Hello. It is nice to have you back or to have you
here for the first time. For those of you who have
read my reviews in the past this month is going to be
a little different. Due to my lack of ability to play
much this month (between midterms and raising my
daughter) I am going to review a published campaign
setting rather than a module.
For those of you who scoff at the idea of using a
world made by someone else, I admire the amount of
time and energy you have with which you can develop a
world of your own. For the rest of you, I understand
how a lack of time can lead to shortcuts from using a
published world to not having a world at all just a
string of encounters and adventures.
The campaign setting I am reviewing is the Forgotten
Realms Campaign Setting. I was somewhat skeptical
about getting yet another version of the Forgotten
Realms, as I already own the two previous releases of
this setting. I though, "ok what can this tell me
that I can't already get from the others if I had the
time to convert them to third edition." Well I was
pleasantly surprised at what I found. With this
setting not only do the players get a wider selection
of races (each race not has a sub race or two except
for humans) and religions (they added a large number
of gods (most of which had been in previous
incarnations of the world but are now updated fro
third edition) and domains for those god). But the DM
also has a better tool for requiring the players to
have a religion, clerics here must all pick a god and
if you have no god good luck getting resurrected.
The setting also has a great breakdown of the regions,
which I for the first time have started to understand.
In the previous releases of Forgotten Realms the
regions seemed lacking, now each region has a fairly
lengthy section telling about the life of people,
towns, rulers, and attitudes. Also, if gives the
players benefits for picking a region to be from and
being a class that realistically comes from that
region. This comes in the form of regional equipment
and regional feats. To get either of these a
character must come from a region in which his class
is preferred. This can add greatly to the background
stories of the characters as they must decide where
they came from and why.
Well that is all for now. Come back next month for
another review. If you have any comments or
suggestions for my reviews, please send me an e-mail;
my address is listed in the staff bio section of the
web page.
Thanks,
Sir
Bluetooth