Why do people dislike Forgotten Realms? Is it simply because it's the most popular?

Why do people dislike Forgotten Realms? Is it simply because it's the most popular?

Because it's a hodgepodge of different genres where hyper powerful living gods live under every fucking rock.

It's a useful starting point and it's convenient to have a background for every little village and stuff, especially if you're not much of one for either creating a world yourself, or feverishly spitballing as your players explore.

But jeez it's dumb having a couple high level spellcasters cooling their heels in every backwater mud pit from icewind dale to thay.

I don't have a real strong opinion either way since it's about as generic as a setting gets. I do however hate the naming scheme that it uses. Every fucking name it feels like is just two random words stuck together. Makes it impossible to take shit seriously.

My biggest problem is godwank. The gods are active in the world (making you wonder what it needs adventurers for), and everyone has to be a god's bitch or they're punished for all eternity (something the "good" gods are okay with). And as others have mentioned, there's also the problem of every village's bartender being a high-level NPC, further raising the question of why the player characters are even there.

The real question is why was Greyhawk so robbed of its rightful place as default setting for D&D?

I think you mean Mystara.

Ok, I have only read about 4 source books, but here is what I noted negatively:
>it has what once where other settings shoved into it
>has historical gods alongside fantasy gods
>buries older more interesting lore compulsively, only presents the vanilla material
>focuses heavily on the most uninteresting locales
>overleveled NPCs, level 17+ literally whos as smalltown governors
>cloned environments, every region needs an identical druid forest to the next one
>adventurer centric writing tone, Aaaadventurers are welcomed to adventure in this adventure area! *winkwink nudge*
>gives demographic breakdown of countries but it is always 90% human anyway. In elf realm and dwarf realm it's flipped.
>monster countries and populations are alluded to as spawnpoints but not detailed ore allowed to interact with human nations beyond spitting out a horde
>spends too much text space on telling me the mountains are mountains and similar information
>such factoids as the captain of the guard is the lesbian lover of the governor and that is the only detail to them both beside name, level and class

I find its cosmology bland and prefer other settings.

the vocalfags of the internet are simply the types who don't like anything classic

they love eberron, for instance

think about that

I can't quite put my finger on why it is, but for me it feels really, really artificial. It's not just that it's high magic - I really like the Greyhawk setting, which has a lot of spell-slinging, and I'm a huge fan of The Elder Scrolls. Both of those feel very alive to me. Forgotten Realms just feels fake.

Yes, because it's the most popular.

Have you thought that classic maybe overdone and people want something a bit different and unique instead of middle earth 2.0?

There's a reason settings like Dark Sun and Eberron are loved more than forgotten realms and greyhawk.

Two reasons.

1) Greyhawk sales were flagging;
2) Gary Gygax had just stormed out of TSR, and Greyhawk's legal status and whether or not TSR could publish new Greyhawk stuff was legally grey. So it made more sense to create a new setting.

> Dark Sun and Eberron are loved more than forgotten realms and greyhawk

I gots me some book sales says different.

Book sales are pretty meaningless when it comes to popularity. Especially when we're talking about how popular things are now, in the age of PDFs and piracy.

studies in the past have suggested that piracy increases sales because after pirating one product and enjoying it, people are inclined to buy the next iteration of it

>(((studies)))

>(((anecdotal evidence)))

I've just never found it particularly interesting. I won't object to a game set there, but nothing about the setting really appeals to me over other generic fantasy settings.

Mask of the Betrayer pointed out a few glaring flaws in the logical underpinnings of FR (while still being set there)

its just lame as fuck. i cant put my finger on it but it just has this aura of shit around it. like i cant read more than a sentence about anything to do with the setting without my eyes wandering off the page.

yeah it has an air of disneyland about it somehow

My gentleman of Ylari descent. Mystara is the best generic D&D setting.

Eberron is a good setting. It's one of the few to attempt taking a critical eye at what a world with D&D magic (in all it's stable, reliable, predictable, and impartial nature) would actually look like, and then made a world well-suited to pulp adventures.

It's basically proto-Golarion. It has the same theme-park setup, just less blatant.

The historical gods are because they got brought in from Earth, along with their people.

The original idea for the setting was that there'd be all these portals between worlds, and that you could find one on Earth and just step into Faerun. And that we'd just forgotten about them, hence forgotten realms.

They dropped that part because they realised idiots might believe it and hurt themselves looking for the portals.

>and everyone has to be a god's bitch or they're punished for all eternity
No, all you have to do is not be a fedora faglord. Something you clearly are having a problem with.

It’s because Ed Greenwood is a massive pervert who managed to make money off his magical realm

All you have to do is not deny the god's existence. Even of you deliberately choose not to worship you'll still end up in the domain of one or the other based on your actions.

I love Eberron because of the major level of ambiguity the gods are handled with.
The only God with an actual physical presence in the setting (the Silver Flame) is stuck in one spot and might actually be a demon running the long con on mortals.

Bag of holding.

i will admit that that is not a bad thing for me

i actually would say most of these are neutral or positive
only
>focuses heavily on the most uninteresting locales
>cloned environments, every region needs an identical druid forest to the next one
are really irksome to me

The bartender has to be high leveled, how is a low level bartender to survive bar brawls?

im unfamiliar but were is it said that you only have to not be a fedora?

Because there is only one class in 5 ed. that actually heavily uses INT. Meaning no alchemist, no artificer, and no non-wizard spell swinger that uses INT.

I wish there was more monster interaction.

>theme-park setup
Nailed it

I love Forgotten Realms, but will freely admit you need to take the Big Red Marker to a lot of the characters and Mary-Sues that are in the setting. The other thing I do is use it as a canvas for background stuff and setting but ultimately maintain focus on the PCs and fit whatever story I'm telling when I DM. I think it helps I've never consumed the FG novels (apart from BG & NwN game series), didn't really followed it when I played Ad&d in highschool with friends (our DM at the time was a Dragonlance fanboy, including heaps of fucking Kender, which is why I have a similar aversion to Dragonlance that many fa/tg/uy has to FG)

I've heard plenty of horror stories of people playing FG with fanboi GMs and players. Those who drop fucking Elminster, Drizzt and whatever fucking character from the novels sleeping with the Gms self inserts etc. Obviously on here and on other blogs, never witnessed it myself, but I can see how such unadulterated autistic horror can put anyone off anything.