Why is the forgotten realms so popular what does it have that greyhawk lacks other then a dietie with divine rank above 20.
It's an alright place to visit but I would not want to spend an entire campaign there
>>45746714
multiple instances of (mostly) successful vidya propagating it
>>45746728
I'd say the novels have more to do with it. Those have been cranked out for decades now.
Multiple novels released in proper time among with cRPG's. Many people become familiar with D&D through computer games, then they started lurking for more knowledge about system/universes/mechanics so actually they have been flooded with Forgotten Realms content accidentaly.
Literraly nothing. It's made of cancer and aids
It is paris hilton of d&d settingswhich in turn is paris hilton of rpgs- it is popular because it is popular. There were some reasons behind this but they're long gone and now it's just the snowball effect.
>>45746714
Better coverage, I guess. Gygax never made any videogames or novels -- videogames barely existed at the time, and RPG novels weren't a thing as RPGs were also incredibly new (and a bit controversial IIRC).
Forgotten realms had all those novels and videogames, because it came out much later, when RPGs (both videogames and tabletop) were an established thing.
Honestly I'd like to play a Greyhawk videogame. Has there ever even been a single one made?
>>45746714
Partly down to shit taste. For example, FR has the Egyptian gods. Literally the same ones. Why are they there? Just are. Nevertheless you'll find some people who think this is really cool. I honestly think a lot of FR fans don't realize the setting flaws and haven't even thought about it. Certainly it will attract those who like predictable generic fantasy with all that entails.
I think the vast amount of (largely unnecessary) detail to the setting is a draw for some. It has another draw in that the clusterfuck approach to world building means that almost anyone can find at least something they like. Taking myself for example, someone who despises FR, I still like a few of the gods and their function in the setting (Red Knight, Shaundakul, Umberlee) and could play a character related to them happily enough.
Vidya and books have already been mentioned.
FR is also that setting that people know. They stick with it despite its flaws for the same reason as they stick with DnD itself.
I think many people do auctualy have some understanding of greyhawk most people know about the adventures set in castle greyhawk.
>>45747763
>Why are they there? Just are.
They're there because interdimensional slavetraders came to earth and captured a bunch of ancient Egyptians, who brought their religion back to Toril with them.
You know it's funny I have never seen a properly anoted map of the realms
You can always find one in discussions about greyhawk
>>45746714
>Why is the forgotten realms so popular what does it have that greyhawk lacks
Wizards of the Coasts marketing power.
>>45748454
but wizards own greyhawk and other shit too
they actively tried to promote greyhawk and eberron in the days of 3.0, even using the former as default setting, yet it failed
>>45748454
The Gygax-Williams legal battles didn't help either. Post-Gygax TSR tried to distance themselves from his vision of Greyhawk.
Wasn't well received and was eventually canned.
>>45748251
>that contrived bullshit
So in other words, "just are".
>>45748533
What dident Lorraine willams ruin.
I like it as a very detailed setting that I can plop an adventure or small campaign into for players who don't want to learn the intricate details of whatever homebrew setting I'd otherwise use.
It's not great, but it is convenient.
>>45748573
that's like 95% of forgotten realms fluff
It is literally built upon deus ex machinas
>>45748573
Fun fact: so are all pretend elf games.
>>45747528
Gygax wrote about 5 novels, just in Gygaxian.
>>45747528
Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil? I think that is Greyhawk.
>>45750114
I think that's technicly in jubilixes layer of the abyss but close enough to count I guess.
>>45749335
Fun fact: and they're all shit. :^)
Few of them match the lazy, contrived worldbuilding of FR however.
So stop with the trendy relativism. FR is the poster boy for shit settings.
>>45750662
Nope, Arch-Barony of Velume
>>45747202
>>45747528
>>45747763
You guys are bizarrely bitter.
You don't understand why it's popular, but instead of actually looking at the setting, you scoff and huff and puff and try to figure out how to dismiss anyone who likes it.
Why is FR good? It doesn't try to subvert any conventions just for the sake of subverting them in order to be original, it just tries to be an broad and detailed Medieval fantasy setting.
