Forgotten Realms Player's Guide: A 4th Edition D&D Supplement (Forgotten Realms Supplement)

I must preface this with a bias warning. I want my "campaign setting" books to be detailed. I'm one who desire more information rather than less. I prefer my books to detail locales. I also like having things statted out and concrete, so that I know that when I speak of an NPC or location, both the players and I know that we're on the same page. Realize that if you are one who appreciate minimality for the purposes of artistic freedom, or who disagrees with me on any of these points, you probably would find your opinion of the book to be quite different. Now, onto the review.

Introduction
I find myself disliking the introduction. It draws upon the history of the Realms, yet a great degree of it's history seems to have recently changed. The 10 important facts about the FR seem contrived. Three deal with the spellplague, two deal with countries that were already threats and explains why they're threats now, and one handwaives why there's no longer about 10 species of elves. All-in-all, not really what I might consider important facts.

Chapter 1: Races
This chapter contains four sections: A two page section on the Drow, a three page section on Genasi, a seven page look at Other Common Races (the races which appear in the Players Handbook), and a Supporting Cast section (involving Gnomes, Goblins, Orks and other races you might meet in game). I find this section lacking in depth. In the PGtF (3.5), we met Faerunian flavored races from the PHB. Gold dwarves, Sun Elves, and Ghostfoot Halflings, for example. I feel that omitting these makes the Realms substancially smaller. No longer is there as much diversity as there was before. I realize that simply making a Dwarf and calling him a Gold Dwarf is a possibility, but I do like having a standardized reference which tells me what skills and special abilities they might have that are different than normal Dwarves. As a corellary, there is little attention payed to races previously described in the PHB.

Chapter 2: Character Classes
This chapter explains the Swordmages, Warlock (Dark Pact), and Spellscarred classes in the same fashion as the PHB describes other base classes. It goes on to describe Paragon Paths and even a new epic Destiny. Not much to say about it, good or bad. I suppose it strongly depends on wether you care for the classes or not.

Chapter 3: Backgrounds
This chapter expounds on places your character may have originated from. The Guide goes into some detail about the places, enough for you to get a taste of where you're from and even offers some possible motivations! It's not a bad section.. except... it's missing certain places where I think it might be normal for PC's to begin from. Sadly, I believe that they "saved" these for Dungeons and Dragons: Insider articles, so I feel a bit swindled for not getting those places. One other nitpick, I really liked the tables from the previous edition showing, at a glance, a location, what bonuses you might get from coming from there, and what available races are there, which is missing from this edition.

Chapter 4: Feats
A chapter of new feats! However, unlike the previous edition most of it's feats are almost exclusively made for new races/classes which debut in this book. I suppose most of this chapters' draw will be wether or not you care for the feats.

Chapter 5: Rituals
25 new Rituals of varying enjoyment. Use to taste, some seem pretty neat.

Chapter 6: Almanac
A chapter which claims to cover Deities of Toril, Lore of the Land, The Calender of Harptos, The Roll of Years, Languages, Coin and Commerce, Class and Station, Families, Learning, Adventurers, The Spellplague and Cosmology. It seems like it's chok-full of information, but that is slightly misleading as it is only 10 pages long. The Deities have been cut down dramatically (one part which I dislike), and it seems that some of the sections are page fillers. Do we need entire sections on how there are different classes, how families are generally like how they are in real life, how there's not too many formal schools in Faerun and explaining how not everyone you meet is an adventurer? The Spellplague section manages to tell you of the Spellplague without actually telling you about the Spellplague.

In the end it feels like it's a low page count, large text-size, picture heavy pamphlet that is supposed to direct you to the ACTUAL Players Guide to Faerun. I feel like if I mixed this book with the Campaign Setting and the Grand History of the Realms, I might have gotten a full books' worth, but for now, I just have a feeling of emptiness, of not knowing, and of not actually playing in the Forgotten Realms.

Any FR book that has come before the Fourth Edition books -sucks-. And I will tell you why. Many of the reasons are already covered in various other posts, reviews, designer commentaries etc. Basically it comes down to this.

I like my pcs and heck my storylines to matter. I don't like the idea that there are so many Pcs turned npcs out there that they could handle the world by themselves and any obvious "major threat' can be handled by someone else.

