/tg/ - Traditional Games

What's there to talk about?

It's still a mishmash of high fantasy, filled with NPCs that serve less as plot devices and more as the author's self-inserts and wish fulfillment that your characters could never compete with, and it's still considered the default and best-selling setting with every new book written in it instead of, say, Athas.

But sure, shoot. What do you want to talk about?

Everything's already been said about Faerûn. You can't throw a rock in that setting without hitting a high-level special snowflake (often a caster) and the rock landing in an area that appears in at least three books.

>>226071

these guys are right

>>226072

>>226081

>>226071

It's because no one made enough screenshots of Dungeons and dragons online or Neverwitner Onlinel filled the wiki up, made mods in games, and fenerally made things more purposeful, like bringing the normies to NWN1 & 2.

Like seriously, there hasn't been a good game for the setting since fucking forever, if it just had some major reddit tumblr enabling mass cancerfest autist fanbase surge beyond the work of incases' halfling luck blessed halfling porn, then maybe somethign would happen, but fucking no.

>>226090

To add to that, why the fuck has it never occurred to anyone to make a game engine that operates like a DIY baldur's gate, like the NWN toolset, but we figured how to do it for B.G tier D&D games making functionality much more expansive?

You know how the artstyle and formatting of the maps in both Age of Empires 1 & 2 and Baldur's Gate II & II and Icewind dale are So very familiar?

We make a WRPG that's engine is designed like Gamebyro, (At least the interface and way content is added via complied files that are activated via a list) but, works like the Age of empires campaign maker system

See where I'm going with this?

Basically, with technology like that, you could rebuild the entirety of Faerun in the custom map maker, arranging terrain using the tools of the program or making custom terrain and mapping the gidpaths for things to walk on.

NPCs, players, creatures, and quests are easy as all hell, because they're 3d Models turned into sprites and scaled to fit the resolution the player is working at and the like.

So basically, you get an incredibly user-freindly game engine that will let you make smash hit WRPGs with minimal resources required.

Sure, it's not cutting age AAA stuff, but it doesn't have to be, as you're effectively making Baldur's gate tier games capable of featuring civilisation building, but things like army control (Plausible mass necromancy to boot).

I mean, imagine every issue of game performance ceasing to exist because you can just make the game on a system where you don't have to worry about balancing, because everything is age of empires stuff.

There would be so much functionality in any game built on that kind of platform, graphics wouldn't mean dick, but it at least wouldn't be too minimal to reach ascendant true-roguelike dwarf fortress tone soup tier graphic levels.

Elevation of land, easy placement, custom map makign usign only imported images you have to path to allow the player to move around in, a sound mixing system for easy NPC voices, a bunch of premade sprites to work with, open scripting, a wide expansive forum for content creators to preside, that lasts and expects no shutdown after the golden age is over and so on.

It's because the setting is overly-large and full of boring shit. Why the fuck would I want to play in Forgotten Realms, or ANY published setting for that matter?

It's standard high fantasy shit that ANY gamemaster can create almost on the fly. Something like Eberron at least has a small amount of interesting flavor to it. Faerun is just a mishmash of shit without anything to give ita particular feel. I'd rather play in Dominaria or something else with the old-school feel of early MTG.

Dark Sun? Pretty much nothing interesting beyond "lol the sun burns you."

Spelljammer? It's D&D in space

Ravenloft? What the fuck is even interesting about ravenloft? The spell mutation tables? The small-town feel? I can create that shit myself.

Blackmoor? Greyhawk? The names are pretty decent. That's really it. If D&D had stuck with Greyhawk as the "official" setting and kept developing it, the same way it was when it was created from actual D&D campaigns, that would be cool. It'd be neat to see the D&D devs passing the same campaign down from generation to generation, each new group influencing the world in a different way and slightly advancing the history.

But will that happen? No. Instead we get every autistic worldbuilder's dream in each new setting, as well as loads of people who submit shitty settings then can't even use them because Wizards put an IP lock on every single fucking submission.

I see no reason why anyone should EVER use a published world, unless you are the 40 year old with two kids who goes on and on about having "real responsiblities" then wonders why everyone else in the group is so much happier than he is.

