Forgotten Realms (3e)

I've been reading a lot lately, and actually not as much the roleplaying game books as normal. I picked up and polished off very quickly Magician: Apprentice, which I'm not surprised by; I've read that before a few times and knew that I liked it. I needed to read it again. I already pivoted into Magician: Master, the sequel, and am making good headway. I've also read quite a bit from my Flame Tree printing of Epic Tales: Greek Myths & Tales, which I consider a non-fiction book. When I'm done with that, I've also got the Norse and Celtic (i.e., Irish, I think, although maybe there's some Welsh in there too) versions of those same books. I've got two gamebooks in my backpack, Elder Evils and the Lulu.com printing of the Moldvay Basic and Cook/Marsh Expert put together into a single volume. But I also finished, a few days ago, my pdf book, which is almost always going to be an RPG book too, because those are mostly the books that I have on pdf. In this case, it was the 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. 

You can't play D&D and not know about Forgotten Realms, of course. It's been (I believe) the most popular setting in the game for many, many years, and it's the default setting of 5e in the way that Greyhawk was for 3e or Mystara was for the "basic" D&D line for many years. Although in all three cases, the actual setting material wasn't really all that good. FR got it's original release as the so-called "gray box" kind of late in the 1e period, it got a second and different 2e boxed set, and then, of course, got a big 3e campaign setting book, which is often considered the gold standard of campaign settings. 4e also had pretty extensive FR books, as I recall, although they weren't as well received because by default, they had to change a ton of stuff about the setting. 

I've been familiar with FR since, oh, the early 90s at least. I actually quite like the original Salvatore "Halfling Gem" trilogy of novels, and the Dark Elf prequel trilogy that he wrote after that, although the handful of additional volumes that I've read in that ongoing saga had gradually lost me. Sometimes when stories are done, they should stay done and not be revisited just because they were popular, and that one certainly qualifies (I actually think that's true for the Riftwar Saga too, which I mentioned re-reading. I struggled to get very far into the post Riftwar Saga additional Riftwar Cycle books.) But I've never read the 3e setting all the way through, nor have I read any of the other setting books for it. Since the 3e one is considered the gold standard, and because I bought a pdf of it many years ago. But because I kinda knew what it was about, read about it online and in Dragon and Dungeon magazine, etc. I had predisposed prejudices about what FR was. I figured it was time to find out once and for all if it was true.

Before I get to that, though, let me preface this with some context. My reading of the Greek Myths, which of course, I'm already pretty familiar with; Greek mythological cycles mainly focus, after describing who all of the Gods are and what their deal is, with about half a dozen major story cycles based on (in most cases) a singular hero: Perseus, Theseus, Herakles, Jason (and the Argonauts, but we'll get to them in a moment) the Trojan War, especially with regards to Achilles, and the Odyssey of Odysseus. All of these are super-hero power fantasies. Almost all of these characters are literally demigods; part divine, and superlative examples of what the Greeks imagined a hero to be, with literal superpowers. The Argonauts were a whole crew of superheroes, led by Jason, the wisest of them all. It even has two superheroes with wings, who chase away the harpies from the Argo by flying after them like Angel from the X-men. If you look beyond the Greeks, this was pretty common for most of these old mythological tales. The Norse actually had more stories about the gods themselves rather than about heroes, but Sigurd qualifies as a Hercules-like Germanic figure, and among the Irish, Cu Chalainn is also a demigod and a superhero. Older stuff fits this pattern as well, if you read about Gilgamesh, the Sumerian superhero, for instance. 

In general, the Germanic and to a lesser extent the Celtic people told more stories about regular people, though. The Sagas, those that weren't simply historical, were about people who were mostly just normal people. And the literature of heroes who were heroes but not superheroes with superpowers is a factor of the peoples of Northern Europe who make up one of the three pillars of Western Civilization. 

Much of the founding literature of the fantasy genre as we know it is also relatively low-key in this respect compared to the mythological stuff that they were building off of. The Matters of France (Roland and Charlemagne) and of Britain (Arthurian tales) relative to the Matter of Rome (Classical mythology), which is more proximate to the fantasy genre as we know it, and although Lancelot or Roland were, of course, pretty superlative heroes themselves, they weren't overtly superheroic like Perseus or Gilgamesh. And as fantasy emerged, via Tolkien, Eddison, Morris, and the sword & sorcery crew; Howard, Leiber, etc. this more grounded approach with heroic yet (mostly) realistic characters in more grounded yet still fantastic settings became the hallmark of the genre.

