The Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Lore Thread

[CT_Phipps]

We all have a bunch of opinions on 5th Edition and its various changes and releases. However, I thought it might be interesting to do a post collecting the thoughts on the lore changes to all of the various settings that have trickled down (and I do mean trickled). This is a thread where you can discuss the changes to Faerun, the Great Wheel, Ravenloft, and any other release material that Hasbro or "official sources" have provided.

Not gameplay but setting, characters, and background stuff.

Go nuts.

 

[CT_Phipps]

Some random thoughts:

1. Bahamut is Paladin and Takhasis is Tiamat: I feel like this is such a blindingly obvious change and bit of fanon accepted by the public at large that it mystifies me that it wasn't made canon decades ago. Yet, it took until Fizband's Treasury of Dragons to finally make it canon.

2. Forgotten Realms walkback: I think they could have made it less obvious but every Forgotten Realms fan that I've talked to is glad that they more or less removed every single change they did during 4th Edition except the time skip.

3. The Zhentarim are now a Player Character Faction: This is a weird proclamation but I think this is my favorite change they've done for 5th Edition. The Factions system is controversial but I think it encourages players to be more invested in the lore. The Zhentarim getting their own faction also reverses 40+ years of getting pissed on like Saturday Morning Cartoon villains. They've outlasted the Shadovar, the Church of Cyric, and virtually every other Johnny Come Lately.

4. Critical Role has their own official setting: I think this is a well-deserved accolade for a group that has done massive amounts of promotion for Fifth Edition. They're really the MVPs of this period of tabletop gaming.

5. Van Ritchen's Guide to Ravenloft: I feel like it made the most missteps because a lot of the changes for greater diversity missed that Ravenloft is not like other settings. It is villain centric and changing up its main NPCs actually could be used as propaganda. I mean, Vlad Drakov is a Medieval Nazi and making him a woman kind of sends a mixed message. Making your most prominent queer relationship be about a homicidal psychopathic doctor and her test subject doesn't help either. Why not make a Weathermay sister queer? The lack of continuity from previous editions also hurts it in my opinion.

6. I love the "Module as Settingbook" idea: I really think slowly releasing source material via modules that anyone can use is a good financial decision. Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is an excellent sourcebook on Waterdeep and yet also comes with a bunch of material that is useful for the rest of the game. Ditto Baldur's Gate and the Descent into Avernus storyline.

7. I dislike the inconsequentialness of some of the modules: Curse of Strahd ends with you killing Strahd and then he'll be back in a month. Maybe you've saved Tatiana but have you really? The same with the Rhime of the Frost Maiden. After you go through all of the efforts to slay Auril, she just goes back to being a god. I would have at least given the illusion that killing Strahd is permanent--ditto Auril. If you slay Tiamat is she dead forever? I think not.

It's like, "Well the Ring is chucked into Mount Doom! Too bad Sauron will return in 30 years."

8. The Great Wheel is the best Wheel: I refuse to believe otherwise. Vecna could not break us! I will say I'm okay with the Feywild and Shadowfell being added to it, though. Both are pretty cool but putting Ravenloft in the Shadowfell was very confusing for me.

 

[Tommy Brownell]

7. I dislike the inconsequentialness of some of the modules: Curse of Strahd ends with you killing Strahd and then he'll be back in a month. Maybe you've saved Tatiana but have you really? The same with the Rhime of the Frost Maiden. After you go through all of the efforts to slay Auril, she just goes back to being a god. I would have at least given the illusion that killing Strahd is permanent--ditto Auril. If you slay Tiamat is she dead forever? I think not.

I don't know what you're talking about. When I ran Curse of Strahd, it ended with the allied NPC and a PC sorcerer dead and buried, a PC wizard fed to wolves, and a PC Ranger and PC fighter turned into evil vampire thralls. Seemed pretty consequential to me.

 

[Akrasia]

World of Greyhawk: Not much has been written for the setting during the 5e era, but that might be a good thing. The treatment in Ghosts of Saltmarsh (southern Keoland) is quite solid. I also like the adventure conversions in Tales of the Yawning Portal. I'm looking forward to running White Plume Mountain eventually for my group.

Goodman Games' Original Adventures Reincarnated. I have all six of these and think that they're pretty great. I'm using the (hilariously massive) Temple of Elemental Evil right now for campaign. So far it's been good fun!

 

[Akrasia]

Magic items. I like that 5e has made them somewhat rarer and less necessary for "balance." (The system overall still has too much magic, though.)

 

[Chris Brady]

Some random thoughts:
2. Forgotten Realms walkback: I think they could have made it less obvious but every Forgotten Realms fan that I've talked to is glad that they more or less removed every single change they did during 4th Edition except the time skip.

