Jockey for Position
Chapter: Season Two
I’ve played in a few Realms game in my day and while Greyhawk will always be my first and greatest gaming love, I have a HUGE amount of respect for Ed Greenwood’s labor of love. I love settings deep with world lore and the Realms are second to none in this department.
Randall (aka @Deadorcs on Twitter) created stats for Elminster’s Jock. If you haven’t checked out his blog yet, head over and give it a look here. Thanks, Randall!
The discoloration on the jock strap makes me terribly quesy…horrible memories. Horrible.
Erk… Scary….. I’m very, VERY scared.
May the power of Waffles CLEANSE THEE!
I always felt the same way about Dragonlance. The realms had enough going on that we could carve out a niche, but it just seemed like everything of import was already done in Krynn once you read the Chronicles and Legends.
I’ve the same feeling with FR… too much history, too much power. We generally use a custom setting for our games.
Nothing but love for ya’ man. Hope your readers enjoy the bonus material. Thanks for the cross-post! Keep drawing the funnies, man. Chops, Sir…you have them!
This was the reason why I liked Eberron when I first put my hands on it. The MOST important NPCs of game, like the Lord of the Blades, are 12-15 lvl, not so combat powerful, but with a lot of influence.
So, you will have to deal not with someone who can save the world alone, but with someone that will create a lot of situations through influence.
I thought the Realms were a bitmore thought out than Greyhawk (less Disneyland/zooish anyway), but one thing about FR that always bothered me was Waterdeep. With no farmland at all, the city survives purely on “commerce.” Go reread some of the early FR entries on how big Waterdeep is and all the mentions of commerce. I guess they eat commerce.
Err, what? Since when have any cities had farmland in them? Isn’t the definition of a city pretty much “not farmland”? London has done just fine for over a thousand years, so it’s not just modern cities like NYC that can pull it off.
I’m pretty sure that Avery knows that, WJS; I assumed that he meant *surrounding* farmlands. Even if there are no farmlands nearby, let’s not forget that Waterdeep is a port city; if the land won’t give them stuff to buy and sell, the sea will.
Waterdeep could also be something like right here in Canton, Texas, where we *do* eat commerce. Every month, we have First Monday Trade Days, where people drive in from as far as California and Minnesota to buy and sell stuff. Canton’s govenment assigns booths and spots on the First Monday grounds to the vendors, the vendors pay Canton to rent the spot, and then the vendors and the shoppers (including scalpers who cruise First Monday looking to buy things and resell them elsewhere at a mark-up) do all the rest. And it all started because a bunch of frontier folks a century and a half back wanted a place to buy, sell and trade horses, and they decided that Canton was as good a place as any.
Maybe Waterdeep’s like Canton, just with more ships and fewer cowboys. 🙂
Realms and Greyhawk have too much history. I don’t want to have to live up to Bigby, Elminster, Drizzt, or Mordenkainen. I prefer the world where the great Garlore deposed Heironeous as the Neutral evil god of honorable combat somehow.
one of the things I loved about realms, ebberon and dragonlance was the rich rich lore. I mean stories left and right. The great thing is that since so much is always going on there is always something for someone to do, after all Drizzt can only be in one place at a time last I checked, and even characters that could be in multiple places…can’t be everywhere. I never caught on with greyhawk for some reason. everytime I tried I felt like it was pushing me away…kinda like I feel with 4e, I want to give it a chance….but can’t seem to find the love for it…because it’s simply built to not be loved…
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