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MThurston
2020-06-06, 04:17 AM
I am catching up on the lore. Anyone know why it is a train wreck?

Was it one person or multie ones writting the background of it?

Kaptin Keen
2020-06-06, 06:05 AM
I am catching up on the lore. Anyone know why it is a train wreck?

Was it one person or multie ones writting the background of it?

The solution to Forgotten Realms is to trash everything from the Time of Troubles and onwards. It's a decently ok fantasy setting - but nothing that was written since the original box is worth blowing your nose in. It's quite literally the worst of the many horrid piles of crap TSR/Wizards are responsible for.

Although ... to be honest, my opinion of RPG content creators is notoriously low, so maybe you shouldn't listen to me =D

Anonymouswizard
2020-06-06, 06:49 AM
I am catching up on the lore. Anyone know why it is a train wreck?

Was it one person or multie ones writting the background of it?

Short answer? Edition updates and multiple authors.

Longer answer: a big problem with the Forgotten Realms is that it attempts to update itself to match new editions but isn't willing to retcon. Eddie this wasn't too bad in the 2e/3e shift and earlier (not great, but it was limited to stuff such as killing off all the Assassins), the shift to 4e saw the death of several god's, including Mystra, with no replacements. The Weave essentially broke down, causing a Type I Apocalypse (it's the end of the world as we know it...), and there was something about smashing dimensions together to explain the new Dragonborn race. Then, because people wanted something more like Realms Classic, WotC instigated another apocalypse which brought back several dead characters and every single major god, even the redundant ones (there's what, four gods of death now?). Add to that the setting being written by multiple authors who don't quite have the same view on the setting, and it being messy is basically a given.

Other settings mostly avoid this by having had relatively short runs or outright retconning to match new editions. Forgotten Realms is the only D&D setting to have been continually published (as a game setting) through five editions of D&D (Greyhawk managed two or three, depending on how you count it, Mystara lasted two, Everton three, Dark Sun got a revival, the others didn't really get past one*).

* Yes, even Planescape.

Khedrac
2020-06-06, 08:22 AM
Other headaches included a lot of the novels just having to be world-changing events that then got included in the next FR product release, meaning nothing was stable.
Now, while I am a believer in worlds changing over time, there's a very good argument for keeping world-changing events out of it - it stops you invalidating half the already published material and makes it so much easier for people buying at a slower rate than publication

Yora
2020-06-06, 09:37 AM
The solution to Forgotten Realms is to trash everything from the Time of Troubles and onwards. It's a decently ok fantasy setting - but nothing that was written since the original box is worth blowing your nose in. It's quite literally the worst of the many horrid piles of crap TSR/Wizards are responsible for.

I think the original 1st edition world is actually quite interesting. Some of the 1st edition supplements like The Savage Frontier and Dreams of the Red Wizards are also quite good.
But with the Time of Troubles at the start of 2nd edition, things do indeed get weird. Much of the coolest elements get thrown out to make the whole world into an often corny ren-fair setting. 3rd edition feels different again, and loses even more if its identity and it only goes down from there.

And it's definitely a case of too many authors. There's probably two to three dozens of them by now, apparently with very little coordination between them.

Tvtyrant
2020-06-06, 09:44 AM
I am catching up on the lore. Anyone know why it is a train wreck?

Was it one person or multie ones writting the background of it?

Which parts? I personally love Al-Qadim and The Lost Empires of Faerun stuff, Thay, Mulan and Rashemi. If we are talking about lost planet halves and the more recent stuff, I think it is because they want to shake up the setting but don't know how to do it without losing cohesion.

Nifft
2020-06-06, 10:48 AM
In addition to the good stuff in the above posts, there's the issue of target audience and audience needs.

FR is one of the few settings where people with no intention to play the game will buy expensive "RPG" books, and that's based around novel readership.

When some of your most loyal paying customers are not interested in the game, but rather are interested in fiction continuity and cameos of their familiar novel NPCs, the game portions might tend to suffer.

Kaptin Keen
2020-06-06, 10:56 AM
I think the original 1st edition world is actually quite interesting. Some of the 1st edition supplements like The Savage Frontier and Dreams of the Red Wizards are also quite good.
But with the Time of Troubles at the start of 2nd edition, things do indeed get weird. Much of the coolest elements get thrown out to make the whole world into an often corny ren-fair setting. 3rd edition feels different again, and loses even more if its identity and it only goes down from there.

And it's definitely a case of too many authors. There's probably two to three dozens of them by now, apparently with very little coordination between them.

Forgotten Realms is pretty generic. That's why it's so succesful. And being generic in and of itself isn't good or bad. When I was younger, I loved Forgotten Realms, because it matched what I wanted out of a game world; heroes and villains, cultures present and long past, magic and wonder and what have you.

Forgotten Realsm is not, however, particularly inventive. Dark Sun, Planescape - Eberron perhaps - have far greater creative vision. It's all but impossible to create something truly new, but it's possible to be less generic. Thus, I am still enthusiastic about those worlds than I am Forgotten Realms.

But you're right, not everything published after the boxed set is awful. Time of Troubles is an effective place to draw the line, though: Everything before is pretty good - almost everything after is .. well, not.

Tycho (of Penny Arcade) was the first I heard put into words the simple fact that you should always leave yourself some space to expand. A game world that literally goes on a murder spree, killing gods, near-divine npc's and so on with the apparent easy of carving loaves of bread. After that, it's really hard to create any sort of believable epic story line.

It's because of the Time of Troubles that I never try to create anything epic. I try to make stories interesting, without relying on the end of the world.

LibraryOgre
2020-06-06, 11:43 AM
I'm with a lot of people here... the Time of Troubles was a symptom of what went wrong with the world. I like some of the changes and products that came after... I think the 3e FRCS book is a fantastic setting book, especially for an all-in-one... but I tend to keep things to just before the Time of Troubles, which never happens. My only big change is that Kelemvor remains as a God of the Dead... I don't like having an evil god of the dead, and prefer Kelemvor's more judge-like approach.

Millstone85
2020-06-06, 12:32 PM
there's what, four gods of death now?By my count, yes. 5e FR has:

Bhaal, the Lord of Murder, as in the unlawful taking of another's life.
Myrkul, the Reaper, now believed to act as a proper psychopomp.
Kelemvor, the Judge of the Dead, who decides the afterlife you get.
Jergal, the Scribe of the Dead, the semiretired original god of death.

Which... doesn't sound so bad? Or wouldn't if priests of Myrkul didn't still promote the creation of the undead, in contradiction with their god supposedly working for Kelemvor. Also, yes, the Wall of the Faithless is still up.

Imbalance
2020-06-07, 11:39 AM
If you've read any major continuously published serial comicbook for any length of time over the last twenty or so years, it's a lot like that IME. If all you've played is jrpg video games, it's not much like that. For me, as a noob DM, it's nice because I can use a pre-existing setting without fear of mucking it up any worse than it already is.

Tvtyrant
2020-06-07, 11:45 AM
Another thing to point out is that D&D settings usually incorporate ludicrously large areas and stretches of time for their content. FR has more stuff then most, but you could take all of FR and stick it on one continent, put all of Dark Sun into one country sized section, all of Eberron into a couple large islands nearby, and Dragonlance onto an area the size of England and it would fit fine. From that point of view FR is actually way less random and overstuffed then real life.

Nifft
2020-06-07, 02:05 PM
Another thing to point out is that D&D settings usually incorporate ludicrously large areas and stretches of time for their content. FR has more stuff then most, but you could take all of FR and stick it on one continent, put all of Dark Sun into one country sized section, all of Eberron into a couple large islands nearby, and Dragonlance onto an area the size of England and it would fit fine. From that point of view FR is actually way less random and overstuffed then real life.

FR's Faerun and Greyhawk's Flanaesse could comfortably be the west and east of a single mega-continent.

Dark Sun could be some kind of horrible desert in between them, which might even be vaguely justified in Greyhawk's lore.



Eberron won't fit -- that setting has four well-mapped continents which each seemed around the size of North America, and one elf island around the size of Great Britain.

Can't really get all that land onto one island, let alone a small island.

Tvtyrant
2020-06-07, 02:26 PM
FR's Faerun and Greyhawk's Flanaesse could comfortably be the west and east of a single mega-continent.

Dark Sun could be some kind of horrible desert in between them, which might even be vaguely justified in Greyhawk's lore.



Eberron won't fit -- that setting has four well-mapped continents which each seemed around the size of North America, and one elf island around the size of Great Britain.

Can't really get all that land onto one island, let alone a small island.
This actually seems like a better setting. Dark Sun is essentially the evil magic Sahara, splitting the continent.

Eberron: There really isn't that much on those continents. Khorvaire is what, 17 regions? The distances between towns within which are exaggerated, there might be 1-2 days walk between settlements. Each of the countries could be shrunk to the size of a county and the whole continent a medium sized island without it doing much. It definitely has a lot more then Dark Sun, which has a total of less then 20 major settlements and an endless amount of badlands sprawled in there.

Nifft
2020-06-07, 02:38 PM
This actually seems like a better setting. Dark Sun is essentially the evil magic Sahara, splitting the continent. If you're in the east, then it's an evil magical Sahara because of the Invoked Devastation / Rain of Colorless Fire; if you're in the west, then it's an evil magical Sahara because of the Folly of Karsus.

Both are wrong, but feature some kernel of truth, and refer to the cataclysmic same event(s).


