3.0 already used Toril alone. I started playing after 3.0 came out, 2nd edition materials were pretty hard to find where I live.How dare you present a logical reason for your not knowing about the old name! :p
Lots of good FR material in the older edition stuff; like you said, though, it's tough to find.
Yeah, I know and I knew bout the Abeir part as well, just not that it was used in this extent before.
Personally I loved the setting as it was presented in the basic 3.0 compaign book and I also liked the supplements all the way up to Shining South, Serpent Kingdoms and the Lost Empires. From that on they started to be rather crappy, entering the 4E format where a lot of the book started to be filled with adventure snippets and dungeon maps, instead of the yummy setting details, adventure location suggestions and plot hooks.
I was caught in the setting ever since I played the Baldur's Gate, but a lot of the charm was lost with the Dark Elf series of books. I've red nine of them and utterly failed to be as ecstatic about them as some people... any suggestions for good FR novels?
Just in case you're still looking, the 2.0 setting stuff is available for download free on the WOTC website (or at least is was).
3.0 already used Toril alone. I started playing after 3.0 came out, 2nd edition materials were pretty hard to find where I live.
Yeah, but by far not all. I haven't been able to find the basic FR book for example. There were some Volo's guides, description of Faerun in ancient past (Netheril, ...) and a book about the Tuigan horde. Now I can't even find these. I'd be happy if someone presented a link for more.
Just Toril. Abeir is that invading thing in 4E, which in propper FR stays away in forgotten reality ;)Been called Abeir-Toril since the old 2nd-edition 'campaign set' (which came out in '87).
As for me: what setting my group plays in is pretty fluid; sometimes it'll be Eberron, sometimes Forgotten Realms, on occasion (a rare occasion, much to my dismay) even Rokugan. Been trying to pick up some Greyhawk books to run some games there.
Yep. Check page 231 of the 3E Campaign Setting book. The map overview is called 'A Scholar's View of Abeir-Toril"
Golarian, Ptolis, and we just converted a legacy home brew world from 3.5e. (This is not the first whole world conversion, but when moving from AD&D/2e/Custom to 3.0/3.5e, the GM decided it best to set the campaigns in a earlier time period where magic was not so scarce. Pathfinder still fit well for the conversion.)
We play in a variety of homebrew settings. We had the idea of setting up a wiki for our latest campaign setting, which is quite handy.
Some of the pictures are fairly tounge in cheek, but you can see my DM's awesome cartography skills :)
http://iphazia.wikia.com/wiki/Iphazia_Wiki
When I actually get it off the ground, I'll be running a heavily modified World of Warcraft campaign set between the 1st and 2nd PC games. Much nonsense will be eliminated from the world, however.
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Currently running a low powered FR campaign centered in Western Cormyr. Using 1st and 2n ed FR box sets as my core background with some material (not current events) taken from 3.0/3.5 FR.
Also very little with regard to white hats and high powered NPCs. They exist, but just to help move the story along, get killed, etc. Generally the super powered bad guys and good guys are way too busy trying not to get killed to get too involved in events that are not in their sphere of control. That or they just don't exist - as I have done with many of the Gods and some power groups.
Once I close that out (soon) I am considering running a Golarion campaign with some Greyhawk overlays - placing the major iconic locations on that world ex. Barrier Peaks, Pomarj, Bone March, etc, in some of the free areas.
Some areas will be dumped - Geb (Undead-R-Us), Nex and Alkenstar (guns) in favor of a few Greyhawk locals or i'll just make the area all dust and fallen empires.
Going to be a low magic powered game with no magic-tech use; so no magic trains, undead emporiums, etc. If there is going to be tech, it's going to be Barrier Peaks/Temple of the Frog and not things sold at Mage-Mart such as wand rifles and the such.
I'm going more for a classic early game campaign feel.
For Pathfinder - the GM's version of the Realms. Post Spellplague, pre-4E.
In my homebrew setting.
Homebrew. Eberron style religious ambiguity, blurred territorial lines, lack of "inborn racial hate," countries based on different societies that range far outside of "LOL EUROPE," post-plot bombed setting, Age of Discovery.
