Quote from: Ratman_tf;1117223Forgotten Realms is the Star Trek Voyager of D&D settings. Warm, comfortable, and not challenging. I don't even say that as a criticism. Sometimes you want the easy and familiar.

So... Elminster is Janeway? The only captain who NEEDED to be courtmartialed (lets admit it, for a utopian post-scarcity society, they produced a lot of military commanders who simply could not follow the rules...)

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1117223Forgotten Realms is the Star Trek Voyager of D&D settings. Warm, comfortable, and not challenging. I don't even say that as a criticism. Sometimes you want the easy and familiar.

Greetings!

*Howling* That's just great, Ratman!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Teodrik;1117059Even though I tried to get into 4e FR but found it too contrived and completely unnecessary, I still have to agree that the Neverwinter book is great. I have a hard time coming up a specific FR setting book I would call better regardless of edition. For me it is definitely the best setting book wizbro has ever done.

Well, the diehard fanbase certainly agreed it was unnecessary. I suspect it might have had more success if the world map hadn't been created by randomly smearing the contents of a sick baby's nappy/diaper over a light blue background.

I think one of the reasons the Neverwinter Campaign Setting was so successful was that the people who wrote it were actually participating in a successful 4E campaign. That's not true of quite a few of the 4E books.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1117181(snip) That's the thing, Dark Sun and FR are two COMPLETELY different settings that aren't even in the same sub-genre. FR is milk-toast quasi-medieval high fantasy with recognizable Earth-like cultures, Dark Sun is an alien post-apocalyptic dystopia that bears no resemblance to medieval Europe, Egypt or the Middle East. The two are NOTHING alike and the fact that FR has deserts doesn't mean that therefore you can play adventures there that are JUST like playing Dark Sun. (snip)

While in the main I agree with your conclusion that Dark Sun and FR are COMPLETELY different, if you have a look at Elfharrow in the 4E campaign guide (I previously typed the Shaar Desolation which is the overall region, but Elfharrow is the specific part I meant), you will see that there are some common themes especially considering the 4E version of FR is quite dystopian. So, no, my comment wasn't based on simply seeing that FR has deserts but from actually reading the campaign guide.

Oh, and Dark Sun does draw on real world mythology: The city-states are quite reminiscent of Babylon, Mesopotamia, and Sumeria to the point where I plan to use a fair bit of Necromancer Games' Ancient Kingdoms: Mesopotamia in my next campaign. Of course, the Dark Sun-specific stuff will need to be added to the mix.

Quote from: Dylan;1117206I've got two unoriginal points to make about FR. First up, it's f*&%ing boring. Case closed. Second, names. It seems to me that DMs and players, even when steeped in FR lore, struggle with pronouncing, let alone remembering, NPC names. Araevin Teshurr. Ellifain Tuuserail. Galaeron Nihmedu. Methrammar Aerasumé. Pharaun Mizzrym. Etc. Clusterfucks of vowels and consonants, ahoy!

Boring? Only if you choose to make it boring. That's purely subjective personal taste, not "case closed"-objective fact.

Names? Ed generally does a really good job with names; Salvatore typically shits the bed. The ones you mention pass these two basic tests: They are quite easy to pronounce and they communicate that they belong in the FR world. I'm sure that, if you could concentrate more than a microsecond, you would find them relatively easy to pronounce.

Why is an "older, deader" setting easier to update?

Quote from: Ashakyre;1117231Why is an "older, deader" setting easier to update?

Fewer active fans resisting change. You generally have a broader, shallower overview, meaning there are less 'fiddly bits' to polish over, sand down or just ignore.  Being deader also means they are not actively changing and warping as you work on them.

Look at just one example: Five years ago there were no Dragonborn in Forgotten Realms. Books were being written from that perspective.  Or rather: Dragonborn existed but they were some sort of demi-god servants of the Dragon Gods, transformed from non-scaly races, and only in the distant past.  Suddenly, yesterday, an entire continent of Dragonborn appears! With an entire culture, social mores, and explicitely NOT non-scaly races transformed by the Gods.

In a setting that hasn't been updated or touched in thirty years (meaningfully), then its a lot easier to wave your hands and say 'Dragonborn were always around. They mostly live over there, in that place. What? You don't remember? Well... it HAS BEEN thirty years, you know..."

Quote from: Spike;1117234Fewer active fans resisting change. You generally have a broader, shallower overview, meaning there are less 'fiddly bits' to polish over, sand down or just ignore.  Being deader also means they are not actively changing and warping as you work on them.