Other than that, published settings exist as a fountain for shitty novels. Really, Legend of Drizzt is the only decent thing to come out of Forgotten Realms. And of course, as usual, you can count on the ass-pirates at Wizards of the Coast to take that idea and stomp it into the ground by creating a fucking DEITY for good-aligned drow, then forcing Salvatore to write a shitty-ass series to promote their terrible MMO.

>>226094

You are a fucking dolt, full stop. If you can't figure out what makes the Gothic horror setting like Ravenloft great or the brutal setting Dark Sun than there is no help for you.

> 40 year old with two kids who goes on and on about having "real responsiblities"

Oh shit I see now, you're just mad that people want to play in a pre-made setting that they most likely grew up with than your shitty OC setting. If you think that Drizzt was the only good thing to come out of FR than you need to go back to your cave you.

>>226081

That's half the charm about the setting, everyone knows the setting and it is cool when you go to a place that you read about in one of the books. It gives the players a cool thing to do and explore. However don't over do it, it can go to shit if you go from one well known area to the next.

>>226093

Why dont you?

>>226107

>You are a fucking dolt, full stop. If you can't figure out what makes the Gothic horror setting like Ravenloft great or the brutal setting Dark Sun than there is no help for you.

Oh I know what makes them great. But they are still shitty settings. The idea is what makes them good. The 300 page sourcebook that no one wants to read, is why they are shit. Campaign settings are always restrictive bullshit that make you feel like you are violating their IP if you change anything. A good campaign setting would be very loose and vague, and only specific about certain parts.

> Oh shit I see now, you're just mad that people want to play in a pre-made setting that they most likely grew up with than your shitty OC setting. If you think that Drizzt was the only good thing to come out of FR than you need to go back to your cave you.

you what? Your post ended in an incomplete sentence. But I guess I triggered you over your favorite settings so I can understand the autistic incoherent rage.

Name some other good things that came from Faerun.

Also, did you even read my post? I don't think other people should play in my shitty OC setting. That's my entire point. Make your own fucking setting, it will fit the needs of your group better. I didn't "grow up" in any of these settings because i made my own and it was better for our group than any published setting. We had several different worlds with interesting aspects to them. But Faerun is none of that. It's just boring, bland, shitty high fantasy with nothing particularly interesting.

As the other anons mentioned, it's incredibly generic. But personally the realms always felt stagnant, especially in the later editions where they practically enforced the Medieval status quo through the spell plagues. Yeah, I was kind of hoping for the realms to march into the early modern period with colonies, religious schisms and all. But I suppose a 17'th Century setting would'v angered the SJWs again.

It's a horrid medley of stuff that doesn't feel coherent or have any distinct feel. At its very best if you ignore most of the setting you can cut it down to a poorly done generic fantasy setting. More commonly it's just this jarring mess of stuff that feels thrown together, horribly.

>>226123

>Campaign settings are always restrictive bullshit

No there are not, you can change whatever you want in the setting as a DM, hell changing stuff in an established setting can make for interesting gaming. Having a loose setting is not a good campaign at all, all that does is make the DM lazy when it comes to railroading the players. Never mind the fact that loose setting have very little lore to them so the risk becoming bland and uninteresting as most default to "fantasy Europe"

>autistic incoherent rage.

Says the man that just bitched about a player in his group with a life and family and implied that since he didn't have the time to make an OC setting that he is somehow less happy than the rest. Yeah I made a typo, so fucking sue me.

You want me to name things that came out from the setting? Sure, BG1 and BG2 and the Time of Troubles novels off the top of my head. If you want to bury your head in the sand and ignore what the setting has to offer than fine, all the power to you but being an ass and shit slinging about them is another thing.

Say what you want about FR, at lest it is not the Pathfinder setting.

>>226148

Didn't pathfinder have a world where strong independent wymen and brave heroic POC resist a evil cis-white man hetero normative patriarchy? All the while using a Arabian Nights theme with the evil white guys as Europeans?

I agree with some of the points going on in this thread, such as pre-mades usually being restrictive, but I disagree with others because not all settings are made equally.

Ravenloft with its Domains is flexible and creative enough that while centered on Gothic horror it can do that horror in a lot of different ways.

Likewise, Dark Sun can be Mad Max on the high desert, or Lawrence of Arabia, or Byzantium with battles in the arena, or all of the above in one campaign.

