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msatran
Learned Scribe
USA
210 Posts |
 Posted - 17 Nov 2005 : 05:51:32
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This is going to sound like a whiny rant. I know it. I know it before I even begin typing.
But still, I press on. When I began running my Forgotten Realms game about 18 years ago in October, I had high hopes and most of them were fulfilled. The world lived, it breathed, most of the characters and NPC's were three dimensional characters who lived and breathed.
Villains were similar. Organizations of humans, organizations of cultists, groups of people who had motives and dreams that were highly interesting and socially complex.
A lot of this is gone now, especially from recent sourcebooks. I love Champions of Ruin and Champions of Valor, but there are huge problems with them. For one thing, the game seems to be moving away from human villains and human motivations, and towards villains who are evil outsiders, villains who are horrible tentacled squid monsters, and villains whose motives are largely beyond the comprehension of the normal human mind.
Plainly put, this isn't as much fun. Reading about Sossalion and what's going on in Impiltur made me yawn a lot. Another evil demon with no human motivations. Once the PC's figure out a way to isolate the demon (Who can't enter the country), it dies because it's not a melee combatant. Yeah, it's hard, but if you're powerful enough to fight the demon, your cleric is powerful enough to cast Miracle.
I want more core race based villainy. I love the Eldreth Veluuthra, because that organization has a clear, yet twisted motive, is horribly evil, and can be extremely subtle.
A better story for what's going on in Impiltur, rather than create an evil outsider who hides in a cave in the mountains, would be this.
Sambryl IS Sambral. She is an evil enchantress with Mind Blank and Modify Memory. She does all kinds of evil things and then, when discovered, rearranges their brain. If someone throws off the enchantment, he dies in an accident, dies of a wasting disease, etc...
Instead of having a clear cut final battle where your PC's beat up some evil outsiders, NOW you have a problem, where your PC's must battle their Teachers and Mentors, who are likely as Lawful Good as they are, defeat them without killing them, and then take on the Evil Queen.
If I do run a game in Impiltur, I'll probably use this.
Lately, I've been very disappointed with a lot of Realms Product, and it shows in my posts, mainly because the human motivations that drive the world have been neglected a lot in favor of mighty evil outsiders, powerful undead (Including what I consider excessive death knight use (Vanrak Moonstar, Imphras II)), and way too many epic NPCs.
I know there's been a deliberate attempt to make things more videogamey on the part of Wizards, but I would MUCH rather see supplements where the motivations of NPC's are cast in more human terms, because the best stories have a little bittersweet touch to them, where victory comes at the cost of human tragedy and loss.
Nobody talks about the Forgotten Realms Novels in the same breath with Lord of the Rings, because in LOTR, you really get that sense that something valuble and important has been lost, because there was a price in human emotion, and in the way people feel about others.
I want more "Being good isn't easy" and less clear cut stuff.
Because roleplaying should always have moral dilemmas. The moment the dilemmas vanish, it's just hack and slash.
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KnightErrantJR
Great Reader
USA
5402 Posts |
Posted - 17 Nov 2005 : 16:06:42
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I know where you are coming from, in some cases, but not all.
Champions of Ruin was in part arranged as a sort of amalgam of Realms Book of Vile Darkness/Evil Player's Handbook, and less about presenting you with villians and their current plans in the Realms. To be fair, Aumvor, Eltab, and the Elder Elemental Evils were all mentioned many times before in the Realms, and Sonellion and Malkzid were both sort of hinted at/lurking in the shadows of Realmslore for a while.
Champions of Valor is geared towards giving heroes more options to play with heroes that are specifially dedicated to being good and spreading good. Not a lot of "current events/plots" going on in a book like that, but I loved the little touches, like the horse breeds.
I agree with you on the Eldreth Veluuthra. Very interesting villains. One of the better extrapolations to be made formal into the 3rd edition rules. Obviously the seeds of this came from Ed's Elminster in Myth Drannor and subsequent works, but its a logical extention, and a group with interesting views and goals.
