the mountains, we can move to (my favorite setting) Dark Sun or the like.
Forgotten realms competes with Eberron in regards to high magic, but I equate FR to monty hall, no holds barred, high magic setting, where Eberoon does something different with almost a steam punk or magic as technology feel, which at least is something new. It is easy to run a monty hall campaign.
My personal complaints on forgotten realms always have been it being generic and dull. However I have been giving the realms another chance and realized something about them, yes it is a kitchen sink setting so you have to play to that strength. Make your own canon and change events as you need them. Focus on the factions or other aspects you want to highlight. A good DM can make most settings damn fun.
Thanks everyone. i think the original purpose of the thread has been served, so I figured why not go off topic ;) Nothing wrong with expressing constructive opinions after all 
Uchawi wrote:
I've been a fan of Forgotten Realms since the old Ed Greenwood Dragon magazine articles on the gods of the elves, dwarves and orcs, way back in the 80's.
I think the Forgotten Realms 3e sourcebook is one of the best D&D supplements.Until recently I never participated in a Forgotten Realms campaign. Now I am running the Hoard of the Dragon Queen for our local gaming group. Forgotten Realms is huge, Dragon mag articles, sourcebooks, novels and video games. I think everybody who plays D&D knows about the Forgotten Realms.
I follow one main rule when running FR, I use what i like and disregard the rest. Over powered npcs that will save the day, will not be an issue because they will not show up in our campaign. I pay homage to events like the time of trouble, spell plague and the sundering, put those are in the past and our campaign has moved on to other events. We are 100 years since the sunderung. I use most of the material from the 3e sourcebook, So in our campaign things I use from that sourcebook are relevant despite canon. Since the map of the Sword Coast in the HotDQ reflects events prior to the changes in the sundering, I disregard all geographical changes to Sword Coast post the Sundering. The age of floating earth motes has gone. We have a tiefling and a dragonborn in our FR campaign, races introduced to the world after the spell plague. They are new to the world and face a lot of prejudice. The dragonborn pc background really reflects that prejudice. Although I do not see any of the famous FR characters like Drizzt showing up in my campaign, I see no reason to shy a way from a cameo appearance from such a character. If a Pc picks a fight with Drizzt so be it. If a Pc kills Drizzt, so be it. Hos does that effect Canon. Well for your FR campaign Drizzt is dead. For RA Salvatory and fans of the drow elf ranger, it doesn't matter. It won't change Canon for the FR community as whole.
I'm enjoying it, because there is so much to work with in the FR setting especially the Sword Coast. One of our players has the Lords of Waterdeep game, which we have been playing, bringing more life to our FR campaign. I am using the calendar its 1489Flamerule25, why? Just because.
JohnLynch wrote:
Even Greenwood is a bit sick of the Realms, or at least what everyone has made the realms into and how it departs from his original vision. His afterwords in Dark Warrior Rising is a good read and talks about the Norse origins of parts of the Realms, how his concept of the Realms were originally shaped to fit what D&D needed at the time and how authors since have extended and changed the Realms. The Dark Warrior books were written to go back to what he wanted the Realms to be without the baggage of 30 years of accumulated literature, no Drizzt, no Elminster, and not every square centimeter mapped and documented and anything but forgotten.
Too many ingredients (especially when the bulk of tyhem are bland) make for a colourless, tasteless stew.
This is what FR has become. It's like the big bucket of aoll the settings, and WotC shoehorning other more distinctive world's stuff into FR is to my mind, annoying and lazy.
The other published worlds are all unique from FR and have a distinctive flavour.
- Greyhawk - actually much darker than FR *(being classed as more S&S than high or heroic fantasy in style) and even though there are a plethora of high level NPCs, they don't seem to drift into overhsadowing of PCs adventures or legend building, even when used in plot. Also, the history is vastly more cohesive and beleivable. Getting the Sword of Kas or the Rod of Seven Parts in GH really means somethings storywise here...
- Mystara - again with the tightly written history... and nice distinctive yet familar cultures which have natural (not alignment-forced) conflict points. Even less of a feeling of being overshadowed by NPCs than in Greyhawk. The well rounded sense of cultural identity is a great diifferentiator between party members and is a significant roleplay enabler.
- Dark Sun - lovely unique setting with many things going for it, and no need for metaplot due to the theme of working for or against the harsh rulers of the world. The only really comprehnsive post apocalyptic fantasy world for D&D which is deserving of the title and the only other S&S world 'on the books'.
- Eberron - I personally don't like this world for the same reasons I don;t like Shadowrun. But I cannot, in fairness, deny that it is very original and unique, with plenty of good plot hooks oozing out of the pages. Hints of the Dune saga in the way the major houses work and unique twists on familiar races like the Drow are one of it's major strong points.
- Krynn - a little hokey, but Dragons! Narrow in scope and really shows it's grown up from a story idea rather than a world idea leading to many stories. However, it is pretty good for a campaign themed in it's own thematic direction and thus has it's niche... a unique niche which even being limited, makes it more flavoursome than FR.
WotC need to support each world or allow it to be officially supported by others willing to credibly take on the role.
I know some people think it's good, but it's annoying as hell for me to see Elemental Evil transplanted forcibly into FR only to require me to re-fit it to go back to where iit came from - Greyhawk.
