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[DnD 4E] Forgotten Realms
Aegeri
Tiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered User regular
Tiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered User regular
Fourth Edition: Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting
Unlike the other thread, this thread is about the 4E campaign setting Forgotten Realms so I shall shamelessly steal this from the other thread and expand upon it:
Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide
Forgotten Realms Players Guide
Scepter Tower of Spellgard
This is currently the only campaign setting that has come out for Fourth Edition and IMO, it's pretty decent. It marks a significant departure from the previous editions versions of the Forgotten Realms however. It has enough detail that any DM will find it a useful resource for making a campaign and providing an overall world to set that campaign in. It does not have the depth of lore or similar that previous editions have had, which is what leads to a lot of the negativity surrounding the setting.
Here is a run down of major changes to the setting (By far not a comprehensive list), all started by "The Spellplague", which ravaged the world and did a whole bunch of damage, which causes all the below changes.
2) Mystra, the God of Magic got killed by another God called Cyric. This is rather like being killed by the three stooges. Ok, I'll refrain from putting my personal opinion into this too much, but none the less she gets killed somehow by Cyric who was manipualated into doing it by Shar. Shar is, coincidentally the new "big evil" of the realms after accomplishing this (and Cyric was imprisoned where is going more insane for his trouble).
3) The weave and shadow weave, the way that magic users accessed magic in Faerun previously, shattered and the resulting mess created the spellplague.
4) A lot of NPCs from the previous setting are dead and a large number of Gods as well. Most of the Seven Sisters are dead or missing, Elminster was crippled and Gods have been shuffled around. One thing they did was reveal many pantheons as actually being one God with many different names, so they consolidated the number of Gods down a lot.
5) Continents were shifted with a "sister world" called Abeir (The Forgotten Realms is set on the continent of Faerun, which is in the world "Toril") replacing landmasses with places in Toril. This is where races like Dragonborn and the like originate in the new realms.
6) Many other places were simply destroyed (Neverwinter and Lantans Rest come to mind immediately) and other places were relatively unharmed in many ways. A huge rift to the underdark was opened in the middle of the place though and it actually drained a large amount of the Sea of Fallen Stars.
7) Areas of active "Spellplague" called plaguelands (predictably enough) are around the place as well. These have horrible abberant monsters amongst other things in them and are plain unpleasant to live.
8) Thay was turned into a giant nation of the undead by Szass Tam, when he almost successfully cast a ritual that would have ascended him to God hood. He's obviously not too upset by failing and is clearly thinking about expanding into his neighbours territories: probably to try again.
9) Finally they advanced the timeline by 100 years.
So that's some of the big changes that occurred, but by no means a comprehensive or exhaustive list.
In my opinion, I like the new realms. I never liked the huge amount of high level good aligned NPCs everywhere and I always felt there was a lot of previous material making it difficult to change things where I wanted. 4E FR takes a similar approach to the rest of 4E, giving you lots of ideas about adventuring, setting up antagonists for campaigns and similar. The book does this at the expense of a lot of lore and detail about NPCs that the setting was once known for. This has really aggravated some old fans and others (like me) are more happy with the increased 'freedom' to change what we want about the setting.
Personally, I find that I can go to nearly anywhere in the 4E realms, read the area and potential campaign sites and spend 30 minutes easily coming up with ways to start a campaign there. So naturally that means I rather like it. On the other hand, it doesn't give you a lot of details beyond the odd name or hint at things that are happening to go on. The 4E Forgotten Realms campaign guide though is well worth it if you want adventure ideas, a workable campaign setting to mold to your liking and a good place to set adventuring in. If you loved the depth of lore, NPCs and similar of the previous realms, I'm almost certain you are NOT going to like this: keep your old books.
Moving on...
The players guide IMO is a useful resource even if you don't actually like the realms as a setting. Although a fair chunk of the book is dedicated to the FR, the Swordmage, races (Drow and Genasi) and feats make it a worthwhile purchase for anyone. Especially if you want to play in the realms.
