Customer Reviews

Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, 4th Edition

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(37)

 

 

First off: this is not the worst RPG product I have ever seen. (I think that anyone who has won a prize at a gaming convention, where prizes are usually cast-offs - I mean, *donations!* - from the sellers' boothes, will agree. I think I've only ever used one supplement I acquired in this way.) However, now that this declaration is out of the way, I must say: even though worse RPG books exist, this one deserves a low rating because it is such a downgrade compared to the previous book that described the Forgotten Realms campaign setting.

This 4th version of the setting is intended to get rid of a number of qualities that supposedly deterred people from roleplaying in the Forgotten Realms previously: too many gods, too many high-level NPCs, too many different cultures and nations, too much accrued lore. Apparently the history of the Realms and its various personalities were problems rather than assets. Thus, the changes between the previous edition and this edition were intended to make it attractive for a new audience.

Well, unfortunately, I don't think it has succeeded. It can't please old fans, because it has destroyed so much that was characteristic of the Realms. But I don't think it can please new ones either, because it spends so much time saying "such-and-such was like this before, but now it's like this." It doesn't always explain the significance of the changes, though - so new readers are left scratching their heads wondering why the devs bothered mentioning the fact that things used to be different at all. For instance: the attempt to copy Eberron with the "10 things you need to know about the Realms" doesn't actually succeed in copying it well, because half of them seem to be more concerned with telling old fans that things aren't the same as they used to be, rather than encapsulating what the setting is *now*. (Incidentally, the magical catastrophe of the Spellplague and the resulting plague areas and spellscars are obviously rip-offs of Eberron's Day of Mourning, Mournland, and dragonmarks, respectively. But we already have one Eberron - and a darned good setting it is too. Why try to make FR into a weak copy?) In other cases, though, when some references to changes from the old situation might prove an interesting read for everyone (e.g. a description of whatever it was that led to the current religious situation, where it's no longer necessary to worship gods and the Wall of the Faithless is gone), there is not even the slightest bit of explanation. It's almost as if explanations were made in none of the cases where they should have been and in all of the cases when they shouldn't have been.

Anyway, the chapters proper start off with a look at the town of Loudwater. This town was chosen to be a close-up example and a base for a number of possible adventures, but it is difficult to muster any enthusiasm about it whatsoever - it's just that boring and generic. Also, the fact that this section and the various possible adventures are put first in the book, before almost anything else about the setting is explained, will no doubt be confusing to those approaching the setting for the first time.

By and large, the book tends towards vagueness and blandness. There are a few nice exceptions (such as the table of art-type treasure), and it's difficult to go too wrong with some of the iconic areas like Rasheman and Cormyr... However, I found myself wondering why some of the gods were in the book at all - and, considering that the devs killed off quite a lot of the old ones or amalgamated them into other ones, that's saying something. In terms of the gods that the devs didn't cull, some of the choices are quite baffling. The drow deity of oozes is now a greater god in the main pantheon? Tyr, Mask, and Mystra (gods of paladins, thieves, and magicians, respectively) are gone - but minor halfling goddess of beauty Sheela Peryroyl is now a standard god? This problem with the gods carries through to nations and geography as well: nearly all of the new countries are less interesting, rich, and uniquely Realmsian than those they replaced. Where, exactly, was the central vision when this book was being put together? Finally, although the page count of the FRCG is not a huge amount smaller than the 3e FRCS, the print size is so much bigger that it really has far, far, far less content in it by far than its predecessor.

There is so much more I would like to write about, but it would be too long for an Amazon review. Suffice it to say: while there is an amount of good work in this book, it is so poor by comparison to the third edition version of the campaign setting that I cannot but give it one star. If you want to play 4e D&D in the Forgotten Realms, my personal advice is that you pick up a copy of the 3e FRCS and work out your own adaptation of 4e magic (and the rest) to the campaign setting. It could scarcely make less sense than the one published here, so what do you have to lose?

Having received and read the 4th edition rules recently, I was anxious to see how Wizards would treat my favorite setting, the Forgotten Realms. The Forgotten Realms (FR) have allways been a fairly standard campaign world, and I have considered that the main strength of the setting. It was a setting in which wizards, dragons, heroes and villains prospered, but none dominated. No huge cataclysms or specific perks were entered into the FR setting. It was just a plain fantasy setting. With it's huge history and detail, any adventurer placed in the FR felt like a guest in the Realms, a small part of it's huge story and background. That all has changed. The new fourth edition Forgotten Realms campaign focusses on the heroes instead of the campaign setting itself.

