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Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, 4th Edition By Bruce R. CordellEd GreenwoodChris SimsPhilip Athans ( Wizards of the Coast )
Release Date: 2008-08-19
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $39.95
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Product Description
Dark perils and great deeds await!
Welcome to Faerūn, a land of amazing magic, terrifying monsters, ancient ruins, and hidden wonders. The world has changed since the Spellplague, and from this arcane crucible have emerged shining kingdoms, tyrannical empires, mighty heroes, and monster-infested dungeons. The Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide presents a world of untold adventure; a land of a thousand stories shaped by the deeds of adventurers the likes of which Faerūn has never seen before.
This book includes everything a Dungeon Master needs to run a D&D campaign in the Forgotten Realms setting, as well as elements that DMs can incorporate into their own D&D campaigns. The book provides background information on the lands of Faerūn, a fully detailed town in which to start a campaign, adventure seeds, new monsters, ready-to-play non-player characters, and a full-color poster map of Faerūn.
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 Mostly useful
It is interesting to start the guide with a full 1st level adventure as chapter 1. It is also interesting to see the new maps and art. The book is a guide to the realms. The book is clear that the FR players hand book is also needed. The rules are mostly in the FR PHB and not in this book and maybe that is OK. It was just a surprise that you needed both.
Like previous books it lists all the lands and tells you a bit about each. It also has a few interesting new rules. The FR PHB has much of the same information but presented differently and at a player view. It reminds me of a Fodor's Guide more than a rule book.
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 The Design Team Was Just Plain Lazy ( valence_now )
I bought the first release of the FR campaign setting back in the early 90's when D&D was in its first edition. Since then I have been continually impressed with how well the Realms have evolved to accomodate each new release of the D&D game. Somehow they managed to keep the game current and exciting while still retaining the enduring, unique "character" of Toril - high fantasy, intriguing heroes and villains derived from the setting, a unique cosmology, and most of all, a "lived in" feel to the game world any long time gamer could relate to.
So when the latest evolution of FR was released with the latest revision of the D&D game rules I didn't hesitate to purchse this book. The 4th edition rules open up a slew of new possibilities for evolving the setting. I was extremely excited to see what Ed Greenwood and company had come up with. Instead, I found a sloppily presented, poorly engineered game world. Both of which would have been unfortunate, but still forgivable, if only the designers had found a way to successfully capture the unique character of the Realms in how they rendered it for 4th edition. TSR found a way to do this when they evolved the setting from 1st edition to 2nd edition. WoTC then did the same in evolving the setting for 3.0/3.5. But for 4th edition, WoTC has failed. Dramatically.
I'm late to the game on providing a review for this book. So don't want to reiterate the scores of other negative reviews - the illogical presentation, the absence of creativity, the destruction of the setting's core aesthetics. What I do want to comment on his how shocked any long time reader of Realmslore will be as to the lack of concern the design team had for maintaining the integrity of the game world. Rather than dilligently adapt and evolve the setting for 4th edition, they just poached a half dozen new concepts from Wizards' 4th edition marketing bin (new races like dragonkind or new magic rules for spells). And then dumped them into this book with what appears to be very little valuation of what makes the Realms well .. the Realms! This isn't just heavy handed. It's lazy. Which for a world with this kind of cachet (and one would think revenue potential) is absolutely shocking.
I have a proposal for Wizards. Back in the early 80's a hit TV show called "Dallas" had a disatrously conceived season. At the end of he season, it was unclear how the show could recover it's fans. It had written itself into a corner with poor plot turns and choice of character development. The solution? The writers started the show's next season with a sequence that showed the entire previous season had been a dream by one of the lead characters. A terrible, terrible dream.
Wizards has some of the best talent in the business. And a lot of revenue on the line. This first shot at a 4th edition adaption has been an unmitigated flop. But what if Elminster just woke up one morning in his quaint tower in Shadowdale. He'd had the strangest dream ...