This one bothers me. Turning it back into the theme park that Ed Greenwood's self-insertion character made the Realms into, because Elminster is so powerful was one of the things I disliked about the 3e version of the setting. The CR45 character could have spent a literal weekend cleaning up all the remaining villains and still had time for a Sunday Night booty call with the Goddess of Magic, who I believe had been one of his apprentices before her ascension.

I get that both he and R.A. Salvatore didn't like that their characters got sidelined to make the setting playable for the players, but rolling it back was the worst idea for me.

And then there's changes to some of the 2e characters. How is Mirt the Moneylender still alive? It's been 150 years after the 2e era. I understand about Durnan, because they made him immortal, but Mirt the Merciless was just a human man, a rogue.

And I do have my complaints with Durnan, the art has him into some scrawny, balding forty something, despite the Undermountain box set describing him as the 'Thinking Man's Barbarian' and was already 45... With a 30 year old wife and nearly 16 year old daughter... Yeah, don't think about it too hard. Medieval setting and all that, I guess.

Worse the Tales From The Yawning Portal turns him into a misanthropic monster who murders his clientele if they can't pay the fee to escape Undermountain, to the point of having a woman sit at his bar and spend her gold to spite him. This is not how you run a business, in fact, it's the best way to get it shut down. If he really is a coward who can't stand the idea of outliving friends and family, let him retire and give his bar to his remaining family to run for him.

Sorry, major pet peeves of mine.

 

[CT_Phipps]

This one bothers me. Turning it back into the theme park that Ed Greenwood's self-insertion character made the Realms into, because Elminster is so powerful was one of the things I disliked about the 3e version of the setting. The CR45 character could have spent a literal weekend cleaning up all the remaining villains and still had time for a Sunday Night booty call with the Goddess of Magic, who I believe had been one of his apprentices before her ascension.

I get that both he and R.A. Salvatore didn't like that their characters got sidelined to make the setting playable for the players, but rolling it back was the worst idea for me.

And then there's changes to some of the 2e characters. How is Mirt the Moneylender still alive? It's been 150 years after the 2e era. I understand about Durnan, because they made him immortal, but Mirt the Merciless was just a human man, a rogue.

And I do have my complaints with Durnan, the art has him into some scrawny, balding forty something, despite the Undermountain box set describing him as the 'Thinking Man's Barbarian' and was already 45... With a 30 year old wife and nearly 16 year old daughter... Yeah, don't think about it too hard. Medieval setting and all that, I guess.

Worse the Tales From The Yawning Portal turns him into a misanthropic monster who murders his clientele if they can't pay the fee to escape Undermountain, to the point of having a woman sit at his bar and spend her gold to spite him. This is not how you run a business, in fact, it's the best way to get it shut down. If he really is a coward who can't stand the idea of outliving friends and family, let him retire and give his bar to his remaining family to run for him.

Sorry, major pet peeves of mine.

I think 4th Edition Realms is about as popular as 5th Edition Dragonlance (and that's before the War of Souls books tried to fix things) but I think 3rd Edition Forgotten Realms actually had quite a few problems itslef as it attempted to fix problems that weren't actually problems to begin with. One of those actually being the "OMG, ELMINSTER CAN OWNZ ALL OF THE BAD GUYS."

Basically, Ed Greenwood has stated that the sole reason for the addition of the Shadovar and City of Shade with it's 30th level Shari-worshiping psychopathic EVIL Wizards being added to the Realms was that they wanted them to "balance" the Chosen of Mystra. Which is why Shade was Gary Stu-ing its way through the entirety of Third Edition, taking over Anarouch and Sembia and now Shar has her own EVIL Weave to call upon because the Weave wasn't apparently usable by the ENORMOUS EVIL MAGOCRACY and Zhentarim already.

The game never seemed to grock the idea that Elminster wasn't actively adventuring and long since had retired to his place in the middle of nowhere nor the idea that Ed already had envisioned the Realms being a place where the Chosen were outmatched, Epic Level characters or not, by the massive numbers of evil doers already present that they didn't need to add their own enormous collection of them.

It was one of my happiest moments as a gamer to read this in THE SWORD COAST ADVENTURER'S GUIDE: "No longer engaged in Cormyr, Netheril attacked Myth Drannor by floating the City of Shade over it. In a struggle for control of Myth Drannor's my thal and the Weave itself, the flying capital of Netheril was brought crashing down on Myth Drannor, resulting in the cataclysmic destruction of both."