Although this at first would look like a very good thing, it essentially means the Realms lack depth. The same depth that made the Realms the most popular D&D setting in the first place. The 4th edition campaign setting is placed 100-odd years later than the 3rd edition. This is perhaps unsurprisingly, because of the many, many changes the 4th edition rules have made compared to the third edition. Whereas the 3rd and 2nd edition of the core D&D rules were generally using the same system, the fourth is different. And it shows in the Realms, and feels rather forced-upon the setting. The thing that strikes me most, and which I thoroughly dislike about this book, is that no particular attention is dealt to the events between the third edition and this new, revised edition. The rich history of Faerun, which has always driven the campaign, is now gone. In the fourth edition campaign setting, a total of 2 (two) pages is spent on Faerun's history - the equivalent of: "and there was light". Recent eventes are covered by two lines at most, from which we must deduct the state of the Realms. Hints are given as to what has happened to our favorite nations, heroes and even gods, but no where is to be read what exactly happened.

The book subsequently concentrates on describing locales and a few protagonists. Considering Faerun has changed tremendously, describing the reasons for those changes would have made for a far more involving campaign setting. Additionally, the many characters and orders of the FR campaign setting, like Elminster, Khelben, the Harpers and so on, are all suspiciously missing in this edition, with only a side-remark spent at best.

Now on the book itself: I really don't know who has editted this book, as well as the Player's Handbook, but it's disastrous. The PHB already left me mind-boggling when reading it, refering to abilities and systems unknown to the reader when reading from front-to-back. The Forgotten Realms Setting is doing the same, starting with a little adventure and subsequently turning to two pages of history and then... magical items and treasure! Just as in the PHB powers were described before the combat sequence, in the FRCS, magical items are deemed more important than the Realms itself. This is not just a fluke - the next chapter is on the Realms of the Gods (Cosmology) while the Gods itself, frequently referenced to, are not introduced until a chapter later! Had I not known most of the gods from previous editions, I would have been puzzled. The artwork itself is nice and frequent, but lacks the detail of previous editions, as well as a short undersign about what exactly is depicted. The artwork is fitting, but seems hurried.

The core part of the book covers the geography of Toril, as it should. This part concentrates primarily on why adventurers should be in that part of Toril and what they can experience in that particular region. Again, a focus on the adventurer instead of the setting, with only little history and main players (NPC's). The book concludes with a decent description of protagonists, however it's too focussed on encounters to my liking, instead of the underlying motives of these protagonists.

Concluding, I am very disappointed in this edition of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. All the flavour that made the Realms my favorite campaign setting is gone. Or is it? Given the frequent hints about recent history as well as characters, I can't help but wonder whether Wizards won't disclose this information in another supplement. Even if it were to be covered in another supplement, it should not be. The Realms is more than just geography, it is being part of a huge detailed history and playing with notorious non-player-characters like Elminster, Khelben, Drizzt and Manshoon. That is what made the Realms the most popular role-playing setting. For me, it no longer is.

I suggest adapting the third edition FR setting for the new fourth edition rules, if you are inclined to use these rules. This campaign book could have offered so much - but provides so little.

The flavor and richness that made Forgotten Realms so compelling as a campaign setting are no longer present. What's left is an "also ran" product with updated "stuff" to fill-in the mechanics gap created by 4e. For those uninitiated in the FR setting it does not impart the deep history or the FR Setting. The previous editions books provide this information, in some instances, very thoroughly. This edition is disappointing. So... 2 marks for adding 4e mechanics and some flavor, missing 3 marks for neglecting the aspects of the setting that made it unforgettable, mediocre integration of artwork, a pathetic (weak, weak, weak) map, and forgetting the point of having the setting in the first place.
To my way of thinking (and role-playing) I buy a campaign setting to make the role-playing experience more engrossing. The flavor of the campaign is what makes it worth-while... new toys and feats and powers and such are always nice... for me, they are not enough to justify the purchase. Sad, as this has always been my favorite "high-fantasy" setting.

