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that's funny that there is no Drizzt in the book.
the layout is different too, with Loudwater and Adventures in and around starting, and then the fluff.
I am very unimpressed with the new "clean" layout for 4th Edition. Lots of wasted space, big fonts, and white pages staring back at me. Not much "character" in my opinion.
I also can't get over treating major NPCs as monsters with "roles". Calling Szass Tam "artillery" (or maybe "controller", I can't remember) seems odd. A great deal of D&D NPCs used to be characters themselves, so all of a sudden now they change when they become NPCs. Also, the deities chapter is a little thin, providing info for only the Greater Deities in the form of a short paragraph write-up. Quickly decoding some information, such as portfolio, seems to be unavailable.
Finally, the book is thin. Given all the large font and blank page space, and wide margins, and page count (288), I would hazard to suggest that the book contains about 1/2 to 2/3 the amount of information of the 3.0 FRCS (320 pages) (and for the same price).
Also, the index was very sparse. Read into that what you will.
For those that liked the jam-packed 3E Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, prepare to be disappointed by this book.
If you like a minimalist approach to your campaign settings, this is the book for you. (And there are apparently a lot of people that like this.)
For me, one more reason I'm glad I'm not going 4E.
The rich history of the Realms that grew from 1e->3e is, well, gone.
It's like they wanted to use the power of the brand (Forgotten Realms) to generate sales for an (essentially) new setting. I understand it, but it's not what I would have wanted. Oh, well.
Aristodeimos
(Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Adventure Path, Campaign Setting, Companion, Modules, GameMastery Maps Subscriber)
That is what I noticed and they took a lot of space to have small adventures rather than give information and background.
Yeah from what I saw of Reviews on Amazon the average rating for the new Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide was like 2.5 Stars. That is lower than just about any D&D product that I have seen in a looooooong time.
Charles
Tharen the Damned
(Pathfinder Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Campaign Setting, Companion, Modules Subscriber)
This is what happens when you let a company best known for making a card game take over your role play systems. Bad decisions by people who don't play, who just want money come into the works and you end up with angry consumers.
To be fair to WoC: this was the Company that bought the struggeling TSR and made 3rd edition possible in the first place!
Or simpler: No WoC, no 3rd edition!
ok, so WOTC gave us 3rd edition, which is a great system...but come on, THAC0, while it had its issues, it was still a great system by itself. i remember countless weekends in the dead of winter with my friends as we struggle with the math to play some D&D.
so far, ive been turned off with 4th edition. i bought the 3 book set when it came out from paizo (thanks for the discount!!), and when i got it, i eagerly paged through and started to read the PHB. needless to say, i stopped cuz it reminds me too much of a MMORPG, like WOW... if i wanted to play a game that resembles an online rpg, ill go online and pay my online subscription to play wow, or AOC, or the future WAR!.
so, ill be putting my money into other RPG settings, like the new pathfinder series, palladium, rifts, shadowrun, maybe even mage and vampire (if i can understand the storytelling process).
This is what happens when you let a company best known for making a card game take over your role play systems. Bad decisions by people who don't play, who just want money come into the works and you end up with angry consumers.To be fair to WoC: this was the Company that bought the struggeling TSR and made 3rd edition possible in the first place!
Or simpler: No WoC, no 3rd edition!
I concur, WotC saved D&D back in the day. All bow to the WotC alter of 3e...
I do not mind a new edition but it the game should progress and get better. I also get that in 2e their were a lot of books to buy and I bought some of them but it was 3e that really brought us a lot of books and this time I bought nearly all of them. I do not think I am willing to replace all those books with new ones for a new game when there is nothing wrong with the books I have. I thought I would pick up the core books (almost cancelled my order as information trickled in about the game) and then the first two FR books. Admittedly I have not read the core books but I did glance through the FRCS and I have never been more disappointed. I have been a FR fan since the early days of the setting and other than 3.5 books it is what I have the most of.