That doesn't mean it's not full of imagination and original ideas. An insane Dracolich worshipping cult, a destroyed civilization that only persists as a single floating city that had spent centuries on the shadow plane, a country run by evil wizards that is trying to take over the world through economic and diplomatic means, all sorts of wonderful ideas, and the more you learn about the setting, the more you realize just how deep and impressive the lore becomes.
You might not understand why it's popular, but it's not just "popular because it's popular." It does a lot of things right, and each region is so dense and diverse that you could actually treat it as multiple unified campaign settings.
The good things Forgotten Realms has:
A classic high fantasy feel suited to huge, sweeping epics.
Lots of novels and video games to build interest.
A well-defined, detailed, and ENORMOUS world.
A place for damn near everything in D&D, or at least everything that existed at the time FR launched.
The good things Greyhawk has:
A harsher, swords and sorcery, Dying Earth feel.
A loosely-defined world that makes it easy for DMs to improvise geography.
A smallish pantheon that's iconic and memorable.
No established history to pressure DMs to conform.
They're both good settings. FR just gets hate because it's popular.
>>45750896
I like FR, but really only for the novels. Some of them are actually pretty good, the Sembian Quintet, anything Thayan, Myth Drannor or Calimshan is usually decent to great. Some of the novels suck, such as most of the one-shots and the ones specifically designed to promote material. I even liked theDrizztnovels, although after Paths of Darkness it took a nosedive.
>>45750765
I must be thinking of a difrent temple then.
>>45750896
I'm not mad forgotten realms is popular I'm mad greyhawk is unpopular.
>>45746714
I've been trying to figure out some of the main differences myself, the last few days. Here's the main thing I've.
>Content
Forgotten Realms has a shit ton of detail, possibly more than almost any other fictional setting, certainly more than Greyhawk or other D&D settings. There isn't many corners that don't have even the villages and small hamlets detailed right down to every last inhabitant, complete with everyone's detailed family histories.
This is a good thing and bad thing. The good is that you'll never be at a loss for content. The bad is that unlike Greyhawk, there's little room to make it your own. You have to really start tearing down a lot if you wanted to give it your own imagined narratives and flavour, while Greyhawk leaves a lot to the imagination, allowing DMs to make it their own.
Also, to push the many Forgotten Realms novels, there's too many superhero protagonists who live in the setting already, and along with many powerful do-gooding organizations, it can leave PCs feeling less important, someone can step in and fix a bad situation if they fail to.
>High Magic vs. Low Magic
Forgotten Realms is much higher magic. Spell-casting is almost a utility, certainly a common enough occurrence to be a service in many parts, and becoming a spellcaster is a relatively accessible vocation. Massive supernatural events and occurrences are a regularity as well, it seems.
Greyhawk more closely resembles a lot of folktales, as well as fantasy literature where magic still has a lot of mystery about it. Famous wizards are known (but not like they are in FR), and a archlich demigod rules over his own kingdom. But overall, wizards are rare, healers aren't there for you in any town like a doctor, and a magic weapon is a special privilege to own, not a common tool owned by any semi-established adventurer. It seems the lack of magic available to everyone helps makes things a little more gritty, which I like.
>>45751224
main things I've noticed:*
OK fuck it I'm going to pick up some forgotten realms books and see what all the fuss is about nobody is going to be able to convince me AO is not shit but I may be able to find something I like.
Plus most of the underdark content for 3e is forgotten realms so I may be able to plunder some stuff there.
>>45751382
Underdark: Read the canonical first 3 Drizzts novels. They're the only really good ones anyway
Intrigue: Anything Cormanthor or Myth Drannor
Monster-of-the-week style writing: Richard Lee Byers. Also writes some decent characters.
General good picks: The Cleric Quintet, The Erevis Cale trilogy (and latter novels), Threat from the Sea
ELVES: The Last Mythal
Avoid: any series of one-shots, the Empyrean Odyssey, Later Drizzt novels, The Elminster novels if you can't get over the fact that Elminster is Ed Greenwood's self-insert.
>>45751224
FR does leave out most of the far eastern edge of its map, in case you wanna use the world without using the locations. Very few places in the established locales that you can flesh out yourselves though.
>>45746714
Good video and popular novel series, which lead to more support for the Realms over Greyhawk, which lead to more exposure.
There really isn't a meaningful difference between the two - it's not like Mordenkainen is any less of a self-insert than Elminster - so ultimately it came down to which got more exposure. The Realms won.
>>45746714
The greater Forgotten Realms has Al-Qadim, Maztica, and Kara-Tur.
Forgotten Realms also has much more developed fluff especially regarding gods.
>>45751522
I auctualy meant sourcebooks but thanks anyway anon.
You know although I'm a greyfag the heavy fleshing out of toril does not seem so bad if I want to use my own unique geography I can just drop in a material like demiplane.
>>45751382
>>45751931
Jungles of Chult
Cult of The Dragon
Cormanthyr: Empire of the Elves
Maztica boxed set
Al-Qadim boxed set
>>45751869
Al-Qadim is OFFICIALLY in Forgotten Realms but it was designed to be used with almost any setting, hell you could use it with Eberron with nary a tweak.
>>45746714
Greyhawk was the 1st Ed. primary campaign setting. No one wants to play or remember 1st Ed.
>>45751121
Jubilixe's Girlfriend is in in so maybe another version of the sample super-module.
>>45752019
And I tend to run high magic item campaigns anyway.
And for that matter have a fairly high density of magic users compared to what greyhawk is normally like although nowhere near as much as it sounds like the realms have.
>>45750896
>Why is FR good? It doesn't try to subvert any conventions just for the sake of subverting them in order to be original, it just tries to be an broad and detailed Medieval fantasy setting.
It doesn't have to subvert them to destroy them, it instead makes them way more shallow and bland than any source material. I dislike heavy subversion of tropes myself, but you also have to keep quality. FR in most cases don't use those "conventions" - it uses extremely bad quality xerocopies of them. You can't realy play what you want, with all the inclusiveness of the setting - yowu want to play an elf - sure you can play a watered down and pathetic version of an tolkienesque elf, or play against the books to have something decent. You want to play a viking - same applies, and so on.
>That doesn't mean it's not full of imagination and original ideas
90% of which are uninspiring and/or infantile and/or underdeveloped. I could name few good ideas in forgotten realms, like shadow weave, but those are single pearls in the ocean of shit
>deep and impressive the lore becomes
sheer volume don't makes anything deep or impressive. quality beats quantity.
>each region is so dense and diverse that you could actually treat it as multiple unified campaign settings.
almost everyone of which is dull and has little to offer. Again, quantity versus quality, combining few good things and lot of mediocore or just bad stuff dont make something good because WOLOLO MUH CONTENT AND DIVERSITY
And believe me, i have some idea about FR. Not that i played few games and quit it, I was pretty much forced to either play it or don't play at all for last few years. I know lots of its lore, and i have to put up with those all lore gnognards masturbating over those shitty ideas and retarded lore and making me want to vomit.
>>45752998
And have a lot of adventurers running around as well
Honestly almost every complaint about the forgotten realms is something I insert into greyhawk anyway.
>>45753052
cont
And that doesn't even touch other shit, like being basically a sandbox for DMNPCs of setting creators and authors of bad fanfi... i mean licensed novels, complete lack of any depth of anthropological depth - cultural, religious, linguistic and so on... I mean, it theoretically is here, but it feels as artificial as imagined by 14yo. Especially religious customs are laughably weak if tou takie into account how theocentric this world is. Next, history shaped by masive amounts of magical/divine deus ex machinas, mentioned MUH diversity which in FR means just throwing a lot of random shit without really any effort to connect it in any sensible way, and being basically invented by old disgusting creep who uses his self insert as an excuse to satisfy his fetishes by making him fuck hundreds of elves, humans and whatever else.
That's probably far from complete list.
>>45751824
i will admit Mordenkainen is pretty shit.
>>45750965
wait greyhawk is considered smallish how many fucking gods does the forgotten realms have.
admitidly a lot of greyhawks gods are mostly only active in certain regions so they may not count for as much.
>>45748454
That's BS. Forgotten Realms was the default D&D everything for like a decade before Wizards even bought out TSR.
>>45746714
Depends when you look.
