As a believer that role-playing is more about creating a story than just hack’n’slash action, I was very sad to see D&D become a World of Warcraft style game of power-ups. However, that just gives me even more incentive to create characters who can cut through the stats and enhancement bonuses to create a lasting impression for DMs, GMs and other players.

I loved the details of 3e and the landscape felt like a place you’ve read about and placed on your travel list somewhere between Rome and Bora Bora.

I guess I’ll just take my quarter elf, quarter celestial, third human, half dragon wizard/sorceror/bard/ranger/fighter/chosen of mystra/doomguide/epic arcane archer/devoted disciple of hoar with his holy energy aura throwing returning smoking gelatinous cube bane vorpal +17 kukri and adapt him to the new rules.
**sigh**

The book proposes another option that I really like: Portals get fucked in all sorts of weird ways during the Spellplague, so have the PCs enter a portal, spend 100 years stuck there in stasis and then pop out in the new Realms. Tidy.

@Sarlax: Well put — I respect where you’re coming from. I think in some ways we need different things out of our setting books. For me, the adventure hooks are cool because for the most part they’re tied into the setting in ways that give me ideas — they make great Realms-specific seeds.

@Itliaf: OK, I’ll bite: Apart from personal enjoyment as a stats geek, did you actually use the percentile population breakdown data for each region? I’m not calling you out here — I’m genuinely curious.

@Wampus again: Re: the lack of gutters in the sidebars. Glad I could “help” you with that.

In the same vein, ever since I spotted the errors on the map, I find errors on the map every region or two. It’s like they threw darts to determine whether a place was a ruin/site or a settlement.

Thanks for pointing this out, Martin. Now it’s driving me nuts as well.
*shakes fist*

And you’re right, that index is a joke. Hopefully, someone will publish a more complete one soon.

*huddled stat geek raises hand*

Great Review Martin,
I have skimmed over most of the setting, and I agree with your assessment of the relative usefulness of each section. Although I love to be wowed with some of the truly unique cultural details, the best details in FR are the ones that are interesting, but also lend themselves to inspiring adventure. The best ones are often to be found outside of the designated “Adventure Hooks” section, and I will be missing those sorely I am sure, but then it’s not as if I chucked all my 2nd and 3rd edition books when 4e came out.

I found the threats section to be an especially great way to organize the monsters and npcs baddies for the setting. In previous editions I always found the monster sections to be a bit tacked on, as in “Oh, more monsters, what am I supposed to do with these?” Having them placed in immediate context is very handy. At the same time I have no problem with grabbing a stat block, filing off the serial numbers, and using the stats for something completely different (as if the players will ever know that the Goblin Warchief they just fought began life as a halfling skypirate)

In addition to your minor gripe about the layout, I would add the prose in this book is not edited to the quality the core books were. Awkward phrasing and abruptly finished paragraphs abound. It seems like they had to cut a lot of material in a hurry to fit their layout. Which is a shame. I bet there is a truly awesome 400 page draft of this out there somewhere.

I’d have written one myself, but I flipped through the book at our local store and was immediately turned off. It matches the format of the core three, and that’s a bad thing. The three core books are all about simple rules and a light approach. That’s not what a setting book should do, however.

I like setting books that immerse the reader in the world. In 3E, I always held Realms books as the standard for presenting setting information. The FRCS was so packed with information that you could use it as a textbook in college courses (FR 1010, 1020, and 2010). Races of Faerun, Underdark, and Serpent Kingdoms were all loaded with information. I flipped open FR4E and saw big margins, lots of whitespace, big fonts, and bullet-point style information presentation and could see that most of what I loved about FR presentation from 3E was gone.

I don’t find much value in adventure hooks. Why not? Because they have almost no relation to the PCs you’re going to wind up with. I want my setting to connect to the PCs in my game, but a hook like, “Rumors of undead crocodiles stealing wagons at midnight spread in a Sembian tavern. Are the stories true, or is the old codger advancing a mysterious agenda?” aren’t very useful. If my players are even in Sembia, what’s to say this has anything to do with the campaign?

Generic adventure hooks are fine things if your campaign is a string of random dungeon crawls, but I don’t want space devoted to them. I could pop onto almost any RPG message board and get inundated with adventure hooks. What I won’t be deluged with is quality, detailed setting materials.

Of course, I recognize the counter that a setting doesn’t necessarily connect with my actual group, either. The difference is that a detailed setting both gives the players information they can use to make characters that connect to the world and that I, as a GM, can fall back on those details if the players ever surprise me.

@Ishmayl: Yeah, the map is a little small and lacking in detail. Part of it was to support PoL, I suppose, but I was really hoping for something big and flashy to hang on my game room wall.

One reason for the 100 year change is there to help explain the change in magic from the 4E rules change and appearance of Dragonborn and Tieflings. Your idea would do just fine – I say go for it!

Hmmm – wonder what kind of sessions you could have gaming the ‘Night Of The Spellplague’? Kinda like all those disaster movies from the ’70s!

I’d be interested in your take on something. My campaign takes place in Hills Edge (a town of 10,000+ that, sadly, doesn’t even warrant mention in the new book). My players have been to very few other places (Waterdeep, Daggerford, that’s about it). I was considering skipping the 100 years RSE. It appears that was just in there to explain some of the culture shifts since the Plague broke out. I was going to make the Plague a sudden, cataclysmic event resulting from their failure to take down the final bad guy in the Age of Worms.

Does this sound feasible? I’m trying to avoid having to rationalize the characters being 100 years older suddenly (especially since they’re mostly human). Any changes to other locations they may visit may have “been that way all along”, as far as they know. Anything going to bite me if I try that?

It’s kinda like comparing graphics in computer games. The first Doom was incredible when it came out compared to everything else. If you stood that next to the games of today, it’s completely unfair to hold them to the same standards.

In those three areas, I think the 4e version presents a lot more info than the 3e version — just comparing the number of adventure hooks between editions is enough for me. (I do wish the cultural details had been left in, though.)

@Troy: “Does it stand on its own as a setting that enables DMs to tell engaging, compelling and epic stories/campaigns?”

Yep, I think so.

@Bastian: I have a soft spot for the 1e maps — I GMed and played with them for years. To me they feel more like actual artifacts from the Realms — they look like a map you could find in-game (and in fact I usually gave my players one of the maps as an in-game prop).

They definitely don’t hold a candle to the 3e map, which is just beautiful — but I’ll take the 1e maps over the new one any day.