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ALOR
2010-12-18, 04:30 AM
While I am not a 4e fan, I was a fan of the forgotten realms in 3.5. I still to this day think the forgotten realms campaign setting was the best buy dollar for dollar of all my 3/3.5 books.
I've remember reading they changed quite a bit for 4e realms when it was 1st coming out. Just wanted to know what they did. are the iconic characters still around? (elminster, drizzit, artemis, red wizards of thay, etc.) Are the major gods all the same? I thought i also heard they had advanced time just what year is it. I know i can't expect an in detail report but a brief overview would be most appreciated.
Thanks

The Tygre
2010-12-18, 04:40 AM
I don't know much, I just remember some of the pre-release stuff. Some of the gods have been trimmed down or fused together if I recall correctly. I think Mystra's been killed, again. Elminster has disappeared, much to fan chagrin. Quenthel Baenre now rules Menzoberanazzan in place of her sister Triel.There are some sky-islands floating around; apparently the death of Mystra caused a spell-plague or something. Like I said, I can't really say much. I just know what I read during the pre-release.

Halae
2010-12-18, 04:46 AM
They nuked it with the spell-plague (caused by mystra's death, I believe, but I'm not sure). Then they added Airships, Thay went through a Zombie apocalypse and is now ruled by Szass Tam by himself, Elminster is brooding about life, Drizzt is now darker and more emo than ever before, and creatures are warped by the spellplague. also, the world connection thing with Abeir (apparently a parallel world where the dragonborn lived) made a connection and now they live there too.

Essentially, take forgotten realms, sprinkle elements of dark sun and eberron into it, and mix thoroughly.

Ed Greenwood said he didn't like what they did with it and left. that, my good people, means something is WRONG

ALOR
2010-12-18, 04:47 AM
I think Mystra's been killed, again.

You know for a god of the most powerful force in the multiverse, she sure is fragile. :smallbiggrin:

DeltaEmil
2010-12-18, 04:54 AM
Ed Greenwood said he didn't like what they did with it and left. that, my good people, means something is WRONGEh, he didn't like 3rd edition Forgotten Realms either. Not that it really matters, as long as some other dudes and dudettes like the current / and prior version, it's all swell in the end.

Also, Wizards of the Coast has churned out other superior campaign settings like Eberron or Gamma World (god, I love the inherent silliness of it).

Vizzerdrix
2010-12-18, 05:01 AM
I know they did away with Gond. That's all I need to know to avoid it like the plague

Halae
2010-12-18, 05:04 AM
Eh, he didn't like 3rd edition Forgotten Realms either. Not that it really matters, as long as some other dudes and dudettes like the current / and prior version, it's all swell in the end.

Also, Wizards of the Coast has churned out other superior campaign settings like Eberron or Gamma World (god, I love the inherent silliness of it).

The point is, though, that Forgotten Realms was often seen as the classic campaign setting. You know, ancient empires, a world still in the dark ages, Demon summoning wizards wanting to overtake your country, orcs all up in your village, and it was good. the problem is that they changed it to fit their preconceptions about what a fantasy setting should be, and made it too much like a dungeon punk setting (like what eberron is) to appeal to the classic gamers that liked it in the first place. In trying to create a new setting to both fit with their changes to the system and their ideas of what a cool setting should be, they've alienated their fanbase for it in an effort to get the people who like that sort of thing to like it as well.

Saintheart
2010-12-18, 05:16 AM
Basically, 4e's meant to be set about 100 years after the Spellplague, which takes place in roughly 1385 DR or thereabouts. The Spellplague happens after Tanis McEmo Cyric finally manages to catch out Mystra and kills her in Dweomerheart. As occurred with the Time of Troubles, this sends magic considerably haywire, although much stronger this time thanks to WOTC fiat because they've actually killed the goddess, not just wiped most of her essence that wasn't being harboured by Elminster of the time.

The Spellplague basically blows up all magic as known to the Realms. Halruaa and other places heavily dependent on persistent spells or spellcasters quite literally fall foul of the Locate City bomb. All memory-based spellcasting dies off, and a pretty big chunk of Faerun's pantheons get wiped out completely - as an example, the Triad of Torm, Tempus, and Tyr gets nuked so Torm's now the only one left and elevated to demigod status.