As for Mirt the Moneylender and Durnan, I've always been a fan of both characters and understand why they have been brought back (because the 100 year time skip was itself a mistake) and there's plenty of ways to do it but I feel what you're saying. I also feel like the "30 year old wife and sixteen year old daughter" was someone making a mistake rather than an intentional note. Then again, there was Asper and Mirt and...no, just no.

I sadly haven't picked up Tales from the Yawning Portal yet either, though even from the beginning, you needed a gold piece to be raised back up.

 

[Tommy Brownell]

The latter Drizzt novels feel so weird to me after skipping several in between (including the 4e stuff) because all the lesser lifespan people not only magically got reborn in new bodies, but new classes and abilities that made it *really* hard for me to mentally connect the two versions of the characters.

 

[CT_Phipps]

The latter Drizzt novels feel so weird to me after skipping several in between (including the 4e stuff) because all the lesser lifespan people not only magically got reborn in new bodies, but new classes and abilities that made it *really* hard for me to mentally connect the two versions of the characters.

It is basically just RA Salvatore writing around editorial mandate.

 

[Chris Brady]

I sadly haven't picked up Tales from the Yawning Portal yet either, though even from the beginning, you needed a gold piece to be raised back up.

Yes, but if you couldn't pay, Durnan wouldn't let you get butchered or die of thirst/starvation, he'd haul your team out and make you do a favour or the like for him. Being a hard ass, especially with adventurers means he'll lose all the good will his clientele would have, and they would rise up against him. Some of which might be pretty violent, and as good as he is with that great sword, I don't think he could handle an entire six man hit team on his own.

 

[CT_Phipps]

Yes, but if you couldn't pay, Durnan wouldn't let you get butchered or die of thirst/starvation, he'd haul your team out and make you do a favour or the like for him. Being a hard ass, especially with adventurers means he'll lose all the good will his clientele would have, and they would rise up against him. Some of which might be pretty violent, and as good as he is with that great sword, I don't think he could handle an entire six man hit team on his own.

I dunno, with the way I play Waterdeep, a lot of the customers are here to hear the screams of dying adventurers.

 

[Chris Brady]

I dunno, with the way I play Waterdeep, a lot of the customers are here to hear the screams of dying adventurers.

Your game, your rules, sure... But yeek!

 

[E-Rocker]

7. I dislike the inconsequentialness of some of the modules: Curse of Strahd ends with you killing Strahd and then he'll be back in a month. Maybe you've saved Tatiana but have you really?

I hate this so much.

I was in a group that played through 90% of Curse of Strahd. Once it became apparent that we were never going to finish, I checked the book out from the library to read the end. I'm not normally one for nerd-rage (or any kind of rage), but I nearly threw the book across the fucking room when I read that Strahd just comes back a month or so after you kill him.

It left me feeling like, "Why did we bother playing this adventure at all? We didn't actually change anything."

 

[Tommy Brownell]

I hate this so much.

I was in a group that played through 90% of Curse of Strahd. Once it became apparent that we were never going to finish, I checked the book out from the library to read the end. I'm not normally one for nerd-rage (or any kind of rage), but I nearly threw the book across the fucking room when I read that Strahd just comes back a month or so after you kill him.

It left me feeling like, "Why did we bother playing this adventure at all? We didn't actually change anything."

Spoiler: that’s pretty much the default state for most of the Ravenloft Darklords in 2e and 3e.

The Dark Powers don’t want them dead, they want them to suffer.

 

[Akrasia]

Worse the Tales From The Yawning Portal turns him into a misanthropic monster who murders his clientele if they can't pay the fee to escape Undermountain,

I really like TFtYP because I like shorter, self-standing adventures that can be inserted into different campaigns (as opposed to the campaign-length adventures that WotC generally focuses on). I also like many of the adventures themselves, especially the 1e ones, and the Greyhawk references.

But the introductory "framing" device involving Durnan and the inn is kind of useless IMO. I don't know why they bothered including it. (Of course a different title would've been needed had they left it out -- maybe Tales for the Grognards...)

 

[CT_Phipps]

Your game, your rules, sure... But yeek!

Just making the "Waterdeep is a wretched hive of scum and villainy" sort of deal. Because, again, it's sending people into an enormous death trap even at its lightest. You don't send people down into Undermountain and make that a tourist trap for an audience that expects it to end like your typical sports trivia night at the local bar and grill. You're placing bets on whether these poor bastards live and die.

Mind you, maybe I am the wrong sort of gamer for this because my PCs have their own bar connected to the Yawning Portal but is based in Skullport.

Spoiler: that’s pretty much the default state for most of the Ravenloft Darklords in 2e and 3e.