Other settings like Spelljammer and Planescape are so wildly divergent that you can have a really interesting time exploring them.

Only Al-Quadim comes up short in terms of a pre-made D&D and that's because Arabian Nights and a presentation form as storytelling can be crunchy to implement.

My problem with Forgotten Realms is my same problem as Dragonlance. In addition to having lots and lots of characters filling every conceiveable important niche so your PC doesn't matter?

It fails at being forgotten in the first place.

What mysteries are there to uncover? What new lands or mist shrouded empires can there be when it's all literally in the manual with an expansive description and cosmology?

A magical fantasy land literally stuck in a thirty year old setting incapable of progression with canonical super characters rendering the player obsolete with no far horizons is basically not a game; its playing in someone else's personal novella and paying for the privilege.

WOTC tried to attend this problem with Eberron as I understand it, creating a setting where high adventure was again the norm and making its major NPC's lowbie enough that a high level PC could supplant or surpass them, but in my experience they completely fucked that up while throwing the authors of the setting under the bus.

FR is the default setting of 5e.

I think we don't have to worry about it 'dying' anytime soon.

>>226158

This guy gets it.

Does anyone actually like Forgotten Realms?

It always baffled me why every single vidya game was set there, when the setting is just a playground for TSR/Wizard's employees DMPCs.

>>226218

It's the most "familiar" (as in, it's fairly generic fantasy) setting with a ton of lore already written for it. That drastically reduces the work the authors have to do for it, since every NPC is already written in advance for them.

>>226219

Plus, WotC doesn't really have other systems that don't have magic being fucked up somehow or other gimmicks regarding the setting, like Eberron, Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Planescape and other such places.

Closest would be Greyhawk, but that's a copyright-ridden clusterfuck that they can't really work with.

>>226221

Not to mention that it has everything a writer needs to tell his story. You want pirates? There's Luskan. You want necromancers? Thay. You want barbarians ruled by witch queens? We've got those, too.

You can write whatever you want in it, since it's the setting that has it all. A kitchen sink.

Compare that to, say, Dark Sun - you can't write a story about a pirate fighting demons there, because there's no sea. And even if you decide to write your own stuff for it, you have to - at least on some level - be consistent with the setting. Modern FR doesn't have that issue.

>>226224

The downside to kitchen sink is that it starts to lack consistency like Golarion. There's a ton of settings and nations but nothing binding them together into a cohesive whole.

>because there's no sea

Yes there is. It's called the Last Sea (go look up Mind Lords of the Last Sea). It's an area controlled by the Mind Lords, a bunch of brains. Around here happiness is mandatory, and those who fall short face mental harmonization. Here you can also find a bunch of surfer druids who hang out with dolpins and try to catch the perfect wave.

>>226224

>there's no sea

There is. Its comprised of fine silt, and they use vessels that glide on top of it, held up by a levitating psionicist and propelled by sails.

There's aren't supposed to be demons, but you can play fast and loose with that. Planar travel is possible, just hard.

>>226225

>>226226

I know that. The point I was trying to make is that to a lazy writer who wants to make the adventures of Jack Sparrow fighting demons, the Last Sea doesn't work since he can't just say "they're on a boat" but has to use setting-specific stuff.

In Forgotten Realms, he can be as lazy as he wants, since everything he could need for his settings is already there. Aztec expies? Pirates? African jungles? FR has it all.

>>226230

>people like it because they're lazy

Fair enough. I'll say that I like the "Renaissance without guns" aesthetic that the Baldur's Gate games gave the setting, but I've never seen it portrayed remotely interesting elsewhere.

>>226145

>No there are not, you can change whatever you want in the setting as a DM, hell changing stuff in an established setting can make for interesting gaming.

Yep, and then you've got to reconcile it with whatever other shit you changed. At least assuming the setting is well built enough to be interrelated to some degree.

> Says the man that just bitched about a player in his group with a life and family and implied that since he didn't have the time to make an OC setting that he is somehow less happy than the rest. Yeah I made a typo, so fucking sue me.

Except… I don't care if you made a typo, I made some as well.

Also, there is nothing wrong with having a family and a life, but pretending you can fit in both, AND expecting the rest of the group to bend to your shitty schedule, makes you a cunt. I bet you have kids yourself, though, so I'll stop there.