Three big physical changes: first, Thay, as others have said, undergoes a zombie apocalypse with Szass Tam now ruling it as a literal kingdom of the undead. Second, big chunks of Abeir are exchanged with Toril resulting in newly-arrived environments, including floating islands and whatnot. Third, Netheril is basically back -- the City of Shade re-establishes Netheril basically where Anauroch was, albeit the area's arable land again now.

Biggest city in the Realms is still Waterdeep IIRC, but no doubt thanks to the success of certain Bioware games Baldur's Gate is now a massive metropolis crammed full of refugees and displaced persons. Underdark's been messed with, but as discussed, the drow are still around. That's the major stuff.

Kurald Galain
2010-12-18, 05:31 AM
Just wanted to know what they did.
They basically turned it into a generic fantasy kitchen sink (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasyKitchenSink).

Elminster is around but has been depowered. I think Drizz't and Artemis are both dead, but more accurately I haven't heard from either of them. The red wizards are now traders, although an old faction still exists that wants to conquer the world. Several of the major gods have been removed, most notably Mystra (again).

DeltaEmil
2010-12-18, 09:01 AM
They basically turned it into a generic fantasy kitchen sink (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasyKitchenSink).Or it other words, nothing has really changed.

Darrin
2010-12-18, 10:02 AM
Or it other words, nothing has really changed.

"So, magic is completely screwed up, all the powerful wizards were killed off (except for Ed Greenwood's pet NPCs and all the uber-hot nymphomaniac sorceresses with a fetish for dirty old men)?"

"Yes."

"Huh. Must be Tuesday."

DeltaEmil
2010-12-18, 10:57 AM
When 5th edition rolls along, it will probably turn out that Mystra's not really dead anyway, and she'll have hot nymphomaniac sex with Elminster again, until she dies again befor 6th edition. Or it was a robot clone from another plane of existence. Something like that. And then people will somehow act as if they were surprised and that the Forgotten Realms have been ruined forever... again, like two weeks ago.

And then everybody will start a drinking contest about which Mary-Sues didn't keel off this time.

Elfin
2010-12-18, 01:23 PM
I think Drizz't and Artemis are both dead, [snip]

Nah, Wizards would never knock off such a profitable enterprise.

Grelna the Blue
2010-12-18, 01:42 PM
Completely separate from my feelings about 4E, I despise what they did to the Frealms. The games I run are in a homebrew setting that is considerably lower-powered, but I've had lots of fun playing characters in the Frealms in the past. One of them was a Mulhorandi necromancer. They nuked Mulhorand when they switched to 4E. It's gone and its people are almost all dead. Even the Mulhorandi gods took off, except for Bast/Sharess and (inexplicably) Set. They messed with a lot of the other southern nations as well and the continent of Maztica has vanished (to where? I don't know) to be replaced with this dragonborn-filled place from another world.

If I were Ed Greenwood, I'd be mad too.

Yora
2010-12-18, 01:51 PM
The Spellplague happens after Tanis McEmo Cyric finally manages to catch out Mystra and kills her in Dweomerheart.
Why? Because it seemed like a good idea at the time? :smallbiggrin:

Kurald Galain
2010-12-18, 01:52 PM
Why? Because it seemed like a good idea at the time? :smallbiggrin:

I think Cyric has never forgiven her for hooking up with Kelemvor instead of him, back then in second edition :smalltongue:

DeltaEmil
2010-12-18, 02:05 PM
Completely separate from my feelings about 4E, I despise what they did to the Frealms. The games I run are in a homebrew setting that is considerably lower-powered, but I've had lots of fun playing characters in the Frealms in the past. One of them was a Mulhorandi necromancer. They nuked Mulhorand when they switched to 4E. It's gone and its people are almost all dead. Even the Mulhorandi gods took off, except for Bast/Sharess and (inexplicably) Set. They messed with a lot of the other southern nations as well and the continent of Maztica has vanished (to where? I don't know) to be replaced with this dragonborn-filled place from another world.And you have been forced to play 4th edition-Forgotten Realms? Last I knew, the Wizards of the Coast-dudes don't have the power to send ninja thugs into forcing anybody to buy their products (yet). I personally don't care about the Realms, and have never found it to be original or good. Every wednesday, I'm playing a shaaran nomad working as a mercenary in Mulhorand. Mulhorand is one heck of a boring place to do adventures, and it really doesn't help that it's Egypt with a different name. If it had at least been more like Stygia, it might have been perhaps more interesting, but then again, I'd roll my eyes over such cheap knock-offs either way...