Look at just one example: Five years ago there were no Dragonborn in Forgotten Realms. Books were being written from that perspective.  Or rather: Dragonborn existed but they were some sort of demi-god servants of the Dragon Gods, transformed from non-scaly races, and only in the distant past.  Suddenly, yesterday, an entire continent of Dragonborn appears! With an entire culture, social mores, and explicitely NOT non-scaly races transformed by the Gods.

In a setting that hasn't been updated or touched in thirty years (meaningfully), then its a lot easier to wave your hands and say 'Dragonborn were always around. They mostly live over there, in that place. What? You don't remember? Well... it HAS BEEN thirty years, you know..."

There have been Dragonborn in FR since August 2008. It's been more than 11 years rather than 5, but your point otherwise stands. My how time flies...

Quote from: Shasarak;1117193Actually Visionstorm does have one good point about why Darksun is nowhere near as successful then the Realms: No Gnomes.

As 4es failure showed you cut Gnomes from DnD at your peril.

I know you probably jest, but I have never actually met or even played online with anyone who actually liked Gnomes. I have only rarely ever even ran into people in social media who professed to like that race, and the few times I have I was dumbfound and some people have even commented on it in replies.

Quote from: Scrivener of Doom;1117227While in the main I agree with your conclusion that Dark Sun and FR are COMPLETELY different, if you have a look at Elfharrow in the 4E campaign guide (I previously typed the Shaar Desolation which is the overall region, but Elfharrow is the specific part I meant), you will see that there are some common themes especially considering the 4E version of FR is quite dystopian. So, no, my comment wasn't based on simply seeing that FR has deserts but from actually reading the campaign guide.

Oh, and Dark Sun does draw on real world mythology: The city-states are quite reminiscent of Babylon, Mesopotamia, and Sumeria to the point where I plan to use a fair bit of Necromancer Games' Ancient Kingdoms: Mesopotamia in my next campaign. Of course, the Dark Sun-specific stuff will need to be added to the mix.

TBH, with the exception of the PHB as a reference for curiosity's sake I totally skipped 4e, and I'm not that familiar with FR in that edition. So the idea of a dystopian FR seems alien to me.

Also, while I concede that there are elements of very ancient middle eastern cultures used as inspiration in Dark Sun, these tend to be more like stylistic choices--particularly their architecture--rather than attempts to represent variants of those cultures in the world. Dark Sun itself is not an attempt at ancient Mesopotamian fantasy, but rather uses stylistic elements of those ancient cultures to invoke an unusual alien feel to the world, while FR is an attempt at ancient-Medieval European style fantasy with Arabic and Persian elements (and Asian elements if you include Kara Tur).

Quote from: VisionStorm;1117242I know you probably jest, but I have never actually met or even played online with anyone who actually liked Gnomes. I have only rarely ever even ran into people in social media who professed to like that race, and the few times I have I was dumbfound and some people have even commented on it in replies.

My wife has always liked halflings, usually in some combination of barbarian, ranger, and/or rogue. However, with 5e, she has instead embraced Forest Gnomes as her favorite (at-will minor illusion and speak with small animals is fun for her). She's not a typical player, and most of the rest of the group forget that gnomes exist and keep referring to her as a halfling (which, to be fair, most of her characters have been). In the most recent game (an Eberron campaign), she's playing a shifter druid and she has had trouble remembering that her base move is 30 ft. rather than the 25 ft. she's used to (not that she spends all that much combat in her normal form anyways... dire wolf and giant spider are so much more effective).

Quote from: Spike;1117234Fewer active fans resisting change. You generally have a broader, shallower overview, meaning there are less 'fiddly bits' to polish over, sand down or just ignore.  Being deader also means they are not actively changing and warping as you work on them.

Look at just one example: Five years ago there were no Dragonborn in Forgotten Realms. Books were being written from that perspective.  Or rather: Dragonborn existed but they were some sort of demi-god servants of the Dragon Gods, transformed from non-scaly races, and only in the distant past.  Suddenly, yesterday, an entire continent of Dragonborn appears! With an entire culture, social mores, and explicitely NOT non-scaly races transformed by the Gods.

In a setting that hasn't been updated or touched in thirty years (meaningfully), then its a lot easier to wave your hands and say 'Dragonborn were always around. They mostly live over there, in that place. What? You don't remember? Well... it HAS BEEN thirty years, you know..."

The other, in my opinion larger, problem with updating the older and deader setting is that it is deader.  No one complains when you update anything because no one cares one way or the other.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1117242I know you probably jest, but I have never actually met or even played online with anyone who actually liked Gnomes. I have only rarely ever even ran into people in social media who professed to like that race, and the few times I have I was dumbfound and some people have even commented on it in replies.