The adventure is decent quality, but requires a lot of work compared to the 'core' adventure series to get fully implemented into a campaign. It also starts at level 2, which is a real pain for DMs wanting to just jump right into a 4E campaign with the adventure and some fresh level 1 PCs. I am actually running this shortly for my Hollow Sacrifice group, I'll let you know how they find it.
Useful Stuff:
Here is a map of the Forgotten Realms.
It's worth noting that like Eberron (to come out soon), the only "official" support beyond the supplements mentioned above will be in Dragon/Dungeon for the realms. They have not, IMO, really been very great at supporting it thus far in either magazine and it remains to be seen if they will follow through on promises to improve it.
Unlike the other thread, this thread is about the 4E campaign setting Forgotten Realms so I shall shamelessly steal this from the other thread and expand upon it:
Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide
Forgotten Realms Players Guide
Scepter Tower of Spellgard
This is currently the only campaign setting that has come out for Fourth Edition and IMO, it's pretty decent. It marks a significant departure from the previous editions versions of the Forgotten Realms however. It has enough detail that any DM will find it a useful resource for making a campaign and providing an overall world to set that campaign in. It does not have the depth of lore or similar that previous editions have had, which is what leads to a lot of the negativity surrounding the setting.
Here is a run down of major changes to the setting (By far not a comprehensive list), all started by "The Spellplague", which ravaged the world and did a whole bunch of damage, which causes all the below changes.
2) Mystra, the God of Magic got killed by another God called Cyric. This is rather like being killed by the three stooges. Ok, I'll refrain from putting my personal opinion into this too much, but none the less she gets killed somehow by Cyric who was manipualated into doing it by Shar. Shar is, coincidentally the new "big evil" of the realms after accomplishing this (and Cyric was imprisoned where is going more insane for his trouble).
3) The weave and shadow weave, the way that magic users accessed magic in Faerun previously, shattered and the resulting mess created the spellplague.
4) A lot of NPCs from the previous setting are dead and a large number of Gods as well. Most of the Seven Sisters are dead or missing, Elminster was crippled and Gods have been shuffled around. One thing they did was reveal many pantheons as actually being one God with many different names, so they consolidated the number of Gods down a lot.
5) Continents were shifted with a "sister world" called Abeir (The Forgotten Realms is set on the continent of Faerun, which is in the world "Toril") replacing landmasses with places in Toril. This is where races like Dragonborn and the like originate in the new realms.
6) Many other places were simply destroyed (Neverwinter and Lantans Rest come to mind immediately) and other places were relatively unharmed in many ways. A huge rift to the underdark was opened in the middle of the place though and it actually drained a large amount of the Sea of Fallen Stars.
7) Areas of active "Spellplague" called plaguelands (predictably enough) are around the place as well. These have horrible abberant monsters amongst other things in them and are plain unpleasant to live.
8) Thay was turned into a giant nation of the undead by Szass Tam, when he almost successfully cast a ritual that would have ascended him to God hood. He's obviously not too upset by failing and is clearly thinking about expanding into his neighbours territories: probably to try again.
9) Finally they advanced the timeline by 100 years.
So that's some of the big changes that occurred, but by no means a comprehensive or exhaustive list.
In my opinion, I like the new realms. I never liked the huge amount of high level good aligned NPCs everywhere and I always felt there was a lot of previous material making it difficult to change things where I wanted. 4E FR takes a similar approach to the rest of 4E, giving you lots of ideas about adventuring, setting up antagonists for campaigns and similar. The book does this at the expense of a lot of lore and detail about NPCs that the setting was once known for. This has really aggravated some old fans and others (like me) are more happy with the increased 'freedom' to change what we want about the setting.