I will admit up front that I don't like 4th Edition, in fact I seriously doubt that the designers could have created a game that I would dislike more. It is like every aspect of gaming that I like was removed or changed in its creation. But I also admit I love the Forgotten Realms. This is the setting where I became a DM for the first time and where the actual setting became an important part of my game experience. So I had to pick up the 4th edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide. Partly because it is like a car accident on the highway, you just gotta look to see how bad it is, and partly because this was one last chance for Wizards of the Coast to win over 4E hold-outs like myself.

Sorry, WotC, but you failed.

First off, let's throw out the entire 4E vs 3E argument. Even then, this is still a terrible book. The entire format of this book is just "wrong". Think about it, this is the first 4E Forgotten Realms book, the introduction to the Realms for a new generation of gamers. Unfortunately, that introduction does not start till page 82! In your typical Role Playing Book, Each chapter of the book build upon the last chapter. In a Player Guide, you start with ability scores, then race, classes, skills, feats, equipment and spells. But not in this book, the chapters look like they were just thrown together randomly starting with an Adventure. Of course there are a lot of aspects of the adventure that do not make any sense unless you have already read the rest of the book. Also, the adventure is rather bland, just a basic Goblin hunt. The original Forgotten Realms Grey Boxed set had an adventure too, a quick trip into the legendary Myth Drannor. Personally, I think this 4E adventure would have been rejected by Dungeon magazine for being to generic.

As I read the next few chapters, I wondered if somehow this book was accidentally assembled backwards because we have a group of little chapters that traditionally would be in the back of the book; Glossary, Time line, Magic Items, Local Treasures, and Languages & Realms speak, which leaves out the traditional "Well Met" greeting by the way.

Next we get to Magic and the Spellplague, Plaguechanged and Spellscars. Get used to these three words because you will be seeing them about every other page. Now what does a Spellscar do for your PC? I don't know, that information will be in the Next Forgotten Realms book. Yeah, page after page of this book referencing something that you will need to buy another book to use.

Next we have the planes (Say goodbye to the Planescape setting) and the gods of the Realms, and they still need two full pages to list them all, but they simplify thing by not providing anything more that a single sentence to define most of them. This is strange, on one hand they want you to forget the past editions of the Forgotten Realms, but on the other you are going to need those books to get the information you need because they have already said there will only be three 4E Realms books.

Finally we are 82 pages into the book and we get to the actual Forgotten Realms. There is an interesting sidebar here where they point out that the majority of the NPCs mentioned in this book are presented without statistics. They say this is because it is your game and you can stat them to fit your world.

Personally I have three problems with this; One, when I pay $30 for a book, I would like it to be finished! Not finishing the book is lazy, bragging about it in a sidebar is brazenly lazy. Two, 4E is new! We need examples to understand how to create those statistics. And three is one of the hidden flaws of 4th edition. In previous editions, NPCs used the same rules that players did. You could sum up a NPC with a single word and number. Town Mayor; Bard 5, Sheriff; Ranger 6, Innkeeper; Rogue 4. But under 4th edition, NPCs use the same rules as Monsters and the monster rules cannot be simplified like this. You would have to provide a full stat block for each NPC or provide nothing, as they did here.

Next we get to the actual nations of the realms, which brings us to the Map. Almost all the 1st and 2nd edition Forgotten Realms products came with maps and they were magnificent. The map included here is far from magnificent. It is vague and inaccurate, Candlekeep is described as being 100ft of the coast but the map shows it about 50 miles inland. And there is a small section of the map with each of the nation entries, but many of the cities and locations mentioned are not shown on the map.

As to the nations themselves, well if you are an old fan, this is the part of the book that will really have you shaking you head. I don't know what it was about the Shining South that offended the designers, but no nation there survived intact. In fact just about everything I liked about the realms is gone or destroyed. Everything that made the realms unique and set it apart from other setting has been washed away. The Harpers, the Zhentarim, nations of Halflings, Wizards and Half elven Drow Amazons all gone. The nations based on historical cultures of our world have also been eliminated. The Realms of 4E just does not feel like the realms and the chapter on Returned Abeir really proves it. There is nothing about this new continent that feels like the Forgotten Realms at all. In fact for a moment I thought maybe someone had included a preview of 4E Eberron in this book, because that is what this new area really looks like, even the sky is a different color here.

Next we see the Underdark and then a chapter on threats of the Realms. Interesting to note that two minor creatures from Returned Abeir get two full pages each, while classic creatures get a sidebar. Kir-lanan, the godless gargoyles are now devout worshipers of Shar and the Draegloth demons are now hot Drow babes with four arms. Why? I don't know, ask the guy who put breasts on the Dragonborn.

