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From: Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd
Subject: Re: Study: Dungeons and Dragons may improve mental health
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2024 01:29:42 +0200
Organization: Campaign Wiki
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On 4/19/2024 5:10 PM, Justisaur wrote:
> 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.
> 
> 

I came into Forgotten Realms in 2e, after already having read a few 
novels and played a few games I sprung for the campaign set. And I felt 
it was grating in ways that few other settings have been. There was the 
feeling about the whole setting material that this was basically just a 
theme park of a world, where even if you don't succeed, some high level 
NPC will swoop in and save everyone.
I did notice the barely logical worldbuilding in other settings as well. 
I have a fondness for Mystara. But at least that setting didn't throw a 
bunch of high level NPCs at you that were just there to show you how 
much you and your party sucked.

Even then I was ok with the setting until the switch to 3rd edition 
happened and the setting had a time jump of a few decades. That's 
basically the best sign for a setting to say: yeah, the designers don't 
care about this setting, why should you?

It is my understanding that by now multiple further jumps have happened.