The Dark Powers don’t want them dead, they want them to suffer.

Which is a fine idea for stories but a shitty idea for a campaign setting.

Famously, White Wolf got flack for the fact that they stated the Magneto equivalent of Trinity (Divis Mal) with stats so high it was literally impossible for any players to ever beat him even if they played for years. When asked, the developer reacted like, "Yeah, why would we want the players to beat him? He's the central character."

It's why I always liked Exalted as the premise is, "You are the Big DogsTM as Solars and you will wreck shit so we're never advancing the timeline because any ST worth his salt will change everything."

I think part of this is due to the fact that Ravenloft started as a "weekend in Hell" sort of adventure where you would go to Ravenloft in order to beat up the local Dark Lord and then get released back on your home plane after it was done. There's no need to try to worry about "fixing" Ravenloft because the people were created by the Dark Lords as part of the torments of them and aren't really "real." You don't worry about fixing Ravenloft anymore than you worry about fixing Avernus.

However, when Ravenloft was expanded to becoming a full-fledged campaign setting, you start getting the issue of people trying to ice skate uphill. What are you fighting for if it's a setting where you can kill the local werewolf pack but you can do absolutely nothing about Strahd, Azalin, or otherwise because they're invincible. You can't even do what Call of Cthulhu allows in that Cthulhu can be put back to sleep for another century or so.

It's also not true to the Gothic Horror roots of the genre as we know Dracula gets put down by Van Helsing and company, Frankenstein commits suicide with his Creature, and Carmilla gets her head chopped off.

I think it bothers me so much because there's no reason that killing Strahd really should be reversed by the Dark Powers in a home campaign. If the PCs destroy him then Barovia is a place that is freed from the Lord of the Vampyres in this storyline but it's not like that is going to affect the rest of the world's Curse of Strahd games.

Maybe Barovia will disappear into the mist and never be seen again or maybe the PCs now have a Transylvania-lite realm in the mountains of Cormyr to look after or maybe they now have to defend it against the armies of Darkon (which will do shit). Still, Strahd is gone and the world will carry on without him in that campaign.

Just my .02.

 

[Tommy Brownell]

Just making the "Waterdeep is a wretched hive of scum and villainy" sort of deal. Because, again, it's sending people into an enormous death trap even at its lightest. You don't send people down into Undermountain and make that a tourist trap for an audience that expects it to end like your typical sports trivia night at the local bar and grill. You're placing bets on whether these poor bastards live and die.

Mind you, maybe I am the wrong sort of gamer for this because my PCs have their own bar connected to the Yawning Portal but is based in Skullport.





Which is a fine idea for stories but a shitty idea for a campaign setting.

Famously, White Wolf got flack for the fact that they stated the Magneto equivalent of Trinity (Divis Mal) with stats so high it was literally impossible for any players to ever beat him even if they played for years. When asked, the developer reacted like, "Yeah, why would we want the players to beat him? He's the central character."

It's why I always liked Exalted as the premise is, "You are the Big DogsTM as Solars and you will wreck shit so we're never advancing the timeline because any ST worth his salt will change everything."

I think part of this is due to the fact that Ravenloft started as a "weekend in Hell" sort of adventure where you would go to Ravenloft in order to beat up the local Dark Lord and then get released back on your home plane after it was done. There's no need to try to worry about "fixing" Ravenloft because the people were created by the Dark Lords as part of the torments of them and aren't really "real." You don't worry about fixing Ravenloft anymore than you worry about fixing Avernus.

However, when Ravenloft was expanded to becoming a full-fledged campaign setting, you start getting the issue of people trying to ice skate uphill. What are you fighting for if it's a setting where you can kill the local werewolf pack but you can do absolutely nothing about Strahd, Azalin, or otherwise because they're invincible. You can't even do what Call of Cthulhu allows in that Cthulhu can be put back to sleep for another century or so.

It's also not true to the Gothic Horror roots of the genre as we know Dracula gets put down by Van Helsing and company, Frankenstein commits suicide with his Creature, and Carmilla gets her head chopped off.

I think it bothers me so much because there's no reason that killing Strahd really should be reversed by the Dark Powers in a home campaign. If the PCs destroy him then Barovia is a place that is freed from the Lord of the Vampyres in this storyline but it's not like that is going to affect the rest of the world's Curse of Strahd games.

Maybe Barovia will disappear into the mist and never be seen again or maybe the PCs now have a Transylvania-lite realm in the mountains of Cormyr to look after or maybe they now have to defend it against the armies of Darkon (which will do shit). Still, Strahd is gone and the world will carry on without him in that campaign.

Just my .02.

I wasn’t intending to argue the pros and cons of it either way…just pointing out that it’s arguable the most “Ravenloft” part of the module, and a carryover from the 90s where metaplot was king. (See also: Deadlands, with its four unkillable servitors, at least one of whom actively hunts PCs after a certain point.)

For what it’s worth, I tend to agree that settings are better served as a starting point, and are changed and altered by the campaign at the table, not the next book release.

 

[Chris Brady]

Just making the "Waterdeep is a wretched hive of scum and villainy" sort of deal. Because, again, it's sending people into an enormous death trap even at its lightest. You don't send people down into Undermountain and make that a tourist trap for an audience that expects it to end like your typical sports trivia night at the local bar and grill. You're placing bets on whether these poor bastards live and die.

Mind you, maybe I am the wrong sort of gamer for this because my PCs have their own bar connected to the Yawning Portal but is based in Skullport.

As always, your game your rules, but Waterdeep isn't really written as a hive of villainy, for that you'd want some of the smaller, rougher towns or Luskan on the Sword Coast, that's more of a Viking Pirates town, but I had plenty of fun using that as the 'Hive of Scum and Villainy' as per Star Wars.

I really like TFtYP because I like shorter, self-standing adventures that can be inserted into different campaigns (as opposed to the campaign-length adventures that WotC generally focuses on). I also like many of the adventures themselves, especially the 1e ones, and the Greyhawk references.

But the introductory "framing" device involving Durnan and the inn is kind of useless IMO. I don't know why they bothered including it. (Of course a different title would've been needed had they left it out -- maybe Tales for the Grognards...)

I agree, even the title makes no sense. Most of those dungeons are located in GREYHAWK, if I remember correctly. And other than the starting info dump, I have no real complaints about the book, the dungeons were well done. But because this is a lore thread, I was focusing on the tiny (It's just one chapter) section that drives me up a wall.

To be fair, I did spend an entire summer using nothing but Durnan, the Yawning Portal and Undermountain (My poor box set...), so I am not an unbiased source.

 

[CT_Phipps]

As always, your game your rules, but Waterdeep isn't really written as a hive of villainy, for that you'd want some of the smaller, rougher towns or Luskan on the Sword Coast, that's more of a Viking Pirates town, but I had plenty of fun using that as the 'Hive of Scum and Villainy' as per Star Wars.

Well that's because Waterdeep is OVER Skullport.

 

[Chris Brady]

Well that's because Waterdeep is OVER Skullport.

So in MY world that makes Skullport the hive of scum and villainy, where the criminals do their business. One thing I've learned living in bad neighbourhoods and biker havens is that the true profession/career criminals NEVER start problems in their own backyards, keeps the Law from bothering them.

I run Waterdeep as more of a cosmopolitan trade port, where people of all cultures and types mix. If you're going to cause trouble, you go to Undermountain level 3.

 

[Armchair Gamer]

I have pretty much no engagement with 5E, but I do know something about one point brought up here:

Some random thoughts:

1. Bahamut is Paladin and Takhasis is Tiamat: I feel like this is such a blindingly obvious change and bit of fanon accepted by the public at large that it mystifies me that
it wasn't made canon decades ago. Yet, it took until Fizband's Treasury of Dragons to finally make it canon.

It was actually made 'canon' in the 1st Edition Manual of the Planes back in 1987 ... and denied by Weis & Hickman almost immediately thereafter. The connection has gone back and forth due to various TSR/WotC policies coupled with the W&H dislike of having Dragonlance connect in any way to the D&D multiverse.

 

[The Butcher]

This one bothers me. Turning it back into the theme park that Ed Greenwood's self-insertion character made the Realms into, because Elminster is so powerful was one of the things I disliked about the 3e version of the setting. The CR45 character could have spent a literal weekend cleaning up all the remaining villains and still had time for a Sunday Night booty call with the Goddess of Magic, who I believe had been one of his apprentices before her ascension.

I get that both he and R.A. Salvatore didn't like that their characters got sidelined to make the setting playable for the players, but rolling it back was the worst idea for me.

And then there's changes to some of the 2e characters. How is Mirt the Moneylender still alive? It's been 150 years after the 2e era. I understand about Durnan, because they made him immortal, but Mirt the Merciless was just a human man, a rogue.

And I do have my complaints with Durnan, the art has him into some scrawny, balding forty something, despite the Undermountain box set describing him as the 'Thinking Man's Barbarian' and was already 45... With a 30 year old wife and nearly 16 year old daughter... Yeah, don't think about it too hard. Medieval setting and all that, I guess.

