Be Ed Greenwood

>building a house in full armor
what the fuck?

>imlying it's Pike and Shot without pikes and shots

Wasn't Eberron a pretty bad market failure? It received next to zero support.

Don't you know? Armor is a costume!

Yep. Funny story Ed told at a panel once.
>When their were developing 4th edition, some guy called him here to discuss development on the Cormyr region.
>Ed replied with "Oh that must means your need to look at X, Y, and Z" (Actually saying xyz because he couldn't discuss it to the panel audience at the time.)
>WotC guy on the phone goes dead serious and says 'Sir. That info is undisclosed information of wizards of the coast. How do you know about that?'
>Ed said he replied with "Son... Do you know who I am?"
>Apparently he called someone higher in WotC later and was like "Who are these kids you have working for you?"

Amusing story even if I'm not the biggest fan of the guy.

What if it's magical armor that grants you super strength. It is D&D/Pathfinder. That's hardly unbelievable, and would be handy when building a house.

>Be OP
>Write shitty setting
>Nobody cares.
>Blown out of the water by a guy writing up his tabletop game at home.

Nice job.

So armor is an exoskeleton? Do workers and smiths wear armor at the job as well?

I always thought the knight lady went looking for the elf and the elf was hiding by a construction site. I never figured the knight was actually helping build the house.

She holds a plank and her helmet rests on the ground. Of course the knight was meant to be working.

Depends how many tombs they've plundered to fight magical shit.
Or how many crafting wizard friends they know.

Gonna assume it's just the one selfish paladin chick there.

Mr. Jorts is the only normal looking guy besides the jorts.

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I was gonna say the guy in red looked sort of normal but then I realized he looks like a young Papa John

It had a fair number of books printed for it and a decent amount of advertising. Comparable to what they had for Faerun.

I heard Greenwood getting blamed for his NPCs promiscousness. But realizing he must have partially lived through the free love generations, I guess that's what affected him?

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I'm getting really bored of generic high fantasy lads. I don't hate it but there's so little vareity in the genre it's absurd, why don't people ever do something else rather than dwarves and elves etc? Scifi has more variety why doesn't fantasy?

Have you tried actually researching settings other than Forgotten Realms? a vast majority of settings published in the last decade are "something else".

I wish WotC would publish Rich Burlew's setting, or made it public domain at least.

>not understanding what "exclusively" means
>being this mentally retarded

A lot of them still seem to be slight variations on the same theme but never feel different enough. I've stopped reading fantasy novels for the same reason. It doesn't help my group love generic high fantasy and they create worlds that are just copy and paste FR stuff.

If It's anything like releasing monolithic software to a open source license I'm pretty sure they couldn't justify the costs, they'd have to check every line of text with a comb for potential copyright, write up a contract and NDA for Burlew and anybody he was involved with etc.

I don't know about copyright, but he already signed the NDA as far as I'm aware.

Read Burlew's D&D shit on his website (Not the comic, his actual homebrew)

It's actually pretty terrible.

Your pike and shot setting has received all it deserves.

>generic
Cult of Elistrae, Bro-hood of Bane, Cult of the Dragon, and the Red Wizards being third world magical item manufacturers isn't generic.

It isn't entirely his fault. Attempts to make Greyhawk the default setting never landed with the same success.

We can all sit around and bitch about Forgotten Realms having too much mindshare, but in reality it is that way because people wanted it that way. Forgotten Realms exploded in the 90's and we have no one but ourselves as a community to blame for that. Ed Greenwood didn't force a certain Drow Ranger on us, we ate that shit up and asked for more.

It is good to see Ravenloft and Planescape see a little more action... but gone are the days of pretending that they, Dark Sun or Eberon are the equal of Forgotten Realms. Fact is, most people are unimaginative and crave the same fantasy tropes they've had since the 70s.

ALL of the submissions were, supposedly even Eberron had to go though several major rewrites and edits to be publishable. Read Baker's blog, It's terrible as well.

>implying name which doesn't describe or hints to the content is good in any way
>being too stupid to find or invent a proper name for the style of play you want
>using misleading name to play out your stupid taco power fantasy

user, you do know that Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms, the one he created, pitched, and still runs games in; is very different from the one bought, published, and marketed by TSR/WotC, right?

How exactly?

Didn't they ask him to write a book specifically about how he runs the realms, and then heavily changed it anyway because it didn't fit with the image they wanted to present for the setting?

Hell, as far as I recall all of the mystra craziness only exists in the TSR/Wotc versions, because Ed has an entirely different interpretation of Netheril and the Avatar Crisis never happened in his games.