Hate FR. Hate it with a passion.
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These days, I've got two different Golarion games, and my main group is still trying to finish Age of Worms in Greyhawk.
Over the years, I've played in many other settings: FR was a favorite, along with Ravenloft, Darksun, and Spelljammer. Even played a game or 3 in the Dragonlance setting.
I think the only setting I didn't play in was Eberron - never really cared much for it.
We play in the Forgotten Realms (mostly the 2e and earlier version) with forays into the connected settings of Kara-Tur, Zakhara (Al-Qadim), Planescape, and Spelljammer.
Loads of fun.
(And +1 to the poster with Ravenloft hate. Me too. Regardless of what apologists say, I've read it and it really is a 'screw you' setting. No fun for me, though others are free to like it for whatever reason.)
*Loves Forgotten Realms*
Out of curiosity Prof... why do you hate it so much? It's -the- setting many gamers think of when they think D&D. Look how many video games for D&D have been in the FR setting.
*Loves Forgotten Realms*
Out of curiosity Prof... why do you hate it so much? It's -the- setting many gamers think of when they think D&D. Look how many video games for D&D have been in the FR setting.
And how many of them were enjoyable because of the Realms? For me it was the Baldur's Gate, Tales of the Sword Coast (BG1 datadisk) and Baldur's gate 2: Shadows of Amn. BG2 Datadisk (Throne of Baal) much less so, Neverwinter Nights was a good game, but the stories somewhat fell below the previously set standards IMHO (partly because there was one hero and his henchman, which somewhat limited previous party tctics and interactions, but the story somewhat suffered as well. What BG series could tell by handmade locations and lengthy swaths of text, the NWN tried to work with the toolbox, which prooved to be a bit more limiting in the end). NWN could easily be setting neutral and used FR only as a brand to collect people, not the other way around.
*Loves Forgotten Realms*
Out of curiosity Prof... why do you hate it so much? It's -the- setting many gamers think of when they think D&D. Look how many video games for D&D have been in the FR setting.
It's the laziest and most boring of the campaign settings.
Well ok, Greyhawk might be worse. I dunno much about Greyhawk.
It really encompases everything I dislike about a setting. The "LOL EUROPE," the hellanistic gods, the utter lack of imagination in nine out of ten areas. It's the Standard Fantasy Schlock Setting. This isn't even touching on the billions of uber-powered NPCs everywhere, the latent sexism that permeates the whole thing, the sheer, mind boggling idiocy that was the "Shadow Druids," etc, etc, etc. I could go on.
The only time I liked FR as a setting was when I played Mask of the Betrayer, and one of the purposes of that game was to subvert the setting as a whole, so I don't think it really counts. Baldur's Gate was a fun series, but I didn't like it because of the setting. The fact is, most video games are made for FR BECAUSE it's the unimaginative standard fantasy schlock setting. No need for creativity, let's just copy high fantasy at its most vanilla!
lol!
I have learned a very long time ago that it is generally a very bad idea to ask people why they don't like FR.
You read a bunch of amazing things.
I'm a player in one Pathfinder game, and the GM in another.
In the one in which I'm a player, the setting is Golarion, but it's not *exactly* Golarion because none of the players have the setting book and we aren't doing the AP modules. So, it's more like generic medieval fantasy with Golarion names and places.
In the one in which I'm the GM, the setting is a fantasy version of colonial-era America, 1786. Muskets & Monsters, if you will.
I started out using Northern Crown, by Atlas Games, but decided early on to switch to a more historical version of "our world, plus magic" and dropped the alternate history presented in Northern Crown.
You make good points ProfessorCrino, but don't you think that FR works because it is 'plain vanilla fantasy'? Most gamers don't have your breadth of reading, and so stick to what they are familiar with.
Nope.
One of my biggest gripes with FR is how laughably unchanging and conservative it is - and the fantasy genre is very conservative as is. The "There is no technical progress" mandate, for example, is stupid in ways I can't even fully formulate.
An ancient evil has arisen. You and your team must go and stop it before it destroys the world and ends life as we know it/subjegates it to a tyrannical rule.