Perhaps make the adventure/expansion supplements setting neutral with conversion notes for each main gameworld instead of coming up wiith convoluted fakery to crowbar the themes of other worlds all into FR...
It's one thing to avoid using the established lore, but its another thing to play in a world that fails to provide a set of useful maps. Sure, we always get a huge world map with each edition, but such maps are completely useless for most campaigns. What we need are smaller maps that help spark our imagination and give us a reason to run adventures. I also want to see poltical boundried defined more. Apparently the realms is full of barons and lords, but the lands they own/control are completely undefined.
Instead we have maps that have morphed from one edition to the next. Take for example the town of Shadowdale. I have several maps of this town and the most detailed is a black and white map provided in the Avatar series of modules. The same is true for entire regions of the FR. Towns, Cities, riviers, and roads have gone missing.
I think my bigest complaint about the Realms is the lack of material specifically designed towards running a campaign. Sure there is a huge amount of lore, but it's scatered across several editions and source books. Each time we are provided with a campaign setting we are offered more duplicate lore and it's often less detailed.
I'm not sure what I'd want in a forgotten realms campaign setting for 5e, but at the very least I don't want another primer into the forgotten realms. I want material that I can actually use in my campaign.
I really don't have a problem with powerful NPCs in the forgotten realms. Characters don't need to save the world at first level. Overshadowing isn't something I ever worry about either. High level NPCs often have their own personal / plannar issues, and when the PCs become high level, they can join them. High level PCs will often delgate tasks to the players anyway.
Right now we don't even have an official word on what timeline is accurate. The timeline of the Forgotten Realms was a fairly consistent progression from 1st Edition through 3rd Edition. 2nd Edition was the "watershed event" with the Time of Troubles (where the Faerunian pantheon was forced into avatar form and walked the Realms; the lasting effects from it were the introduction of Cyric as a god, the replacement of the original goddess of magic with a new one, and eventually a new god of death who wasn't evilly aligned). Everything in Realms lore proceeded from that from 2nd Edition to the end of 3rd Edition.
The Realms sort of got taken over, in terms of canonical fiction, by Elminster and Drizzt Do'Urden. In my personal estimation, books on Drizzt should have ended a lot sooner than they have (they're still ongoing). Most everything in the last 10 years or so has largely had him as a near-secondary character in his own books; it feels like WotC or Bob Salvatore were using his "Star power" to pull people in to learn more about other characters whose paths he crossed. Understandably, Bob Salvatore probably wants to write about more than just Drizzt, but may have a rough time convincing people to buy a Forgotten Realms novel he writes that doesn't include the drow.
As an aside, there's STILL backlash against someone playing a Chaotic Good drow Ranger who dual-wields scimitars...
4th Edition jumped the Realms ahead 100 years in timeline. A Spellplague occurred as a result of the goddess of magic dying (again), and some conceptual changes were made to fit in with the reimagined cosmology of 4th Edition. In the books, to keep him current, Bob Salvatore wound up killing off almost all of Drizzt's supporting cast (semi-logically, as only the dwarf Bruenor was likely to have lived another hundred years; the rest of Drizzt's companions were human or had human lifespans). In my personal estimation, it came to show that as cool as I think Drizzt is as a concept, he isn't all that interesting as a character without the Companions of the Hall involved. It'd be like having a novel about just Caramon Majere in Dragonlance: he's only really interesting as a contrast to his brother Raistlin.
I get the feeling from the Realms lore presented in the Player's Handbook for 5th Edition that we may have jumped back to the pre-4th Edition timeline. I suppose we won't know until some official material is printed or put online.
In general, the biggest obstacle to running material in the Forgotten Realms is the sheer bulk of canonical lore involved in the setting. It's been around since 1st Edition. I still remember seeing ads in comic books for it when I was just getting into D&D at the age of 12, and that was nearly 30 years ago.
As has been suggested, you're best off just starting small and limiting interaction with the major lore areas of the Realms, at least until players are comfortable with your version of them. It isn't uncommon for someone in the middle of the Dalelands to have never heard of Waterdeep. That's half a continent to the west, and they're more likely to think of Cormyr as a major port area. Tuck someone down south near the jungles of Chult, and they may have never heard of the areas to the north where the bulk of the lore is written in the novels and products. Go far west to the Moonshae Islands, and you remove a lot of incentive for players to argue that they want to go to Icewind Dale.
Far too often, it's been my experience that players apply a 21st Century mindset to a time when it isn't feasible. Most people in "medieval times" rarely saw past their own village in their entire lifetime, because it's where they were born, who they knew, where they learned a trade, and where they married, begat, and died. The adventuresome types were the ones who started a shambling merchant caravan and slowly learned that the roads led somewhere, eventually coming to a larger village, and probably moving goods around between a few of those.
The PCs may be super heroes, but they still start off small. They likely have no reason to have heard of Waterdeep until you tell them about this major merchant city on the west coast where the true movers and shakers move about.
Not reading everything right now, but make sure you give links or other sources on what your not changing. One of the things I hate most about the realms, is that I dont want to read hours of lore off the wiki or novels I have no real intrest in reading becuase in a DND setting, I want my players to be the center of those novels. IM sure other settings have these problems as well, but FR seems to have them in spades. I would actually really like to play a FR game with a much more limited lore and history. Another favorite setting of mine is Dragonlance, but to me, the best stories in the realms are already written. Same problem, though with smaller amount of books