Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Justisaur Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd Subject: Re: Study: Dungeons and Dragons may improve mental health Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2024 08:10:18 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 54 Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2024 17:10:18 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="e19c4f4ce673e45bd306cc5cf2c5f30e"; logging-data="3215921"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+aH5+cPq1JDipqgAOe+pIwjcEziJAXBJA=" User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird Cancel-Lock: sha1:PEkdiw6miX2jrcBWLcF63FqjPGE= In-Reply-To: Content-Language: en-US Bytes: 3603 On 4/18/2024 9:30 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote: > On Thu, 18 Apr 2024 01:15:57 +0200, Kyonshi wrote: > >> On 4/18/2024 12:29 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote: >> >>> (I just wish I had more to say about frp.dnd... but I'm barely >>> involved in the game anymore and completely out of touch with the >>> latest trends. I mean, I guess we could rehash old issues, like: who >>> would in a fight, Drizzt Duorden or Elminster? ;-) >>> >>> >> >> cue to me ranting how the Forgotten Realms are the worst of the DnD >> settings and really never should have become as popular as they somehow are > > I actually quite enjoyed the original "Forgotten Realms" setting, as > described in the originally grey-boxed AD&D release. A lot of my own > campaign material emulated the style of its 'Cyclopedia of the Realms' > sourcebook. It was only later that the setting started to annoy me, as > it became ever-more magic-heavy and every corner of it was detailed by > TSR/WOTC, leaving no room for exploration or development by players > and DMs. Forcing obvious fantasy-equivalents to real-world places > (Kara Tur = China! Maztica = Central America! Al Qadim = Mythic > Arabia!) didn't help; it just made the entire construct feel all the > more disjointed. And once certain characters started gaining undue > popularity, the whole thing started feeling weirdly tiny and > soap-operaish ("Oh look, Drizzt Duorden is in this adventure too!") > > > The "Forgotten Realms" was never /great/, but in its original form, it > was a good 'starting point' - a baseline 'adventure world' - for > beginner players, I think. It certainly appealed to me more than the > "Mystara" setting of BECMI D&D, or Greyhawk. > I loved the original 1e gray box, the Waterdeep supplement added some really nice tables for things like picking pockets. 2e after spellplague was so-so. While the novels were o.k. for high-fantasy pulp, I found they made my job harder as a DM as many of my players knew them far better than I did and I always felt changes to the world would be criticized. They weren't but I felt the imagined pressure and pressure to constrain my adventures to the written setting. -- -Justisaur ø-ø (\_/)\ `-'\ `--.___, ¶¬'\( ,_.-' \\ ^'