D&D 5E 5E Forgotten Realms: what will it look like?

[ferratus]

And seriously, if you can't do something with Fantasy Egypt sending its imperial armies out conquering its neighbors, making the Red Wizards nervous.... I humbly suggest you are not trying hard enough.

The problem is not that I can't do anything with fantasy Egypt, it is the fact that fantasy egypt doesn't mesh well with the rest of the setting.

If it had slight egyptian elements (like Thay for example) that would be one thing, but just copy-pasting Egypt (complete with bronze age technology in a renaissance world) is just silly.

At least returned Abier has some of the flavour of the rest of the Realms. Maztica, Mulhorand, Kara-Tur and Zakhara don't have Realmsian flavour, but merely are earth cultures with the serial numbers filed off and crudely welded on to the setting. Maztica is particularly bad, being basically a complete retelling of the spanish invasion of the Aztec empire with a fantasy gloss.

 

[rounser]

Right, and because there are bad parts of the realms, it's fine to introduce something worse? This is 4E logic again - "ah, hit points make little sense, so as a design convenience it's okay for us to invent healing surges which make no sense." I'd rather they'd left maztica intact and ignore it if they had to, at least that would have been believable and undisruptive.

Instead make a big mess with existing fans' expectations and ability to suspend disbelief, similar to the big mess made out of expectations and ditching of D&D detail in the main game's implied setting, built up over 30 years. The result speaks for itself - both 4E and it's take on FR didn't last long enough for the corner cases they had compromised the big picture for to matter. Few people care that two fire elemental summoning mages can conveniently fight a war in 4e when the game has been abandoned entire because a fire creature taking fire damage violates suspension of disbelief. Likewise, few people care that historical analogs are gone when the process of destroying them seems so contrived. Willing suspension of disbelief only goes so far.

The 4E realms are clearly phoney to former fans, and they'd put up with the Time of Troubles, so can't say they weren't tolerant, but there's a limit and 4E FR and it's hamfisted retcons, 4Eisms, Eberronisms and wholesale destruction of a lot of things some people enjoyed about the setting was too much on the nose.

 

[Glade Riven]

I expect 5e to sand off some of the rougher edges of the Spellplague and do what WotC said it would do - allow easy play in any era.

It also needs a blue crate marked "Town Guard" that has a Dimention Door installed, capable of transporting PCs through time and space. It would be controlled by a human-looking extra-dimentional being only known as The Cleric. He has what he claims to be a sonic wand that pretty much does whatever the plot needs it to do.

 

[Sylrae]

I expect 5e to sand off some of the rougher edges of the Spellplague and do what WotC said it would do - allow easy play in any era.

It also needs a blue crate marked "Town Guard" that has a Dimention Door installed, capable of transporting PCs through time and space. It would be controlled by a human-looking extra-dimentional being only known as The Cleric. He has what he claims to be a sonic wand that pretty much does whatever the plot needs it to do.

But that itself would be a retcon, because in 2e it was established that time travel in the forgotten realms is very strictly limited and controlled. In fact there is only a single spell that can do it, and any other types of time traveling magic from other worlds either simply dont work, or have their limits in addition to the limits of the one time traveling spell that does work.

It's in one of the Arcane Age books. Cormanthyr Empire of Elves, I believe. Right near the beginning.

I'm okay with history progressing forward. I dont swallow retcons very well, particularly if you cant justify it to me through events that happened.

I can deal with the spellplague, even though I think its stupid. I dealt with drow magic functioning on the surface in 3e once I found the source that said why (though I was peeved that the relevant events that allowed for this to happen werent mentioned in the FRCS) I cant deal with the things that they ignore and pretend they never existed, while writing in contradictory details.

Small changes that dont change the story I can handle (like shrinking the map in terms of distances in 3e).

 

[humble minion]

The problem is not that I can't do anything with fantasy Egypt, it is the fact that fantasy egypt doesn't mesh well with the rest of the setting.

If it had slight egyptian elements (like Thay for example) that would be one thing, but just copy-pasting Egypt (complete with bronze age technology in a renaissance world) is just silly.

At least returned Abier has some of the flavour of the rest of the Realms. Maztica, Mulhorand, Kara-Tur and Zakhara don't have Realmsian flavour, but merely are earth cultures with the serial numbers filed off and crudely welded on to the setting. Maztica is particularly bad, being basically a complete retelling of the spanish invasion of the Aztec empire with a fantasy gloss.

I actually liked what WotC were starting to do with Mulhorand in 3e, and was really hoping for an Old Empires regional book (along the lines of Unapproachable East) to flesh it out a bit. There was the new pharaoh who was quite modern and Western-looking in outlook, but a more traditional/conservative priesthood and populace. Hints of a romance between the pharaoh and a paladin of a very pragmatic, militaristic Heartlands deity. And Mulhorand had that imperialistic, expansionistic outlook, expressed in the occupation of Unther, which would sit ambiguously with most traditionally 'good' FR gods.

I always looked at Mulhorand as only remaining separate from Thay because they had their incarnate gods walking around, which countered their low technology base. But in more modern (3e FRCS modern, I mean) times, the gods had gone and Mulhorand was having to modernise in a big hurry to remain independent, therefore triggering an embrace of Heartlands people, trade, tech, etc with all the attentant potential for culture clashes and so on. I see them as analogous to a Japan post-Commodore Perry. An old culture suddenly exposed to modernity, going through incredibly rapid changes under significant outside threat, but losing a lot of traditions in the process (which means significantly more in a fantasy world where the priests etc who are the guardians of those traditions can blow you up by praying at you!)