I really don't know why all of this had to be changed for 4th edition. Why not have a nation of Saurials instead of Dragonborn? Why destroy so much of the work of previous writers and designers? Why eliminate everything that made the Realms unique? Here was a chance to bring back some of the longtime gamers who were shoved aside for 4E, but instead many aspects of this book seemed designed to push us even further away. The book will touch upon something from 100 years ago, but not explain it at all.

Overall, this is a depressing book. To see something that I have enjoyed for all these years destroyed just to make a World of Warcraft knock-off just does not make sense. If I wanted to play WoW, I would be playing it, I want to play D&D in the Forgotten Realms, but the realms presented here should be forgotten. So much of it is just so bland and uninspiring. With each Paizo Pathfinder book, I want to see more. But with each 4E book I see, I am left wondering why did they try to fix something that was not broken.

This book just reminds me that 4E is just a game I have no desire to play.

I have been a fan of the Realms for over 20 years and enjoyed my first look at the 4th edition rule set. But I was growing very concerned over the direction the design team was taking with my beloved Realms. 100 year time jumps, the killing off of many of the deities, the complete obliteration of whole nations.

As it turned out, it was even worse than I thought. Whole land masses were swapped with another world simply for the sake of introducing certain 4e things like the dragonborn. Mulhorand? Gone. Neverwinter? Destroyed for no apparent reason. The Zhents? A shell of themselves. The Harpers? Pathetic little group. I don't even want to discuss what happened to the various dieties.

Whats worse is that the book is not even well written. The lore is kept to a minimum, which is very un-Realms like. Unfortunately, Bruce Cordell had a lot to do with this volume. Never a good thing.

The only half way decent part was the Returned Abeir section. Maztica has been replaced with a new land mass filled with dragon emperors, Dawn Titans, and rebellious people. It would have made much more sense to merely introduced this land in an effort 4th-edition-ize the Realms, but the design team decided a better idea would be to junk decades of lore and campaigning.

The real reason behind this devastation is the effort to decrease the homework for the novelists. Two of the designers, Rich Baker and Bruce Cordell, as well as others, have been criticized for errors in lore when writing their novels. The simplest way to protect themselves was to remove the lore. Which they have done. Unfortunately, they have removed my interest, as well. Not to mention put out a subpar product.

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 ...

First of all let me say this review is written from the point of view of a gamer who has used the Forgotten Realms as his primary game world for a little over 18 years but is willing to embrace a new system when it works such as the transition between 2nd and 3rd ed.

I had already felt like D&D had been destroyed by the 4th ed. I hated the video game approach to the game and laughed at the explanation that they are taking the game back to "role playing". As I have said elsewhere regarding this subject, If you need a new system to inject role playing into a game, you're doing it wrong. I also laughed when I read that the reason the Realms has changed so much is to better reflect the new system. This baffled me, it still does. They didn't need to tear apart the Realms when the 3rd edition came out.

"That's OK though" I thought. "Forgotten Realms has always been about the lore and substance of the world, I can still use the 4th ed Realms books for their information rather that their implemented rules" (I still have many 1st and 2nd edition books that serve this purpose admirably). With growing incredulity I watched the writers gloss over almost everything of any interest.

Things that are major issues to fans receive little or, more often, no explanation. For example (SPOILER ALERT) the entry on The Silver Marches (Now called Luruar for no explained reason) casually states "Before she passed away, High Lady Alustriel of Silverymoon founded a mutual defense league in the region." That's the soul mention of Alustriel in the entire book. No how, when or why. Just "passed away". This would mean nothing to the casual reader but to myself and countless other fans of the Realms it requires a little more than that. To put it into broader terms, this would be like reading and loving the Sherlock Holmes stories and then picking up a book one day and reading "Before he died, Watson was a close friend and confidante to Holmes" with no further explanation or insight as to why or how this major character was tossed aside without rime or reason.

It didn't take too long to sadly see that the Realms no longer existed. Now I'm not talking about "The Realms you knew no longer exist due to a great calamity" kind of no longer existed, I'm talking about the kind of "no longer existing" that involves throwing out every single piece of what makes something appealing, intriguing and deep, and replacing it with something else that calls itself by the same name but is simply a shadow of it's predecessor. I can only describe it as...well, empty. This word kept coming back to me as I turned page after soulless page. Empty. The heart of the Realms has been ripped out and replaced by a clockwork replica that tries to do the job but is so distant from the original it might as well be something else entirely.

WOTC could almost have released this as a new campaign setting and got away with it. Change the names, countries etc and voila, new money making scheme. This is to the Realms what the Highlander, Robocop and The Crow sequels were to their original incarnations. An Insult. They took a wonderful, creative concept that fans embraced and loved and then decided to ignore everything that came before it and turn it into an empty shell of it's former self.

The only people I can see enjoying this game are the people who were introduced to D&D via 4th ed and have never heard of the Forgotten Realms before and good luck to them. It just saddens me that they missed out on such a good thing.

I always liked to remain relatively faithful to official Realms canon for simplicities sake. That way, when new books or source material came out that is specific to events or history, I don't have to twist things around too much to make use of it. With all the little details and events taken care of in the official lore, I could concentrate on merging my game/story into that world and use the wealth of information as a foundation to build upon. I have now abandoned official Realms at this point and will do as I damn well please because I no longer care what WOTC do with it because I won't be buying it. (I know I could have done this anyway as any game world is the DM's to do with as he/she pleases but I explained why I didn't). I'll start by fully embracing the Pathfinder system by Paizo Publishing, currently available as a free beta PDF, which both streamlines and expands upon the 3.5 core rules under the open game license. Wow, that sounded like an infomercial, I swear I don't work for them. I just like 3.5 and would rather give my money to a company who is going to do something with it when the 500+ page final release comes out next year.

If you are looking for Forgotten Realms, might I suggestForgotten Realms Campaign Setting (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.0 Fantasy Roleplaying, Forgotten Realms Setting)?

Fourth edition takes another step in furthering itself from Dungeons and Dragons altogether by adding Forgotten Realms' new changes to the mix. The continent of Faerun has been shattered by Spell Plague. In short, this means they skip 100 years in the future. Apparently (now, they say this in the text), the Weave, the thing that creates magic in Faerun, was unimportant to its use. In short this setting has been neutered from its original. Massive retconning has taken place to change much of the history to the point that they have simply ignored things that occurred in the past, or blatantly changed it.

Evil is evil and good is good, and one of the worst parts of these changes is that the complicated evils of the past (the Zhents and the Black Network, the Red Wizards of Thay in their Magocracy) have been changed to be unrecognizable. Many of the changes completely go in the opposite direction of every piece of lore that had been before 4th edition occurred.

If you are a new player of 4th edition (read: World of Warcraft) you may enjoy this setting. But anyone who has enjoyed Forgotten Realms in the past for its intricacy, detail and story would do best to steer clear of this abomination.

Also, like the other 4th edition books, this too contains recycled artwork.

I was so excited when I recieved this in the mail the other day, but when I flipped open the book my first reaction was shock. The illustrations were sparse and flat out boring (the maps look like they were made with free internet software!), there seemed no rhyme or reason to the overall layout of the material, and the areas were written like a "sneek-peek" preview from a gaming mag rather than content from the actual book. I quickly checked the back of the book to see if this was really a WOTC licensed setting; I just couldn't believe the poor treatment to such an important franchise.

Trusting in the great authors who took part in this book, I decided to be open minded and read it anyways. I can say without a shadow of doubt, this is probably one tenth the value of the 3.0 version of the same setting. It's missing classes, races, in depth time lines, key NPC's, and illustrations that really felt like the Realms. I understand the idea is to expand on all this later, but to say this all a DM needs to run a FR campaign is grossly misleading.

Worst WOTC product I've ever seen.

The item decription includes this little gem: "This book includes everything a Dungeon Master needs to run a D&D campaign in the Forgotten Realms setting..." This isn't just a slight exaggeration. It's an outright lie.

Beyond the gutting of the Forgotten Realms world history and the total overhaul in geography, there is fundamental information missing from the write-ups to actually run the campaign as presented. Would you like to challenge your players with a flare-up of Spellplague? Well, you'll either have to wait for the FR Players Handbook or make it up yourself. Do you want some stat information about the various personalities in Faerun? You better houserule it!

It's amazing to me that a book filled with nothing but fluff can have so little actual content in it. If you have the 3rd Edition FR book, then keep it and play in the real campaign world. Just treat this one as some weird alternate reboot.