Worse the Tales From The Yawning Portal turns him into a misanthropic monster who murders his clientele if they can't pay the fee to escape Undermountain, to the point of having a woman sit at his bar and spend her gold to spite him. This is not how you run a business, in fact, it's the best way to get it shut down. If he really is a coward who can't stand the idea of outliving friends and family, let him retire and give his bar to his remaining family to run for him.

Sorry, major pet peeves of mine.

All of the above bothers me too. Ed Greenwood is an ascended neckbeard. Reminds me of GRRM in more than one aspect and none of them good.

Elminster began life as a literal GMPC and Deus ex machina, on his own admission. Mirt is a blatant author insert. (Not sure about Durnan.)

Best way to handle the Realms IMHO is to flat-out debuff the NPCs — why does Elminster have to be 30th level? Isn’t 20th badass enough? 15th even? Apply to several other NPCs as needed.

I still dig the Realms, though. The Caldwell cover illos, the SSI videogames, the Jaquays gazetteers… the Dales, the Sword Coast and so many places I have yet to play with — Sembia, Selgaunt, Westgate, Hellgate Keep… if nostalgia is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

 

[CT_Phipps]

I have pretty much no engagement with 5E, but I do know something about one point brought up here:

It was actually made 'canon' in the 1st Edition Manual of the Planes back in 1987 ... and denied by Weis & Hickman almost immediately thereafter. The connection has gone back and forth due to various TSR/WotC policies coupled with the W&H dislike of having Dragonlance connect in any way to the D&D multiverse.

I love both of them but maybe they shouldn't have used a platinum dragon and five headed dragon.

 

[Chris Brady]

All of the above bothers me too. Ed Greenwood is an ascended neckbeard. Reminds me of GRRM in more than one aspect and none of them good.

Elminster began life as a literal GMPC and Deus ex machina, on his own admission. Mirt is a blatant author insert. (Not sure about Durnan.)

Best way to handle the Realms IMHO is to flat-out debuff the NPCs — why does Elminster have to be 30th level? Isn’t 20th badass enough? 15th even? Apply to several other NPCs as needed.

I still dig the Realms, though. The Caldwell cover illos, the SSI videogames, the Jaquays gazetteers… the Dales, the Sword Coast and so many places I have yet to play with — Sembia, Selgaunt, Westgate, Hellgate Keep… if nostalgia is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

I'm not an actual fan of the realms. It's serviceable, but it doesn't excite me. However, what it does have is a plethora of information and usable content. It's an easy setting to get into because information is EVERYWHERE.

And yeah, I keep the NPC's out of the picture unless I have to use them (the players want to 'meet' them or something). Also, I keep it in the 2e era, which makes it easier for me.

 

[CT_Phipps]

I admit my Realms has been dramatically lowered in power level from 3rd Edition onward. I stuck with the "20th level is the limit" rule well before it was cool. It's difficult but yes, you can reach the level of Elminster, Manshoon, and Ssass Tam.

But I don't think Ed Greenwood deserves any insults for Elminster's role in the setting. Ed said that Elminster existed as a quest giver of the World of Warcraft sense.

He can show up anywhere and is unkillable (by PCs) but never was supposed to be involved in adventures and retired from active adventuring as well as insane.

 

[Tommy Brownell]

Uber powerful NPCs never bothered me in The Realms. I mean, I tended to run my supers games in the Marvel Universe. Uber powerful characters off dealing with their own shit is part and parcel of that, so I just adapted that same mentality to The Realms.

 

[CT_Phipps]

Uber powerful NPCs never bothered me in The Realms. I mean, I tended to run my supers games in the Marvel Universe. Uber powerful characters off dealing with their own shit is part and parcel of that, so I just adapted that same mentality to The Realms.

I agree, the two problems of uber NPCs and alignment were things I never had a problem with at my tables due to my superhero fixation. The only thing I wanted to make sure was the PCs felt they could get there too.

Speaking of alignment:

I eventually moved to a more Planescape interpretation of Alignment that was significantly more cynical as I grew older, which is ironically a bit more like the Law versus Chaos simplicity of 1st Edition.

Good: Primarily Selfless and driven by a concern and empathy for others.
Neutral: A mixture of selflessness and selfishness, competing for control.
Evil: Primarily selfish, driven by a lack of concern and empathy for others.

Which meant that there were a huge number of evil shopkeepers, bakers, and bratty teenage daughters out there. Also, some genuinely crazy good people who were absolutely CERTAIN that their particular interpretation of good was the best way to go even if it broke a few eggs to make an omelette.

I then made sure this was always in every campaign gazetteer for my players. It worked extremely well for Dragonlance as the idea the Black Robes weren't all raving madmen but just self-interested jerks worked well to explain how they got along.