Eberron: There really isn't that much on those continents. Khorvaire is what, 17 regions? The distances between towns within which are exaggerated, there might be 1-2 days walk between settlements. Each of the countries could be shrunk to the size of a county and the whole continent a medium sized island without it doing much. If the Underdark is just a small cave, and the Five Towns are just a single cabin, then maybe.

But none of those things seem acceptable to me.

Tvtyrant
2020-06-07, 02:48 PM
If you're in the east, then it's an evil magical Sahara because of the Invoked Devastation / Rain of Colorless Fire; if you're in the west, then it's an evil magical Sahara because of the Folly of Karsus.

Both are wrong, but feature some kernel of truth, and refer to the cataclysmic same event(s).

If the Underdark is just a small cave, and the Five Towns are just a single cabin, then maybe.
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But none of those things seem acceptable to me.

I rather like that. I would almost make Dregoth a little less deific and more "guy who managed to get out of a desert surrounded by a horrible cloud." Which I like because Dark Sun plays up the top end a little much for being small ruined towns ruled by incompetent buffoons. The story starts with one of them dying to a spear they gave out in a ritual they planned for thousands of years.

Q'Barra compares very easily to Cornwall in number of towns and geographic features. The whole continent fits into the British Isles, which wouldn't cause any issues with either the cities being small (they are industrial) or the distances being too small (the Underdark would still be country sized.) It can certainly be scaled however you like, but I would personally make it Southeast Asia in size.

Nifft
2020-06-07, 03:11 PM
I rather like that. I would almost make Dregoth a little less deific and more "guy who managed to get out of a desert surrounded by a horrible cloud." Which I like because Dark Sun plays up the top end a little much for being small ruined towns ruled by incompetent buffoons. The story starts with one of them dying to a spear they gave out in a ritual they planned for thousands of years. I gotta read my old Dark Sun books again, I recognize more than I understand...

But yeah, Faerun and the Flanaesse could coexist very comfortably.

They've got similar pantheonic tendencies, and it seems like the Great Wheel is often used in conjunction with FR even though FR is supposed to have its own cosmology.

The afterlife oddities like the Wall of the Faithless might be a continental curse which doesn't apply to people in other areas. Maybe an artifact or subclause of the local Pact Primeval? Hmm, would it be interesting if each area had its own ... infernal jurisdiction?

Then you might get "forum shopping (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_shopping)" by powerful individuals, who just teleport over to one area or the other when it's necessary to test some legal fine-print.

("Elminster is only pretending to be insane to avoid paying legal damages from that incident with St. Cuthbert...")


Q'Barra compares very easily to Cornwall in number of towns and geographic features. The whole continent fits into the British Isles, which wouldn't cause any issues with either the cities being small (they are industrial) or the distances being too small (the Underdark would still be country sized.) It can certainly be scaled however you like, but I would personally make it Southeast Asia in size. Well, I liked the 3.5e book's sizes. I don't see any particular reason to deviate from those except to glorify some other setting -- and it's not necessary, since Eberron works great as its own setting with its own planes and its own gods and its own genres.

The size makes sense to me -- the continent had just finished a century long war, and was depopulated. There were vast unpopulated areas ripe for exploitation, albeit with risks like unexploded magical munitions and so forth.

The low population numbers make sense in the context of the Last War; Cornwall doesn't.

Tvtyrant
2020-06-07, 05:30 PM
I gotta read my old Dark Sun books again, I recognize more than I understand...

But yeah, Faerun and the Flanaesse could coexist very comfortably.

They've got similar pantheonic tendencies, and it seems like the Great Wheel is often used in conjunction with FR even though FR is supposed to have its own cosmology.

The afterlife oddities like the Wall of the Faithless might be a continental curse which doesn't apply to people in other areas. Maybe an artifact or subclause of the local Pact Primeval? Hmm, would it be interesting if each area had its own ... infernal jurisdiction?

Then you might get "forum shopping (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_shopping)" by powerful individuals, who just teleport over to one area or the other when it's necessary to test some legal fine-print.

("Elminster is only pretending to be insane to avoid paying legal damages from that incident with St. Cuthbert...")

Well, I liked the 3.5e book's sizes. I don't see any particular reason to deviate from those except to glorify some other setting -- and it's not necessary, since Eberron works great as its own setting with its own planes and its own gods and its own genres.

The size makes sense to me -- the continent had just finished a century long war, and was depopulated. There were vast unpopulated areas ripe for exploitation, albeit with risks like unexploded magical munitions and so forth.

The low population numbers make sense in the context of the Last War; Cornwall doesn't.
I would definitely either go with separate jurisdictions (Faerun already has alien pantheons competing with local ones) or the religions are just wrong about what happens when you die in setting.

If it works for you that is great! I really dislike under populated worlds that are way too big, it is a classic fantasy trope that always stuck in my craw. I'm looking at you, LotR through Wheel of Time *shakes fist*.

Millstone85
2020-06-07, 06:34 PM
They've got similar pantheonic tendencies, and it seems like the Great Wheel is often used in conjunction with FR even though FR is supposed to have its own cosmology.The usual reconciliation appears to be in treating the World Tree's planes as layers of the Great Wheel's planes.

An amusing aspect of this is how Dweomerheart moved from Limbo (under the CN Mystryl) to Mechanus (under the LN Mystra) to Elysium (under the NG Midnight, who also goes by Mystra). It makes one wonder if the next goddess of magic will move it to Hades.

Then there is the World Axis. Oh boy, the World Axis! So a Torilian cataclysm led to the Inner Planes, Limbo and the Abyss all merging into the Elemental Chaos? Was it, like, just the Toril-related layers of these planes? The 5e Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide mentions the 4e Spellplague and how some of its effects on the land were undone, but is suspiciously silent on the cosmology. I guess we are just going to pretend that part of the cataclysm never happened.

Anonymouswizard
2020-06-08, 09:24 AM
Another thing to point out is that D&D settings usually incorporate ludicrously large areas and stretches of time for their content. FR has more stuff then most, but you could take all of FR and stick it on one continent, put all of Dark Sun into one country sized section, all of Eberron into a couple large islands nearby, and Dragonlance onto an area the size of England and it would fit fine. From that point of view FR is actually way less random and overstuffed then real life.

Didn't WotC inflate all nummerical values inEberron by a factor of ten or something?


The usual reconciliation appears to be in treating the World Tree's planes as layers of the Great Wheel's planes.

An amusing aspect of this is how Dweomerheart moved from Limbo (under the CN Mystryl) to Mechanus (under the LN Mystra) to Elysium (under the NG Midnight, who also goes by Mystra). It makes one wonder if the next goddess of magic will move it to Hades.

Then there is the World Axis. Oh boy, the World Axis! So a Torilian cataclysm led to the Inner Planes, Limbo and the Abyss all merging into the Elemental Chaos? Was it, like, just the Toril-related layers of these planes? The 5e Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide mentions the 4e Spellplague and how some of its effects on the land were undone, but is suspiciously silent on the cosmology. I guess we are just going to pretend that part of the cataclysm never happened.

Oh boy, 4e forcing every setting into the Nentir Vale cosmology was horrific, except maaaaaaybe for Dark Sun.

Tvtyrant
2020-06-08, 11:44 AM
I liked the Elemental Chaos, TBH. Same reasoning though, most of the planes didn't have enough stuff to justify being 1 or more infinite planes of existence. Having them be big floating chunks in a sea led to easier planar adventuring.

Anonymouswizard
2020-06-08, 11:56 AM
I liked the Elemental Chaos, TBH. Same reasoning though, most of the planes didn't have enough stuff to justify being 1 or more infinite planes of existence. Having them be big floating chunks in a sea led to easier planar adventuring.

I'm not against the Nentir Vale cosmology, it fits with the setting and history it was designed for (the Dawn War and it's ancient mostly won fight for Law Versus Chaos). I wouldn't mind seeing a Nentir Vale update for 5e with the cosmology intact, I find it possibly the best of the default settings I've seen WotC use (although Greyhawk just had it's deities nicked and not much else).

I just think it was a problem when everybody had to be forced into it even if it didn't fit.

Grod_The_Giant
2020-06-08, 12:24 PM
If you've read any major continuously published serial comicbook for any length of time over the last twenty or so years, it's a lot like that IME. If all you've played is jrpg video games, it's not much like that. For me, as a noob DM, it's nice because I can use a pre-existing setting without fear of mucking it up any worse than it already is.
That's a pretty good comparison, yeah. The Realms are a mess because they've been continually expanded, developed, and subjected to world-changing cataclysms for decades-- not just under different authors, but entirely different companies.

NRSASD
2020-06-08, 01:05 PM
Regarding the multiple gods of death, what happened to Cyric?

Tvtyrant
2020-06-08, 01:09 PM
Regarding the multiple gods of death, what happened to Cyric?

Didn't he die in the novels? After he was using the combined souls of everyone who died to try and replace AO when he went missing and mystra reincarnated inside a teen girl. I haven't read those since I was a kid but I think that is how it went.

Millstone85
2020-06-08, 02:13 PM
I'm not against the Nentir Vale cosmology, it fits with the setting and history it was designed for (the Dawn War and it's ancient mostly won fight for Law Versus Chaos).Likewise.

Of course, the Great Wheel also had a war of Law vs Chaos, but it is an interesting variation to make it an Astral vs Elemental business. And I loved how both sides were eventually kicked out of the mortal world by the nature spirits that were born of their clashing energies.


I wouldn't mind seeing a Nentir Vale update for 5e with the cosmology intactI think the recently published Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, and its world of Exandria, are the closest thing we will get.


Regarding the multiple gods of death, what happened to Cyric?
Didn't he die in the novels? After he was using the combined souls of everyone who died to try and replace AO when he went missing and mystra reincarnated inside a teen girl. I haven't read those since I was a kid but I think that is how it went.Let's see if I can answer that one without looking at the wiki. Just for the challenge.

It was during the Time of Troubles, right? And the teen girl was Midnight, who eventually became the new Mystra, and may or may not still have the old Mystra within her. Or something like that.

Anyhow, Midnight's own death would later cause the global wild-magic cataclysm known as the Spellplague. Her killer was, I think, none other than Cyric. He had not died, just gone mad, but he got over that too.

But Midnight also reincarnated, not inside another girl but inside... a bear. Yes, I think that's it, she put her soul in a bear. And then Elminster found the bear and helped Midnight go back to full strength.

This brings us to the next cataclysm, known as the Second Sundering*. And now Midnight is believed to contain elements of not only Mystra but Mystryl as well. And Cyric is still around, of course.

* The First Sundering was the ancient event that created the island of Evermeet. The energies it unleashed are suspected to have travelled forward in time and made the Second Sundering possible. They may also have travelled backward in time to allow the Zeroth Sundering, the original division/duplication of Abeir-Toril into the twin worlds of Abeir and Toril**.

** Yes, in FR's version of the Dawn War, Ao eventually said "Okay kids, the primordials get this ball, and the gods get this ball".
Hmm, sorry, I didn't actually remember much of anything about Cyric, and ended up talking about Mystra instead. Also, as others have noted, this is totally like explaining the history of the Marvel and DC multiverses.

Edit: Here is the wiki's entry on Cyric (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Cyric). It doesn't mention him dying.

Anonymouswizard
2020-06-08, 06:41 PM
Likewise.

Of course, the Great Wheel also had a war of Law vs Chaos, but it is an interesting variation to make it an Astral vs Elemental business. And I loved how both sides were eventually kicked out of the mortal world by the nature spirits that were born of their clashing energies.

Oh sure, but I kind of find that element of the Great Wheel suffers from a lack of focus (particularly as Planescape, the only setting entirely focused on it, went for factions with looser ties to alignment). The Nentir Vale cosmology is pleasingly simple, even if we add in the PhB2 and PhB3 myths (the nature spirits and psionics).


I think the recently published Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, and its world of Exandria, are the closest thing we will get.

I'm trying to remember how much Critical Role's world is aligned with the Nentir Vale cosmology, I know it sprung from 4e and uses a genericified version of it's default pantheon, but never looked into the cosmology. Maybe I should pick up the Tal'Dorei or Wildemount books (then again, I'm more interested in picking up the Eberron book at the moment and find it's cosmology more interesting*). Just wish WotC would sell a reaonably priced pdf, because it means I wouldn't have to sit around looking for a sale on Amazon.

* Partially because it goes all in on a slight change 3.X made to divine magic and ended up with radically different religions. I'm fairly certain that Eberron is the only published D&D setting I've seen with contradictory religions, and it's amazing.

Millstone85
2020-06-09, 05:10 AM
I'm trying to remember how much Critical Role's world is aligned with the Nentir Vale cosmology, I know it sprung from 4e and uses a genericified version of it's default pantheon, but never looked into the cosmology.I never watched CR. I also haven't read all of EGtW yet, though I am loving it.

It does use what the 5e DMG calls the pantheon of the Dawn War and accurately describes as "draw [I]in several nonhuman deities and establish [I]them as universal gods". On that account, I particularly like Moradin as the god of craft and creation. But the best member of the pantheon is what is in my opinion the one true Raven Queen, not the really weird one 5e put in MToF. Now, I don't see how the Dawn-War pantheon is more generic than it was in 4e?

For its cosmology, EGtW seems to assume the 5e Great Wheel. However, I have noticed that:

In this version of the creation myth, the gods eventually banished themselves. More precisely, the good or neutral Prime Deities banished the evil Betrayer Gods, but had to remove themselves from Exandria in order to do so.
The divine realms of Erathis and Zehir coast through the Astral Plane instead of being tied to one of the Outer Planes.
I can't retrieve the page, but I think the distinct Elemental Planes were depicted as a recent development, something like the corpses of defeated Primordials.

Tvtyrant
2020-06-09, 09:20 AM
Likewise.

Of course, the Great Wheel also had a war of Law vs Chaos, but it is an interesting variation to make it an Astral vs Elemental business. And I loved how both sides were eventually kicked out of the mortal world by the nature spirits that were born of their clashing energies.

I think the recently published Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, and its world of Exandria, are the closest thing we will get.

Let's see if I can answer that one without looking at the wiki. Just for the challenge.

It was during the Time of Troubles, right? And the teen girl was Midnight, who eventually became the new Mystra, and may or may not still have the old Mystra within her. Or something like that.

Anyhow, Midnight's own death would later cause the global wild-magic cataclysm known as the Spellplague. Her killer was, I think, none other than Cyric. He had not died, just gone mad, but he got over that too.

But Midnight also reincarnated, not inside another girl but inside... a bear. Yes, I think that's it, she put her soul in a bear. And then Elminster found the bear and helped Midnight go back to full strength.

This brings us to the next cataclysm, known as the Second Sundering*. And now Midnight is believed to contain elements of not only Mystra but Mystryl as well. And Cyric is still around, of course.

* The First Sundering was the ancient event that created the island of Evermeet. The energies it unleashed are suspected to have travelled forward in time and made the Second Sundering possible. They may also have travelled backward in time to allow the Zeroth Sundering, the original division/duplication of Abeir-Toril into the twin worlds of Abeir and Toril**.

** Yes, in FR's version of the Dawn War, Ao eventually said "Okay kids, the primordials get this ball, and the gods get this ball".
Hmm, sorry, I didn't actually remember much of anything about Cyric, and ended up talking about Mystra instead. Also, as others have noted, this is totally like explaining the history of the Marvel and DC multiverses.

Edit: Here is the wiki's entry on Cyric (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Cyric). It doesn't mention him dying.

That is about how I remember it. I'm amazed Cyric lived, I could have sworn he died in that series.

Yeah it is a lot like reading a western comic series. Needs a reboot.

PairO'Dice Lost
2020-06-09, 12:59 PM
If it works for you that is great! I really dislike under populated worlds that are way too big, it is a classic fantasy trope that always stuck in my craw. I'm looking at you, LotR through Wheel of Time *shakes fist*.

I think having small settlements separated by wide swathes of unpopulated land makes sense in D&D settings in a way that it doesn't in settings like LotR or WoT. The latter are largely pseudo-historical worlds with sprinklings of exotic and magical stuff that you'd expect to make the setting more populous, not less (orcs and Aiel living in otherwise-unlivable regions, sorcerers and Aes Sedai taking care of plagues and droughts and such, etc.), while the former is chock-full of dangerous monsters and random planar phenomena and so forth to the point that the population managing to be even a third as high as Medieval values is still impressive.


The usual reconciliation appears to be in treating the World Tree's planes as layers of the Great Wheel's planes.

An amusing aspect of this is how Dweomerheart moved from Limbo (under the CN Mystryl) to Mechanus (under the LN Mystra) to Elysium (under the NG Midnight, who also goes by Mystra). It makes one wonder if the next goddess of magic will move it to Hades.

When I've used the World Tree cosmology (only a handful of times, since I much prefer the Wheel), I actually treated its planes as separate divine realm-like Astral demiplanes, with the "cosmology change" simply being the point at which the gods up and moved from their former locales to their new realms and the "World Tree" simply being an artificial planar pathway like Yggdrasil or the Rivers Oceanus and Styx.

Partly because of the alignment whiplash from gods changing alignment themselves or moving in with gods of different alignments, partly because the supposed difficulty of planar travel between them resembles demiplanes with limited planar connections more than normal Outer Plane behavior, partly because the only inhabitants of these "planes" are said to be petitioners and servants of each of the gods without any other outsiders "passing through" as one might expect on other planes, and partly because the general 3e cosmology change kicked off by Vecna explicitly involved the creation and promotion of bunches of demiplanes (like the Demiplane of Shadow becoming the Plane of Shadow) so the FR divine realms splitting off at the same time made a lot of sense.


I liked the Elemental Chaos, TBH. Same reasoning though, most of the planes didn't have enough stuff to justify being 1 or more infinite planes of existence. Having them be big floating chunks in a sea led to easier planar adventuring.

The main two issues I have with the Elemental Chaos (among many others) are that, firstly, the Great Wheel already had Limbo if you specifically want a "throw a bunch of elements in a blender" plane; it's even called the "Everchanging Chaos of Limbo." You can already have mixed regions like, say, an "ocean" of liquid fire bordered by "coastlines" of ash and solid smoke in the existing Inner Planes where Fire, Ash, and Smoke met, and unlike in the Elemental Chaos setup that ocean of fire will actually stick around and can have its own sites and ecosystems and so on where the Chaos presumes such a thing would randomly change at some point.

Secondly, the Inner Planes have always been associated with Law, not Chaos. The Inner Planes were ruled by the Vaati (the original exemplars of Law) back in the day, they were all nicely partitioned because Law won the war against Chaos and earned the right to make the multiverse nice and organized like it wanted, and so on. The devs deciding to Limbo-ify everything--and then on top of that throw in the Abyss too so demons became elementals for no good reason--was just yet another thing, like changing the meaning of "archon" and "eladrin" and such, that was a deliberate "screw you" to the previous cosmology in general and Planescape in particular.

At least doing something like turning the Inner Planes into distinct but finite "elemental dominions" in the "Ethereal Sea" to match the divine realms in the Astral Sea would have (A) been something novel instead of lazily ripping off Limbo, (B) allowed for more stable and distinct adventuring locales than the Elemental Chaos does, and (C) had precedent in the form of Krynn calling the Deep Ethereal the "Ethereal Sea" so it wasn't a total rejection of the old cosmology. :smallannoyed:


Oh sure, but I kind of find that element of the Great Wheel suffers from a lack of focus (particularly as Planescape, the only setting entirely focused on it, went for factions with looser ties to alignment). The Nentir Vale cosmology is pleasingly simple, even if we add in the PhB2 and PhB3 myths (the nature spirits and psionics).

I find the 4e cosmology to be less "pleasingly simple" and more "throwing out any kind of interesting or novel cosmology in favor of something blandly generic."

Heck, the 3e Manual of the Planes literally has a proto-Nentir Vale cosmology as an example of an incomplete stripped-down cosmology that you can use for a single campaign that still leaves a bunch of open cosmological questions. It even has the first glimmers of the dreadful 4e Adjectivenoun naming convention!


A SAMPLE COSMOLOGY: THE OMNIVERSE
The D&D cosmology is rather large because it’s designed for wide variety of options and playing styles. As an example, here’s a simpler cosmology for a campaign. The planes that make up this simple cosmology, the Omniverse, are as follows:
• A Material Plane. This is the home of the player characters.
• An Astral Plane, an Ethereal Plane, and a Plane of Shadow. We want to use the spells and items that refer to these planes.
• A single Elemental Plane, which is made up of all four elemental types (Earth, Air, Fire, and Water).
• Overheaven. This Outer Plane is where most of the goodaligned deities live, along with outsiders such as archons.
• Darkunder. This Outer Plane is where most of the evilaligned deities live, along with demons, devils, and other evil outsiders.
Even such basic choices raise questions. Where do the lawful neutral outsiders such as formians and the chaotic neutral outsiders such as slaadi go? You could just put them aside for the moment, or assign the formians to a lawfulaligned piece of Overheaven and the slaadi to a particularly chaotic chunk of Darkunder.
[...]
A single Elemental Plane puts the elements in continual conflict on their home plane. A traveler to the Elemental Plane would have to prepare for random changes between the various elements. You can assign planar traits according to your needs. Let’s say portions of the Omniverse’s Elemental Plane are fire-dominant, water-dominant, air-dominant, and earthdominant. Let’s define Overheaven as mildly goodaligned and Darkunder as mildly evil-aligned. Because the planes are only mildly aligned, the neutral natives there don’t suffer.
[...]
For the Omniverse, we’ll put all our planes within the Astral Plane. This is the great open sea that links the planes. The Material Plane sits in the center, with the Ethereal Plane and the Plane of Shadow overlapping it. Above the Material Plane we put Overheaven, and Darkunder goes beneath (though it’s just as accurate to put them beside the Material Plane).
[...]
With the Omniverse, you have a basic layout of planes, sufficient to use everything in the D&D core rulebooks. The cosmology reflects a strong good/evil split and mostly ignores conflict between law and chaos. The Elemental Plane is a continually warring land of conflict between inhuman forces. Planar travelers may visit Overheaven or Darkunder more than they travel to the Elemental Plane, but perhaps powerful mages have cut their own deals with the various elemental lords.

For the devs to take a boiled-down cosmology that any DM could frantically throw together during the first session of a new campaign and that explicitly avoids being "designed for wide variety of options and playing styles" and then make it the official cosmology is just plain lazy and terrible, a Spellplague-tier hackish plot device with no real upsides that I can see.


* Partially because it goes all in on a slight change 3.X made to divine magic and ended up with radically different religions. I'm fairly certain that Eberron is the only published D&D setting I've seen with contradictory religions, and it's amazing.

For all that people give FR grief for having explicit meddlesome deities and detailing everything to the Nth degree, it actually has a bunch of sects, cults, heresies, schisms, and other religious open-endedness that you don't see in Greyhawk or even some of the earlier AD&D settings. The whole thing where 4e dropped Lathander for Amaunator and said they were really aspects of the same deity was something that had been debated by religious scholars in-setting for at least two prior editions...though 2e's insinuations about the intermingling of the Talfiric and Faerunian pantheons and 3e's explicit Risen Sun Heresy and Three-Faced Sun Heresy were infinitely more interesting and nuanced than 4e's "Surprise! They're literally the same god and we're hot-swapping them now!" take on things.

But yes, Eberron's take on religion, especially the part where the Sovereign Host might actually just be really old and powerful dragons and human and draconic scholars both think the other side is wrong but politely indulge them anyway, is pretty great.

Nifft
2020-06-09, 01:27 PM
For all that people give FR grief for having explicit meddlesome deities and detailing everything to the Nth degree, it actually has a bunch of sects, cults, heresies, schisms, and other religious open-endedness that you don't see in Greyhawk or even some of the earlier AD&D settings. You kinda do in Greyhawk.

That's where I remember fantasy syncretism (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/syncretism) first starting, too -- the idea that maybe there's a divine force of fire, for example, and gods like Obad-Hai, Pyremius, Nola, and Joramy are merely divine aspects of something more fundamental -- which in this specific example seems a bit odd, since those are vastly divergent divinities, but it's where I think the earliest examples originated.

Millstone85
2020-06-09, 03:29 PM
Needs a reboot.That was probably a joke, but I wonder if such a thing would be possible and/or desirable. Either stopping the Realms' clock on 1489 DR for all future editions, or outright reverting it to 1358 DR.


The main two issues I have with the Elemental Chaos (among many others) are that, firstly, the Great Wheel already had Limbo if you specifically want a "throw a bunch of elements in a blender" plane; it's even called the "Everchanging Chaos of Limbo."At least the World Axis did not include both planes at the same time. This is something about the 5e version of the Great Wheel that really has me rolling my eyes.

Oh, and the 5e Great Wheel also has distinct Elemental Planes, making the Elemental Chaos even more redundant.


Secondly, the Inner Planes have always been associated with Law, not Chaos. The Inner Planes were ruled by the Vaati (the original exemplars of Law) back in the day, they were all nicely partitioned because Law won the war against Chaos and earned the right to make the multiverse nice and organized like it wanted, and so on.This reminds me of Dragon#414, which offered a way to include the modrons in Nentir Vale. The article reimagined Primus as a law-enthusiast primordial who tried to transform the Elemental Chaos into the Elemental Planes, but failed and ended up fragmented into pieces that became the modrons.

I found it inspiring, though a couple things annoyed me. Modrons were still described as partly organic, when this was the perfect occasion to make Primus a metal primordial. And they abandoned the plane, moving instead to a sort of reverse-far-realm called the Accordant Expanse.


At least doing something like turning the Inner Planes into distinct but finite "elemental dominions" in the "Ethereal Sea" to match the divine realms in the Astral SeaActually, the World Axis had both "astral dominions" like Arvandor and "elemental realms" like the City of Brass. Also, githyanki sailed the Astral Sea while githzerai created enclaves of stability in the Elemental Chaos.

By contrast, as far as I understand, the 5e version of the Elemental Chaos is a "you die immediately upon arrival" kind of place. I guess that's one way to make it different from Limbo.

Yora
2020-06-09, 04:20 PM
That was probably a joke, but I wonder if such a thing would be possible and/or desirable. Either stopping the Realms' clock on 1489 DR for all future editions, or outright reverting it to 1358 DR.

I don't see any reason why there couldn't be both a book to describe Faerûn in it's current timeline advanced state, and one in it's original starting state. Give the alternative classic version book an explanatory title and a distinctively different cover, and there shouldn't be a problem.
By this point, the setting has changed so much that there would be little duplicate or redundant content.

The only reason against it is WotC seeming not interested in releasing new D&D books.

GentlemanVoodoo
2020-06-09, 05:21 PM
The only reason against it is WotC seeming not interested in releasing new D&D books.

Pretty much. Or those that they do release are the sure bets or have content where favorable responses were shown in their surveys.

Anonymouswizard
2020-06-09, 05:30 PM
I find the 4e cosmology to be less "pleasingly simple" and more "throwing out any kind of interesting or novel cosmology in favor of something blandly generic."

Heck, the 3e Manual of the Planes literally has a proto-Nentir Vale cosmology as an example of an incomplete stripped-down cosmology that you can use for a single campaign that still leaves a bunch of open cosmological questions. It even has the first glimmers of the dreadful 4e Adjectivenoun naming convention!



For the devs to take a boiled-down cosmology that any DM could frantically throw together during the first session of a new campaign and that explicitly avoids being "designed for wide variety of options and playing styles" and then make it the official cosmology is just plain lazy and terrible, a Spellplague-tier hackish plot device with no real upsides that I can see.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh.

What's wrong with vague and broad? How is 'many divine domains float through the Astral Sea' less interesting than 'there are twentyish Outer Planes, which areconnected to the Material via the Astral Plane'?

