I think it highlights how early-on they were concerned with the idea of people just trying to metagame off the book.

RPGPundit

Quote from: DestroyYouAlot;623883(Notice this complaint never seems to get leveled against Greyhawk?  In the folio, pretty much every listed settlement has a 9th, 10th, or higher-level character in charge - which is as it should be, with AD&D's default assumptions.  I think it's one of those things that has just become part of the culture, rather than anything that's actually there on the page.)

Yes, I agree.

Quote from: DestroyYouAlot;623883Beyond that, the assumption (in AD&D, at least) would be that these high-level characters, with domains of their own to run, can't adventure regularly, since they've got other things to worry about.  Sure, you can leave things to the seneschal for a week or two, but who knows what kind of cock-up he'll have made of things when you return?  If anything, these characters would serve as patrons/quest-givers in a well-run campaign.

It's funny that you mention that, as it just reminds me about the Duke of Dragon Reach in Tethyr. He's a 15th lvl fighter, but one of his listed intrigues is "secretly wishes to find an excuse to go adventuring again, but responsibilities demand so much attention." Gee, sounds like he's raring to go traipsing about the countryside to Mary Sue the nearest band of adventurers...

It'd take a bad GM to read this as a green light for GM PC Mary Sue.

And then there's the 0 lvl caravan merchant in Grey Box who has extensive reach in southern Vilhon Reach. Or the low level merchant of curios and spells that fronts for fencing goods around Moonsea. Both powerful, but still low level and expendable. They have a significant spread of power, but are not Holders of Power, as in creating their own safe sphere. Killable, but having very dangerous friends, these NPCs deliberately scream cloak and dagger or charm politics.

I think something about the expectation of every NPC in town ought to be zero to low level is involved. I disabuse my players of that ASAP. You don't know who has been what until you actually either a) talk to them and they open up to you, or b) fight them and find out the hard way. Option B tends to cut short the adventures of the careless very fast in my games. Choose your battles wisely.

Quote from: Opaopajr;624013I think something about the expectation of every NPC in town ought to be zero to low level is involved.

People can bitch about 3e... (and do) ...but one of the best parts of the game is the town creation rules in the DMG, which told you outright that high level NPC's are embedded in the world.

(I know they didn't do it first, or maybe even best, that's not my claim. They did it well, that's the claim.)

But that's different than having a designer's Mary Sue, or several dozen of them, permeating a setting.

Kvothe is a very interesting character to read about, but 30 of him, written as Mary Sues, not tragically flawed heroes, kind of mars the setting for a lot of people.

It's the Mary Sue part that bothers, not the presence of high level NPC's.

But how much of that is novelized bullshit coloring the setting? I honestly don't know yet for myself.

I read a few Vampire the Masquerade novels (not very good on the whole) and generally still found all the meta-plot not just ignorable, but downright forgettable. They tried to have meta-plot bad writing affect the CCG, but fan outrage quickly put that to rest.

But a CCG is such a different product than an RPG. There must be some sort of bad GM or competitive element involved to make people care so much about Mary Sues in FR. I wonder how big FR RPGA plays a factor, like perhaps One World By Night LARP did for VtM?, in making meta-plot such a poisonous thing... along with general fan asswipes bickering a setting to death.

Quote from: Opaopajr;624072But how much of that is novelized bullshit coloring the setting?

I just don't like Mary Sues. Most people don't. (Most people.)

Mind, I'm not arguing that the Forgotten Realms is bad. I'm not demanding it change. (It shouldn't have; the Spellplague seems to have been a mistake, for obvious reasons.)

I'm just saying that one can have a lvl. 20 Wiz in a settlement, without having an author-insert fantasy persona who boinks the goddess of magic on a regular basis (hence the reference to Kvothe).

Its off-putting. Nothing deeper than that.

I'm not arguing with you about the concept of Mary Sues. I do not enjoy them myself. What I am trying to hash out for my own knowledge is how much of this "Mary Sue-ness" is from external setting sources.

When I look at Grey Box, I don't get that sort of context.

When I look at 2e Lands of Intrigue, it is tightly presented as a chapter of immediately current events. And it reads like a plot summary of a pile of cheesy fantasy novel melodrama. Bad, but mercifully compacted into less than a decade of FR history and around five pages of fluff. Easily disposable. The rest is pages upon pages of good stuff, as nebulous and suggestive as Grey Box.

Mary Sues only come from context. That game product offers a passing nod to such meta-plot context and then rapidly moves on. The Mary Sue characters then get a blurb of personality, responsibilities, connections, and intrigues outside of said chapter. The blurbs are pretty solid, short, & sweet.

