FR

You're a weird guy.

FR is good. It's got a lot of great ideas, and its level of detail and history is a boon, not a bane.

Yes, there's bad ideas as well, and that can be said about any setting, but thankfully FR is divided into little subsections that allow people to decide what kind of taste they want.

As far as your impenetrable text business, the Campaign setting books are pretty straightforward, and there's plenty of halfway decent novels to act as a starting point for entering the setting. I don't think there's anyone who knows all there is to know about the Realms. and it's expected and even encouraged for players and DMs to include their own ideas (such as to provide explanations for the thousand and one open-ended mysteries) and to adapt the setting to how they see fit.

Don't tell the players they're playing in Forgotten Realms, file the serial numbers off of everything, and only introduce the lore which is actually relevant to the PCs. Elminister only exists if your party is exhausted in the middle of a dungeon, and he accidentally casts a Heal spell on the PCs because he thought he'd found an isolated place to train his new puppy.

I don't think Gond suppresses tech so much as knows that FR is on the cusp of entering a sort of Industrial Revolution of sorts, what with the growing introduction of firearms and increasing desire from some island gnome city about getting ahold of as much raw iron and black powder as they can get their hands on, with said island starting to make clockwork devices and a bunch of other stuff, after they up and vanished for almost 100 years due to Spellplague shenanigans.

It's been hinted that the island (and everyone on it) either just turned itself invisible and became super isolationist, or got Plane Shifted and only came back when Mystra returned and started to fix the shit caused by the Spellplague.

>casts a Heal spell on the PCs because he thought he'd found an isolated place to train his new puppy.
That's Dragonlance, you knowb.

I think you will love Aventuria then, the setting of the dark eye rpg.

I can't stand Aventuria.

It reads like some kind of tongue-in-cheek parody, except someone forgot to tell the writers it was supposed to be funny, so they just took it at face value.

reduce the amount of magic even further

everyone except those poor souls has the chance to play something better

>FR is good.
fucking dropped

aventuria was quite good originally but too much crap has been added since then. i don't mind the goof too much, one can always tone it down, but it does not get counter-balanced by edginess enough.

>someone forgot to tell the writers it was supposed to be funny, so they just took it at face value
Nah, they're just German.

Sorry but how is Greyhawk good?
Literally only old edition grognards and people trying to get "gamer cred" pretend to like it

I never said it was good, I said it was better at being a generic fantasy setting than FR is, which isn't really up for debate.

A setting being generic isn't a good thing in and of itself, but it does make it a good entry point. If you have someone who knows absolutely nothing about D&D, it's much easier to dump them into something like Greyhawk than to throw them into Dark Sun or Ebberon, because even non-roleplayers are well aware of the fantasy tropes that such generic settings are built upon, but less so with settings that try to do something different.

There's a reason why FR is used for fucking everything, while Dark Sun is all but completely forgotten.

Oh, really? I guess my DM must have adapted that joke.

>better at being a generic fantasy setting than FR is, which isn't really up for debate.
It certainly is up for debate. How specifically is Greyhawk "better" than FR for generic fantasy?

I don't see much difference, at least if you set a newb party down int he core areas of each setting, that being the City of Greyhawk and Baldur's Gate, respectively.

If its your opinion its up for debate, and your wrong.

>Everybody hates the Forgotten Realms.
I don't.

>How would you improve it?
Get rid of all the people who have nothing better to do than complain about it.

>Get rid of all the people who have nothing better to do than complain about it.
So if we got rid of all the critics the Forgotten Realms would be absolutely perfect? OK Computer

>Everybody hates the Forgotten Realms.

I disagree with your central premise.

>The first thing is that we already have Greyhawk, which does "generic fantasy" far better than Forgotten Realms.

Excepting, of course, in the most important area: sales.

>The first would be to strip it down to the bare essentials

So...what 5E did, then. Cool.

No, he specifically said the people who have nothing better to do than complain about it. Not every critic, just the ones that are more interested in complaining rather than fixing, and more importantly, fixing it in a way that still leaves it as the Forgotten Realms in tone and feel.

Well, if you're going to be splitting hairs like that, how exactly do you differentiate between "legitimate" critics and these imaginary "critics with nothing better to do"? Telepathy, perhaps?

Seriously? The same way you do with anything.

This, , is not helpful, since it consists only of complaints without any suggested fixes or patches.

This, , is helpful, since it suggests how to replace the thing that the critic didn't like.

This, , is also helpful since it lists out what the critic doesn't like, the reasons why he doesn't like it, and then suggests ways to fix it.