Its the network effect.  You dont care, I dont care but Tommy does so the group chooses to play something else that does have Gnomes.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1117223Forgotten Realms is the Star Trek Voyager of D&D settings. Warm, comfortable, and not challenging. I don't even say that as a criticism. Sometimes you want the easy and familiar.

I'd further contend that it's even closer to Star Trek Voyager's alternate character interpretations from SFDebris (archived here on TVTropes).

In other words, warm and comfortable on the surface Lovecraftian nightmare beneath the surface.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1117244My wife has always liked halflings, usually in some combination of barbarian, ranger, and/or rogue. However, with 5e, she has instead embraced Forest Gnomes as her favorite (at-will minor illusion and speak with small animals is fun for her). She's not a typical player, and most of the rest of the group forget that gnomes exist and keep referring to her as a halfling (which, to be fair, most of her characters have been). In the most recent game (an Eberron campaign), she's playing a shifter druid and she has had trouble remembering that her base move is 30 ft. rather than the 25 ft. she's used to (not that she spends all that much combat in her normal form anyways... dire wolf and giant spider are so much more effective).

Yeah, most people don't even remember they exist (hence, may confuse a small race PC for a halfling during play), and when they do play them, often it's cuz of secondary reasons pertaining to a gnome subrace with cool tricks that work for a certain character type, or maybe cuz they did something cool with them in a specific setting.

Quote from: Shasarak;1117247Its the network effect.  You dont care, I dont care but Tommy does so the group chooses to play something else that does have Gnomes.

Ya, but how big can that network of players be? I have met FAR more people who like playing half-orcs, but not making them a standard race never hurt AD&D 2e, and never stopped anyone from simply including them in their game regardless, even if they're not an official standard race.

Still, Dark Sun's greatest barrier of entry is its uniqueness (which paradoxically is also its greatest strength), cuz everything works differently and most people don't know anything about it. While in FR you don't need to know anything about it cuz its vanilla high fantasy--you've already tried similar stuff even if you've never played that world specifically. But you'll need to read up a bit of material or have someone explain it to you if you wanna try Dark Sun, since it's an original setting that deviates significantly from the norm and NO race (other than human) works quite the same way as standard fantasy.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1116803As a person who hates how Static Star Wars has become, Il say there is a counterbalance to this.

A setting can be "Just-Right" and developing it can simply make it worse. You can always play in older material but its less likely to receive support.

For instance the Development of Darksun Mostly robbed it of any mystery.

Just about all the settings got this rot over time as TSR got it in their heads that these settings "were not fleshed out enough!" which totally contradicts the original idea of giving a framework and alot of blank areas for players to make of it whatever they wanted. So over time every damn hex had to be filled in. Usually in tandem with the idiot assumption that these settings are "not populated enough!".

Quote from: Spinachcat;1116824I could happily disparage FR, but I'm a Rifts fan so that would seem hypocritical.

FR makes sense as the 5e core because of the economic power of the FR brand, and its not realistic to expect a company to not chase the biggest pile of dollars.  

Personally, I'd prefer if new editions got new settings, but regurgitation of nostalgia makes more money.

Another reason may be that their RPGA and equivalents have been predominantly set in FR. Thats been ongoing since the 90s. With notable side settings of course like the Living Galaxy and Living Seattle ones RPGA used to run.

Quote from: Zalman;1116875I'm still scratching my head as to why anyone thought D&D needed to include a "default" setting at all. (And of course using any previously existing setting is going to invoke shoehorning and/or gutting, given the wealth of legacy material from/for a variety of settings).

That is easy. Not everyone is good at, or wants to build their own world.

Quote from: Blankman;11169145e D&D doesn't have a default setting. Faerun is mentioned as an example a few times in the PHB and DMG, and the examples of fantasy names for humans in the PHB are from Forgotten Realms cultures, but other than that, there really isn't any default setting material in the core (there are some lists of gods in Appendix B of the PHB, but those include Norse, Celtic, Greek and Egyptian pantheons, as well as the gods from Greyhawk, Dragonlance and Eberron). The DMG has a lot of material on creating your own setting though.

Faerun shows up as the setting of the starter box campaign, and for most of the published adventures, but adventures have to have some setting.

1: Right. To date 5e has had setting books set in the following. Forgotten Realms, Magic, and Eberron. 2 modules have so far been set in Greyhawk and Ravenloft.

2: Not really. Alot of pre-2e modules were either set to whatever was the current default setting. Or in many cases left blank as it were and could be anywhere, or their own settings. A module needs a location. But that location does not need to be tied to a setting.