If that sounds familiar it's because that's every plotline to everything that's ever come out of Forgotten Realms (save for Mask of the Betrayer, which as I already noted had subversion as a goal). It's also the most often seen plotline in fantasy works in general, and here's my problem with it - it has no aspirations. The world isn't a better place after you're done. In fact, it's largely the same, and in fact, that's the general point. The idea that that status quo is a good thing that needs to be maintained. This is the conservative outlook on fantasy that I mentioned. That's why I find Forgotten Realms so boring - the setting never tries to aspire towards anything. "Everything is rainbows and lollypops but OH NO BAD GUY, QUICK KILL HIM! Ok, the world is good again." Yawn.
Look at the landscape. Most of the kingdoms are either good aligned or neutral (which in FR typically means "with good leanings"). The evil organizations are all moustache twisty evil, be they cults to eeeeeeevil gods, cabals of eeeeeeevil necromancers who all backstab each other constantly, eeeeeeevil murderer/thieves guilds, etc, etc, etc. It's so utterly trite and boring, because at the end of the day, your adventurer isn't making life better for anyone; he's just trying to keep things the same forever until the end of time. There's no advancement. It's the literal definition of "stale."
...I could admittingly keep going beyond this, but I'll cut off here.
shambles through thread
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You make good points ProfessorCrino, but don't you think that FR works because it is 'plain vanilla fantasy'? Most gamers don't have your breadth of reading, and so stick to what they are familiar with.Nope.
One of my biggest gripes with FR is how laughably unchanging and conservative it is - and the fantasy genre is very conservative as is. The "There is no technical progress" mandate, for example, is stupid in ways I can't even fully formulate.
An ancient evil has arisen. You and your team must go and stop it before it destroys the world and ends life as we know it/subjegates it to a tyrannical rule.
If that sounds familiar it's because that's every plotline to everything that's ever come out of Forgotten Realms (save for Mask of the Betrayer, which as I already noted had subversion as a goal). It's also the most often seen plotline in fantasy works in general, and here's my problem with it - it has no aspirations. The world isn't a better place after you're done. In fact, it's largely the same, and in fact, that's the general point. The idea that that status quo is a good thing that needs to be maintained. This is the conservative outlook on fantasy that I mentioned. That's why I find Forgotten Realms so boring - the setting never tries to aspire towards anything. "Everything is rainbows and lollypops but OH NO BAD GUY, QUICK KILL HIM! Ok, the world is good again." Yawn.
Look at the landscape. Most of the kingdoms are either good aligned or neutral (which in FR typically means "with good leanings"). The evil organizations are all moustache twisty evil, be they cults to eeeeeeevil gods, cabals of eeeeeeevil necromancers who all backstab each other constantly, eeeeeeevil murderer/thieves guilds, etc, etc, etc. It's so utterly trite and boring, because at the end of the day, your adventurer isn't making life better for anyone; he's just trying to keep things the same forever until the end of time. There's no advancement. It's the...
Tell you what, instead of complaining, how is this. Do something about it. Open your own company and produce the products you want to see, that at progressive and is not the rainbow colored marshmallow treat you seem to think you see when you look elsewhere.
You can have good Necrophages and Evil Kingdoms with good thieves guilds.
Molly Dingle - your Colonial America settings sounds fantastic! I've often wanted to run something like that. (I'm currently running Pirates & Cthulhu... set ~1685).
I couldn't resist the lure of Lovecraft Country either... my colonial group just left Arkham after a nasty run-in with the awakened dire rat aberration-bloodline sorcerer, Brown Jenkin... >:)
good points
The problem with all of them is that they apply to virtually every published setting, including Golarion. There can't be technological progress because then it wouldn't be a fantasy setting any more. The argument to me is that the great minds of Faerun, instead of being drawn to astronomy and engineering or something, are instead drawn to wizardry. So magic is itself the stifling force of the world.
I happen to like FR for what it is, and when I want to run generic fantasy that's what I'll run. Out of all the generic fantasy settings (Greyhawk, Dragonlance, etc.) it has the most history and flavor.
The only big published settings that skirt this issue or at least address it, that I can think of, are Eberron which I hate for other reasons, and Dark Sun which I love dearly but has its own internal issues.
So what are your favorite settings to have played in?
Like the latent heartbeatchallengedism.
The latent nature of heartbeatchallengedism and rottingcorpsefaceism are not properly addressed in FR.
That is just unfair and un-Toril like!
Tell you what, instead of complaining,
New guy to the internet alert!
Don't ask me of my opinion if you don't want to hear it.
As I mentioned earlier, I typically play through homebrew settings, including my own, which is derived more from the Age of Discovery then Middle Ages Europe. In the setting, a huge cataclysmic disaster happened 500 years ago - the world has since managed to begin rebuilding itself, and adventurers are a semi-legal representation of a united effort between various empires to explore the world as it is now, both for riches, magical and technological advances, artifacts of old, and fertile ground for settling. I plan on the players eventually obtaining their own colony to turn into a fully independent city-state (and perhaps more of the players are so inclined).
There is no monolithic evil - in fact, there's little to no "Evil" with a capital E at all. I'm a fan of moral ambiguity. There are both good and bad factions inside the empires that the players will get brash with, but they all think they're doing the right thing - even the ones who set off the cataclysmic disaster on accident felt they were doing the correct and moral thing. There is religious ambiguity as well - no Hellenistic pantheon where the gods regularly come down to high-five their followers, but instead divine magic is tied more to belief then actual god-worship, and as a part of that, the religions don't have alignments. Nor for that matter do the religions recognize each other - a half-elf who worships Elam doesn't get irate at the polytheistic elf because he worships the "GOD OF LIES," he does it because he's not worshiping "god" at all, but rather some "twisted pagan ritualism"
I'm also a big Planescape and Eberron fan.
Well, my thoughts on FR are that in the book you have a setting caught around the date X and it's developement for good or bad is upon the players. Will Zhents controll defeat Cormyr and finally controll the area only to be swept away by the next orc horde pouring from the north? Will Thayvian runes be on all magic across the Faerun? You are the DM, aren't you? so the advancement from X to X+15 is your work.
Personally I don't like my setting going fast forward like the real world has gone in the last few centuries. Instead I'll let it bath in it's own blood like it had in the previous 5000 years before. Slowly advancing, tripping and starting over again. When and whether the renaissance will ever come is up to me, but this state suits me. It's what we've been doing for so long after all.
my current savage tide campaign is in Mystara
while my runelords campaign is in Golarion
All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Call of Cthulhu & Basic Roleplay system based games, Twilight 2000/2013, Rifts, Mouse Guard, Pathfinder rules with 2e Forgotten Realms Lore, Piledrivers and Powerbombs, Amethyst, Trying out Hero System - Post Apocalyptic Hero soon.. And last but not least over the past year I have been slowly piecing together a homebrew world that is very dark and gritty.
I'm currently in one Greyhawk game and one Golarion game. More a fan of the first, but that's mostly because of who I'm gaming with.
I'm a huge fan of Eberron, and hopefully my second group will get back to that game someday. *wistfulsigh*
Gesundheit!
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The last six games I've been in have been;
Golarion
Freeport trilogy set in Greyhawk
The Scarred Lands (Hollowfaust region)
Eberron (Xendrik)
Greyhawk
Al-Qadim
We've also done extended Realms campaigns, Kara-Tur, Spelljammer, etc.
The only settings we didn't fall in love with were Ravenloft, Dark Sun and Dragonlance, although we ran games in those settings as well.
The last six games I've been in have been;
Golarion
Freeport trilogy set in Greyhawk
The Scarred Lands (Hollowfaust region)
Eberron (Xendrik)
Greyhawk
Al-QadimWe've also done extended Realms campaigns, Kara-Tur, Spelljammer, etc.
The only settings we didn't fall in love with were Ravenloft, Dark Sun and Dragonlance, although we ran games in those settings as well.
What did you think of Freeport? That's what my DM is running right now.
And how can you not fall in love with Athas? /swoon
I guess it was just my DM. Best campaign I ever played in.
Ugh. I hate Ravenloft with a burning passion... >.<Why is that? I think you've just never had anyone run it right for you.