Sure, it might not be deep, but if it had been used sensibly (as a simple cosmology for a simple default setting, with other settings using their own more complex cosmologies) than it would have been fine and served it's purpose (giving places high level dungeon crawls can happen without the complexity of the Great Wheel).

Nifft
2020-06-09, 05:36 PM
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh.

What's wrong with vague and broad? How is 'many divine domains float through the Astral Sea' less interesting than 'there are twentyish Outer Planes, which areconnected to the Material via the Astral Plane'?

Sure, it might not be deep, but if it had been used sensibly (as a simple cosmology for a simple default setting, with other settings using their own more complex cosmologies) than it would have been fine and served it's purpose (giving places high level dungeon crawls can happen without the complexity of the Great Wheel).

Yeah, vague & broad is great for the system's published default metaphysics.

That makes it much easier for me to adapt the system to whatever I'm homebrewing for the next campaign.

I don't need to have a player show up expecting to visit his great aunt in Acheron and then get unhappy when there is no such place.


EDIT: That said, this is the Forgotten Realms thread, and I can hurl this post back on-topic by saying that the default setting metaphysics intruding into FR has been pretty awful for the place in 4e and even now in 5e.

LibraryOgre
2020-06-09, 05:51 PM
That was probably a joke, but I wonder if such a thing would be possible and/or desirable. Either stopping the Realms' clock on 1489 DR for all future editions, or outright reverting it to 1358 DR.


FWIW, that's how it is in the Kingdoms of Kalamar (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/15875/Kingdoms-of-Kalamar-Players-Guide-to-the-Sovereign-Lands?affiliate_id=315505) setting... while they will talk about things that might happen and are coming up, time itself has remained static since the beginning. The only path forward is through play.

Millstone85
2020-06-09, 06:55 PM
I don't see any reason why there couldn't be both a book to describe Faerûn in it's current timeline advanced state, and one in it's original starting state.I would love that.


FWIW, that's how it is in the Kingdoms of Kalamar (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/15875/Kingdoms-of-Kalamar-Players-Guide-to-the-Sovereign-Lands?affiliate_id=315505) setting... while they will talk about things that might happen and are coming up, time itself has remained static since the beginning. The only path forward is through play.It is also always 998 YK on Eberron. In fact, isn't FR the only D&D setting that expands its timeline?

Nifft
2020-06-09, 06:59 PM
It is also always 998 YK on Eberron. In fact, isn't FR the only D&D setting that expands its timeline?

Greyhawk progressed for a while.


You know what would be a good model for the Realms?

Star Wars.

They have sourcebooks for each era, so you could run an Old Republic game or something in the middle of the movies.

LibraryOgre
2020-06-09, 07:44 PM
It is also always 998 YK on Eberron. In fact, isn't FR the only D&D setting that expands its timeline?

Dragonlance did a couple of times, even in AD&D.

Dark Sun did, with the introductory freakin' novels.

Greyhawk did, with the Greyhawk Wars.

Ravenloft did (Grand Conjunction). Planescape did (Faction War). I don't think the various Realms sub-settings did (Al Qadim, Maztica), nor did Birthright, I believe, but I could be wrong.

The 90s were big on advancing metaplot. I blame White Wolf.

Zombimode
2020-06-10, 12:52 AM
Greyhawk did, with the Greyhawk Wars.

And then again with the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer.

Khedrac
2020-06-10, 02:24 AM
Gary Gaygax was publishing events continuing the Greyhawk timeline in Dragon magazine pretty much from the beginning, so it was never static.

The Known World/Mystara don't really have a timeline until the Gazatteers came out and they were static at AC1000, but the Wrath of the Immortals boxed set moved things forward to AC1020 and the Almanacs kept it moving.

I think Birthright was fairly static.

Dragonlance started in a world-changing event so I don't think it was ever static (unless they stabilised it afterwards).

Ravenloft (the demi-plane), though static by its very nature had domains change over time.

Planescape certainly wasn't static.

Spelljammer was pretty static, only really being advanced by modules, but then it's nature was such that changes were not easy to spot!

Dark Sun/Athas I think started static, but then changed to accomodate the fiction they were publishing.

I think that's the main ones...

Yora
2020-06-10, 04:11 AM
I believe the changes to Dark Sun were so unpopular that they went back to the original starting position for 4th edition.

Millstone85
2020-06-10, 04:11 AM
I stand way corrected.

thorr-kan
2020-06-10, 08:14 AM
I don't think the various Realms sub-settings did (Al Qadim, Maztica), nor did Birthright, I believe, but I could be wrong.
*Nobody* knows what time it is in Zakhara! :)

No actual dates are mentioned. The only time reference I'm aware of is a mention in the City of Delights boxed set of the "Mage of Shadowdale." So it's some time after Eliminster gets that title.

Democratus
2020-06-10, 01:07 PM
The weird thing about Forgotten Realms is that it's destroyed/recreated/destroyed/recreated so often that a character has to question if it is even worth it to "save the world" in an adventure.

Why bother when everything is going to be torn down in a few years anyway? :smallbiggrin:

PairO'Dice Lost
2020-06-11, 02:15 AM
You kinda do in Greyhawk.

That's where I remember fantasy syncretism (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/syncretism) first starting, too -- the idea that maybe there's a divine force of fire, for example, and gods like Obad-Hai, Pyremius, Nola, and Joramy are merely divine aspects of something more fundamental -- which in this specific example seems a bit odd, since those are vastly divergent divinities, but it's where I think the earliest examples originated.

Oerth is definitely where the "gods aren't the source of divine magic but merely 'lenses'/'channels' for more primal concepts" idea comes from, but the individual churches are still pretty much unified and think that their gods are the head honcho of their portfolio; I'd consider that different from the FR and Eberron cases, where there's debate within each religion about those sorts of things.


Actually, the World Axis had both "astral dominions" like Arvandor and "elemental realms" like the City of Brass. Also, githyanki sailed the Astral Sea while githzerai created enclaves of stability in the Elemental Chaos.

I know the Elemental Chaos had stabilized areas like that, I meant that I'd have preferred to see e.g. the Elemental Plane of Fire become a separate and distinct "Elemental Dominion of Fire" in the Ethereal Sea where the City of Brass and other fire-dominant adventuring sites could go, in the same way that Outer Planes were separate and distinct astral dominions in the Astral Sea, as opposed to the fiery sites just being plopped down in the Elemental Chaos intermixed with everything else. That way you at least pay lip service to the "Law strictly divided up the elements" lore from all the previous editions and can use previous-edition adventures and such that involve traveling between Inner Planes with less conversion.


By contrast, as far as I understand, the 5e version of the Elemental Chaos is a "you die immediately upon arrival" kind of place. I guess that's one way to make it different from Limbo.

Yep, the 5e cosmology is the worst of all possible worlds cosmologies, news at 11. :smallamused:


Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh.

What's wrong with vague and broad? How is 'many divine domains float through the Astral Sea' less interesting than 'there are twentyish Outer Planes, which areconnected to the Material via the Astral Plane'?


Yeah, vague & broad is great for the system's published default metaphysics.

That makes it much easier for me to adapt the system to whatever I'm homebrewing for the next campaign.

I think sticking with the Wheel would have been better for two reasons. Firstly, and most obviously, the Great Wheel has always been the default D&D cosmology (on the Advanced branch, anyway); it would have been much easier to convert previous-edition material, maintain in-setting continuity, and so on if it had remained the default cosmology in 4e. Nuking the Wheel and radically redefining Wheel-specific terms like "archon" and "eladrin" was really just a pointless "screw you" to previous edition fans like so much else in the 4e design process.

Secondly, I personally think it's much better to have a default cosmology be specific and complex and let DMs whip up the simplified Playskool My First Cosmology version on their own, rather than presenting a bare-bones simple cosmology and requiring DMs to do the heavy lifting. Starting with the Great Wheel and saying "actually, the Outer Planes aren't in a defined ring shape, they kinda float around wherever" is a trivial change, as is something like "In this homebrew setting, you have the Ethereal Plane, Heaven, Hell, the Feywild, and nothing else," whereas starting with a blank slate of undefined astral dominions and have to write up stuff for the Great Wheel Outer Planes or revert the Feywild to the Ethereal Plane or whatever is a heck of a lot more work.

And neither a simple default cosmology nor a default Great Wheel impact what you can do with homebrew cosmologies--Eberron exists, after all, and its cosmology is radically different from both and would require a significant writeup of new things like planar cycles and manifest zones regardless of which default cosmology you started with.


Sure, it might not be deep, but if it had been used sensibly (as a simple cosmology for a simple default setting, with other settings using their own more complex cosmologies) than it would have been fine and served it's purpose (giving places high level dungeon crawls can happen without the complexity of the Great Wheel).

Now this I can definitely agree with. The biggest problem with the World Axis was that all existing settings were forced to retrofit their cosmologies to it, especially FR since it became the pseudo-default setting of 4e next to Nentir Vale in the same way Greyhawk was the pseudo-default for 3e. If the World Axis had been in the DMG as a baseline cosmology but the FR books used the Great Wheel as normal and dropped the "'Abeir' is actually a parallel world" stupidity that only existed to shoehorn in World Axis concepts, I wouldn't have a problem with it at all and anyone who didn't like the World Axis could just ignore it while still having 4e-ified versions of Great Wheel material around.


EDIT: That said, this is the Forgotten Realms thread, and I can hurl this post back on-topic by saying that the default setting metaphysics intruding into FR has been pretty awful for the place in 4e and even now in 5e.

1000% agreed.


You know what would be a good model for the Realms?

Star Wars.

They have sourcebooks for each era, so you could run an Old Republic game or something in the middle of the movies.

Sooo...the Spellplague is the Disney acquisition and all the good FR lore is the EU? I can get behind that. :smallcool:

But seriously, 2e FR did a great job with that kind of multi-era gameplay. They had sourcebooks on Netheril and Cormanthyr so you could play in those eras, complete with basic time travel rules to allow you to switch eras on the fly, and all of the regional sourcebooks like Old Empires and Shining South went into a lot of detail on the history of the region so if you wanted to set a campaign in, say, -642 DR you'd have a pretty good picture of the whole of Faerûn at that point in time.


The weird thing about Forgotten Realms is that it's destroyed/recreated/destroyed/recreated so often that a character has to question if it is even worth it to "save the world" in an adventure.

Why bother when everything is going to be torn down in a few years anyway? :smallbiggrin:

It really only happened twice, with the Spellplague for 4e and the Second Sundering for 5e. All the Realms-Shaking Events before that were comparatively mild and/or localized, a bunch of gods getting shuffled around here or already-rare psionics getting some tweaks there or the like. And there's just a century between those two events, so from an elven perspective it's kind of like the two World Wars: major global events that sucked for those involved, but came and went and then the world moved on.

Cliff Sedge
2020-06-13, 08:34 PM
For me, as a noob DM, it's nice because I can use a pre-existing setting without fear of mucking it up any worse than it already is.

As a veteran DM, I like it for that same reason. It provides a lot of cover / plausible deniability for DMs to either make mistakes or to pick-and-choose or change things, and it would be hard to tell the difference between your mess and the mess that was already there.

I use FR content from both 2nd and 3rd editions of the game mixed together, and as far as I'm concerned, there are no discrepancies or conflicts - because I said so. Which is really to say, I don't use the Forgotten Realms as a campaign setting: I shamelessly steal whatever I want from it to build the wacky world I want.

Nifft
2020-06-13, 09:30 PM
As a veteran DM, I like it for that same reason. It provides a lot of cover / plausible deniability for DMs to either make mistakes or to pick-and-choose or change things, and it would be hard to tell the difference between your mess and the mess that was already there.

I use FR content from both 2nd and 3rd editions of the game mixed together, and as far as I'm concerned, there are no discrepancies or conflicts - because I said so. Which is really to say, I don't use the Forgotten Realms as a campaign setting: I shamelessly steal whatever I want from it to build the wacky world I want.

As long as you don't have any FR flavor lawyers, that's a solid plan.

When you meet someone who read the books and is practically bouncing in his chair to tell you why whatever you're doing is wrong, it's not so great.

(I was a player in a group with such a person, and a DM who was getting more & more frustrated... the group didn't last, probably not specifically because of this guy, but I suspect he didn't help. The only other setting where I've seen that type of flavor-lawyer happen was Star Wars.)

Cliff Sedge
2020-06-14, 02:30 AM
As long as you don't have any FR flavor lawyers, that's a solid plan.

When you meet someone who read the books and is practically bouncing in his chair to tell you why whatever you're doing is wrong, it's not so great.


Not a problem: I would just tell him to shut up. Seriously, fellow DMs - stop allowing annoying players to bully you.

I tell all my players up-front what the game is going to be like, and if they don't like any of the details, . . . ? Well, Bye.

[Edit: the same goes for rules lawyers, system lawyers, or any player who somehow thinks he knows more about my campaign than I do. I built the thing; it doesn't matter how closely you* think it resembles something else you've seen, you (and more importantly, your brand new character you just made) have never seen it before and literally know nothing about it. *Using "you" in the general sense, not speaking to any particular person on this forum, to be clear.]

Kaptin Keen
2020-06-15, 01:38 AM
As long as you don't have any FR flavor lawyers, that's a solid plan.

Whut?

As GM, I control the world. Players control their characters. If I inform the players that the halfling King Wobbleknees rules Cormyr - then that's how it is, and it's not debatable.

Occasionally players try to object, but what are they going to do? Generally, there's nothing they want less than take over the GM chair, so ... that's pretty much the end of that.

Actually, when there's a session 0 I generally inform players upfront that their player knowledge is worth squat because I change everything from settings to monsters to spells - a fireball is a fireball when players cast it, but a necromancer may well have a Bonesplosion spell with the exact same hitpoint effect, only it detonates the bones inside the characters.

It's healthy to do away with all the established expectations. It keeps players on their toes, and it totally decomissions the backseat drivers and rules lawyers.

Khedrac
2020-06-15, 06:12 AM
Actually, when there's a session 0 I generally inform players upfront that their player knowledge is worth squat because I change everything from settings to monsters to spells - a fireball is a fireball when players cast it, but a necromancer may well have a Bonesplosion spell with the exact same hitpoint effect, only it detonates the bones inside the characters.

It's healthy to do away with all the established expectations. It keeps players on their toes, and it totally decomissions the backseat drivers and rules lawyers.

I agree, but the key point is that you tell the players this upfront. Too often GMs tell the players that they are running the game "by the book" which is when the problems arise from the players knowing the books better than the DM.
(Be fair, the DM has a lot more to worry about and know than the players, especially when you add to their load the knowledge of the adventure and campaign.)

Zombimode
2020-06-15, 08:25 AM
Whut?

As GM, I control the world. Players control their characters. If I inform the players that the halfling King Wobbleknees rules Cormyr - then that's how it is, and it's not debatable.

Sure. But be prepared that your players may be disappointed. After all, wasn't your campaign pitch "A new and exiting Forgotten Realms adventure!"?


The GM always imparts their vision upon the setting. That is unavoidable and not a problem. To me it is important that the GM respects the setting (otherwise why bother even using the setting?). The GM should work with the setting, not against it. And major deviations should be discussed beforehand.

From player's side on the other hand there should be an amount of trust that the GM will create a good game even if presented vision is not 100% conform with your own vision of the setting.



Actually, when there's a session 0 I generally inform players upfront that their player knowledge is worth squat because I change everything from settings to monsters to spells - a fireball is a fireball when players cast it, but a necromancer may well have a Bonesplosion spell with the exact same hitpoint effect, only it detonates the bones inside the characters.

It's healthy to do away with all the established expectations. It keeps players on their toes, and it totally decomissions the backseat drivers and rules lawyers.


That... sounds like a really unhealthy player-GM relationship.

Why do you feel the need to change things up this way?


If you feel that running on GM fiat instead of rules is needed to "keep players on their toes" this refelects only poorly on your personal GM skills of using the rules of the game.
Likewise with "backseat drivers and rules lawyers": it seems you are trying to solve out-of-game problems with in-game solutions.

Kaptin Keen
2020-06-15, 03:23 PM
That... sounds like a really unhealthy player-GM relationship.

I wonder - why would you feel qualified to comment on that? You have no idea who I am, how I play, who the people I play with are, or whether what I do works or not.


Why do you feel the need to change things up this way?

Well, why would you feel you don't?

To me, it's brain achingly simple: I'm better than the guys who write the books. But not only that. Player knowledge is actively harmful. It doesn't matter what they think they know - 'oh, goblins are just 1hd' or 'I think fireball is his most powerful spell, so he must be level 5 at most' - doesn't matter, all these assumptions takes something away from the game. It reduces the possibility of surprise, the sense of wonder, and it puts a clear limit on the creativity I can pour into the game.

I think there are two types of GM's. One will stick with the rules as they are, and guide their players through premade modules. They will follow guides for calculating WBL, and challenge ratings, and ... well, all that jazz.

The other kind see GM'ing as a creative process. They will use the rule set as a framework on which to build something of their own. I haven't played in Forgotten Realms since ... I don't even know, the 80's I guess? But I've used FR as a canvas on which I've painted my own stuff. I've done the same with Eberron, Dark Sun, Planescape, and more, before discarding the printed settings entirely in favor of my own.

If you see the game as a game, I'd say the former type of GM is better. But I don't. The 'game' is an epi-phenomenon, it's a small, barely significant side effect. It's there to govern certain exchanges - of blows, or words, or goods - but the real content, the reason we're at this table, is to collectively spin yarns of heroes doing hero stuff.

Also, I'm frankly quite bad at the Type 1 GM'ing.

PairO'Dice Lost
2020-06-15, 04:28 PM
Player knowledge is actively harmful. It doesn't matter what they think they know - 'oh, goblins are just 1hd' or 'I think fireball is his most powerful spell, so he must be level 5 at most' - doesn't matter, all these assumptions takes something away from the game. It reduces the possibility of surprise, the sense of wonder, and it puts a clear limit on the creativity I can pour into the game.

On the contrary, being able to extrapolate things about creatures in the game world helps increase immersion by a lot more than it harms some nebulous "sense of wonder." Wizards know that someone who can cast fireball but not cone of cold is more skilled than the reverse, commoners know that bands of weak but numerous goblins raid their villages every spring, churches of Good gods likely have myths and teachings about various kinds of fiends, and so on, and trying to pretend that characters who grew up in the world would have no idea how it works is just silly.

It's as if you were running a game in modern America and you swapped out BMW and Volkswagen for Hupmobile and Studebaker because it's "more creative." If players run into a classic German car with a cutesy reputation and are getting in-character by making "punchbuggy" jokes, but you're sitting there going "No! It's not a VW Beetle! It's a, uh, 'Hupmobile Scarab'!" then you're giving up the benefits of familiarity and history for very little return when you could be spending that effort (and the player's lore memorization tolerance) elsewhere.