This, , is not helpful, since it's just an angry rant from a lonely user who was never able to kill Drizzt in Baldur's Gate no matter how hard he tried.

Make it clear to the players, from page 1, that this isn't a low powered generic fantasy setting.

It's a high powered fantasy super heroes setting. Anyone of consequence to the world (as opposed to a small town) is level 15+.

The king isn't going to care about your level 3 fighter. A city guard is likely tougher than that.

Explain what kind of characters are at what level range, and what kind of adventures are appropriate for that range.

Then make it a single new realmcyclopedia, like the 3e campaign setting, but tell people where they can find more information on stuff, and make the more info easy to access and digital.

Detail everything. The biggest advantage of Faerun is the details are there if you want them. Sure, you can use the broad strokes encyclopedia and make up the rest, but if you want details they're typically available. The appeal of Faerun is the high power level and wealth of available predetailed info. Town maps, that sort of thing

Stop advancing the timeline in the rpg setting, and have it set at least 10 years before whatever is going on in the current-day novels.

Nuke it, again, for real this time.

>Anyone of consequence to the world (as opposed to a small town) is level 15+.
>The Simbul was Level 30 or something stupid like that

i've never played a game in FR lore (save for shitty vidya) and get the feeling it's a setting that exists more to give a vague and almost useless example of play to new players who aren't creative or involved enough to just make their own shit up on the spot.

is that not what it is? criminy

>So, tell me about Greyhawk.

99% of what DMs make up on the spot is going to be worse than the default of Forgotten Realms.

>which isn't really up for debate
A subjective opinion isn't up for debate?
Come on, be honest; you never read anything about Greyhawk OR Forgotten Realms.

I can SMELL the 3e babbies all over this thread.
That shouldn't even be possible as the Internet transmits no odors, yet collectively they all emit this distinctive smell that transmits through the digital medium.

I'd kill everyone who developed their opinion from a fucking Veeky Forums meme.
It's okay if you don't like FR, but if you know literally nothing about ANYTHING other then what you heard in Veeky Forums then fuck right the fuck off.

The level of willing acceptance of total ignorance on this board when the ability to discover information like this takes zero effort at all with access to the Internet is fucking appalling.

Yes there are some characters who are a bit over the top for levels. Elminster and the simbul, for example. But most of the novel characters and the like are level 15 or lower.

With the exception of Elminster most are totally irrelevant anyway.
Seriously; that Drizzt guy has over 15 books about him published over 20 years and exactly TWO things he's done or has happened in his novels actually affected the campaign setting.

Oh, sure. Most don't have any major effect on the setting.

It's still a setting with lots of characters running around at all levels, which means that yes, it's highly improbable that you're going to save the world by level 3.

Which two things?

> it's highly improbable that you're going to save the world by level 3.

That applies to every campaign anyway - who the Hell is saving the world at level 3? What are you even saving it from? An ankylosaurus? Three bugbears?

That at least is a legit complaint.
If you like NPC's all being low level, even in prior editions there was a silly number of 10+ NPC's, the majority of which were rulers of various towns on the map or heads of nations.
At least Greenwood basically had it so that almost all of them actually DID nothing; they were all retired basically. Every 13th level Fighter in charge of a city was basically never adventuring and unless saving the world involved mustering his national or city-state army he didn't do fuck-all.

Of course the later novels went around not paying any attention to this in one of WotC's many poor business decisions regarding D&D which they've shown to be literally incapable of not making.
In his second book when they re-settled Mythril Hall, and just recently when they re-settled Gauntlygrim, though this second one barely affects the campaign setting at all as it's a purely 5e thing and thus there's not much in the way of a main campaign book.

And technically it was his dwarf buddy that actually did both of those things.
Actually, dwarves do a LOT more then Drizzt himself does. Like, literally everything important comes down to what some dwarf did.
Maybe not surprising in that the only reason Drizzt is still alive is because editorial demanded it of him; he apparently had planned to kill him off over ten book ago or something.

He wasn't even supposed to be the main character of the series.

Salvatore REALLY likes short guys; gnomes, dwarves, and halflings show up everywhere in his shit.

Not a complaint in my book. AFAIC its Nice to actually have a setting with non-chump npcs.

>Salvatore REALLY likes short guys; gnomes, dwarves, and halflings show up everywhere in his shit.

For that matter, drow are short for elves...

It's a matter of preference then.
I dunno, these threads annoy me not because of the content (I'm a Ravenloft/Dark Sun guy myself), but because of the shocking levels of ignorance involved in them.

