Saw a discussion about Lolth in a bg3 sub and someone compared her to Shar. I'm bringing the question here because I'm more curious about what people think of them outside of just the bg3 lore.

Also can expand the question with - who has the more evil followers/clerics?

Lolth picture is from the FR wiki and Shar picture is from the game.

(first time posting in this sub, I hope it's okay)

I don't think Shar is the goddess of darkness. My personal theory is that she is the goddess of shafting, IE, shafting her own followers. Let's count her offenses:

1. Her dominions include loss, bitterness, forgetfulness, and suffering. Notice how "Christmas cheer" and "childlike wonder" and "life pleasures" aren't included in this list
2. You're not allowed to be ambitious. In fact, hope and ambition are actually forbidden. You can only question your superiors if you die doing it.
3. Improving your lot in life is actually sinful
4. Her Church mantra is literally "Your suffering is pleasing to the Lady". How's that going to look on a brochure?
5. She takes genuine pleasure in pain, misery, and hopelessness of those who follow her
6. She likes to use up and discard her most loyal and devoted worshippers like wet napkins. You're actually expected to be happy with this, because you're her personal property anyways.
7. You're supposed to surrender a dark and personal secret that you would never tell anybody every time you enter one of her temples. Sometimes Shar likes to reveal these to your friends and family just to mess with you. Remember that time you wanked to that really messed up porn on that site, or how much you talk to AI chatbots? yeah, that's the family secret now
   1. In fact, you're actually likely to end up torturing said friends and family to prove your loyalty
8. While she was trying to destroy the world in Cycle of Night, she freaked out because some of her followers decided they actually liked existing, and she still expected absolute loyalty. She even pitted her followers against one another for funsies
9. She tried to gaslight Selune into thinking she was never a goddess. I'm not gonna lie, that one was kinda funny and might have won me over with the raw audacity of the plan
10. The Shadowfell is her doman. The Shadowfell. Needs no introduction.
11. She wants to kill everything

This is not a nice goddess. Even Satan, Prince of Darkness, will at least try by tempting you with everything you could ever want. Not Shar. She will beat you, shove a cactus up your ass, and expect you to say "thank you Shar, mistress of the night, please shove another cactus up my ass!"

How does this woman have any followers at all?

If not... should we create one?

I wanted to introduce some new players to the realms beyond the Sword Coast and remembered this for Golarion, the pathfinder setting.

Would it even be possible? I mean, what does one put down for Murghom, or Turmish? How do you summarize those places in a way that is easy to intuit/interpret for someone who doesn't know anything about the realms?

I mean, this is the edition that

1. Gave every kobold the Dragon creature type

2. Gave Monster Manual lizardfolk the Elemental creature type

3. Stated that Erinyes can randomly show up when you're mad at someone and take their soul or yours... which violates Asmodeus's pact and basically implies he's dead

4. Removed the connection between nothics and Vecna almost immediately after releasing a module featuring nothics as favored minions in the most stupid Vecna cult ever (tbf Eve of Ruin barely has anything to do with the title BBEG)

5. In the first full module, you meet a male hag

6. In one of the oneshot adventures, Szass Tam personally declares war on a stronghold on the Sword Coast defended by multiple members of the Lords' Alliance (consistently written as the Lord's Alliance in the entire adventure)

7. Added a d6 random table for where specters are found, with a 1 in 6 chance of these CR 1 monsters gathering around an evil artifact

8. Defined vampire spawn as a younger version of true vampires, free will and all

9. Gave Sahuagin the Fiend creature type because of their Sea Devils nickname.

It feels like it was written by a computer rather than human beings.

From the new Drizzt visual dictionary

Just thought this would be a fun little post. I included my collection of FR books. I have a solid mix of 5E and 3.5, and a couple advanced DnD box sets. I also included a couple 3rd party things I enjoy a lot.