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 Pretty much useless if you're new to the Realms
Just to be clear-this is my first real exposure to running an FR campaign. I always avoided it for all the baggage it seemed to carry. How ironic then that I'm so disappointed with the lack of information I found in the new book.
To put it mildly, the book is seriously light on content. I'm on the fence about returning the book. The only reason I'm considering holding onto it, is because I'm waiting to see how much they add via Dragon. (The Cormyr piece in Dragon is the only reason I didn't immediately return the book. I'm willing to give this a little time to shake out.)
I'd say this book is a 50K foot view of FR. But I would have preferred a 1K foot view of at least ONE of the "classic" adventuring areas (i.e. Dalelands or Cormyr). The feeling I'm left with is one of casual knowledge. I really don't feel I have enough information to run my own detailed campaign in any of these settings.
The capital city of Cormyr has 4 paragraphs! I can't run an adventure in a capital city described in 4 paragraphs. If I wanted to "fill in the details," I wouldn't have bought a "Campaign Setting Guide."
It really seems unclear who this book is for. It seems to me; all you've done is ticked off your fan base, and confused new readers.
I'm not looking for something on the scale of Monte Cook's Ptolus campaign setting (though PLEASE let him convert that to 4E!-I'd return this in a heartbeat).
Also, the introductory adventure took up way too much space that could have been better served adding much needed depth to this book. The 'starter adventure' should have been saved for Dungeon. Really pointless.
In summary: Careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
I wanted a "fresh start" on FR. Not a blank slate with a few scratches.
Overall, I'm very disappointed and wouldn't recommend this product.
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Let's Get the Facts Straight
The new FRCG is not perfect. Far from. But let's get the facts straight here people.
The Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide is not a "travesty" nor is it "the end of the Realms." A quick look at the people writing the book will reveal as much, many of whom have worked in the Realms for years and love it as much as most fans. Unlike those who post a review before reading the book, however, these people aren't hung up on maintaing the Realms exactly the same way for decades on end. Change comes eventually and in this case, I think most of the changes are done well.
Let's get to what the guide does well. First off, lore. This book is almost nothing but. There's a little crunch in here but what the book is really about is the fluff and most of it is well-written and with a set of details that makes the Realms come alive as a world again - just a century later and with some changes. It doesn't have as much lore as 3e Realms has, but let's remember that 3e Realms had seven years of support, whereas 4e Realms has been out for only a few months. Likewise, 3e Realms built heavily upon the foundations of 1st and 2nd edition Realms, whereas 4e Realms is more than a century after the base year for 3.5
The book also posseses a nice, readable format as well as a nice set of new enemies to play with at the end of the book. Many of the new countries to explore are interesting and while places like Neverwinter, Luskan, Unther, Mulhorand, and Halruaa will be missed new locations like Tymanther, Returned Abeir, or Akanul have the potential to be just as interesting, as does the new Shadow Empire of Netheril if the writers play it right. Overall, this is an interesting fantasy world to explore all on its own, without even taking into account the planes, which also get some attention in this book (though less than I would have liked).
Now let's get down to some of the major criticisms of the book. First of all, alot's changed. But not quite as much as you might expect. Though every region has been transformed in some manner, many have only endured only marginal changes. Take Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, or Amn, the three great coastal cities of 4e Realms. All three are instantly recognizable from their original renditions, though with a few alterations. BG, for instance, is now much larger. But other than minor changes like these they remain much the same. The same goes for many other regions, including Cormyr, Chult, the Silver Marches, and the Underdark.
As for whether or not Ed Greenwood has forsaken the 4e realms - he has not. In fact, if anything, he shows more enthusiasm for it than 3e. He loves the new ruleset (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXvq4-GbuNI) and, if the fact his name is on the book cover doesn't convince you, keep in mind that he wrote up the lore for an entire continent on his own - Returned Abeir, which is certainly a major change in Realms lore. Naysayers who want to shout about Greenwood hating the new Realms just don't have anything to base their claims on.