Personally, I find that I can go to nearly anywhere in the 4E realms, read the area and potential campaign sites and spend 30 minutes easily coming up with ways to start a campaign there. So naturally that means I rather like it. On the other hand, it doesn't give you a lot of details beyond the odd name or hint at things that are happening to go on. The 4E Forgotten Realms campaign guide though is well worth it if you want adventure ideas, a workable campaign setting to mold to your liking and a good place to set adventuring in. If you loved the depth of lore, NPCs and similar of the previous realms, I'm almost certain you are NOT going to like this: keep your old books.
Moving on...
The players guide IMO is a useful resource even if you don't actually like the realms as a setting. Although a fair chunk of the book is dedicated to the FR, the Swordmage, races (Drow and Genasi) and feats make it a worthwhile purchase for anyone. Especially if you want to play in the realms.
The adventure is decent quality, but requires a lot of work compared to the 'core' adventure series to get fully implemented into a campaign. It also starts at level 2, which is a real pain for DMs wanting to just jump right into a 4E campaign with the adventure and some fresh level 1 PCs. I am actually running this shortly for my Hollow Sacrifice group, I'll let you know how they find it.
Useful Stuff:
Here is a map of the Forgotten Realms.
It's worth noting that like Eberron (to come out soon), the only "official" support beyond the supplements mentioned above will be in Dragon/Dungeon for the realms. They have not, IMO, really been very great at supporting it thus far in either magazine and it remains to be seen if they will follow through on promises to improve it.
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That bitch Radcliffe had it coming.
thus endeth my bad joke quota for the day
Other ideas I had included a horror/intrigue campaign beginning in Tethyr and going into the vampire-ruled Night Baronies, or something to do with the demon cult in Impiltur. The problem becomes finding a worthwhile BBEG to tie it all back to in the long term - a clan of vampires, for instance, doesn't feel like a particularly epic-level threat.
This might be an obvious piece of GM advice, but as for big bads - the last campaign I ran was for MERP and lasted years, and the best thing I learned from it was that big bads don't have to be epic in size and scope to provide a satisfying climax. If you can make the party absolutely hate them it's sometimes even better. Have the vampire clan run by someone who'll be tough to knockover in the final battle, sure (a vampire who's also a were-dragon would provide a fun oshit moment), but if you have a couple of unique henchmen dog the party's every step through the campaign and constantly screw them over a final climax involving killing them will feel soooo good, even if they're not the end of level boss themselves.
My major bad guy was this mage/dragon who was tough as nails to beat, but the party fell over themselves to get to the evil one-eyed dwarf and his partner Black Numenorean mage next to him because after years of having these guys kick their asses and otherwise thwart them they were just itching to repay them in kind.
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I haven't had the chance to be a player in it (and probably won't) but I enjoy DM'ing it.
My players are a swordmage (human wheloon escapee), ranger (halfelf from silverymoon), warlord (drow from silverymoon, never been in the underdark) a rogue (dragonborn hatched in the gray vale, doesn't know her parents), and a druid (wild elf from elfharrow).
Like Aegeri, I enjoy the books. Just enough info and hooks to get players jumpstarted with characters and to get the DM jumpstarted with adventurin' ideas... and not so much info that you feel locked into anything (my problem with 3E FR: too much goddamned history).
So far I'm enjoying it and I wish I had more time in my IRL schedule to game!
I'm having a similar trouble with choosing a setting. I have a place I want them to start because it fits my storyline quite well, but I want them to branch out quite a bit before the end of Heroic tier. I suppose I could easily add quest rewards for travel to get them to other cities..?
Oh and I
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In my opinion, FR needs Pelor. Pelor makes everything awesome. Or is Amaunator supposed to be basically him?