It's kids talking about something that they never actually bothered with or learned about and complaining about it. At least I was ACTUALLY AROUND when Forgotten Realms was at it's height and was a thing and thus actually learned about it firsthand.

Some of the shit on this board I hear is just lots of "he hate a thing we've heard people are supposed to hate on here".

He actually doesn't like drow too much. Every time they show up in Drizzt books it's because sometime told him "needs more drow".

There's a reason he fostered off the actual writing on that huge series of drow novels to another group of people entirely.

Forgotten Realms was only bad until Golarion cropped up.

It's unsalvageable. There are few good parts to it but there are too few and away, so basically you would have to write new setting around them.
Most of the core setting elements, like overbloated magic that affects the setting in extremely incoherent way, patchwork of regions that not really fit in to their neighbourhoods, standing with overstretched legs between generic fantasy and overblown magepunk despite those two genres not really fitting, shallow and boring demihuman race descriptions for most parts, no sense of scale, ed greenwoods magical real insterts, and generally authors' self insert snowflake mary sue npcs and total lack of grittyness and sense of dangers - almost every baddie in the setting feels like saturday morning cartoon villain and not real menacing threat, and utterly shit pantheon with even shittier methods of interactions with the world.

Yeah. Most of the FR hate you see is uninformed memeing, from a bunch of ignorant jackasses complaining about stuff that's either very inaccurate or flat out wrong.

I actually really like faerun, as far as d&d settings go. It's not perfect, but i like it more than most of the alternatives.

>ed greenwoods magical real insterts, and generally authors' self insert snowflake mary sue npcs

See, but neither of these are an actual problem with a campaign setting, since you can just NOT HAVE THEM SHOW UP YOU MORON.

I will never understand this complaint. "How can PCs be special in a world with Elminster?" makes about as much sense as "why are there even heroes in a world with Superman?"

SUPERMAN HAS HIS OWN SHIT TO TAKE CARE OF, NUMBNUTS.

YOU COMPLAIN ABOUT SCALE, AND THEN ASSUME THAT SOME RANDOM HIGH-LEVEL NPC WHO LIVES IN BUMFUCK SHADOWDALE IS GONNA ALWAYS BE EVERYWHERE IN THE REALMS AT ALL TIMES?!

Take what bits I need, discount what I don't need, tell the players that anything in the books are rumors that may or may not be true.

Elminsters, Drizzt and the rest of them don't show in my games unless I want them to show up.

>Everybody hates the Forgotten Realms.
>Impling.
Lot of us don't.

Because it's a ridiculously unbelievable excuse that destroys the credibility of the setting and any GM who uses it.

>Tiamat is invading the Forgotten Realms!
>Only your plucky band of 10th level adventurers can stop her!
>Because Elminster is...uhh...busy. Somewhere...uhh...else. Yeah.
>probably because he's fucking an elf goddess somewhere

That's like saying that the Soviet Union invades Missouri, but the US Army is, uhh, too busy with other important matters. It's up to your plucky little band of 5 Kansas City police officers to save the day!

If that's the case, then pretty much every book or TV show has zero credibility either.

that's still a tip of an iceberg tho.

And scaling issues isn't only about npc's and lvls
FR has wars that lasted for four millenia FFS. This is idiotic, even if longevity of the race involved should be taken into account, and really there is no reason it should. They don't fight battles in slow motion because of their long lives.

And I forgot to mention that the "detail level" is actually disadvantage if you realize that most of those details are riddiculously stupid and feel fake as fuck.

And
>magical realm inserts
isn't about npcs too, but for example, description of sexual behaviour of the races. And quite often happens that some fuck brings that up in game

I would not say that but I would say it's a hurdle many less experienced GMs have a hard time getting over and thus is definitely a problem.
A setting shouldn't be only accessible if you're experienced as a GM.

Comparing both Greyhawk and FR, Greyhawk seems better and more cohesive.

Still FR has a big place in my heart for the videogames obviously.

I say take elements from both and homebrew it. One of my best campaigns was a modified Greyhawk\FR\Dragonlance campaign that almost became Jason and the Argonauts meets Mount & Blade.

Greyhawk has great evil characters, the role of the Gods is also toned down, over the years Forgotten Realms became insane.

Off-topic but the Cult of the Dragon is my favorite FR fluff
>nerd falls in love with waifu
>waifu has sex with him
>turns out waifu is a bit of a slut
>nerd decides to become the best that ever was to win back the slut's heart
>misreads a prophecy about undead and dragons
>takes a bunch of dragons on a ruse cruise, turning them into undead
>nerd only died when the avatar of a god got pissed off at him

Based Sammaster.