As far as "limiting your creativity" goes...being better than WotC module writers doesn't mean that everything you come up with is necessarily better than what's in the books from either a flavor or mechanics perspective. The idea that one's skill and creativity as a DM means that one not only can but should change things willy-nilly and try to keep players and PCs in the dark is a harmful one, both for player enjoyment and for the internal consistency of your game world. As someone on another forum once said in a "rulings vs. rules" discussion:


Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

Also, the idea that whatever changes you might make to races, classes, spells, etc. are automatically going to be better balanced/better received/etc. than the standard take on things doesn't hold at all. Dark Sun, Forgotten Realms, and Eberron have very different takes on the standard races and classes, and different players like different versions of each; dropping Eberron gnomes into a FR game, FR orcs into a DS game, or DS halflings into an Eberron game might seem better to you, but (A) not all your players will necessarily agree and might actively dislike those alternate takes and (B) the resulting change might not fit with the rest of the material, causing either a jarring flavor disconnect with that one element or a lot more work for yourself in other areas.

So I'd say player knowledge, as well as player agency and player buy-in, are not just "not harmful" but actively good and in many cases necessary. It may be your world, but it's the whole group's game.


I think there are two types of GM's. One will stick with the rules as they are, and guide their players through premade modules. They will follow guides for calculating WBL, and challenge ratings, and ... well, all that jazz.

The other kind see GM'ing as a creative process. They will use the rule set as a framework on which to build something of their own. I haven't played in Forgotten Realms since ... I don't even know, the 80's I guess? But I've used FR as a canvas on which I've painted my own stuff. I've done the same with Eberron, Dark Sun, Planescape, and more, before discarding the printed settings entirely in favor of my own.

If you see the game as a game, I'd say the former type of GM is better. But I don't. The 'game' is an epi-phenomenon, it's a small, barely significant side effect. It's there to govern certain exchanges - of blows, or words, or goods - but the real content, the reason we're at this table, is to collectively spin yarns of heroes doing hero stuff.

This is a false dichotomy. Between robotic module-runners on the one end and wibbly-wobbly storytellers on the other lie many different kinds of DMs. It's entirely possible to write up and run your own settings while still adhering to WBL and CR and all those seemingly-boring and -unnecessary rules, for example, or to model adventures on modules for variety but heavily reflavor them until they're unrecognizable; let's call those "type 1A" and "type 2A" DMing, respectively.

I'd argue that type 1A DMing style is superior to your type 2 DMing for most DMs most of the time. Many complaints about the game being "inherently imbalanced" and the like turn out to result from the DM ignoring or not understanding those rules--How many people have repeated the "all adventuring days must involve 4 equal-CR encounters" canard without ever having actually read the encounter rules? How many people think WBL is an inviolable quota of magic items to which PCs are entitled without having read the WBL description?--and they would be objectively better DMs if they followed them.

Which isn't to say that either would be a better DMing style for you, or for any other given DM, but the way you're presenting rules as irrelevant and following them as mindless and uncreative is a pretty slanted take. One could easily say that for their group the real content is the game and the challenge therein, and that the rules and surprising outcomes thereof are what separate roleplaying from trite and trope-y storytelling, and their "two types of DM" summary would paint your preferred style in a pretty unflattering light.

dancrilis
2020-06-15, 06:14 PM
I am catching up on the lore. Anyone know why it is a train wreck?

4th Edition happened.


Also, yes, the Wall of the Faithless is still up.

The Wall of the Faithless is awesome and every setting (with very obvious and active Gods) should have one.

Millstone85
2020-06-16, 03:36 AM
The Wall of the Faithless is awesome and every setting (with very obvious and active Gods) should have one.At the very least, it needs a better explanation for why benevolent gods would support it.

My attempt at one would be that, in worlds that are cut from the Outer Planes, the only available afterlives are divine realms, and each one is metaphysically held together by its inhabitants' faith in its ruler. Accept anything else than true worshippers, and the place starts to unravel. But then, the souls no god can get, those have nowhere to go, and so they haunt the living or become food for fiends. Hence the need to lock them up somewhere, cruel as it might seem.

dancrilis
2020-06-16, 08:44 AM
At the very least, it needs a better explanation for why benevolent gods would support it.


My thinking on it is that it is a choice.

The wall is not a secret punishment that awaits the faithless, and it is not what you get if you only give lip service to a god or jump between gods as convenient (those would be the false who to memory get judged based on Kelemvor opinion of them).
In order to end up on the wall you need to effectively actively reject even lip service worship of the gods knowing that this means that you would end up on the wall - under those conditions I don't think you can complain that you ended up on the wall.
Exceptions abound but even they I understand come down to Kelemvor's judgement.

Anonymouswizard
2020-06-16, 10:42 AM
The wall is not a secret punishment that awaits the faithless, and it is not what you get if you only give lip service to a god or jump between gods as convenient (those would be the false who to memory get judged based on Kelemvor opinion of them).

When Kelemvor tried that the good gods forced him to start sending them back to the Wall, because now good people could get eternal paradise by being good people they stopped worshipping the good gods, and instead of doing things to be worthy of worship they got annoyed that they didn't get any freebies anymore.

If I'm remembering correctly. This is why I hate FR lore.

I like Dolurrh, because yes it's a horrific fate, but it's impartial. Everybody ends up there, religions have to deal with it as best they can.

dancrilis
2020-06-16, 10:50 AM
When Kelemvor tried that the good gods forced him to start sending them back to the Wall, because now good people could get eternal paradise by being good people they stopped worshipping the good gods, and instead of doing things to be worthy of worship they got annoyed that they didn't get any freebies anymore.


I believe he did that with the faithless and was told to stop, the false still get punished just punished as a Kelemvor feels which could be anything from escorting visitors to the City of Judgment, to unspeakable tortures. (but they seemingly don't go to the wall - although I imagine some of them would prefer that).

Nifft
2020-06-16, 11:11 AM
I like Dolurrh, because yes it's a horrific fate, but it's impartial. Everybody ends up there, religions have to deal with it as best they can.

Dolurrh is a transition plane.

Nobody stays there.

It's where you wait around before you get sent to whatever comes next, the specifics of which is unknown.

Anonymouswizard
2020-06-16, 11:58 AM
Dolurrh is a transition plane.

Nobody stays there.

It's where you wait around before you get sent to whatever comes next, the specifics of which is unknown.

Or it could just be the end, nobody really knows for sure.

But yes, I believe most Eberron religions take the transition plane stance (to me, I like to think it's preparing should for reincarnation).

Millstone85
2020-06-16, 12:13 PM
In order to end up on the wall you need to effectively actively reject even lip service worship of the gods knowing that this means that you would end up on the wall - under those conditions I don't think you can complain that you ended up on the wall.So, if a character recognized this as extortion but decided to yield to it, they would not be judged faithless? I highly doubt that's how it works.

As for the false, I don't remember. The wiki (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/The_False) says they are "the souls of those individuals who intentionally betrayed their deities after making a commitment to them during their lifetimes", which doesn't sound like it would encompass mere faint worship.

Tvtyrant
2020-06-16, 12:35 PM
So, if a character recognized this as extortion but decided to yield to it, they would not be judged faithless? I highly doubt that's how it works.

As for the false, I don't remember. The wiki (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/The_False) says they are "the souls of those individuals who intentionally betrayed their deities after making a commitment to them during their lifetimes", which doesn't sound like it would encompass mere faint worship.

Sounds like it effects Paladins, Clerics, Warlocks, etc. "Hey you unrepentantly betrayed the entire structure of your faith after we gave you supernatural powers."

Millstone85
2020-06-16, 12:51 PM
For what it is worth, here is 5e's very brief description of the process.

Most humans believe the souls of the recently deceased are spirited away to the Fugue Plane, where they wander the great City of Judgment, often unaware they are dead. The servants of the gods come to collect such souls and, if they are worthy, they are taken to their awaited afterlife in the deity's domain. Occasionally, the faithful are sent back to be reborn into the world to finish work that was left undone.

Souls that are unclaimed by the servants of the gods are judged by Kelemvor, who decides the fate of each one. Some are charged with serving as guides for other lost souls, while others are transformed into squirming larvae and cast into the dust. The truly false and faithless are mortared into the Wall of the Faithless, the great barrier that bounds the City of the Dead, where their souls slowly dissolve and begin to become part of the stuff of the Wall itself.
I see now that it doesn't say on what criteria the servants of the gods lay claim to a soul. So, in this edition, could one declare "This woman has proven herself a true warrior before Tempus" and leave with a soul that only ever believed in her martial training? That would open possibilities, including story-wise.

dancrilis
2020-06-16, 12:58 PM
So, if a character recognized this as extortion but decided to yield to it, they would not be judged faithless? I highly doubt that's how it works.

As for the false, I don't remember. The wiki (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/The_False) says they are "the souls of those individuals who intentionally betrayed their deities after making a commitment to them during their lifetimes", which doesn't sound like it would encompass mere faint worship.

Just looked up the book again:

A character who frequently changes patron deities is likely to gain a reputation of being weak in her faith, and risks being branded as one of the False in the afterlife.
page 39 Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting 3rd edition.