Pretty much, though Amaunator is a little less Holy Protector and a little more Star Quarterback.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
While technically innocent of any wrongdoing (and having just fought off a raid) the party are dragooned into raiding the barrow by the guard and Lady Moonfire, with Zark getting off scott free as there's no real evidence against him and he denies everything (can you spot the annoying recurring bad guy yet?). Once they've sorted the barrow they'll want to look into the drug-trafficing business (I hope), which will kick into Zark's connection with bandits and the Lady of Shadows battle, which will then make them town heroes. I might cough up the dough for D&D Insider to run the adventure in Draigdurroch tower after that, or I might just have them look into links between the Lady of Shadows and her mysterious employer, who turns out to be a mage located inside a dangerous keep on an earthmote that's been floating around the area for a couple months (I might use the Thane brother's hall I'm using in the pbp here for this - it's a nice, intelligently designed house). And from there they can start following the breadcrumbs back to the Shades of Netheril or someone working for Szass Tamm. And of course while this is going on they'll be getting used to Loudwater and its inhabitants. That's the basic plan, anyway. Maps for the first few encounters are all sorted, and counters will be opal fruits (I refuse to call them starburst) and M&M's (only kill what you can eat).
Also, ahahahahaha. I've just read jacobkosh's review of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide on Amazon. Perfect.
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Interesting hook. Must be a somewhat unscrupulous party :P
I've been using this and so far I like it. The DC's in the skill challenge it starts with might not be hard enough, could be worth taking a look at. The first combat encounter requires some good strategy on the PC's part to deal with, or it could go pretty badly for them.
That's kinda neat... plus a lil' side trek in an earth mote would be cool. I may have to steal this idea.
I've just been going over the Loudwater stuff and I like it. It's generic but not in a bad way, and it's like they went out of their way to show just how many adventure hooks even a sleepy small town could have.
Bogart: you should have the trail lead to Szass Tam, because I'm totally calling dibs on Netheril. 8-) In all seriousness, though, good luck with the session (even though you're in TEH FUTARE and already know). Let me know how it goes/went.
My friends and I have had a couple sessions of my new FR4E campaign so far, and it's going well. It's based in Daggerdale, which I chose because it manages to be both remote (and very much undeveloped as a setting, compared to the rest of the Dales) and yet close to where the action is. We began with the PCs, who had been fished from the water after a shipwreck in the Moonsea, coming to from a drugged stupor, finding themselves marching through the dark woods in shackles and surrounded by Zhentarim slavers. When werewolves jumped the caravan, the PCs broke loose and did a skill challenge to outrun the werewolf pack, finally finding themselves in the tiny, ass-end town of Dagger Falls.
The town is the one point of civilization at the center of a giant woods crawling with werewolves and other nasties, and it's essentially under siege; everyone hustles out at dawn to farm and fish, but woe to anyone stuck outside the stockade at nightfall. No caravans have made it through from elsewhere in a couple of months and the townsfolk are getting desperate.
What's actually going on is that a local Sembian merchant is trying to squeeze out his competition in the Dale (and bring it into the Sembian fold) by strangling their trade, and to that end has had recourse to a bunch of lycanthropic and shadow-spawned beasts from his masters in Netheril; meanwhile, the desperate local lord has retained a band of hardass mercenaries to clean out the monsters, unaware that they're actually Zhents and are using their contract as an excuse to run drugs and slaves, possibly as a prelude to reconquering the dale as a province of a rebuilt Zhentil Keep.
What I'm trying to do is to get a bit of a sandbox thing going, where the PCs are just dumped into the middle of this and left to figure it all out (or not). I've never run one of these, before, so I'm not entirely sure how to go about setting it up and am just playing things by ear.
Heheh, thanks! I thought I was going to get voted into oblivion for that one but it seems truth and justice are on my side.
It helped that one of the PC's had chatted up Lady Moonfire the previous night in the Green Tankard and made some great diplomacy rolls. My Lady Moonfire is perhaps more of a dim posh gal than the writer intended, but I think the 'oh gosh that's so super' tone was fun. It makes a change from my usual country bumpkin NPC's, most of which end up sounding like extras from the pub in An American Werewolf In London.