Anyway, Baldur's Gate is a video game and Time of Troubles novels I've never read, so I'll give you those. I can't comment on their quality. However, as an RPG campaign setting, I see nothing that Faerun has to offer.

> all the power to you but being an ass and shit slinging about them is another thing.

I'm only shit-slinging because it's a very poor campaign setting and the idea of published campaign settings is flawed in general. It's generally only used by GMs who lack creativity.

>>226195

So your solution to a shitty part of the setting is just to ignore it. Instead of playing another setting.

And your solution for it being super-generic is the one expansion for some video game that contained something slightly original.

>>226218

>when the setting is just a playground for TSR/Wizard's employees DMPCs.

It is. It'd be fun if they actually played campaigns with them, but since most of them are dead that'd be kinda fucked up.

>>226221

>>226224

Or they could stop faffing about in a published setting that maybe 20% of gamers use, and create actual content for the game that 90% of gamers would use.

>>226123

>Name some other good things that came from Faerun.

Pool of Radiance, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights. Nearly 100% of the canon of good D&D video game adaptations is set in the Forgotten Realms.

>Campaign settings are always restrictive bullshit that make you feel like you are violating their IP if you change anything.

What, are the lawyers gonna kick your door down and haul you physically to court if you edit a setting to your liking? If you have some neurosis about not editing other people's work, that's your fucking problem, not the setting's.

>>226230

> The Last Sea doesn't work

Sure it does. In the period immediately before the campaign the Mind Lords were somehow overthrown, sending the region into chaos but also giving the beleaguered people of Dark Sun a chance at real freedom for the first time in generations.

Now bold corsairs sail the sea in hopes of making their fortune or supplanting the legacy of the Mind Lords, but such brazen action comes with a price. Already denied the light of the gods, the bleached world has no protection from infernal or demonic invasion, and the Last Sea was only able to remain on the world because it was an immense planar portal to a watery domain kept placid by the Mind Lords. Without them, the surface has become agitated, and horrible things now rise Lovecraftian from the shining depths.

>>226257

I think one of the Planescape books once mentioned a demonic invasion of Athas.

They were beaten back.

>>226224

But as a result your story will be dogshit since the setting is dogshit.

>>226267

No arguing there. Lazy people write shit stuff.

>>226257

Yes, but the lazy writer doesn't want that, he wants a Jack Sparrow expy sailing the high seas.

>>226281

As I believe was said elsewhere, that's not the setting's fault, that's user failure.

Has anyone used Roshar as a setting? From the Stormlight Archives.

>>226425

I don't see the need to insult anyone, but addressing your question, I believe the consistent disconnect in the community and the cause of the edition wars (besides it serves a corporate interest) is that with the late eighties early nineties crash in the gaming market there is a difference in experience between older first and second edition players and third+ players.

Third edition is, for many young people, their first exposure to Dungeons and Dragons, and Eberron is their first exposure to a setting that is alternative to the bog standard Forgotten Realms. We have to remember Greyhawk with its internal struggles never caught on, and in the third edition era Ravenloft was reasonably damaged from mismanagement in the 2nd Edition.

WOTC always hinted at expanding the content to incorporate more of the old favorites, but lets face it, they never did. Ravenloft was reduced to a board game during 4rth and we got Dark Sun but because its 4rth it can't be played with anything non-4rth. The only setting that got a solid release and solid support for a solid fanbase was Eberron during the 3rd edition.

Eberron isn't bad from base book, but it does fall into the Faerun trap of being mapped and marked with expansive cosmologies and pre-existent factions that supplant your importance in setting. That's compounded by an approach to world design that is much like an MMO. "That awesome sounding place? You can't go there, it's CR is far outside your abilities at level 1"

The real question we should be asking is why do people feel the need to take giant fetid dumps over different settings? Its all D&D.

Is there a reason why the FR wiki refers to everything in past tense? Did the world get destroyed or something?

>>226772

The FR is several kinds of shit. It translated all stuff that appeared in 4e from 3.5e to 4e and left the rest in 3.5e, giving it a very disjointed feel. Rely on us rather than the wiki.

But yes, FR had several new holes fucked in it in 4e. Luckily that got fixed in 5e.