So far, I'm left guessing that this Mary Sue meta-plot outrage derives more from RPGA & novelization leaking in to play. I am now curious to see how bad it reduced the play value of game products later.

I'll have to experience an egregious example of gordian knot meta-plot to see how ugly this gets. Perhaps it renders it unplayable outside the tight dramatic framework. I heard The Horde campaign book was quite bad, and that was also free to download, so I'll have to check that out next. But I hate modules, so I do not know if it can answer my question.

If Mary Sues are an issue, kill Elminster.  Or have him off on extraplanar business.  Or just not home.  BAM - setting fixed!  Maybe also Khelben. *

That's all a Mary Sue is - a wish-fulfillment self-insert.  Unless someone is suggesting that Ed Greenwood sees himself as a 20th-level cavalier, or a silver-haired witch?

*Alternatively, just don't run them that way.  (Protip: You're the DM.)

Quote from: DestroyYouAlot;624122If Mary Sues are an issue, kill Elminster.  Or have him off on extraplanar business.  Or just not home.  BAM - setting fixed!  [...snip...] That's all a Mary Sue is - a wish-fulfillment self-insert.  Unless someone is suggesting that Ed Greenwood sees himself as a 20th-level cavalier, or a silver-haired witch?

Ed Greenwood IS Elminster. I happened to meet Ed Greenwood and game with him before I had seen a picture of Elminster. He even showed up in his own game quite unabashedly.

Is it a Mary Sue? Yes. Is it a problem? Absolutely not. Just as DestroyYouAlot suggests, Elminster was only there as a quest-giver.

Having never read any of the fiction materials, I think it is entirely reasonable for there to be high level characters running around in the game universe committed to their own goals, reminding PCs they are not the be-all-and-end-all of the in-game universe. That these high-level NPCs are based on their designers is no different than your characters being slightly based on you.

I think the only problem with the Mary Sue issue is having your perceptions polluted by fiction and meta plot that as a character you would not have had access.

//Panjumanju

Whoa!  I remember that I only read a few of the Forgotten Realms novels when they first started appearing so I went and did a search for a FR novel list and it is legion!  The only FR novels that I have read are the three books of the Icewind Dale trilogy; The Crystal Shard, Streams of Silver, and The Halfling's Gem.

I definitely think that a lot of the criticisms of The Forgotten Realms Setting are colored because they are viewed through a novelization lens.  I have never used any of the high-level named characters contained in The Forgotten Realms Setting (any edition, for that matter) as Mary-Sue NPCs, and I certainly don't get that the text of grey-box edition of The Forgotten Realms Setting.

Quote from: Panjumanju;624129Is [Elminster] a Mary Sue? Yes. Is it a problem? Absolutely not. Just as DestroyYouAlot suggests, Elminster was only there as a quest-giver.

That.  Actually, now that I think of it, this advice

Quote from: DestroyYouAlot;624122have [Elminster] off on extraplanar business.  Or just not home.

is explicitly spelled out in the Grey Box, in case you weren't an experienced enough DM to just do this on your own.  I totally forgot that tidbit.  

Of course, plenty of DMs have clearly ignored this advice, and the published setting takes the rap, which is sorta like blaming the makers of this knife if a bunch of kids get stabbed.

4th it's the most interesting, playable, and has the best art. Hands down.

Quote from: Drohem;624137I definitely think that a lot of the criticisms of The Forgotten Realms Setting are colored because they are viewed through a novelization lens.

This is quite possible, although there's a reason people do that: under TSR, at least, the course of the Forgotten Realms setting was basically steered not by gaming products but by the novels. This obviously wasn't true of the grey box and other early material, but once the tie-in novels really began picking up steam they became the driving force. The Time of Troubles, for instance, was basically depicted through a series of novels - so far as I remember there was no campaign published in which you could play through the Time of Troubles and even if there were the novels still provided the canonical lowdown on what happened (including who got to be the new gods).

If it's clear that the designers and publishers of a setting are seeing it through a novelisation lens, then it's hard not to take it that way yourself.

There was a series of three Avatar Trilogy modules. I can't speak for the quality however I expect they weren't very good.

I did like the books though. That was the second series I read, right after the Finder's Stone trilogy. I doubt they'd hold up so well today but at the time they were part of my introduction to the Realms.

I'm getting the whiff that this thread could be summed up as "The best edition of the Forgotten Realms is a case of 500 office paper sheets: 500 totally blank maps for you to fill up and nothing else: AWESOMIUM!!!!111" :rolleyes: