Why's Forgotten Realms more popular than Greyhawk?

[Dethangels Shadow]

Actually previous to 3.0+, Greyhawk was in another crystal sphere or DnD dimension.  They may have changed that since then.  FR was created fully by Ed Greenwood, wife, and friends. 

 

--PVR

They haven't changed it... they are two seperate crystal spheres, with uniquely different cosmologies. Greyhawk uses the standard one from the core books, Faerun's is much, much different.

 

One thing they have highlighted (starting in 3e) is how difficult it is to travel from FR to another cyrstal sphere (ie Greyhawk).. there is only one or two ways to do it... and it's a dangerous trek. IIRC, only the Shadow plane can be used... too tired to look it up right now.

[Foil]

Actually previous to 3.0+, Greyhawk was in another crystal sphere or DnD dimension.  They may have changed that since then.  FR was created fully by Ed Greenwood, wife, and friends. 

 

--PVR

They haven't changed it... they are two seperate crystal spheres, with uniquely different cosmologies. Greyhawk uses the standard one from the core books, Faerun's is much, much different.

 

One thing they have highlighted (starting in 3e) is how difficult it is to travel from FR to another cyrstal sphere (ie Greyhawk).. there is only one or two ways to do it... and it's a dangerous trek. IIRC, only the Shadow plane can be used... too tired to look it up right now.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Well when your not so tired I would like to hear a little more about that.

[Shadow Drifter]

LOL now that you bring up travel between the two, it would be interesting to see greyhawk implimented into NWN 2. LOL even if it was only a cameo (you get the meaning) "You must travel to the this crystal sphere to capture a (insert quest item here), best of luck (insert heros name here)".

 

Now that would be interesting... maybe

[knightsubzero]

why is dragonlance not as popular as forgotton realms?

 

marketing simple as that. i personally like dragonlance alot more it has a more epic feel to it. the books are brilliantly written (mostly). But that is also the reason forgotten realms is so big cause the books are brilliantly written read anything by R.A. salvatore and you will just go wow this guy is awsome he knows how a sword really works instead of some writers who's only knowledge is pointy end goes here.

 

ive never heard of greyhawk before.

 

and id also like to support shadow drifter i live in brisbane as well (its more like 1 million people as opposed to 100000 (3rd biggest city)) and Pnp isnt very big at all warhammer has some following but is still about as popular as WWF.

 

the only table top game of anykind i have played is lord of the rings and thats only been about 3 times. I own hundreds of minatures all around my house but i just paint them i dont play them.

 

i guess we have better things to do like play video games that have a lot more feel to them.

 

I mean some people play pen and paper (i know 3 who do) but its rare and i know alot of people.

[Dethangels Shadow]

Well when your not so tired I would like to hear a little more about that.

Here's some of the details regarding the Plane of Shadow..

 

As described in Manual of the Planes, the Plane of Shadow constitutes the primary link between Toril's planar cosmology and those of other worlds.  The Plane of Shadow connects Toril's Material Plane with those of other worlds, including the default world for the D&D core books -- the World of Greyhawk.  Naturally, in a land as full of magical portals as Faerun is, unusual portals that connect to other Material Planes via conduits through the Plane of Shadow almost certainly exist.  Some sages point to such connections as the source of spells named after the great wizards of Greyhawk, such as Otto's irresistible dance, Otiluke's freezin sphere, Tenser's transformation, and the various Bigby's hand spells.

 

The cosmology of Toril is likened to a tree with many branches, with the prime material, ethereal and shadow planes forming the trunk.

[Arlain]

honestly though... i live an hour from brisbane, and even in brisbane your hard pressed to find DnD... as some one said before its not that popular here (that said Warhammer isnt either, i just guess some super nerd decided to open shop with very few customers LOL man i hate warhammer)

 

You seem to not know brissy well.

 

Ace Comics and Games(City), Fast Break Sports (Nundah- (mutilple Living Greyhawk (and Living FR) games a month here), Mind Games (Stones Corner and City), Comic Warriors (Annerley), Rajin Comics (southside somewhere), Borders (big bookstore in the City), Wicked Games (Aspley).

 

There is a shop in Ipswich, another in Beaudesert, and another somewhere deep southside that I know of, but I don't remember the names of.

 

BTW if you are interested in trying out the PnP side of things the folks that run the RPGA's living campaigns would be glad to see you - contact them through the Yahoo group Brisgames

 

II know there is a gaming shop in Bundy and there certainly used to be one out at Toowoomba. I'm not aware of any on either the Sunshine or Gold coasts, but a little asking around on the Brisgames list should turn them up.

 

Australia has a massive PnP community, that allows a lot of gaming shops to flurish. (Heck I was down in Mornington the other week on holidays and low and behold there was a gaming shop...true it was full of kids playing 40K but they sold DnD stuff as well.)

 

Any Australians wanting to hook up with local PnP folks can drop me a PM, chances are I can put you in touch with someone., or at least find your local store.

 

Oh and to say something relevant to the actual thread...

 

All TSRs settings are high fantasy, ithey are just different flavors of High Fantasy. FR and GH both have horrible geo-politics and worse histories, cobled together to suit the needs of tonights gaming session and the latest module. (Dragonlance performs better in these regards as it was built from scratch by TSR to sell books and gaming in parallel.)

 

One of my favourite settings is Planescape - because at first level everything really can eat you, but it just doesn't suit my style as a Dm so I never managed to run a campaign there. But FR, GH, and DL are easy for me to run games in so I've ran them in all those settings (plus Darksun, Mystara, and some others.) I like the high fantasy aspect of these settings and can easily tailor campaigns to suit them. But I also likey gritty realism to and in the same settings can tailor campaigns for that as well.

 

 

So ultimately the settings become what the DM and PCs can make of them, not what they are in the sourcebooks. The sourcebooks are a source of ideas - cannon is what happens in your campaign. (Which is why I like PW play over module play in NWN)

[Dethangels Shadow]

You seem to not know brissy well.

 

Ace Comics and Games(City), Fast Break Sports (Nundah- (mutilple Living Greyhawk (and Living FR) games a month here), Mind Games (Stones Corner and City), Comic Warriors (Annerley), Rajin Comics (southside somewhere), Borders (big bookstore in the City), Wicked Games (Aspley).

 

...

 

Australia has a massive PnP community, that allows a lot of gaming shops to flurish. (Heck I was down  in Mornington the other week on holidays and low and behold there was a gaming shop...true it was full of kids playing 40K but they sold DnD stuff as well.)

 

Any Australians wanting to hook up with local PnP folks can drop me a PM, chances are I can put you in touch with someone., or at least find your local store.

Heh... I knew it.. :cool:

You just have to know where to look..

 

So ultimately the settings become what the DM and PCs can make of them, not what  they are in the sourcebooks. The sourcebooks are a source of ideas - cannon is what happens in your campaign. (Which is why I like PW play over module play in NWN)

That's true... it's always what the DM and PC's make out of it. I think the argment with what is or is not "canon" really has to do with what a licensed product can or can not contain. With NWN and NWN2 being licensed products, they should fit within the core rules and sources (FRCS, PGtF, RoF, etc.)

 

One of the reasons I liked HotU so much was because it tied the story into a current event happening in the Realms. It didn't, however, alter the course of events such as the OC did -- eg. Klauth dead, Neverwinter's thaw, etc.

[EnderAndrew]

I'll take Planescape, Dragonlance, and Dark Sun over both FR and GH.

[Dalmir "The Dark"]

I personally use Greyhawk as a home base and Forgotten Realms as a secondary stomping ground. I also use Planescape because it connects to everything as has a lot of flavor in and of itself. My players have even ventured to Dark Sun and been sucked into Ravenloft on occasion. They have also frequented a good number of the inner and outer planes on a regular basis.

 

My campaign, when active, really has very few limitations. Game settings become more like planes and are considered as either the prime material plane or alternate prime as needed. Once Greyhawk was no longer supported by TSR, I started incorporating some of the Forgotten Realms material into my campaign and just took it from there. My overall campaign world has evolved into quite a hybrid over the years as a result.

[EnderAndrew]

I like to fill my worlds with my NPCs. Even when I played DragonLance way back in junior high, we always played on different continents. Why have players who know the source material as well as you, if not better?

 

What if players argue that you're not representing an existing city well enough? If you create your own settings, then you are the auteur.

 

I may pull rules from certain settings, but I don't take much source material from them.

[Ginthaeriel]

3e and 3.5e was only well received cause it pampered the carebears who didnt even bother to try to understand 2e rules(which i still say are the best rules and LAST rules of the once great AD&D)

 

Did you just call people who prefered 3E carebears? Do you even know what that means? It means someone who is too afraid of getting ganked in PvP and therefore whines about it. Not someone who refuses to understand a ruleset system that is inflexible, allowed for very little character development unless with the use of some very niche and hard to find rules, with lots and lots of supplementary overhead rules added by tons of different people all working from different campaigns with different settings and different styles all throughout the years.

 

I say good riddance to 2nd Edition. This is Pen and Paper roleplaying, not a freaking computer game with "carebears", what matters is the story, the character development and the freedom of creativity. Does anyone still play such a restricted class based system? In all honesty, I believe the best PnP systems are ones that don't have any classes at all and are totally skill based. That allows for total character freedom.

 

As for the whole FR vs. GH debate: here's my suggestion. Make your own world! Surely you must have enough creativity to not require having someone construct a setting for a story for you to roleplay, right? Honestly, it just seems so much more rewarding if you have characters that adventure in a brand new world of their own, creating the setting as they go along, as if they were exploring it. If you set a PnP game in FR or GH, you could just read the sourcebook and then know everything there is about the setting. Boring. The DM can never surprise you this way. Plus, if you create your own setting, it's magic levels, realism levels and amount of drow (which is going to become an actual statistic in all PnP products eventually, since they permeate every facet of PnP so damn much) are all custom tailored to your tastes. Sourcebooks are a waste of money.

[Volourn]

"If you set a PnP game in FR or GH, you could just read the sourcebook and then know everything there is about the setting. Boring. The DM can never surprise you this way."

 

Hahahahahahahhahahahahaha. No. You are wrong. Next.

[EnderAndrew]

I can understand the most complicated rules systems. That doesn't mean I have to like them.

 

Cross-referencing charts and looking up tables is not fun. The less the rules get in the way of the story, and staying in-character, the better.

[Rosbjerg]

me and my group (jeez that sounds geeky) always play without rules .. we have a fair GM and that way we can focus on the actual role-playing! that's what I prefer ..

[Volourn]

Only poor role-players allow any amount of rules to ruin their role-playing.

[Rosbjerg]

I would say only poor role-players need rules to play ..

[Volourn]

"I would say only poor role-players need rules to play .. "

 

Good to know. I never use rules in my games. Just guidelines. Next.

[Rosbjerg]

you'll say anything to win an argument won't you? :D

[Volourn]

"you'll say anything to win an argument won't you?"

 

Yeah. I shouldn't lie. I use one rule. :cool:

[EnderAndrew]

I thought it was rule zero.

 

And who said Volourn won arguements?

[Ginthaeriel]

"If you set a PnP game in FR or GH, you could just read the sourcebook and then know everything there is about the setting. Boring. The DM can never surprise you this way."

 

Hahahahahahahhahahahahaha. No. You are wrong. Next.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Perhaps "never" is too strong a word, but even then, all surprises will be situational and not in terms of a world setting. For example, seeing for the first time that a place like Sembia exists when you've been adventuring in the Silver Marches your whole campaign is an example of world setting based surprise. Obviously this won't happen if you have read the sourcebook. Situational surprise would be discovering that the king was actually a doppelganger in the service of your archenemy. And that doesn't really count, because in any good story, it's kind of a *necessity* for the DM to be able to come up with cool twists like that, at least for a good game.

 

Hell, even that situational surprise can be ruined if the adventurers knew doppelgangers existed. People ought to invent their own monsters as well.

 

Using Sourcebooks is restricting. They are a waste of money. If you must use a setting, at least use one where not *everything* is really known, so that at least you can allow for some improvisational flexibility for the DM.

[Darque]

Yer all buffleheaded

[EnderAndrew]

I use the sourcebook to be me a ground. Forgotten Realms has the UnderDark. Star Wars has Jedi and Sith.

 

The rest I fill in.

[Darque]

Being on topic: I can't see why either setting is popular

 

They're both dull.

 

Give me Dark Sun or Planescape... though Eberron looks interesting.

[Percival]

Being on topic: I can't see why either setting is popular

 

They're both dull. 

 

Give me Dark Sun or Planescape... though Eberron looks interesting.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Ah, it took nearly 5 pages for people to start trashing a setting without any reasonable arguments. Well, congrats, I thought it would only take 1 or 2 pages of replies.