As one of my PCs put it, "Even the planes recognize gradiance. Acheron is LAWFUL evil where the machine is callous and brutal. The Nine Hell is lawful EVIL where the cruelty is the point and its just efficient about it."

Similarly, Mount Celestial is Lawful GOOD where everything is a place and a plan but mercy is a high point where Arcadia is a place I'd kill go mad because its good and peace at the price of absolute conformity.

 

[Rogerdee]

Did not like going back to the Wheel after 4e which allowed anyone to be evil, if they chose, but they did not start that way or be irredeemable as a result. Also the simplified cosmology made far more sense.

 

[Giganotosaurus]

I miss Planescape and Spelljammer. Forgotten Realms is very serviceable as a setting, just not very exciting after awhile.
I wish they'd bring back or make a new setting like Dark Sun and Al-Qadim. I also liked the Wheel cosmology for how absolute it could be, you could refuse to conform to the absolute good-evil nature and the gods would punish you with nonexistentance in the afterlife.

 

[EmperorNorton]

Official Spelljammer is one of the few ways I'd return to running a 5e D&D game.

(We do have the running joke of running Curse of Strahd with increasingly ridiculous premises. Same adventure book, just change one thing. Like everyone being part of a spelljammer crew that got stranded in Barovia. Or my personal favorite "an entire campaign devoted to teaching Strahd to deal with rejection and how to date and respect boundaries" as his main tragic backstory seems to be "I liked a woman and she didn't like me back, waaaaaaah".)

 

[Rogerdee]

Official Spelljammer is one of the few ways I'd return to running a 5e D&D game.

(We do have the running joke of running Curse of Strahd with increasingly ridiculous premises. Same adventure book, just change one thing. Like everyone being part of a spelljammer crew that got stranded in Barovia. Or my personal favorite "an entire campaign devoted to teaching Strahd to deal with rejection and how to date and respect boundaries" as his main tragic backstory seems to be "I liked a woman and she didn't like me back, waaaaaaah".)

Possible SJ with numbers filed off called Blackstorm Realms....not released yet, but successful KS by Jetpack.

 

[Rogerdee]

Did not like going back to the Wheel after 4e which allowed anyone to be evil, if they chose, but they did not start that way or be irredeemable as a result. Also the simplified cosmology made far more sense.

Honestly having corruption in DnD would be better and make more sense.

 

[Chris Brady]

Uber powerful NPCs never bothered me in The Realms. I mean, I tended to run my supers games in the Marvel Universe. Uber powerful characters off dealing with their own shit is part and parcel of that, so I just adapted that same mentality to The Realms.

The problem with that, again my perspective as a DM, is that it takes away from the Players.

It turns the setting into something of a theme park, where all the big threats have been handled and the players are pretty much nothing more than janitors cleaning up or tourists exploring a House of Horrors, where all the real danger was taken care of long ago.

And it didn't help that there are a few Ed Greenwood interviews that have more or less alluded or just outright stated that Elminster has pretty much done all the work necessary FOR the Realms.

YMMV, of course.

 

[Tommy Brownell]

The problem with that, again my perspective as a DM, is that it takes away from the Players.

It turns the setting into something of a theme park, where all the big threats have been handled and the players are pretty much nothing more than janitors cleaning up or tourists exploring a House of Horrors, where all the real danger was taken care of long ago.

And it didn't help that there are a few Ed Greenwood interviews that have more or less alluded or just outright stated that Elminster has pretty much done all the work necessary FOR the Realms.

YMMV, of course.

Not at all. When I ran the Tyranny of Dragons campaign, I made some off-hand mention to the fact that no one knew where Elminster was at.

Where was he actually? Who the fuck knows. But he was too busy to stop the Cult of the Dragon. Maybe he was fighting Lloth. Maybe him being disposed was the whole reason they struck when they did. Heck, I even had a high level adventuring party led by own former PC run off and get slaughtered by the Cult, to help persuade the group that a) leveling up first was a good idea and b) so was trying to forge a coalition at the Council of Waterdeep (which they largely succeeded at, meaning they went in with troops and not just four vs the whole cult and their forces).

Like I said, it's like Marvel: If there's enough bad guys being active, there's enough work to go around for the good guys.

My approach, anyway. (IDGAF what Greenwood said in interviews. It's my world once I crack open the books and start planning.)

 

[TJS]

I miss Planescape and Spelljammer. Forgotten Realms is very serviceable as a setting, just not very exciting after awhile.
I wish they'd bring back or make a new setting like Dark Sun and Al-Qadim. I also liked the Wheel cosmology for how absolute it could be, you could refuse to conform to the absolute good-evil nature and the gods would punish you with nonexistentance in the afterlife.