Current game is D&D 3.5e game in Forgotten Realms, running Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave.
My players are tired of it though and want something different but we're near the end of that module so we decided to finish it.
I want to run Ravenloft but my brother has plainly said that he does not want to play Ravenloft.
I do have a side-game started with him and one other regular player using Pathfinder RPG rules and I stuck the 3.5e Expedition to Castle Ravenloft adventure (which I've read several times out of sheer joy) in the mountains in Ustalav in Golarion. So the cleric of Sarenrae and the two-weapon kukri fighter (who follows Cayden Cailen, I think) have just walked into zombie-infested Barovia.
I have to say, the ability to critical hit undead is going to make this adventure must easier. ALSO, Sun domain from Sarenrae negates channel resistance. As far as I can tell, it just makes channel resistance (ie Turn Resistance) no longer matter at all.
Those two points are the only reason my brother plays that adventure. He is seriously convinced anything that says Ravenloft wants to kill him.
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The next campaign is going to be Ravenloft: Masque of the Red Death using the 3.5e custom classes from the Sword and Sorcery Masque of the Red Death 3.5e book but using Pathfinder rules for adjudication of how skills work and combat issues (including critical hits).
As concerns my brother, I try not to mention that it's actually a Ravenloft setting (he does know that though) and Pathfinder rules will make it a little easier going.
I've already informed the players I don't expect them to live very long. They'll be starting at level 1 with the slow XP progression and I plan to open with the Paizo module Hangman's Noose, except setting it in 1890s London instead of in Absalom. If they survive Hangman's Noose (a somewhat-railroady ghost story, in a good way), I have a rough over-plot worked out where a wealthy physician hears of the ordeal and approaches them to fund them as paranormal investigators. (Party consists of a French scientist, an engineer, a medium, a Chinese physician, and a Scottish golfer, and I'm not sure the class of the last guy.) Eventually, if they live--and they know that running away is going to be a viable option--they'll learn that the doctor who hired them has funded three different groups investigating the paranormal and he's doing it because he is himself haunted by the ghost of a boy. But that's for later, in the meantime it's an excuse to send them to investigate all kinds of paranormal things with a focus on undead. (I like undead.)
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That's probably more information than you needed.
One of my biggest gripes with FR is how laughably unchanging and conservative it is - and the fantasy genre is very conservative as is. The "There is no technical progress" mandate, for example, is stupid in ways I can't even fully formulate.
Technical progress is based on science as we know it and a number of cultural ideas that have allowed it's application. A lot of worlds are based on magic. Progress might not be apparent as such, and would certainly be different. Besides, as I'm sure others have mentioned, too much progress leads to a setting that might be... non-fantastic?
Progress is a modern ideal and a relatively recent phenomenon tied to science and the fundamental understanding of the universe that it supplies. Even a knowledge of scientific principals and groundbreaking inventions can't guarantee their wider application in society. The ancient Greeks had a significant knowledge of science, they invented the steam engline and the electric storage battery... and did nothing much with them. You are definitely a child of the times (no insult intended). You presume "progress" is the norm, not the exception.
An ancient evil has arisen. You and your team must go and stop it before it destroys the world and ends life as we know it/subjegates it to a tyrannical rule.If that sounds familiar it's because that's every plotline to everything that's ever come out of Forgotten Realms (save for Mask of the Betrayer, which as I already noted had subversion as a goal). It's also the most often seen plotline in fantasy works in general, and here's my problem with it - it has no aspirations. The world isn't a better place after you're done. In fact, it's largely the same, and in fact, that's the general point. The idea that that status quo is a good thing that needs to be maintained. This is the conservative outlook on fantasy that I mentioned. That's why I find Forgotten Realms so boring - the setting never tries to aspire towards anything. "Everything is rainbows and lollypops but OH NO BAD GUY, QUICK KILL HIM! Ok, the world is good again." Yawn.