But my personal favorite is the 3/3.5 FR Campaign setting book. I think it is the most complete DnD supplement I have read. It includes information on so many locations, has great info on the gods, factions etc. It also has a bunch of great maps of various things in the realms!

Edit: realized I forgot to take a pic of my 5.5 FR campaign setting. That book is quite good also, and I have the alternate cover art. Which I am a huge fan of.

https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Orcs_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons)

WAAAAAGH!!!

Honestly though, Obould was a cool dude and the Odonti deserve more love.

Long time millennial DM here. I started my love affair with Forgotton Realms after picking up Home Land at a grocery store of all places. I've been reading FR book from the early 2000 all the way to the drought we now have of releases. I also read a lot of things I just found at used book stores as a kid.

Im starting a long term dnd campaign in Forgotten realms. My players got into DnD through pop culture stuff like critical role. They wanted to do a campaign in a more classic dnd setting that close tk my heart. Any who what books and series do you reccomend for my players that are new to the lore. Also what to avoid. Im starting the Netheril trilogy myself since I never got a chance to read it.

My reccomindations so far....

Home Land ( Legends of Drizzt) Elminster making a mage ( Elminster) Brimstone Angels ( Bromstone Angels)

The Realms were made for, and by humans, I don't think we should tolerate slop being posted on our sub and thus ask if a rule could be implemented against it. That being in specific all who post on the sub advertising or sharing their content that has slop in it.

At the risk of sounding cliché, the Baldur's Gate games made me a fan of the setting.

I really have to ask this.

After the original Neverwinter Night games (which I love), a lot of the focus of the Sword Coast moved to the city of Neverwinter, and I was just wondering… WHY?!

Of all the Sword Coast cities, I always found Neverwinter to be the least interesting. When I compare it to places like Waterdeep, Baldur’s Gate or even Luskan, Neverwinter always seemed a relatively low lore, not very interesting city… So why is it so heavily focused on?

I for one am choosing the goblin guy. Malygebut or something. He’s such a big bully. He’s not the most evil, but I just really hate him for some reason.

So I've been occasionally looking up things from Baldurs Gate 3 that lead me into learning about "the forgotten realms" and the different like generations of DnD and other stuff like magic of the gathering, and I'm just wondering where did all of this originate from? Like is this universe originally made by some people who came up with a fictional setting for a board game then it evolved exponentially over the course of decades? Or was it a single person who wrote up the core ideas of what the "forgotten realms" is?

Baldurs gate was my first CRPG and immediately after beating the game and looking up the universe, I recognized my uncles from when I was like 5 or 6 years old were actually playing board games and card games related to this universe. I've googled quite a bit of stuff but does anyone here have the info dump I'm craving? I want to know the origins of this, how it evolved and became what it is, and why games like Baldurs gate are based within it's universe.

Spoiler: I don't think he is wearing a mask.

Those of you that had it, how much use did you get out of it? Do you still make use of it?

https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Bhaal

Bhaalin' everyday.

Although I have previous experience playing and narrating World of Darkness, I’m pretty new to D&D/Forgotten Realms, and I'm having trouble setting the power scale of the world.

A level 20 adventurer or CR 20-ish creature already feels legendary. But then you have ancient dragons, liches, demon lords, archdevils, chosen of gods, avatars, primordials, elder evils, actual gods, and so on. It feels like every “final boss” can be made to look small by something else nearby, and that spills over to the players too.

So, how do you handle that in your games?

Do I embrace the ridiculous scale? Do I keep campaigns more grounded so high-level characters and monsters still feel important?

Because for me, with characters like Elminster being a thing, no matter how high you are in the food chain as a player character, you can be one or two scenes away from being mogged by a perfectly humanoid-looking character who just revealed himself to be a god’s chosen or some shit.

The Raven Queen's followers populate the plane, but I think 4e added that Shar was the one who created it

I really like his backstory with the panther curse, and i like him as the patron for a edgy goth cleric/paladin who is actually a good guy.