Thank the gods for Golarian... the Pathfinder APs have saved my interest in the game.
Does anyone else have impressions of this book lest we get into another 3.xe vs. 4e debate (snooze)
yeah actually I like it although I don't use 4.0, I'm afraid i'm still resisting change. I'm sure I'll eventually find something I like about 4.0 but now, well you know old people. Anyway this book has some good things in it. Of course if you're an old schooler FR person you'll probably hate it, but once again thats an issue with everything 4.0 ya know. I think overall FR is more playable in now with some of the changes they made. I remember used to in the old days everything was all about the NPC's. Every region had some super potent NPC's that basically made the whole world static and kind of worry free. After all they could stop any serious naughtiness from happening. What could pc's do? Not much but give support or be red shirts.
Well I made a review, but it is too long for the Review section, so I will put it here.
** (Two stars)
I will admit up front that I don’t like 4th Edition, in fact I seriously doubt that the designers could have created a game that I would dislike more. It is like every aspect of gaming that I like was removed or changed in its creation. But I also admit I love the Forgotten Realms. This is the setting where I became a DM for the first time and where the actual setting became an important part of my game experience. So I had to pick up the 4th edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide. Partly because it is like a car accident on the highway, you just gotta look to see how bad it is, and partly because this was one last chance for Wizards of the Coast to win over 4E hold-outs like myself.
Sorry, WotC, but you failed.
First off, let’s throw out the entire 4E vs 3E argument. Even then, this is still a terrible book. The entire format of this book is just “wrong”. Think about it, this is the first 4E Forgotten Realms book, the introduction to the Realms for a new generation of gamers. Unfortunately, that introduction does not start till page 82! In your typical Role Playing Book, Each chapter of the book build upon the last chapter. In a Player Guide, you start with ability scores, then race, classes, skills, feats, equipment and spells. But not in this book, the chapters look like they were just thrown together randomly starting with an Adventure. Of course there are a lot of aspects of the adventure that do not make any sense unless you have already read the rest of the book. Also, the adventure is rather bland, just a basic Goblin hunt. The original Forgotten Realms Grey Boxed set had an adventure too, a quick trip into the legendary Myth Drannor. Personally, I think this 4E adventure would have been rejected by Dungeon magazine for being to generic.
As I read the next few chapters, I wondered if somehow this book was accidentally assembled backwards because we have a group of little chapters that traditionally would be in the back of the book; Glossary, Time line, Magic Items, Local Treasures, and Languages & Realms speak, which leaves out the traditional “Well Met” greeting by the way.
Next we get to Magic and the Spellplague, Plaguechanged and Spellscars. Get used to these three words because you will be seeing them about every other page. Now what does a Spellscar do for your PC? I don’t know, that information will be in the Next Forgotten Realms book. Yeah, page after page of this book referencing something that you will need to buy another book to use.
Next we have the planes (Say goodbye to the Planescape setting) and the gods of the Realms, and they still need two full pages to list them all, but they simplify thing by not providing anything more that a single sentence to define most of them. This is strange, on one hand they want you to forget the past editions of the Forgotten Realms, but on the other you are going to need those books to get the information you need because they have already said there will only be three 4E Realms books.
Finally we are 82 pages into the book and we get to the actual Forgotten Realms. There is an interesting sidebar here where they point out that the majority of the NPCs mentioned in this book are presented without statistics. They say this is because it is your game and you can stat them to fit your world.
Personally I have three problems with this; One, when I pay $40 for a book, I would like it to be finished! Not finishing the book is lazy, bragging about it in a sidebar is brazenly lazy. Two, 4E is new! We need examples to understand how to create those statistics. And three is one of the hidden flaws of 4th edition. In previous editions, NPCs used the same rules that players did. You could sum up a NPC with a single word and number. Town Mayor; Bard 5, Sheriff; Ranger 6, Innkeeper; Rogue 4. But under 4th edition, NPCs use the same rules as Monsters and the monster rules cannot be simplified like this. You would have to provide a full stat block for each NPC or provide nothing, as they did here.
Next we get to the actual nations of the realms, which brings us to the Map. Almost all the 1st and 2nd edition Forgotten Realms products came with maps and they were magnificent. The map included here is far from magnificent. It is vague and inaccurate, Candlekeep is described as being 100ft of the coast but the map shows it about 50 miles inland. And there is a small section of the map with each of the nation entries, but many of the cities and locations mentioned are not shown on the map.
As to the nations themselves, well if you are an old fan, this is the part of the book that will really have you shaking you head. I don’t know what it was about the Shining South that offended the designers, but no nation there survived intact. In fact just about everything I liked about the realms is gone or destroyed. Everything that made the realms unique and set it apart from other setting has been washed away. The Harpers, the Zhentarim, nations of Halflings, Wizards and Half elven Drow Amazons all gone. The nations based on historical cultures of our world have also been eliminated. The Realms of 4E just does not feel like the realms and the chapter on Returned Abeir really proves it. There is nothing about this new continent that feels like the Forgotten Realms at all. In fact for a moment I thought maybe someone had included a preview of 4E Eberron in this book, because that is what this new area really looks like, even the sky is a different color here.
Next we see the Underdark and then a chapter on threats of the Realms. Interesting to note that two minor creatures from Returned Abeir get two full pages each, while classic creatures get a sidebar. Kir-lanan, the godless gargoyles are now devout worshipers of Shar and the Draegloth demons are now hot Drow babes with four arms. Why? I don’t know, ask the guy who put breasts on the Dragonborn.
I really don’t know why all of this had to be changed for 4th edition. Why not have a nation of Saurials instead of Dragonborn? Why destroy so much of the work of previous writers and designers? Why eliminate everything that made the Realms unique? Here was a chance to bring back some of the longtime gamers who were shoved aside for 4E, but instead many aspects of this book seemed designed to push us even further away. The book will touch upon something from 100 years ago, but not explain it at all.
Overall, this is a depressing book. To see something that I have enjoyed for all these years destroyed just to make a World of Warcraft knock-off just does not make sense. If I wanted to play WoW, I would be playing it, I want to play D&D in the Forgotten Realms, but the realms presented here should be forgotten. So much of it is just so bland and uninspiring. With each Paizo Pathfinder book, I want to see more. But with each 4E book I see, I am left wondering why did they try to fix something that was not broken.
This book just reminds me that 4E is just a game I have no desire to play.
For those that liked the jam-packed 3E Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, prepare to be disappointed by this book.
If you like a minimalist approach to your campaign settings, this is the book for you. (And there are apparently a lot of people that like this.)
For me, one more reason I'm glad I'm not going 4E.
The rich history of the Realms that grew from 1e->3e is, well, gone.
It's like they wanted to use the power of the brand (Forgotten Realms) to generate sales for an (essentially) new setting. I understand it, but it's not what I would have wanted. Oh, well.
You've listed nearly all of my major problems with the new Realms. But then again, it lead me to Pathfinder and Paizo, so you lose some, you win some. ;)
Mr Baron
(Pathfinder Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Roleplaying Game, Campaign Setting, Modules Subscriber)
And what sucks evern more about 4th forgetton realms other then the book itself and what they did to the campaign setting...is that the Mangers of all of 4th D&D have gone on reckerd as saying that for campaigns they are going to make only 3 core books for each settings...and thats it....the reason for the large gaps in them is so they can put basic advendure on d&d insider and make you pay monthy for them.
I just took a long look at this piece of sad dross and put it back on the shelf. The Realms have been destroyed and it's unforgiveable. I for one am glad i didn't collect one single 4th edition book. I got out before WoTc killed D&D. They didn't just killed it, they worked it over with a lead pipe and left it for dead in the street.