That context established, Forgotten Realms had a reputation of very powerful; overly powerful, in fact, characters marching like legends across the landscape. But not necessarily in a mythic sense; more in a kind of cringy power-fantasy kind of way. Superheroes that did nothing heroic at all, but which were powerful enough to do whatever they wanted to do. Supervillains in the worst cases, who were only considered good by fiat and default rather than because of their actions. Entitled, bratty little princesses (regardless of sex) who succeeded by fiat and deus ex machina rather than their actual merits. 

I found that maybe in that was a little bit of an overblown complaint, but not entirely without merit. There are a lot of slightly cringy overpowered power-fantasy NPCs running around. But they mostly just seem like high level D&D characters. Higher level than they needed to be, and higher level than any other D&D NPCs (up to that point) had been, however. 

There was also a vibe of low-status male pining; a kind of gamma perspective that pervades at an almost ambient level to the setting. Signature characters like Elminster are not only over-powered in terms of rules, but they get lots of inexplicable attention from high powered girls throughout the setting. They like to sit around impressing themselves with their cleverness while they deliver often rather silly and cringy lectures to the reader. To be fair, this can easily be ignored, and the setting can be treated simply as if it were a regular D&D setting, and the tone of the material at your table can be different. There are some cool ideas within the setting, like the Red Wizards of Thay. The Dalelands maybe aren't exactly exciting or unique, but they're fine as a settling element, as are many of the Western Heartlands areas of the northern Sword Coast, including even Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, etc. It's useable, if not exciting, stuff. 

In fact, there was almost too much of an emphasis on useability, at least with this version of the setting. It started to strain credibility that there are so many monsters just hanging around, that "adventurers" is such an important economic, political and social force in the setting, that there's "dungeons" all over the place, etc. 

I suspect that for people who like Forgotten Realms, this is a big part of what they do like, but I'll say that in general, my perspective after this deep dive, reading the entire 320 or so page small text campaign setting 3e book, that I'm not very interested in it. I didn't think that I was, and I hadn't been interested for many years (this book is more than twenty years old, after all—and it's not exactly the first version of the setting either). I found that it was much as I expected it to be. It comes across as a "cozy" fantasy setting for over-the-top power and fame fantasies for Mary Sue characters that's heavily invested in D&D mechanics specifically, written by a bunch of northern liberals; Canadian and PNW in origin, who are hapless gammas on the socio-sexual hierarchy. It's somewhat toned down by the need to be more appealing to a mass market, but ultimately, that ambiance can't help but poke through.

That said, Ed Greenwood, a person about whom I've heard a number of personal communication creepy and cringy anecdotes, claims that his own version of the setting in his own home game and written notes is quite a bit darker than any published, and has a different tone. And even people who've read multiple versions of the setting over the years claim that the original is the best in some respects, or at least the darkest and most open. OSR types like it, FR-heads probably prefer 3e. Maybe I'll try and add that to my reading list for this year, although it won't be near the top of the list. 

I also found that the organization and focus on a lot of mechanics, especially up front, was quite the slog, but I don't know that I can blame this particular book or this particular setting for that, as that was common for most 3e setting books, even third party ones. Eberron had much of that same problem, as did Rokugan and others. In good consciousness, I can't exactly recommend the book. I doubt I'll ever read it again, now that I have, and I'm really glad that I didn't spring for a POD version, or overpriced used market copies (tend to go for $75-80 or so.) The pdf is on drivethrurpg for $15, which is already plenty. But I don't regret having recently re-read the Halfling Gem trilogy, and as soon as I find where I put it when I relocated, I'll re-read my omnibus Dark Elf prequel trilogy, again, without guilt. The setting's not a disaster. But it's not my cup of tea, and having dug into what is often considered the gold standard of setting books, and the gold standard in particular of Forgotten Realms (along with the gray box) I'm confident that I don't care to ever really use it.

It's worth noting that many of the issues that I have with the Forgotten Realms, while not necessarily endemic to the 5e Realms, as I understand it, have become commonplace in D&D overall. We have settings that are—literally—designed to mimic Hogwarts, except in D&D. As Professor Dungeon Master says, 5e is like The Muppet Show. It's heavily invested in the trope of power fantasies of gammas who don't even want to go adventure as much as they want to roleplaying flirting with monsters, or just hanging around in a fantasy DisneyWorld, except even more Disney than DisneyWorld. I've had little interest in 5e, even as I'm now playing in a longish campaign of it (which we're only 20-25% done with, for what it's worth). It's OK. But it's not what I would choose either from a system standpoint, or from a setting standpoint.