Nor do I enjoy 18th level characters being considered -trivial- in the over all scheme of things (Drizzt I am looking right at you) these are beings who are the utmost paragon of heroes, what it means to be a Hero and yet they are unknown in vast swaths of the world? No. No. and No.

I don't enjoy worlds so overly detailed that you might as well say "Dragons be here" on maps.

I don't enjoy a setting that feels more like a novel than a place to run my story lines.

That was what we had before. Some people -like- the thought of what they and their characters do not mattering, some people even -like- having so much story line floating around that you really can not run your own without tripping on what is going on currently in the realms.

I hated, and still hate that philosophy. Always will. It goes against everything I stand for as a story teller, a dungeon master, and a player.

The new realms, is about putting it back into the Dm and player's hands and not have the world be an autonomous self running world. (Coincidentally this is also the design philosophy of Fourth Edition as well)

That being said, let's get on to the real meat of this review.

What is the goal of this book?
To summarize this, the goal of this book is to give the player's everything they need to start a character within the Forgotten Realms, or rather to give them material not covered in the Player's guide because it is world specific. (aka regional benefits races etc)

Mark two, to make a book that is fairly universal and flexible as to where it can be used. (Ie not just for the realms but for any world, or homebrew at least)

Mark three, to give player's and the Dm a rough idea as to how they can flesh out their world mechanically speaking.

Mark Four, make playing in Faerun Fun for everyone and not just fluff mongers.

Does this book accomplish these?

In two words. Hell Yes. I've not actually felt this excited for forgotten realms. Ever. Regrettably this is the second to last book that they will release for the Realms but, it's a damned fine book. There is a lot of gold to be found within it's pages. They surmise each region adequately enough for a player to get started without having each and every little thing spelled out to the point that there is no wonder or to have any sense of discovery spoiled by the over detailing of a region.

This book also blows the older version of it out of the water (Player's guide to Faerun) in nearly every sense of the word.

My only regret with this book is that, the spell scarred was not a full on class. (It literally just needs a role and an at will folks.. really could you guys have just gone the extra mile here?) I feel they dropped the ball a little there, but I can rectify that.

Also no Aasimar. Yet plenty of fluff for them... Another failing. Grant it I have my own Aasimar anyway, but seriously guys, you weren't hurting for page count limits with this book by any means. You could have put a lil more into it and at least have given us the Aasimar/Deva.

This kind of thing happens a couple times in the book which keeps it from a five star rating in my book. What's there is excellent, but had they spent just a little more effort they could have truly had something astounding on their hot little hands.

Overall, I would say that the product is acceptable for the price, but the bar is definitely being set lower than previous editions in terms of content. Only two new classes (and one new warlock pact) is a little weak, but the large number of paragon paths is great.

The Background section has a unique way to present information about each FR region to players, although the overall information is thin. Depending on what you're looking for as DM to help flesh out the world, this might be either good or bad.

The feats and rituals were mostly disappointing in my opinion. Regarding feats, there isn't much here if you are looking for feats for a character that isn't divine or isn't one of the two classes in the book. There are 24 rituals, of which only a few struck me as interesting or useful.

Agree with the other reviewer comments on the art.

Overall an acceptable supplement, but I would only recommend it if you are going to play FR. Sometimes supplements (see Magic of Faerun (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying)) transcend their main focus to be worth purchasing regardless of their context, but IMO this one doesn't.

If you play in the Realms this book is a must have. From able to play a Drow (has darkvision whatever happen to this not going to happen) or a Gensai (which seems to be a little overpowered.

The feats make any drow (ranger) very powerful with the hand xbow. The backgrounds are very nice flavor as well. Gives a little preview of what races will be in the PHB2.

The information in this is presented very neetly and clearly. Unfortunately, some of the art is reused from previous editions, but oh well.

My main appreciation for this book comes from the ability to take from it for other settings. Only a little bit of the material is truly setting-specific (such as spellscars). It otherwise doesn't take much work to remove region-specific requirements from say, Paragon Paths, to use in other settings. Much of the material, including paths, wouldn't even require that. And the Genasi and Swordmage are very easy to import to any setting you like.

Overall I'd recommend this, even if just as a 4e supplement if you never intend to use the Realms.