>>226784

How many times has the Goddess of Magic who somehow keeps almost anything together died, just to return/be reborn/be revived by a Chosen by now anyway?

>>226252

>What, are the lawyers gonna kick your door down and haul you physically to court if you edit a setting to your liking?

No, but it's extra work I'd rather not do, for a setting that doesn't even fit my group's needs anyway. Just make your own, basic worldbuilding isn't even that hard. You do understand most groups don't give a fuck abotu all those extra details, right? They are there for adventure and story, not ancient history, unless it is relevant to their quest.

>>226425

I don't even like Eberron, it's just that it at least tries to be somewhat unique. Faerun has nothing unique, original, or speical. It is all standard fantasy crap, and you need to stop shilling ita nd deal with that fact.

>>226831

>I don't even like Eberron, it's just that it at least tries to be somewhat unique. Faerun has nothing unique, original, or speical. It is all standard fantasy crap, and you need to stop shilling ita nd deal with that fact.I don't even like Eberron, it's just that it at least tries to be somewhat unique. Faerun has nothing unique, original, or speical. It is all standard fantasy crap, and you need to stop shilling it and deal with that fact.

>deal with that fact.

This is why any conversation of disparate editions become wars. As someone who doesn't even like Faerun, it's not an objective absolute fact that it has "nothing" to it, and anyone who disagrees isn't "shilling".

There are many elements of Faerun I would consider atrocious, especially where certain derivative dark elf pretty boys are concerned, but it is also the base from which a lot of things were defined which did not crop up in Greyhawk. Way back when playing the gold box games I enjoyed the city of Waterdeep. I enjoyed the Savage Frontier. I enjoyed the Sword Coast and the idea of Minotaur corsairs.

What the previous anon was addressing in a shitty way is that fans of Eberron have a tendency to say "Eberron is minimally different therefore it is immensely superior to everything that came before it." And that's just not true.

Eberron is a setting, just like Faerun is a setting, and it has its flaws as well. If we could at least agree on a base line and put aside the personal attacks one way or the other the discussion could actually move forward for once.

http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Earth

Seriously fucking dumb.

>>226071

Maybe everyone just forgot about it

>>226153

wait, what? I haven't heard of this. I play pathfinder. It sucks, I know. But they're like, the only game that has an SRD filled with every single rule, monster, and item all for free.

>>226822

Every time one of the writers makes her his waifu

>>227099

If money is that big an issue just pirate a good system

>>227099

Mutants and Masterminds is better and has everything on an srd.

>>226179

Oh son! You made it before me, funny how you worded it exactly like I had in mind. not that I mind :^)))

>>227244

Link?

>>226094

Half the problem I feel when playing some of the…other games that they tried putting out, is not so much as the fact that it's a 'boring' setting (There's a ton of shit in it, and some of it has the capacity to not be boring.) rather than the fact that there's been no actual huge shift in status quo recently, to my knowledge. Sure, that whole 4E thing happened, and it 'shook up' magic, but everyone pretty much remained in their places they had before.

Either that, or the setting has essentially become stagnate: Nothing new or exciting can or will come of it. It may be best remembered as a baseline for something else.

>>227914

Best part?

They later retconned 4e to be only a dream Elminster had.

Gotta upheld that status quo.

>>227919

Are you serious?

>>228060

We are talking about Wizards of The Coast here, Anon. They love to suck Elmister's and Drizzt's cocks and can't deal with the fact they are non-factor in D&D 4e.

>>228087

Well 4e sucked anyway.

>>228355

It's the only good thing that happened to D&D since the 80s.

>>228361

You're a clown.

>>228361

Opinion discarded

>>228361

Oh how quickly people forget. I bet you also think Oblivion was the best ES.

>>228623

Repeating the same shitty joke doesn't make it less unfunny than it was with >>226179

>>228631

I'm sorry anon! I didn't realize I was having fun the wrong way before I hit 'New Reply'!

>>228631

Back to Cuckchan with you.

>>228631

Maybe he just forgot?

>>228610

One of the best, or are you forgetting about buggerfall?

>>226071

Nothing to talk about. Hasbro buried it long ago, even didn't care for Salvatore cash cow.

There's loyal grognard crowd, but it has a dedicated grazing place (candlekeep).

>>226072

WinterFaux, pls go.