Less elves, more ERP

>>give birth to the most obnoxious writer's pets and mary sues in fiction
It's not like he wrote other writers' FR novels. Most of the endgame character crowding going on on the Sword Coast doesn't have anything to do with Greenwood.

You make it sound as if Forgotten Realms was somehow selected or favored by TSR, which it wasn't.

is entirely right. Forgotten Realms became an official AD&D setting towards the end of 1st edition because players were clamoring for more of it. Originally Greenwood gained fame as long-running contributor and editor of Dragon magazine, where he'd drop in articles about his own campaign, and he did some products that could be slotted into any campaign world as well. But people kept clamoring for more of his stuff. He had to answer letters constantly about his world and eventually TSR picked up on this and ran with it. It as connected with Greyhawk and with Gygax being forced out of the company.

Now see, even though "Greyhawk" and "Blackmoor" were the first "settings" of D&D, they were very light on details. The original folios actually had more room dedicated to special rules that Gygax and Arneson favored than actual settings. Early D&D/AD&D was very heavy that each DM should develop their own world to play in, and in fact Gygax mentioned much later that he originally didn't even want to do a Greyhawk setting at all. TSR wanted him to do a Greyhawk setting for the same reason they later asked Greenwood to. People were constantly demanding and requesting more information, especially about the mythical Castle Greyhawk dungeon. So Gygax, with some help, cobbled together the Greyhawk box set, the first real setting for D&D.

But Gygax could never make Greyhawk what TSR wanted. He wanted to keep it fully private, something he controlled. He didn't want to publish information on Castle Greyhawk at all. And so TSR started searching further abroad. This resulted in basically two things:

1: TSR started up the project to co-develop a line of novels and a line of game modules to do an epic Tolkien-esque high fantasy setting with a laid-out story and famous characters. This would become Dragonlance.

2: Forgotten Realms became official

To add onto from what Ed has said in the past, he doesn't much care for writing high powered people, he much prefers setting ideas that focus on regular people, or at least people regular enough to be sympathetic.
TSR, and later WotC, said that fans bought books about super wizards who have sexual situations far more than they care about stories of people who are involved in gambling dens or investigative scenarios, and started saying they'd be paying for those.

>being this close minded

You're just being a nob now, user.

>I heard Greenwood getting blamed for his NPCs promiscousness. But realizing he must have partially lived through the free love generations, I guess that's what affected him?

Greenwood is a firm believer in free love and a nudist, yes.

Because the largest part of the fantasy reader base are emotionally and intellectually stunted children that panic at the sight of anything new or unusual. Ironic for a genre named 'fantasy', but there you go.

In FR as created by Ed:

- Bi-sexuality is normal (and yes, this means the men as well as the women)
- "Revels" (sex orgies) are normal
- "Festhalls" (brothels) are in every small village and visiting them is normal way to spend evening.
- Prostitution is the main industry of Forgotten Realms, "sex workers" are everywhere and there are about 100 different names for different kinds of prostitutes.
- Incest is normal way for families to "indulge feelings of mutual affection" (it's not real incest if she doesn't get pregnant)
- Public city-wide orgies are the way to celebrate major holidays

Of course, this isn't exactly out of place in certain historical periods and cultures (Greeks, in particular the Etruscans, were known for having frequent orgies and the nobility of many cultures like Hawaiians and the Ptolemy Egyptians encouraged sibling incest; Rome had all of the above at various points), although mostly bronze age while FR mixes its bronze with its iron and postclassical.

>Incest is normal way for families to "indulge feelings of mutual affection" (it's not real incest if she doesn't get pregnant)

I could have sworn Ed wrote about incest with the same disgust he used when talking about child abuse.

Yeah, that one I don't recall from anything he's written. Revels and Festhalls, yeah but the last three are a bit more than even him.

It also forgot all the genderbending.

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Forgotten Realms is the most popular magical realm in all of D&D. Reminder that it had canonical Drow dickgirls long before 5e rolled around. As for the names for prostitutes, check the third post here:

forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=8518&whichpage=43

forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5812&whichpage=58

>It’s important to remember that many of the Realms deities encourage “sex for fun” (or even “sex for religious rapture”) and their priests have magical and pharmaceutical meals of preventing contraception, so “it’s only incest if the female partner gets pregnant.” This, by the way, usually means family members satisfy their curiosity and indulge feelings of mutual affection, and then go looking for less “safe and familiar” but far more exciting partners, elsewhere.