The Faithless firmly denied any faith or only gave lip service to the gods for most of their lives without truly believing. The False intentionally betrayed a faith they believed in and to which they had made a personal commitment.
page 259 Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting 3rd edition.

So basically the rules seem to be pick a patron deity, give more then lip service and you are fine - change of you want but you might want to be careful about it.

That doesn't seem a terribly high bar - but higher then I initially made it seem, in a setting with a lot of gods you should likely be able to find one who doesn't offend you and whose dogma isn't to difficult to follow.





The truly false and faithless are mortared into the Wall of the Faithless

So it seems the gods may have streamlined the process in over the editions.

Clistenes
2020-06-16, 02:02 PM
Dolurrh is a transition plane.

Nobody stays there.

It's where you wait around before you get sent to whatever comes next, the specifics of which is unknown.

WotC choose to keep it a mystery, so DMs can decide on the ultimate destiny of souls as they wish.

The worshipers of the Sovereign Host and the Dark Six think that the "true" soul goes to the gods, leaving behind a shell. The followers of the Undying Court and of the Blood of Vol think that souls just whither and die in Dolurrh.


So, if a character recognized this as extortion but decided to yield to it, they would not be judged faithless? I highly doubt that's how it works.

As for the false, I don't remember. The wiki (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/The_False) says they are "the souls of those individuals who intentionally betrayed their deities after making a commitment to them during their lifetimes", which doesn't sound like it would encompass mere faint worship.


It depends. If a person with a great sense of justice despises the gods because of the Wall of the Faithless's extortion, and gives lip service to Tyr only out of fear... Tyr may still accept them due to their sense of justice, even if they don't like Tyr that much... Same goes for a great warrior who gave lip service to Tempus, or to a skilled farmer who loved his land dearly and gave lip service to Chaountea.

For these deities and others, devotion to their portfolios themselves is probably more than enough, and it overrides their shallow devotion to the deities themselves...

Mask may actually enjoy the selfishness and hypocrisy of a character who worships him out of fear, so long as said person is a deceitful and skilled thief.

Other deities like Umberlee and Auril are known to be petty and spiteful and they may demand devotion to themselves rather than just to their portfolio, or else damn them as False...

LibraryOgre
2020-06-16, 03:25 PM
Y'all complaining about the Wall of the Faithless like the Gray (https://darksun.fandom.com/wiki/Gray,_the) isn't a thing that exists.

Tvtyrant
2020-06-16, 03:28 PM
Y'all complaining about the Wall of the Faithless like the Gray (https://darksun.fandom.com/wiki/Gray,_the) isn't a thing that exists.

Yeah but the genre is different. Dark Sun is literally Mad Max IN D&D!!!, much like how Spelljammer is Stark Trek IN D&D!!!. It is designed to be a horrible inescapable nightmare. Faerun has some bad parts but it i overall a much nicer place to live, and the fans didn't revolt over surf boards like Dark Sun fans did.

Millstone85
2020-06-16, 07:04 PM
For these deities and others, devotion to their portfolios themselves is probably more than enough, and it overrides their shallow devotion to the deities themselves...Well, that would change things, perhaps even to the point where these deities are effectively not taking part in the Wall.

Also, the 5e SCAG explains that "The average person worships different gods in different contexts". It usually involves the patron deity of their trade, deities associated with particular life events, and even cruel deities whose wrath must be appeased.

This makes me wonder if a character could go through life on Faerûn in a somewhat agnostic way, unsure of which deity will ultimately find them worthy of their realm.

And, headcanon of mine, deities feed on mortals' faith in their persona and/or their portfolio. So Torm does get more powerful whenever he gets people to pursue noble ideals. It works better if they say "By Torm!" while doing so, but it still works if they don't.

PairO'Dice Lost
2020-06-16, 07:32 PM
Y'all complaining about the Wall of the Faithless like the Gray (https://darksun.fandom.com/wiki/Gray,_the) isn't a thing that exists.

The difference between the two, aside from setting genre as Tvtyrant noted, is that the Gray is a natural Athasian phenomenon of unknown origin (presumably a side effect of the overuse of defiling, but no one knows for sure) and there are no gods trying to enforce it as a thing (since, y'know, there are no gods in Darkspace). If the Wall of the Faithless were a natural phenomenon that the gods not only didn't want to be in place but had tried and failed to destroy and the Gray were an intentional creation of, say, the Nature Masters of the Blue Age, you'd see a lot less in-game angst and out-of-game rage about the Wall and a lot more about the Gray.

Clistenes
2020-06-16, 07:44 PM
Well, that would change things, perhaps even to the point where these deities are effectively not taking part in the Wall.

Also, the 5e SCAG explains that "The average person worships different gods in different contexts". It usually involves the patron deity of their trade, deities associated with particular life events, and even cruel deities whose wrath must be appeased.

This makes me wonder if a character could go through life on Faerûn in a somewhat agnostic way, unsure of which deity will ultimately find them worthy of their realm.

And, headcanon of mine, deities feed on mortals' faith in their persona and/or their portfolio. So Torm does get more powerful whenever he gets people to pursue noble ideals. It works better if they say "By Torm!" while doing so, but it still works if they don't.

I can't remember which sourcebook it was, but it was said that even if a character worships several deities without favoring one above the others, there is always one of them that fits them better due to their principles and lifestyle, and that deity is considered their patron even if the mortal didn't explicitly chose them as such.

A deity can accept a soul based on both/either their devotion and/or their behavior. In one of the novels a thief who worships Torm is refused by Torm because he didn't live his life as Torm commands, and is also refused by Mask because he didn't worship him, so he was considered a False... however, the interesting part is, Kelemvor offered his soul to both, so both could have taken it.
Eventually the character proves his worth as a thief and Masks accepts him... So he was finally taken away not by the deity he worshipped, but by that whose portfolio fitted him best...

Anonymouswizard
2020-06-17, 07:56 AM
Y'all complaining about the Wall of the Faithless like the Gray (https://darksun.fandom.com/wiki/Gray,_the) isn't a thing that exists.

I mean, I brought up Dolurrh because Eberron is 'current' while Dark Sun isn't.

But the same point stands for both, the Gray is natural and impartial, as far as we know it's always been there. While it might have come about at some point it doesn't seem to be an intentional creation.

You also get actively put into the wall, you don't just naturally end up there when you die. The Gray and Dolurrh are just as bad fates, but they're not a divinely inflicted punishment for making a reasonable choice.

Millstone85
2020-06-17, 08:49 AM
A deity can accept a soul based on both/either their devotion and/or their behavior.Alright, then. As far as I am concerned, that fixes the FR afterlife. :smallsmile:

Clistenes
2020-06-17, 12:30 PM
Alright, then. As far as I am concerned, that fixes the FR afterlife. :smallsmile:

Well, it still sucks in the sense that the deity you worship can dump you if they don't like your lifestyle and choices, and the deity you deserve can dump you if you didn't worship them, and then you are labeled a False and have to stay in the Fugue Plane as Kelemvor's servant (or being tortured by Baatezu, depending on how much of a traitor to your deity and an hypocrite to your faith you were in life...).

But your average dude can worship a handful of deities, and if at least one accepts your lifestyle, they will take you away. A peasant can be reasonably safe by worshiping Chauntea, an artisan can be reasonably safe by worshiping Gond, a merchant can be reasonably safe by worshiping Waukeen, a musician can be reasonably safe by worshipping Milil, a traveler can be reasonably safe by worshiping Shaundakul and a spoiled aristocrat party animal can be reasonably safe by worshiping Lliira.

The problem comes when say a coward worships only Tempus and Torm, or a thief worships only Tyr and Helm... these would be screwed, because these deities wouldn't accept them...

The Faithless are those who rejected all deities altogether, kept worshipping a deceased deity, or refused to worship any other deity after being rejected by their patron.

I guess it can be dangerous if you become too lazy and passive and do nothing that aligns with any deity... I mean, most of us probably do little that upholds the portfolio of any deity, like do we travel constantly? work in a farm? play music? write our own poems or stories? fight in wars? punish evildoers...? Some of us may do some of that stuff, but others just work at an office and spend our free time watching TV or in forums like this one...

Me? I would probably worship Eldath, the goddess of Peace, and Guan-yin, the Shou-lung goddess of Mercy. I don't think they would refuse me, if I don't seriously hurt anybody during my lifetime, Deneir, too, since I like stories and reading (I guess I would try to write my own, if I lived in Faerun). Isis too, if I were a spellcaster.

Cliff Sedge
2020-06-18, 10:27 PM
Just going to float this out there in case anyone needs to read it:

(From the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting for 3rd ed. D&D. Greenwood et al. 2001.)


The information in this work provides you, the Dungeon Master, with a sketch, a snapshot, of a complete, living, breathing fantasy world in which to set your D&D game. It's . . . a set of suggestions for how you could play a continuing game, and a source of ideas for how to develop a world of your own. (page 6)


..., the Forgotten Realms campaign setting has generated literally hundreds of Forgotten Realms novels, adventures, and supplements. The only portions of this body of material that matter are the parts you choose to incorporate into your campaign. . .

Rule 1: It's Your World
... The real details are left up to you. Make additions as you see fit... if your players read this book and try to dictate details of the world for you, stand firm. It's your world. Don't be a slave to the map or this book, and don't be afraid to alter anything you want to. (page 297)


So, FR purists who try to argue with the DM about how the Realms are "supposed to be" - Ed Greenwood disagrees with you.