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From: Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd
Subject: Re: Study: Dungeons and Dragons may improve mental health
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2024 08:10:18 -0700
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On 4/18/2024 9:30 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Apr 2024 01:15:57 +0200, Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> 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

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