This was in August 2006.

Well googling brings up how Ed wrote about royal incest as happening (sometimes unknowingly because Azoun was such a slut) in Cormyr, in part because the two horniest people in the realm are the princess-knight and the king. Not with each other though, she tends to fuck a lot of strapping young men who happen to be secreted away half-brothers.

Seems a bit of a long call from being "incest is totally acceptable" though.

Though funny enough in that same post there's also talk about how you don't see city-wide sex because there are people who don't like sex in public, which is why most of the orgies tend to be at specific temples or places set up for such events.

So between 2006 and 2010 it went from "yeah it happens" to "only in some places."

Wtf I love Forgotten Realms now? I'll strive to play FR just like Ed Greenwood would.

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The man's allowed to change his mind. Or get better at hiding his power level.

The point is that the TSR/WotC Realms are not Greenwood's Realms.

Yeah, it's pretty much just a callback to his beliefs there. In a way it's sorta magical realm, in another it's just reflecting the time he's lived in.

Yes. Elminster's Forgotten Realms.

His home game didn't have a Time of Troubles at all.

Doesn't help that the princess-knight leads a band of followers off on monster-slaying quests regularly, and she gets all hot and bothered with some murderhoboing. Azoun being a gigantic manwhore is pretty well-established too.

>One much-retold tale concerns an annual spring "promenade" at court, wherein young noble lordlings and ladies are presented to the King for the first time. This is their "coming out" in Suzail society after they've passed puberty, been trained in etiquette and whatever interests they show aptitude for. Their families desire them to have a higher profile so they can gain social connections and influence in the realm. It's customary during such promenades for the younglings to be announced by heralds (in the order of their birth, eldest first) and paraded one-by-one in their finest garb through the throne chamber before the enthroned king and all who desire to attend. It's also been customary for Vangerdahast to stand behind the throne, staring steadily at each of them (and, so the rumors run -- correctly -- mentally co-ordinating War Wizards who are scrying, prying, and spell-recording the images of every young noble). It's usual for many of the young nobles to resemble Azoun in some way, but on this particular promenade, almost all of them looked very much like the king. In the silence that followed the last presentation, ere the King rose to invite the assembled into adjacent state chambers for revelry, to meet "the bright new blood and hope of the realm," Vangerdahast was clearly heard to remark to Azoun, in carefully neutral tones -- "Moderation, my liege?"
>archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rl/20061101a

The guy doesn't matter - you would have had the same outcome no matter who it was. Its popularity is about money. The most financially successful game is going to be a generic melting pot of fantasy adventure. FR is huge enough that you can run many varieties of game without reinventing everything.

It crushes other settings because other settings are not as profitable. The people who tire of FR style fantasy are a smaller group who get spin-off settings from time to time, though they still can't deviate too far from the formula for fear of making the setting too annoying to learn.

Then eventually you get people like in the pathfinder general who need meme games with superhero tier power just to catch a flicker of interest, because they are so thoroughly desentizied to everything. But they are impossible to please and you can't make money off them, so they are never catered to.

It's not Ed Greenwood's fault WOTC doesn't give a fuck about your shitty setting. Its your shitty settings fault.

Matt Mercer's Tal Dorei setting is basically cannon at this point and only came out a year or so back.

Your setting is boring and dumb. That's why no one recognizes it.

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Post it then faggot. Prove us wrong.

The stuff around the sword coast and the lore behind it is great. It's basically all you want, if you just want a generic fantasy setting and there is nothing wrong with that.

Without Forgotten Realms we wouldn't have gotten Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale, and Neverwinter Nights.

I am a bit meh on the forgotten realms deities, as they are a bit too generic for my tastes. I think religion is not done well in dnd in general and that's not Greenwoods fault.

Greyhawk and Eberron are tied for the title of Best D&D setting and any other opinion is wrong.

Greyhawk because it isn't massively overdeveloped so it has enough room for you to change shit around without pretty much at will without negating the point of using the setting at all while also having stuff to build off of and not being utterly bland, empty nothing like the 4th edition setting.

Eberron because it's actually like, good and interesting.

But Neverwinter Night's OC sucked major balls (both of them). It literally got saved by multiplayer and the expansions.

>imagine coping this hard

>It received next to zero support
It got 17 rulebooks and 5 adventure modules for 3.5
And also like, an MMO.

>it's actually like, good and interesting

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...

I really enjoyed Forgotten Realms back in 1e/2e. Some of the stuff from 2e I didn't like and ignored in favor of the earlier 1e stuff, but that is about it.

