James Wyatt + FR!?

Out of all the shlock about 4e, the Forgotten Realms is the one I like.
For me making the realms a little mor dangerous is just the thing it needed to be more interesting.

Can someone clue me in why it was necessary to explain about the "changes" which of course requires someone to please explaine what "changes" this thread is referring to. Unfortunately I don't have much time to surf the net at work anymore so I can't keep up with all the 4E news and rumors.

Thanks

I'd be happy if there was an event like the end of the Days of Thunder, where mountain ranges moved, coasts were redrawn, subcontinents sank beneath the waves. I would like to see something that evoked this:

Elminster in Cyclopedia of the Realms said:

These magic-users and clerics can reshape the face of the world, and indeed have done so over the millennia. Hills and forests may appear where there have been none before, and mountains may move several miles.

Click to expand...

Wycen said:

Can someone clue me in why it was necessary to explain about the "changes" which of course requires someone to please explaine what "changes" this thread is referring to. Unfortunately I don't have much time to surf the net at work anymore so I can't keep up with all the 4E news and rumors.

Click to expand...

There is an event called the Spellplague that his the Forgotten Realms. The details of which might be kind of spoilers(and haven't been FULLY released yet). It was described as having the nature of magic changes and thousands of mages die all over the planet. Basically, nothing sounds safe from changing in the Realms. The nature of reality was even described as being mutable.

Plus, they need story reasons why every wizard in the world carries around staves, wands, and orbs and they need them to make their spells full power. They need to explain why spells can no longer do what they used to do. They need to explain why the way people get powers from gods changes, why monsters have different powers and work differently, etc.

Crunch dictating fluff. Spew.

Samnell said:

That was true of the 3e FRCS. And the 2e FRCS. and the 1e FRCS. New players don't know about the historical details of the setting. If they did, they wouldn't be new players. They would be experienced players. Nothing about making apparently massive changes to a setting has anything to do with the new player effect, one way or the other.

Click to expand...

Exactly. I was new to FR in 3e and it did inspire some wonder in me. Had I known since the start that every single rules update is followed with a cosmological change to the setting, just to explain why a spell works differently than before, it would have certainly inspire me... a total drop of suspension of disbelief.

Vigilance said:

Every shared world needs a reboot on occasion.

And there will be hue and cry from the established fanbase when that happens.

Ask Marvel and DC, they'll tell you.

Click to expand...

All the DC continuity reboots have happened at the same time as a steady decline in DC comics sales. Oh, you get a temporary boost when you have a Crisis on Infinite Earths or a Zero Hour or an Infinite Crisis or a Final Crisis . . . and then the decline sets in again.

Or, say, look at Traveller, first after the assassination of Strephon and then after the Virus. There's a reason every version of Trav issued since TNE has been set either before Stephon was killed or in an alternate universe where he wasn't killed.

Hey, remember how well Enterprise did in the ratings in its first season, after it became apparent it had thrown out care for continuity in favor of some Temporal Cold War?

There's no evidence that rebooting shared worlds does anything other than piss fans off. It's like getting sick in the Eighteenth Century; you go, you see the doctor, and the doctor takes a lancet and cuts open a vein. You complain about the pain and feeling faint, and the doctor tells you that bleeding is a medical necessity. Then a statistician comes along in the next century, takes some surveys, and discovers that poor people survive illnesses better than the rich. Why? Because the poor can't afford vein-opening doctors, and that more than makes up for their poorer food and shelter.

Mortellan said:

Crunch dictating fluff. Spew.

Click to expand...

Amen.

Much as I resepct the designers' opinions, I think thispost is just damage control spin on what I consider a bad decision: trying to explain metagame changes (ie, rules) within the context of the game. It was a bad idea with Time of Troubles, and hasn't become a better idea with age. The 3E FRCS did it right: just make the changes and present them by default (note that I don't have a problem with changes, per se, just in the method of execution).

They're in this pickle through another old and equally bad decision: having the novels impact the campaign settign timeline. They need to cut that cord, too.

Eberron is still a relatively new setting, and from the start it has taken a very PC-centered approach to events in the world. There aren’t a ton of high-level NPCs running around, doing the things that PCs should be doing. There haven't been world-shattering events that altered the world and demanded timeline advancement. Its novel line has told stories within the context of the setting without dramatically altering the setting. And its lore consists of a campaign setting book and maybe a dozen sourcebooks.

Click to expand...

*sign* He's actually saying that in the FR, the über npcs do the PCs work....

The connection between novels and game world is by far the Realms' biggest weakness IMO though.

Gwathlas said:

I wasn't going to be buying the new game system they misname dnd and now I won't by buying any more novels published by wotc! They can mess up the Realms all they want, won't change my play or pleasure!

Click to expand...

Good for you, sir.