Yes, it is common... apparently because it's popular. None of which makes it good or bad. It all comes down to implementation and frequency. If the world is being threatened on a daily basis that's either boring... or an episode of Eureka :)
Look at the landscape. Most of the kingdoms are either good aligned or neutral (which in FR typically means "with good leanings"). The evil organizations are all moustache twisty evil, be they cults to eeeeeeevil gods, cabals of eeeeeeevil necromancers who all backstab each other constantly, eeeeeeevil murderer/thieves guilds, etc, etc, etc. It's so utterly trite and boring, because at the end of the day, your adventurer isn't making life better for anyone; he's just trying to keep things the same forever until the end of time. There's no advancement. It's the...
Here, I think it cmes down to "what works". Most people tolerate "good" or even the status quo of "neutral". A good king is "popular", a bored time server of a king is tolerated. An oppresive evil king generates opposition. Evil, has issues :) When things become intolerable (and evil as the central tenant of a society tends to be) people opt for change, whether it's internal or the neighbors deciding "enough is enough". Hence the limited spread of "evil". Personally I see most governments tending to lawful and neutral, with good and evil sprinkled into society where they fit, but that's my bias.
In the end, a static world certainly makes as much sense as a progressive one. Whatever generates the best adventure works. The very nature of a commercial setting (which presumably is going to be used for more than a single adventure or isolated AP) tends to make it "static" and the need for breadth and space for adventures of different types often leads to "vanilla" fantasy areas (often based on historical precedent or classic fantasy tropes).
Oh, now for one of my pet peaves :) Most people who think that medieval Europe is "familiar and boring" probably doesn't know as much about it as they think. It is an alien environment to modern man if it is explored in any depth. If you do know a lot about it then tortur... ahem, that is *educating* your players can be fun :D
An ancient evil has arisen. You and your team must go and stop it before it destroys the world and ends life as we know it/subjegates it to a tyrannical rule.
If that sounds familiar it's because that's every plotline to everything that's ever come out of Forgotten Realms (save for Mask of the Betrayer, which as I already noted had subversion as a goal). It's also the most often seen plotline in fantasy works in general, and here's my problem with it - it has no aspirations. The world isn't a better place after you're done. In fact, it's largely the same, and in fact, that's the general point. The idea that that status quo is a good thing that needs to be maintained. This is the conservative outlook on fantasy that I mentioned. That's why I find Forgotten Realms so boring - the setting never tries to aspire towards anything.
I really like the Forgotten Realms, but I'd never really recognised this as a problem. It might explain why my players never quite got into it as much as they did to the homebrew worlds I've run (which usually involved some kind of 'aspirational' element as you put it later).
It seems to me you can get around this by focussing on local issues - ie things you can actually change even though the world around you is, if not static, at least fairly stable.
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What did you think of Freeport? That's what my DM is running right now.
Loved it. The Cthulhu-esque elements were evocative, the flavor of the city was awesome, the many quirky NPCs had great flavor, and the serpentfolk / Valossan roots totally flowed for me.
I tweaked it heavily, 'though, with lots of Greyhawk specific influence. (It was set post Greyhawk Wars, and the city had been overtaken by the Scarlet Brotherhood during the recent past, and then reclaimed during a night of counter-treachery. Only one former Scarlet Brotherhood representative remains, and his loyalty is to the high priest of the church of Wee Jas, which is one of the three most powerful temples in the city.)
I did fold in Freeport-esque details, such as the Valossan / serpentfolk stuff (making them a parent race to the lizardfolk, troglodytes, sahuagin *and* yuan-ti) and the hilarious Iovan gnomes, with their enslaved gargoyle servants, coming up with a feat that would allow a Iovan gnomish sorcerer to to take first small Gargoyles (called Grotesques) and later full sized Gargoyles as Improved Familiars.
And how can you not fall in love with Athas? /swoon
I guess it was just my DM. Best campaign I ever played in.
I liked it before they started mixing stuff up and Tyr became a free city, but we'd just gotten heavily into Al-Qadim, etc. at the time, and Dark Sun was just one setting too many for us to get invested in. None of us were huge psionics fans, which probably didn't help, although, perversely, the Athas-splat 'The Will & the Way' ended up making the 2e Psionics system actually fun for the first time, and one of our Al-Qadim players ended up playing a Will & the Way expanded Psionicist who would grow giant scorpion claws and stuff in combat...