We got the town raid and the first barrow room done in what turned out to be a four-hour session, and got a decent amount of roleplaying done in between the combat. M&M's make for tasty counters, but I think I'm going to have to either invest in some floor tiles or sort out some decent smaller counters to use with the photocopied maps, as it got a little confusing with only six colours of M&M's. An ominous earthmote was seen briefly on the horizon, and hints of the Lady of Shadows reached the ears of the party rogue (who interestingly chose not to share them with the rest of the party).
The second combat was a bit too easy for my liking, due to me not playing the gobbos correctly and drawing the party over the trap, and I didn't roll the second d10 for damage when a bloodied skullcleaver hit, but you live and learn. Also, barbarians, for anyone who hasn't had one in their group, hit awfully hard. After whiffing his way through the first combat he did about 36hp of damage in one turn against the hexer and laid him the hell out.
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It got people's attention... and afterward, because the PC's were the only ones who had done anything about the situation, Moonfire is keen to get their help. Got things started quickly.
Party is:
Guillaume, Human Assault Swordmage and Wheloon Escapee (played by my friend who I've known for 15 years)
"Al" (can't remember friggin elf names), Wild Elf Druid from Elfharrow (played by another D&D veteran)
Elvari, Drow Bravura Warlord from Silverymoon (played by my Drizzt fangirl player :P)
Laerilla, Half-Elf Beastmaster Ranger from Silverymoon (played by 10 year old daughter of fangirl)
Nista, Dragonborn Ruffian Rogue, local bodyguard (played by 8 year old daughter of fangirl)
Kids are great when you go through character creation... they just don't care about character optimization at all, which is a nice change from my veteran who plays the wild elf, who loves to talk about game mechanics.
My Drizz't fangirl is very happy to be playing FR... and as attached as she is to the books, she likes how different the new setting is because she doesn't know everything about it. And she takes some solace that "well, I guess it's possible that Drizz't is still alive and hiding out somewhere."
Ahahaha that's great.
Heh. That's funny, my usual country bumpkin NPC's end up sounding like the cast of "Fargo". The players have caught on that that particular voice means they're probably talking to the average joe who doesn't know much about anything.
Same. And two of my players are 8 and 10 years old... it's impressive how quickly they're picking up the game.
For them, a typical four hour session consists of two combat encounters and a skill challenge. With a little practice they might be able to get it up to three combats and a skill challenge, which seems to be a typical "full day" for adventurers.
Legos, or a similar colorful construction toy, can be very useful. I'm a big fan of Legos... they fit exactly in an inch by inch square (or 25mm x 25mm :P ) and the variety of colors makes it easy to keep track of enemies than if I use actual miniatures... since I never have miniatures that actually look like the enemies.
I think the trap isn't in the greatest location for drawing people over it. I mostly kept the hexer near it so that he would be harder to get to while his boys tried to tie the PC's up in areas with difficult terrain and obstacles.
And yeah... if in either the first or second encounter the hexer goes down early... it's over quick.
The party investigating the barrow in my game was an almost entirely human party, a decent mix of barbarian, swordmage, warlord/cleric, paladin, rogue and wizard, and the people from the local meetup group (five guys, one lass) all turned out to be fine. We were playing in a room in a local pub that's built into the rock base of the 'castle' in town. It claims to be the oldest established pub in England, but so do many others. Cool setting for the game, though. The table could have done with being a bit bigger, but the atmosphere was fine. Another RP group played something else on a couple of tables nearby, and I think another D&D group were meeting elsewhere in the pub at the same time.
I'd have loved to use legos or minatures, but using the maps from the FR Campaign Guide meant that they'd be too big for the map. I'll try and blow the maps I'm using up to a larger size for the next session, or invest in some tiles. I have a metric ton of old citadel minatures back at my folks house, and I'm fairly certain they'd be happy to get rid of them, so I might pop back over there at the weekend.