Are the gods reduced in number? Yes, and in some cases drastically so, though it's not as though there's only a dozen gods now (indeed - there's about a dozen greater gods ruling over pantheons of lesser gods). Also, consider that the book doesn't detail anything on Zakhara or Kara-Tur aside from a brief mentioning (much like 3e FR) and so whether or not the pantheons of that land remain intact is an open question. One does still have a right to complain in this department though, as more than a handful of important gods have taken the fall.
Now there are somethings worthy to complain about. Though the format for the chapters is alright the overall outline for the book itself is very badly done. The most interesting and detailed chapters are, oddly enough, placed at the BACK of the book rather than the front, where one would might expect them to be. Instead, the first three or four chapters, which are more or less glorified appendicies, are placed up front. This makes for a jarring format.
The map, while by most standards well-done and detailed, is less than what has come before for Realms fans and has substantially less detail. Furthermore, for all the promotion of the Underdark and of Returned Abeir a map for them does not exist in comparison.
The art, is, however, fabulous, much like most of 4e's art.
Bottom line: The book is well-written with lots of lore and ideas for DMs (players, however, need the FRPG companion). It's not a "rape" of the Realms, having, after all, been written by many of the minds behind the Realms for the best ten years. It is, however, a big change. If you can get past the 100 year jump and Spellplague buy the book. If you can't move on, don't - you'll only be wasting your money and fueling your frustration.
Personally - I enjoyed it.
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The Realms are Dead ( winterskyblue9 )
Forgotten Realms has been a favorite fantasy setting of mine forever now. This latest edition is an abomination of all previous incarnations of the Realms. Ed Greenwood - how could you possibly condone your name being associated with this farce in any way? I actually feel gutted, disgusted, lifeless - and oh those are 3 words that can summarize the 4th edition of the realms. But if you'd like more, read on.
All of the color, the mystery, the excitement, the lore, the flavor, the history, the peoples, the locations, the empires, the wondrous places - all - GONE! All because the Spellplague (a.k.a WOTC money plague) was created and WOTC decided that a complicated setting was too much for their new target audience - 9-12 yr olds. How is this justified? Well, Wizards say that now you have all the control, you create the lands as you see fit for your campaign, you populate them and decide what monsters and heroes are a part of them. If I wanted that, I wouldn't pay good money for it, I would just make my own generic world to be populated by cookie-cutter NPC's - oh wait a second - that's just what this is! So people like Lady Alustriel, Szass Tam, Manshoon, Kheben Blackstaff, and many, many others are now simply background material if mentioned at all. Supposedly this is to allow the PC's to be stars of the show without such high-level NPC interference. Let me tell you something - I have been in many Realms based campaigns. I have been in games where NO and I mean NO high level NPC's of Faerun EVER come in contact with the PC's. So, if you are in a campaign where the adventure party is constantly having to report to Elminster for every minor orc they defeat or track they find and he then tells them exactly what it means, or the adventurers are in Thay and come across Szass Tam (even though they are 4th level, out of heals/spells, no magic items and have just fought a army of wraiths, ghouls, zombies, and other undead fiends) and are total party killed/wiped out - or even sillier - Drizz't Do"Urden "mysteriously" appears in Chult where the party is to help the struggling PC's out - YOU HAVE A TERRIBLE DM WHO IS RUNNING THE GAME WRONG - don't blame the setting for your horrible experience!!!.
Many other posts have touched upon other numerous terrible attributes of this book - the pantheon makes no sense, deities gone for no reason, others ascended for even more obscure reasons, fewer pages but higher price, the map is terrible, etc.
Stay far, far, away from this. The Realms are Officially Dead! Product Suicide by WOTC. Do not spend one cent on any more of their 4th edition B.S. MMORPG wanna be product. I would give negative stars if I could. One is way too generous.
A setting that I once felt rivaled that of even Middle Earth in its wonder and creativity itself is no more. Thanks WOTC for ruining a beautiful world and taking advantage of your loyal fan base. For shame!
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Addiction
