Western Shores

[Guest poorknight1]

Does the new edition of Fantasy Hero include the Western Shores sample campaign? Thanks in advance...

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Western Shores

 

Originally posted by poorknight1

Does the new edition of Fantasy Hero include the Western Shores sample campaign? Thanks in advance...

No. Thank goodness IMHO

[Pattern Ghost]

I kinda liked it. Might have been cool if they fleshed it out a bit more and got rid of the stupid default magic system.

[Bartman]

Originally posted by Pattern Ghost

I kinda liked it. Might have been cool if they fleshed it out a bit more and got rid of the stupid default magic system.

It seemed too generic, broad and flavorless to me.

 

Got your Norsemen, Mongals, Arabs, Pirates, and native savages? Check, check, check, check, and check.

Got your generic medieval kingdoms, good, evil and disfunctionally neutral? Check, check, and check.

Got your completely impossible haven in the evil kingdom? Check.

Got your impossible magic locations, super cooled glaciers, ultra high mountains, and really deep canyons? Check, check check.

Got your good demi-human kingdoms, one each for Elves, Dwarves and Hobbits oops I mean "Halflings?" Check, check, check.

Got your rough territory filled with evil demi-human tribes? Goblins, Orcs and Trolls. Check, check, check.

Got your ancient fallen empire to provide magic items and mysteries. Check

 

Got any originality? Um, nope.

Got any depth? Nope again.

Got any reason not to just pick up Forgotten Realms and adapt it? Nope.

[Monolith]

Originally posted by Bartman

Got any reason not to just pick up Forgotten Realms and adapt it? Nope.

Forgotten Realms...

• Got your Norsemen, Mongals, Arabs, Pirates, and native savages? Check, check, check, check, and check.

• Got your generic medieval kingdoms, good, evil and disfunctionally neutral? Check, check, and check.

• Got your completely impossible haven in the evil kingdom? Check.

• Got your impossible magic locations, super cooled glaciers, ultra high mountains, and really deep canyons? Check, check check.

• Got your good demi-human kingdoms, one each for Elves, Dwarves and Hobbits oops I mean "Halflings?" Check, check, check.

• Got your rough territory filled with evil demi-human tribes? Goblins, Orcs and Trolls. Check, check, check.

• Got your ancient fallen empire to provide magic items and mysteries. Check

[misterdeath]

Originally posted by Monolith

Forgotten Realms...

• Got your Norsemen, Mongals, Arabs, Pirates, and native savages? Check, check, check, check, and check.

• Got your generic medieval kingdoms, good, evil and disfunctionally neutral? Check, check, and check.

• Got your completely impossible haven in the evil kingdom? Check.

• Got your impossible magic locations, super cooled glaciers, ultra high mountains, and really deep canyons? Check, check check.

• Got your good demi-human kingdoms, one each for Elves, Dwarves and Hobbits oops I mean "Halflings?" Check, check, check.

• Got your rough territory filled with evil demi-human tribes? Goblins, Orcs and Trolls. Check, check, check.

• Got your ancient fallen empire to provide magic items and mysteries. Check

 

Mon, I think you've just proven his point. You can get Western Shores in the FH book, and make up the rest.

 

Or you can get the bookshelf choking plethora of FR stuff and do the conversion work.

 

I think that Western Shores was deliberately designed to mimic the feel of the dominant product at the time.

 

Hence, it never really appealed to me. It wasn't cool enough to warrant the time.

 

D

[Bartman]

Originally posted by misterdeath

Mon, I think you've just proven his point. You can get Western Shores in the FH book, and make up the rest.

 

Or you can get the bookshelf choking plethora of FR stuff and do the conversion work.

 

I think that Western Shores was deliberately designed to mimic the feel of the dominant product at the time.

 

Hence, it never really appealed to me. It wasn't cool enough to warrant the time.

Exactly. If I wanted Forgotten Realms I would go pick up Forgotten Realms. I certainly wouldn't have used a generic 'store brand' that just duplicates the whole thing.

[shinrin]

Hahahaha!

 

Originally posted by Monolith

Forgotten Realms...

• Got your Norsemen, Mongals, Arabs, Pirates, and native savages? Check, check, check, check, and check.

• Got your generic medieval kingdoms, good, evil and disfunctionally neutral? Check, check, and check.

• Got your completely impossible haven in the evil kingdom? Check.

• Got your impossible magic locations, super cooled glaciers, ultra high mountains, and really deep canyons? Check, check check.

• Got your good demi-human kingdoms, one each for Elves, Dwarves and Hobbits oops I mean "Halflings?" Check, check, check.

• Got your rough territory filled with evil demi-human tribes? Goblins, Orcs and Trolls. Check, check, check.

• Got your ancient fallen empire to provide magic items and mysteries. Check

 

Thank you so much. I needed a good laugh today.

[Pattern Ghost]

Except that the Forgotten Realms sucks.

 

FR drools, WS rules.

[Beetle]

Originally posted by Bartman

Exactly. If I wanted Forgotten Realms I would go pick up Forgotten Realms. I certainly wouldn't have used a generic 'store brand' that just duplicates the whole thing.

Of course, Forgotten Realms itself is just a "name brand" duplicate of Greyhawk.

[tkdguy]

Forgotten Realms is way more inteesting than Greyahwk, IMO. Then again, I played with a bunch of hack & slashers (I was one too) during our GH campaign.

 

Still, I think there's a lot more flavor to FR, because the cultures are more detailed. The only problem I have with it is that the magic there is obscenely powerful. Of course, GH is the same way.

 

BTW, I'e read somewhere that FR was originally meant to be a world where Ed Greenwood could set his stories in. It became a D&D world afterwards. Greyhawk was meant to be a game world from the start.

[Kestrel]

I plan on using my Atlas of Pern for my world setting. The maps are great and it's not been used to death as far as I know.

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by tkdguy

Forgotten Realms is way more inteesting than Greyahwk, IMO. Then again, I played with a bunch of hack & slashers (I was one too) during our GH campaign.

 

Still, I think there's a lot more flavor to FR, because the cultures are more detailed. The only problem I have with it is that the magic there is obscenely powerful. Of course, GH is the same way.

 

BTW, I'e read somewhere that FR was originally meant to be a world where Ed Greenwood could set his stories in. It became a D&D world afterwards. Greyhawk was meant to be a game world from the start.

I am of the opposite opinion. I vastly prefer Greyhawk and find it to be much richer than FR, which I despised from the moment I bought the original boxed set lo those many years ago (and subsequently foisted off on a friend at no cost just so I wouldnt accidentally look at it again).

 

 

As far as "hack and slashing", that has far less to do with a game setting and far more to do with a play group.

 

Just goes to show different strokes for different folks.

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by Kestrel

I plan on using my Atlas of Pern for my world setting. The maps are great and it's not been used to death as far as I know.

That could be made to work; also, you may want to check out the Atlas of Kalamar. If youre a map fetishist like me, the Kalamar map is a tempting morsel

[Galadorn]

Re: Re: Western Shores

 

Originally posted by Killer Shrike

No. Thank goodness IMHO

 

LOL.

[Alcamtar]

Originally posted by Killer Shrike

That could be made to work; also, you may want to check out the Atlas of Kalamar. If youre a map fetishist like me, the Kalamar map is a tempting morsel

 

I love the Kalamar Atlas, but the maps are just littered with weird, alien, hard-to-pronounce, hard to remember names. Bleh.

 

Also, the geography is not varied enough for my tastes. It may be realistic, but then, I play fantasy games for a reason! :-) I'd like to see vast deserts, more mountains, etc. And there *are* areas in the real world that pack a lot of varied geography into a small area.

 

Mike

[Lord Liaden]

The Greyhawk world maps have always seemed to me to be the most realistic of any fantasy game setting (if that's not too much of an oxymoron). So many "worlds" have all the mountains over here, forests over there, deserts down south etc. The lands are either too uniform over a vast area, or too diversified over a small one. Greyhawk geographic features have appropriate variety and diversity for a landmass of that size, but retain a degree of randomness as to where everything ended up, much more like the real world. (The Flanaes is obviously based on Europe and the Near East, so that probably influenced some of the geographic choices.)

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by Lord Liaden

The Greyhawk world maps have always seemed to me to be the most realistic of any fantasy game setting (if that's not too much of an oxymoron). So many "worlds" have all the mountains over here, forests over there, deserts down south etc. The lands are either too uniform over a vast area, or too diversified over a small one. Greyhawk geographic features have appropriate variety and diversity for a landmass of that size, but retain a degree of randomness as to where everything ended up, much more like the real world. (The Flanaes is obviously based on Europe and the Near East, so that probably influenced some of the geographic choices.)

I know my Greyhawk maps are a favored treasure Ive bought extra Greyhawk boxed sets over the years just for extra copies of the maps.

[Alcamtar]

Arg! I bought a used Greyhawk boxed set, but when I opened it, it only had the eastern map! The darn things are too expensive nowadays to collect, though. I wish I hadn't lost my original boxed set. I think my dad tossed it a dumpster or something while I was away at college! >

 

I agree about the GH maps having a realistic feel. The FR maps always struck me as extremely haphazard, dotted with tiny unconnected mountains, hills, forests, and other stuff, not to mention strangely shaped bodies of water. That, and a lack of clear political boundaries or natural settlement patterns. Okay I admit it, I hate the FR politics and geography.

 

Mystara had nice maps and interesting geography, but too many oddities -- like stone age tribes in the middle of the civilized world, or a lake drained by two rivers flowing through parallel canyons to the same sea, and some weird cultures and politics. But it had a lot to like as well.

 

Regarding the WESTERN SHORES, I actually like it a lot. I thought that the "cold war" was kind of trite, the "evil kingdom" seemed rather wooden, and the daemon's cleft thing was cheesy... but I rather liked all the other lands. In particular, I like Lantern Town, Irolo, Weyrcliff, Zylistan, and the pirates. Ambria was okay.

 

The big problem with the western shores, and with most fantasy worlds, was the "one of everything" syndrome, and the lack of any real variety. It had exactly one of each type of kingdom, one land for each demi-human race, one evil guy, one good guy, one mountain range, one desert... and no overlap betweem them! Bleh. Mystara had this problem before it was expanded, and compounded it with jarring out-of-place elements. Middle Earth has this problem to some extent; too homogenous for my tastes. GURPS Yrth was a little better, at least there's some cultural crossover and limited geographical variety, but it still feels small and cramped. I can't tell if Forgotten Realms has this problem because everything is too vague and unrecognizable to really pin down; it seems original, but it is so different that it doesn't really "click" with me.

 

Greyhawk had a LOT of kingdoms (and less-than-kingdoms) that strongly resembled one another, like squabbling twin brothers. It had multiple evil bad guys, multiple good guys (and they didn't all agree), multiple barbarians, multiple demi human lands, complex politics, interesting and varied geography.. and importantly, lots of borderlands, wilderness, and distant exotic locations. Unfortunately I don't like what they did to living GH; '83 boxed set for me!

 

One world that is apparently very obscure is Vortimax from Fantasy Warlord -- a fantasy setting for a miniatures wargame. It has a lot of what I like about Greyhawk, but I think it's better in some ways. Like GH it has dozens of squabbling states, many of which are similar, lots of politics, a huge world, varied evil and varied good, fallen lands, and lots of exotic "off the map" destinations. The names sound better than GH (not hard), and the geography is very believable yet interesting. I'd use it if I wasn't so compulsive about doing it myself. :-)

 

Mike

[Bartman]

Originally posted by Alcamtar

Middle Earth has this problem to some extent; too homogenous for my tastes.

I hate to pick a comment from an excellent post, but I have must defend Tolkien on a -14.

 

Part of the reason ME feels rather small is it actually is pretty small. None of the action takes place south of Rome, north of Hamburg, west of London, or east of Belgrade. If you were to take a train from London to Belgrade you would probably see less variation in terrain then Tolkien actually crammed into his story. Here is a map if ME with an overlay of Europe.

 

[Kestrel]

Another alternative is to use the Harn maps. My friend used them for a home-brew naval campaign and they were amazingly rich in detail.

[tkdguy]

The Warhammer FRP map is similar to our world, with a few significant changes. I'm using the map along with some NPCs from 7th Sea to flesh out a new campaign.

[tkdguy]

Originally posted by Killer Shrike

I am of the opposite opinion. I vastly prefer Greyhawk and find it to be much richer than FR, which I despised from the moment I bought the original boxed set lo those many years ago (and subsequently foisted off on a friend at no cost just so I wouldnt accidentally look at it again).

 

 

As far as "hack and slashing", that has far less to do with a game setting and far more to do with a play group.

 

Just goes to show different strokes for different folks.

 

Guess we'll just have to agree to disagree there. BTW, I'm a big fan of your work. You put in a lot of thought in your stuff, and it shows.

 

See folks? You CAN disagree on something without starting a flame war!

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by tkdguy

Guess we'll just have to agree to disagree there. BTW, I'm a big fan of your work. You put in a lot of thought in your stuff, and it shows.

Thanx for the kind words; I just hope somebody somewhere is getting some use out of it. Its always nice to get emails and msgs from people that are using it and insight into what parts they find useful, etc.

[Starwolf]

I always liked Kulthea (of Shadow World fame) it is very detailed and with a little work (and some provided Hero conversions) it is a great backdrop for Fantasy Hero. I am also partial to Krynn from Dragonlance.