Lessons learned: those books are very heavy. For starters, don't bring a PHB, because everyone else will. Nick one of theirs if you need to refer to something. Better maps and proper counters (though I liked using M&M's and I think it was fun - impractical, though). Be more ruthless with your rolls. I fudged a pair of critical rolls that would have killed someone into one critical and a miss, purely because I didn't want anyone having their first character killed in the first session, but I think even if he'd died the party would have revived him soon enough.
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Would that be "Many-Arrows?" I'm still not clear if that's just the name of the area, or if it's also the name of their King.
And damn Bogart, that sounds like a really awesome place to hold a game.
The pub (well, as close as I can get to one in 'Merica) in my area actually would be kinda neat... and me and one of the other players are buddies with the bartender...
Damn it would be nice to be able to order a plate of sausages and a Smithwick's while playing D&D. :P
The next room is much easier, so be aware of that (you might want to add more to it, maybe?) I had a dragonborn warlord whip out a breath weapon and take out almost all the rotters in one go, before they even made it past the portcullis.
The room after that can be fun, but my PCs did a lot better there than in the first barrow fight. They pushes one of the Soldiers onto the teleportation disk to get rid of him for a while, and threw the hexer into the pit before he could really do anything.
The High Shaman proceeded to wreck them all, however, and they then were forced to run for their lives. He's a fucking terror.
PSN: SAW776
Once they discovered that he was doing something completely ineffectual they bartered him the totem from the shop in exchange for him keeping his minions in check until the return of the Ogre King. :P
I sorta turned into an impromptu social skill challenge.
I'm looking over Scepter Tower and it actually seems really cool - although admittedly I'm fond of the trope of having a bunch of strangers thrown together in a mysterious, scary place, each with their own dark secret or reason for being there. The level 2 thing isn't that huge a problem as the tower is located just down the road from Loudwater, so presumably it is meant to be run right on the heels of the stuff in the FRCG.
In the room before the Shaman, they whittled down to one soldier then he basically makes an intimidate roll and says "Surrender or Die!" But he had spent the whole fight running around and hiding, and this is a soldier who is serving a necromancer/possibly a god. So I was like.. "No.. that's not going to work." And instead had the hobgoblin feign surrender then club the PC and attempt to drown him in the fountain.
I thought it was. The rest of the party thought it was fun. The target..not so much.
But then when they got to the Shaman, while the rest of the party was trying to negotiate, he just runs up and attacks. And then, when one of the PCs almost managed to re-stabalize the situation, the one guy attacked again. And afterwards he was just like "Well, I tried diplomacy before and it blew up in my face!"
It's like.. "Surrender or Die" isn't exactly diplomacy, man.
PSN: SAW776
I'm seeing a tie in between Spellguard (based on the preview of the first page) and Draigurroch. That could be interesting.
He makes veiled references to the "new and great power" that he is investigating. He mentions that in 'Saharelguard' he found his answer... though it was a pity he could not take it with him. This would be his last entry that implies he was undone by his ambitious experiment.
Also, some Netherese tomes of Warlock-ish knowledge and Necromancy. A few ugly lookin' rituals. And some run of the mill warlock fare dealing with Infernal and Fey Pact knowledge.
Whether or not they decide to show the nastier stuff to Lady Moonfire may have... implications. They haven't really tried to determine what she is (a warlock), so whether or not they show her his research for the cash, or whether they show her the more run of the mill stuff to satisfy her before going off to investigate this nasty Netherese stuff that Draigurroch was tapping into and developing will be the choice before them.
Either way it will send them right to Spellguard Tower.
If my haphazard calculations are correct they'll be at about 2.5 when they hit Spellguard (they've finished Ogre King and are working on Icy Spire now).
If not I shall make the numbers correct.
The party's getting invited to Moonfire's ball after returning from the barrow, and I thought the evening itself would make a nice skill challenge. Little rules of etiquette while eating, the dances, the proper social nuances of high society, all these taken together could be made into a skill challenge the whole party could do. I need to think more about it, but I reckon it could work.
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