If I were Ed Greenwood, I'd be mad too.Doesn't he get money for this run-of-the-mill setting anyway? What should he care about it, if other people like it the way it is now? In a few years, the Forgotten Realms will probably be overrun by something like flying monkey sharks to justify the next edition or something like that. It's been started with the Times of Troubles, which is when Greenwood started not liking the Forgotten Realms, and it will be a mainstay for this bog-standard kitchen sink long when D&D Vista edition will have ruined D&D for ever...

Grelna the Blue
2010-12-18, 03:01 PM
And you have been forced to play 4th edition-Forgotten Realms? Last I knew, the Wizards of the Coast-dudes don't have the power to send ninja thugs into forcing anybody to buy their products (yet). I personally don't care about the Realms, and have never found it to be original or good. Every wednesday, I'm playing a shaaran nomad working as a mercenary in Mulhorand. Mulhorand is one heck of a boring place to do adventures, and it really doesn't help that it's Egypt with a different name. If it had at least been more like Stygia, it might have been perhaps more interesting, but then again, I'd roll my eyes over such cheap knock-offs either way...


A few points:

First, the flagship setting no longer seems to have anything I'd want to steal. Used to be there might be bits here and there I liked--feats, PrCs, monsters, adaptable towns, published adventures, etc. That isn't true any more, and there seems little prospect of there ever being anything coming out in the future.

Second, I have friends who run games who, for whatever reason, don't like to homebrew. They prefer to have an established setting to work within. This change has hurt them because now they have to come up with their own chronology of changes for the Frealms. One game has already shut down, with this as a contributing factor, and the others have slowed down--a lot.

Third, I've never found Mulhorand to be remotely boring to adventure in, largely because it isn't friendly to adventurers. However, since 2nd Ed there has been precious little published material for that particular Old Empire (even the war with Unther is barely touched on), so what it looks like is largely up to each GM. Perhaps it's just that the GM you have has put more energy elsewhere?

ALOR
2010-12-18, 04:07 PM
Thanks everyone for answering my questions.
It sounds like I can add what they have done to the realms to my dislikes of 4e.

Yora
2010-12-18, 04:16 PM
It's certainly nothing that caters to the oldschool fans. :smallamused:

DeltaEmil
2010-12-18, 04:31 PM
First, the flagship setting no longer seems to have anything I'd want to steal. Used to be there might be bits here and there I liked--feats, PrCs, monsters, adaptable towns, published adventures, etc. That isn't true any more, and there seems little prospect of there ever being anything coming out in the future.So you're playing 4th edition D&D, just not in the 4th edition Forgotten Realms? That's the best thing that could happen to you.

Not that it really changes anything, as 4th edition Forgotten Realms is still bland and generic just like the last 10 years. And it will still be bland and generic in the next 10 years, when D&D 6th edition will roll out. Or perhaps that'll only be 5.5, who knows...

Second, I have friends who run games who, for whatever reason, don't like to homebrew. They prefer to have an established setting to work within. This change has hurt them because now they have to come up with their own chronology of changes for the Frealms. One game has already shut down, with this as a contributing factor, and the others have slowed down--a lot.There's like enough books for 3rd edition Forgotten Realms alone to make a hundred campaigns each lasting 10 years, if you play once a week (barring holidays and player absence or gm illness and other important reasons).
Also, they're sticking towards the official chronology? Really? For what? Not even Ed Greenwood sticks to the official chronology. He personally ignores the Times of Troubles, and dislikes 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and will dislike 5th, 6th, 7th and Vista-edition Forgotten Realms. Of course, there are some other who are strangely enamored with 4th FR, others swear by 3rd FR, and others use AD&D 1st edition and play Greyhawk and denounce Forgotten Realms for ruining Gygax-land.

Third, I've never found Mulhorand to be remotely boring to adventure in, largely because it isn't friendly to adventurers. It's boring because it's an orderly empire where most problems have already been dealt with efficiently by their uber-munchkin priests-warrior, and if we go by 3rd edition depiction, they're lead by a goody-goody paladin-quasi-god who is popular, has good looks, is kinda competent, has the divine right to rule that no high priest would question, is winning the war against the demoralized and pitiful remnants of the ancient evil untheric empire that most of its former slave populace won't cry after (even if they'll still remain slaves under their new mulhorandi overlords, they'll still be treated better), or more specifically, their weak-sauce aristocrates and fighter-level nobles who need the Red Wizards to save their sorry beacon. And my gm has even changed stuff so that the paladin-pharao is more ambigous-neutral (and not a paladin), the churches are more plotting and scheming against each another, and that there's a lot more grave-robbers running around and stealing magical do-hickeys.
Yet, what can you really do in a country that doesn't need saving, has no eldritch abomination lurking below, is economically booming (even if it's only going to be short-while and the occupation costs will come up someday), has made the old uber-arch-mages who kidnapped the mulan in the first place go hiding so deep underground that they won't come out to look for fear that the gods will smack them silly? Political intrigues can only go so far and will remain a local nuisance, uncovering another red wizard trickery quickly grows stale (oh look, they've been masquerading as other people... again...or sent succubi... again...no, wait, they're sending enhanced purple worms who spit radioactive shocking burst acid globs this time...), travelling back in time to help the gods smack the imaskari supermages still only accentuates that the present is boring, dungeon-raiding (which isn't that fun at all) can be done anywhere else too, and picking on the untheric remnants is like bullying a defense-less todler.

Oh, and it's Egypt with another name. At least Warhammer Fantasy has their Egypt-land being ruled and inhabited by a bunch of creepy mummies and skeletons, and Stygia has snakes eating people on the street. Mulhorand doesn't have any of that either (save as random encounter, or an assassination plot by Set-cultists... uuuuhhh, how original it is that the only interesting thing in Mulhorand has been stolen from Conan, and they're not even ruling the country with their abominable snakes).

However, since 2nd Ed there has been precious little published material for that particular Old Empire (even the war with Unther is barely touched on), so what it looks like is largely up to each GM. What could have changed anyway? Just by virtue of having clerics and sanctioned wizards styling themselves as Toth-Priests (or at least taking a token-level cleric), the mulhorandi were already winning this openly and clearly.

There's no mystery, no unhappy populace, no interesting sight-seeing location, no prophet threatening to kill all first-borns (and something like that would rather make us all raise our eyebrow if it came up in our campaign), not even an interesting spin on Egypt.

It's so bland and generic... just like the rest of the Forgotten Realms (and don't get me started on the Shaar savannah... they're even more boring than Pseudo-Egypt).

Perhaps it's just that the GM you have has put more energy elsewhere?No, actually, my gm's put a lot of energy into Mulhorand and Unther, but he also recognizes that there's not much you can really do to make it that interesting in Boring-Lawful-Egypt-with-another-name, so he sometimes sends our adventuring gang to do world-saving somewhere else.

SoC175
2010-12-18, 04:36 PM
Then they added Airships, Airships were there before.

Ed Greenwood said he didn't like what they did with it and left He didn't leave. He wrote a lot of realms stuff since then and still is

I know they did away with Gond. That's all I need to know to avoid it like the plague Actually they didn't anything to Gond. He's one of the unchanged deities

Nah, Wizards would never knock off such a profitable enterprise. Yeah. Drizzt was covered by being a drow anyway and Artemis coincidently had this little episode that gave him a superhuman lifespan just before the 100 years jump. :sigh:

Why? Because it seemed like a good idea at the time? :smallbiggrin: Well, it's his job to murder as many deities as he can. He's one of the few deities actually doing their damned job

Saintheart
2010-12-20, 09:51 AM
Well, it's his job to murder as many deities as he can. He's one of the few deities actually doing their damned job

...The problem being, of course, that he's now locked away in Hammerspace for the archetypical 1000 years or so, so he can't get on with his job. Until we cue the first Awesomesauce Trilogy Of Franchise Novels Set In The Exciting New And Improved Fourth Edition World Of Faerun In Which Several Cardboard Cutout Characters Save The World From Cyric Being Let Out Again By Way Of Stopping By Gary Stu Elminster's House To Obtain Halfbaked Instructions And Watch As Yoda Calls Asking For His Lines Back.

:smallcool:

hamishspence
2010-12-20, 10:06 AM
Might be interesting to look at what hasn't changed.

Most of the gods are still there- only a few of the major ones, and a bit more of the minor ones, have gone. Tempus, god of war, is still there. Ilmater, the other one of the Triad besides Torm and Tyr, is still there.

Some have been merged- Sune, generic goddess of love, and Hanali- elven deity of love, are now considered to be the same thing.

So are Talos, the one eyed generic CE god of storms and destruction, and Grummsh, the one eyed CE god of orcs and destruction. (Talos is now considered just another name for Grummsh).

Sarrukh are still there.
Sharn (although not phaerimm) are still there.
Baldur's Gate is still there- though it has grown considerably.

In general, it seems to me that the 4E Faerun is not all that different from the 3E Faerun- a few things added, a few things subtracted, but most of it is the same.

stainboy
2010-12-20, 11:55 AM
If you look at FR as a product these all seem like good choices.

Powering down Elminster makes it possible to accomplish things that aren't constantly overshadowed by Elminster. Traditionally, any adventure in the Dales had to include a reason why Elminster didn't just show up and fix it, usually that it was beneath his notice. This was lame.

Advancing the clock 100 years is as close as they can get to retconning the canon overload in 2e/3e FR. You can't walk twenty feet in FR without tripping over some canonical conflict that should completely dwarf whatever you're doing. The gods have walked the earth in your characters' lifetimes, and that's just the start of it. It makes your characters' accomplishments trivial. "Oh, you killed some orcs? That's pretty cool. It's like that one time two years ago when Torm flew over the town to fight an army of Thayan dracolich riders."

Mystra had to die. The goddess of magic shouldn't be good-aligned. It doesn't work. The goddess of magic also shouldn't be a boilerplate character from somebody's pulp novel. Now if we could just get a proper god of death, and get Cyric to hug a Sphere of Annihilation...


I like FR the way it was overall, but these changes make sense. I can't think of a single problem with them that doesn't boil down to "I don't like 4e." (They just HAD to find a way to import their stupid dragon-furry PC race, didn't they?)

Psyren
2010-12-20, 12:06 PM
Airships were there before.

This. There's one on the front cover of Shining South for pete's sake. :smallannoyed:

To hear some people tell it, FR has everyone living in wattle-and-daub huts and scribing their scrolls with excrement and goat skin, while Eberron is a cross between Blade Runner, the Matrix and Tron, with elves. They're not that different, people. (Technologically anyway.)

The Glyphstone
2010-12-20, 01:36 PM
This. There's one on the front cover of Shining South for pete's sake. :smallannoyed:

To hear some people tell it, FR has everyone living in wattle-and-daub huts and scribing their scrolls with excrement and goat skin, while Eberron is a cross between Blade Runner, the Matrix and Tron, with elves. They're not that different, people. (Technologically anyway.)

I think that would be the only way to make Ebberon cooler than it already is.

gbprime
2010-12-20, 02:03 PM
Eberron benefits from one advantage over FRealms, even before the 4E cataclysm/update... it's hard to find an NPC in Eberron over 12th level. There just aren't that many of them.

It strained disbelief in the FRealms why any task would fall to the PC's when every town, country, monastery, or hermitage had some NPC in their high teens lurking about. Unless one of those dudes is the problem, they should probably be handling things instead of these faceless newbs.

Elminster was an extreme example of this, but in general high teens and epic level people were all too common. I can suspend disbelief enough to believe that a mideval setting could be cosmopolitan in various ways, but not to the point of seeing writeups on fifty NPC's over level 12 who live within 200 miles of the problem, are negatively affected by said problem, and who aren't doing anything about it.

So yeah, the reboot may or may not have been handled well, but it was decidedly necessary.

The Big Dice
2010-12-20, 07:49 PM
...a cross between Blade Runner, the Matrix and Tron, with elves.

I think I just got an idea for a GURPS game...

WitchSlayer
2010-12-20, 08:22 PM
Eh, I'd never run Forgotten Realms anyway, not my kind of setting. I'll just stick to running Dark Sun.