I loved the old Scarred Lands setting that White Wolf put out for 3rd edition.

And then Onyx Path brought back it for 5th edition.

And...I loved the old Scarred Lands setting that White Wolf put out for 3rd edition.

 

[CT_Phipps]

The problem with that, again my perspective as a DM, is that it takes away from the Players.

It turns the setting into something of a theme park, where all the big threats have been handled and the players are pretty much nothing more than janitors cleaning up or tourists exploring a House of Horrors, where all the real danger was taken care of long ago.

And it didn't help that there are a few Ed Greenwood interviews that have more or less alluded or just outright stated that Elminster has pretty much done all the work necessary FOR the Realms.

YMMV, of course.

People kind of pick and choose what they hear from Ed Greenwood and it's kind of annoying because the man has been active with the fandom for forty years.

For example, in Ed Greenwood's comments he's ALSO stated:

1. That Manshoon and Szass Tam are perfectly capable of killing Elminster and the other Chosen of Mystra as well as hyper-competent deadly individuals. Given they're only TWO threats, Elminster and company don't actually ever confront the majority of threats directly because there's a better than 50% chance they'd lose in a head on fight. TSR did not represent his view of the Realms' evildoers very well.

2. That Elminster and the Chosen Ones are mostly insane now and not actually 100% right or wise. One of his Dragon Magazine fiction is all about Elminster being missing for a month because he spent it talking to skeletons in a crypt.

3. Ed said that there were more high level evil doers than do gooders in the Realms by far and the reason they hadn't taken over was not just El and the others playing subtle games but because evil is fighting evil in the Realms.

4. Ed has the perhaps unfortunate belief that gamers will play to the epic levels themselves.

 

[TJS]

Why can't Elminster solve this problem?

"While hitting the bars you hear the rumour that Elminster, the famed sage of Shadowdale, has mysteriously disappeared".

Of course the real issue is perhaps that then you just move down the line "Why can't Blackstaff solve this problem" - but well that's the Forgotten Realms I guess. It's sort of built on the D&D assumption that you don't solve world spanning problems until you're high enough levels to stand in for the existing NPCs who can.

And really regular D&D sort of has this issue anyway. Why can't Bahamut manifest his avatar and deal with invading armies of Tiamat. He's supposed to be good isn't he- so why wouldn't he step in and help when you really need it? You kind of have to either have your own answer for these questions or just ignore them.

I think the biggest issue with Forgotten Realms is that this whole issue became a 'thing'. And once it does it can be hard to look away from it for many people.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I’ve been using the Realms pretty regularly since the 3e days and no one’s ever asked why Elminster hadn’t solved a problem. As far as I care, Elminster doesn’t even exist. He’s never appeared in one of my games nor been mentioned.

I never really got this complaint about the Realms. Do players actually ask about this stuff in your games? Or is it more of a setting consistency matter from the persoective of a GM?

Just say “oh he’s dead” and move on. No?

 

[CT_Phipps]

I’ve been using the Realms pretty regularly since the 3e days and no one’s ever asked why Elminster hadn’t solved a problem. As far as I care, Elminster doesn’t even exist. He’s never appeared in one of my games nor been mentioned.

I never really got this complaint about the Realms. Do players actually ask about this stuff in your games? Or is it more of a setting consistency matter from the persoective of a GM?

Just say “oh he’s dead” and move on. No?

I mean a lot of fans actually WANT to interact with the NPCs of the setting.

Certainly I enjoy Elminster and Khelben and have enjoyed many games in Waterdeep and Shadowdale.

But yes, I agree that the slightest bit of imagination is helpful if you want to do it.

1. Khelben, Elminster, and the Seven Sisters have gone to another world called "O-Earth" or something like that to deal with someone called "Vekna, Vetrka, Verna" according to Lhaeo. No, he doesn't know when they'll be back. Other possible problems may include demonic invasion, Far Realm evils, conference with the Feywild, or trapped in Ravenloft by a vampire who wants to break him out.

2. Do you have the teleportation spells or methods to contact these individuals immediately or do you want to divert yourself from stopping Tiamat's summoning to try to get them involved?

3. I admit I do limit all of the Chosen to 20th level. 20th level is the nice sweet spot that it can be incredibly powerful to 1st levels but it is entirely reasonable that at the end of a single campaign, the player characters are close to that.

 

[TJS]

I'd probably dump Elminster down to 12th to 14th level myself. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that the high end of D&D is probably best chopped off.