There was some incredible dramatic potential there, and potential to shape a Mulhorand that fitted seamlessly into the more sophisticated, integrated Realms that the FRCS started, but it needed more work to be done on it to fully realise what it could have been. And obviously when the 4e realms were being designed, all of it got thrown out the window to fit Dragonborn and Tieflings in.

 

[ferratus]

I understand the wounds are fresh, so perhaps I shouldn't have poked at it. We dragonlance fans had a lot of angry feelings about how the setting was changed in the 5th Age. Imagine if the entire continent of Faerun had been been turned into 5 climate types (Glacial, Volcanic, Jungle, Desert and Swamp), all the gods vanished from the setting, magic no longer worked the same, and D&D was no longer the rules system, and you'll get a sense of how DL fans felt. Essentially, when the spellplague was announced, DL fans understood the storm that was coming to the Realms.

That said, I've always had an affection for the heartlands of Faerun, and how they seemed to be organically grown from the setting itself. The "Old Empires", Zakhara, Maztica and Kara-Tur never really felt like they belonged and were just crudely tacked on. I also am not really fond of renamed earth cultures, historical figures, or historical events showing up in my D&D fantasy world. It just seemed lazier and less imaginative than the heartlands setting.

So I'll take returned Abeir over Maztica any day of the week. I also don't really mind if it is done by retcon, reboot, or world-shattering event. I understand though that this is pretty much a matter of taste.

We are all agreed though that the 3e Cormyr was better, and that the 4e Moonshaes is better though right? That's pretty much universal I'd imagine.

 

[rounser]

Nah, stuff that 4E eladrin retcon bollocks. 1E Moonshae (pre-novels) is my favorite part of the Realms (and the Korinn Archipelago within that, if an undeveloped microcosm is called for - see, there are corners for newbies there, no need to nuke the place). Ironically for you, the original published Moonshae (not Ed Greenwood's version for his original FR) was developed as a "British Dragonlance".

And you're again falling into the trap of saying "this was crap (e.g. 5th age DL) so that makes more crap or worse crap okay." That didn't work for healing surges or Schroedinger's damage citing hit points as a defense, and I'm not buying it here either.

 

[Nivenus]

And you're again falling into the trap of saying "this was crap (e.g. 5th age DL) so that makes more crap or worse crap okay." That didn't work for healing surges or Schroedinger's damage citing hit points as a defense, and I'm not buying it here either.

This is unrelated to the main discussion but what's so abhorrent about healing surges?

 

[gyor]

Mulhorand was one of my favourite empires. It wasn't backwards, it had advanced enigeering, mathmatics, libraries, art, and most of all magic, both divine and arcane. It was xenophobic with outsider ideas, but it had thousands of years of research and advanced knoweldge given to them by gods.

Thay got much of its basics in magic as well from Mulhorand and its tech. Thay did go in other directions afterwards.

Mulhorand was perfect for campaigns invovling theocractic intrigue. Oh and Mulhorand did use iron. Mulhorand faught powerful empires and often won, hence why,until the spellplague Mulhorand had never been conquered in its long history. It wasn't just the gods, who had thier power greatly reduced thanks to the imaskri and later the orc gods. Mulhorand still relied on its armies.

As for Mulhorand not fitting in, Mulhorand and Uther founded most of the nations in that region. You also find all kinds earth like cultures on Toril, such as viking, Inuit, African, celtic, East Indian, Arabian, Turkish, not just reniasance european, and in Kara tur you also had Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Mongolean extra fits. This is thanks to the Imaskri, Calim, Memmon, and possibly the Batrachi and LeShay kidnapping human's from earth. Earth and Toril have a long,history together unlike other D&D setting.

Some human cultures are native to Toril, such as Nethril, but many human and non human,immigranted earth and other worlds, its part of the reason its called the Forgotten Realms.

People think FR has no theme, not realizing its right in the name. It has a theme. Its why you have earth deities such as Loviator, Silvanus, Tyr, ect... because empires dead and forgotten realms on, earth still survived on Toril. That and Toril had many dead and forgotten realms of its own.

People think Toril is just another kitchen sink setting like Greyhawk or Golarian, instead of a setting with theme, like Eberron, Ravenloft, and Darksun, but they're wrong, although FR's particular theme allows it some of the advantages of a kitchen sink setting.

Sorry for the rant, its just bugs me that people don't get its theme when its looking them right in the eyes.

FORGOTTEN REALMS.

 

[Grumpy RPG Reviews]

I actually liked what WotC were starting to do with Mulhorand in 3e...

FR lacked a real imperial power. It lacked a large scale war. Empires are dramatic and interesting. War is dramatic and interesting. Both offer game play possibilities. A war, hot or cold, between Thay and Mulhorand, would have been interesting. Yet it did not happen. And They and Mulhorand were replaced by less interesting features. That is not an improvement, it is just calling a bug a feature and getting pissy when people notice the difference.

I understand the wounds are fresh...

They are not fresh - the 4E FR books are four years old at this point. However, the older FR fans remember them and so are skeptical that 5E FR will be better, it is likely to be as bad if not worse.

The "Old Empires", Zakhara, Maztica and Kara-Tur never really felt like they belonged and were just crudely tacked on...

Zakhara and Kara-Tur are not part of the "Forgotten Realms." They are part of the same contiental system and on the same planet, but they are not Forgotten Realms. They never carried the F.R. banner.

Further, given the utter lack of information on Zakhara and Kara-Tur there is no reason to believe the status quo of those settings has change; i.e. there is no reason to believe they suffered through the Spellplague or got blown the hell up.