Was a good setting that grew out (out interest anyhow) of the pages of the mages series that we enjoyed reading.

youtube.com/watch?v=KNcKolKQ1F4

Maybe the elf left a log in the middle of the street where everyone could trip up over it, so the knight grabbed it, and took off her helmet to go shout at the elf?

Go read some of the modules and settings the OSR setting is putting out for some good shit

>I really enjoyed Forgotten Realms back in 1e/2e. Some of the stuff from 2e I didn't like and ignored in favor of the earlier 1e stuff, but that is about it.
>Was a good setting that grew out (out interest anyhow) of the pages of the mages series that we enjoyed reading.

That's how I handled Forgotten Realms in my gming.
What I don't get are the people who say 3e was the best realms when it incorporated all of the worst 2e stuff and retconned a lot of 1e stuff.

>be me
>3 years ago
>going to play my first D&D game
>dad is running it
>"so what setting are we gonna use dad?"
>forgotten realms lol

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>implying your dad would ever show your disappointing ass affection

>inadvertently crush the dream of every DM of having his setting made official by WotC
Why would you want that in the first place?

I really wouldn't mind Forgotten Realms as the default setting, if it weren't for the fact that every book seems dedicated to including setting specific information for it. I'd vastly prefer Greyhawk or Blackmoor be the default setting in that instance, since those are the settings of the game's creators.

I'd buy that opinion if you included Dark Sun, and then made a mention of second place for Spelljammer and Planescape.

Dark Sun is awesome for being a perfect Sword and Sorcery setting. You're a big damn badass in a harsh world and are expected to do your best to make a mark in it.

Spelljammer and Planescape are awesome for the same reason, which is providing vast amounts of space for weird-ass adventures. The only complaint I can make against Planescape is that it tends to get treated as a "WoD-lite" by some of its fans rather than as an excuse for infinite adventure.

I feel you, OP. Right now I'm in the process of preparing a Planescape campaign adjusted for 5e for my usual group, and those who are going to play planars are already loving everything in that setting.

>Using the official setting
>Not making up your own using the system as an engine
Why do you even care what's official, just use whatever the hell setting of others you want even if you don't wanna make one up.

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I've never actually played a Dark Sun or Spelljammer game.
I do feel bad for leaving out Planescape

>Greyhawk and Eberron are tied for the title of Best D&D setting and any other opinion is wrong.
That's not how you say "Dark Sun" and "Ravenloft".

Burlew's 3.5 homebrew is garbage...

>why don't people ever do something else rather than dwarves and elves etc?
I think you mean humans.

But Ravenloft isn't actually that great. Even as a horror setting, it's too goofy, and it's ultimately a setting designed for railroading.

In that case it is not anons setting being shitty.
He just doesn't have connections/is famous enough for random idiots to pick up his setting and make it popular enough to be profitable. No one is going to buy a setting book about something no one has heard of by someone no one has heard of.

I prefer humans to other races because they have variety to them rather than being physical representations of human traits.

>No one is going to buy a setting book about something no one has heard of by someone no one has heard of.
Kickstarter my dude.

Self-publishing is a thing. As are kickstarters. He isn't going to get recognized or any publicity if he never puts himself out there.

>it's ultimately a setting designed for railroading.
Either you've had a GM who didn't know how to run Ravenloft, or you've been playing the d20/4e version which is way shittier than AD&D or even 5e. You need some clever GMing and a bit of rule of cool, but it can give some great stories.
youtube.com/watch?v=icYbEBgUZJc

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>Ravenloft got whored out 3rd party White Wolf instead of getting first party support
granted those gazetters were pretty good
>5e material will consist solely of dicking around in just Barovia

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Curse of Strahd was alright but I honestly don't have high hopes for the rest of the stuff they might have planned. Most people just think "Barovia" instead of the entire demiplane and all the dark powers fuckery that makes the setting fun.

Not that user but

I don't name my setting Legend of the Five Rings if I don't want people to do samurai shit.

I don't name my game Paranoia if I want people to have a trusting functional team dynamic.

I wouldn't name my setting Soaring Starfarers and Fiery Frigates and then expect people to pick it up and say "this looks just right for my game of high diplomacy"

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Compared to what, 2e's mountain of modules and novels for Forgotten Realms?

Such a kickstarter probably wouldn't be successful tho since it doesn't have a name like Matt Mercer's behind it

I mean theoretically a good project can stand on its own merit but in practice thing's aren't that simple