AD&D1e
Most people who talk about the Realms now don't remember it, but during the early days of Forgotten Realms, people were sending in love letters to TSR about how FINALLY there was a setting that wasn't based around shitty novels and revolving around a main cast of characters that no one cares about.
How that Elminster guy being a bumbling old wizard (and an unreliable narrator) was a cool thing because the setting was only written from the perspectives of people's experiences, meaning there was a lot of (obvious) bias and a lot of areas that simply weren't written about outside of rumors, because that's all the characters who "wrote" the books knew.
When there were books that used meta knowledge, they focused entirely on the parts necessary for the DM to know, and then left a lot of grey areas for the DM to make up his own narrative.
Though before the end of AD&D1e, the setting would start to spiral down, as editorial mandates started changing things. Demanding novels be printed, and demanding that "named characters" be established for brand recognition. For characters who were unimportant and minor are now to be practically if not literally gods.
>>45753935
AD&D2e
This is perhaps when the Realms popularity boomed due to a shit ton of novels, and this new guy on the block called Drizzt. Now TSR was in full book production mode with new books coming out every month. Every part of the FR got details, even parts that didn't exist before, or parts that had completely different rumors/notes about them.
A war game that was supposed to take in ye olde british isles with king arthur and all in its fluff was suddenly refluffed and the old "Moonshae Isles" notes were completely thrown out to use them.
The setting's history went from patchy grey areas to fully fleshed out, and completely nonsensical with the introduction of the Arcane Age boxed sets.
The gods got the most flavor ever written with the trilogy of deity books, though admittedly they were quite interesting.
Al-Qadim, Kara-Tur, and other settings also got their full links into the FR, for better or worse.
And of course, the editorial mandates got worse, as evil now had to constantly be Snidely Whiplash, grossly incompetent and never succeeding.
>>45753945
D&D3e/3.5e
This is the Realms that most people talk about these days, because it came out shortly after the most popular video games, and it was around in the early days of the internet when all of the new generation were learning about D&D.
This is the Forgotten Realms where much of the weird moral areas, and tricky situations that didn't quite fit the D&D system of alignment or "kid friendly" nature that a game company would want were simply thrown to the wayside.
This is the Realms where suddenly the Netherese were back... and not really doing much.
This is the Realms where one wondered why it even exists as a setting, given the sins of the end of 1e and the sins of 2e were now the most prominent parts of the world.
But this is the Realms that most people remember, and the realms that continued to have grossly successful novels.
D&D4e
Was grossly reviled for ruining everything with a minority who said they enjoyed it strictly because it ruined everything, which kind of defeats the purpose.
D&D5e
Is it that popular in 5e yet? I honestly haven't been paying attention to the Realms as of late.
>>45750728
Sure, we'll stop with the trendy relativism, as soon as you point out a Fantasy Game setting that *isn't* shit in your opinion.
>>45753052
Show me on the doll where Elminster touched you.
>>45753960
>Is it that popular in 5e yet? I honestly haven't been paying attention to the Realms as of late.
It's quite popular. The three adventure paths (and the accompanied D&D Adventure League 'campaigns') are set there and they are stressing that this is the Realms reborn. They are scaling it back to where it was back in 2e's days in terms of heroes and stuff, with Elminster and Drizzt and the gang fucking off to the back. I think WotC even says that you should just ignore them whenever because fuck it, it's your game and they shouldn't be stealing the glories from you. I think that they all also got weakened a fuckton too, though I might not be right on that one.
>>45753168
Sweet jeesus fuck anon, you're so mad I thought you were a khornate. It's not like the setting being bland killed your family. Besides, it's a good halfway point between advanced and novice players, offering a compromise between a huge world and enough content that you don't need to do much heavy RP to keep the pace up. There's really no reason to act like a screaming 14 year old who just got no-scoped in call of honour: battle ops 9000
>>45754280
I think they killed most of them off, not Drizzt obviously because he still sells books, but most of the 20th level or higher arcane caster good guys who just sit around and glory hog are gone.
>>45750114
Sadly this game is a bug-ridden shitfest.
Forgotten Realms won the moment Baldur's Gate appeared and because of one certain Drizzt. Later, Neverwinter Nights added to that on the vidya side.
That's not a judgement on the settings, though. I like both of em tbqh.