As far as the excessive death knight use, I think that is just a function of that fact that for a long time, Death Knights were thought of as a DragonLance signature creature, so no one would touch them for other settings, and now that that stigma isn't quite as prominent, I think it just sort of happened. Chalk it up to coincidence. If another few books have death knights in them, then I'll start getting upset.
I do agree, to a degree WOTC has started to make things a little bit more "short attention span" but I think its actually gotten better since the earlier days of 3rd edition, not worse. Even the artwork seems to be moving away from the hip "dungeon punk" image that they were sure would draw in all the new players that saw their ads on MTV (ugh).
I think part of why no one talks about Forgotten Realms novels in the same breath as LOTR is becuase LOTR really kicked off modern fantasy fiction, and its a hard act to follow. If you are implying that Realms fiction is lowering in quality, think back to the early to mid nineties when every person on staff at TSR seemed to get to write at least one Realms novel, even if the story could have been cut and pasted into any fantasy setting. I just finished reading Paul S. Kemp's Erevis Cale trilogy, and its hard for me to picture Realms fiction going down in quality after reading them.
I think moral dilemas are difficult to present in sourcebooks. In some ways, you can say that this or that good person had ties to this or that theives guild through a relative, or that they are geas by this or that evil wizard, but in the end, I think it has as much to do with a DM presenting the situation in a manner that his players can pick up and run with, and some players will never run with them.
At any rate, I would like to see a return to more regional sourcebooks, no matter what format or jist they put on them (since apparently Mysteries of the Moonsea will be more "hook" oriented then previous ones). I do think you have to have books other than just regional sourcebooks, however, becuase someone that never has his players leave, say, the Silver Marches, might still benefit from a magic sourcebook or a book like Champions of Valor.
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hooper101
Learned Scribe
USA
117 Posts |
Posted - 17 Nov 2005 : 16:48:22
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| Well thought out both of you. These thoughts are deffinately proven correct by all the posts in the stupidest thing a character has done in a campaign, a lot of which are normal behaviors in the E-gaming world. I think there are people who want to fight outsiders all the time and they probably should move towards a more sci-fi setting. What is popualr though sells and what sells drives what is printed. I would bet that quite a few of the authors have left the table executives shaking their heads and knowing that the older fans would hate these things but also believing that we could work our way around it. It sounds like you still have a great flare for writing a well thought out and very human motivated campaign Msatran. I agree with you give me human plots, I dont need no stinking Balrogs. Huzaah! |
Die, die, die ,die, die, why won't you just die you silly dragon! |
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msatran
Learned Scribe
USA
210 Posts |
Posted - 17 Nov 2005 : 20:00:01
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Well, thank you, it's nice to get a compliment.
I can still have Sonellion and run the campaign, it does function, just not as well, unless Sonellion is bound to the enchantress in some way. (By blood, a prisoner of her desire to manipulate Impiltur and remain in power through ritual binding, an actual member of the Citadel of Conjurers who Nord DIDN'T kill, either because she wasn't there or because she escaped (And it's not like anyone will recognize this person, how many hundreds of years was this? It's not like the modern era, where people look at a picture of a really evil guy, like Hitler, and say "My GOD! That's HITLER!" :))
I was thinking it might not even be a person at all. My current thought was Maulagrym Sorcerer 5/Cleric 5 (Shar)/Mystic Theurge 14 (CR 28) (For some reason, all campaigns around level 20 are have a CR 26-28 bad guy at the end. Why break tradition?)
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Rinonalyrna Fathomlin
Great Reader
USA
7106 Posts |
Posted - 19 Nov 2005 : 04:01:11
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I also don't agree about the novels--the actual storylines of the best novels have very human characters in them, and often a sense of loss.
I like the comments about "too many evil oustiders/undead/weird monsters" though. I like villains that have palpable motivations, rather than just "he's evil, and that's it." |
"Instead of asking why we sleep, it might make sense to ask why we wake. Perchance we live to dream. From that perspective, the sea of troubles we navigate in the workaday world might be the price we pay for admission to another night in the world of dreams."
--Richard Greene (letter to Time) |
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What I want in the Realms in the next few years:
