Blowing it All Up and Starting Over

As gamers' thoughts turn to a New Year, it's worth remembering how the Forgotten Realms has reinvented itself with each iteration of Dungeons & Dragons.

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Dungeons & Dragons has been through several iterations, but because the standard fantasy campaign world has morphed from edition to edition, those changes were usually independent of the game world itself. The Forgotten Realms went through some startling in-universe changes to reflect the new rules set -- three times: The Time of Troubles, the Spellplague, and the Second Sundering.
[h=3]2nd Edition: The Time of Troubles[/h]Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was a hit in the 80s. It was also a focal point of the Satanic Panic, a belief in America that children were being corrupted by media, including Dungeons & Dragons. TSR planned to consolidate the disparate rules for AD&D, but it also had another goal in mind. Shannon Appelcline explains in Designers & Dragons:

TSR (re)announced the new edition of the game in Dragon #117 ( January 1987). In the next issue, project lead Zeb Cook famously penned a column title “Who Dies?” It mentioned that part of the revision would involve deciding which character classes to throw out. The column was remarkably prescient, spotlighting the two classes that were eventually removed from the game — saying that assassins had always been bad for party unity while monks had been better covered by Oriental Adventures. However it also threatened many other favorites, from clerics and thieves to illusionists and druids. The result was a huge outcry, thousands of letters, and a lot of debate about the new edition. Cook would later say that he was trying to evoke a reaction. Whatever the purpose, it allowed players to have a real hand in the revision of the game, first through their letters, then through a massive questionnaire. Players even saved the bard, another class that Cook had marked for extinction.

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The changes went beyond classes. Appelcline explains:

James M. Ward, who had instituted the removal of demons and devils, explained in Dragon #154 (February 1990) that “[a]voiding the Angry Mother Syndrome has become a good, basic guideline for all of the designers and editors at TSR, Inc.” Apparently, TSR had received one letter a week complaining about the demons and devils since the original Monster Manual was printed, and those 624 letters, or what Ward called “a lot of letters,” had been the reason he’d removed the infernal races.

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The end result was that D&D's rules didn't just change, its policies did too:

The release of AD&D 2nd Edition corresponded with important policy changes at TSR. An effort was made to remove aspects of the game which had attracted negative publicity, most notably the removal of all mention of demons and devils, although equivalent fiendish monsters were included, renamed tanar'ri and baatezu, respectively. Moving away from the moral ambiguity of the 1st edition AD&D, the TSR staff eliminated character classes and races like the assassin and the half-orc, and stressed heroic roleplaying and player teamwork. The target age of the game was also lowered, with most 2nd edition products being aimed primarily at teenagers.

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To reflect these changes, the Forgotten Realms experienced a world-spanning event known as the Time of Troubles. Lord Ao, over-deity of the Forgotten Realms gods, decided to shake things up by demoting all deities to avatar status to teach them some humility. Some deities died during this time, while other mortals ascended to godhood. MerricB explains the mechanical end results:

Now, the point of this was to update the world to the new rules. The change in clerical spell lists could be attributed to the gods now paying more attention to mortals. Half-orcs, demons and devils were just pushed aside in the new Realms… they existed, they just weren’t talked about much. Monks had never been that much of an issue. But assassins… TSR had a special plan for them. You remember how Bhaal, the god of assassins, got himself killed? Well, when he was killed, that act also killed every assassin in the Forgotten Realms. Sucks to be them! (Or to have an assassin PC!)

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Much of these changes were expressed through fiction and comics, while other changes were hinted at and explained only later. And of course, Bhaal's death was an excuse to remove assassins from the game. You can see the full list of changes on the Forgotten Realms wiki, but suffice it to say that these changes were far-reaching.
[h=3]3rd Edition: Nothing to See Here[/h]Third edition passed the Forgotten Realms without incident:

The introduction of D&D 3e was exceptional in that there was no overarching, global in-setting event introduced to explain the rules changes. Oddly, the adventure Die Vecna Die! was intended to explain the rules changes (for all D&D settings), but its events were never made FR canon. WotC just proceeded with the 3e rules and setting changes without adding any corresponding historical events. The 3e change is thus “silent” in FR's historical record.

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This isn't to say that the Forgotten Realms weren't changed in significant ways, but rather that the campaign wasn't adjusted to reflect the rules. The next edition would not be so kind to the Realms.
[h=3]4th Edition: The Spellplague[/h]The Spellplague didn't have nearly the amount of fictional support but its effects were just as far-reaching -- if not more so -- as The Time of Troubles, Mystra was assassinated by Cyric and Shar -- Cyric and Midnight were adventuring companions at one point before the Time of Troubles -- causing the magical essence behind the Forgotten Realms to be warped by the Far Realm. 4th Edition's changes to D&D were significant, so the impact felt on the Forgotten Realms was equally disruptive. Planes were shuffled, including the creation of the Feywild and the introduction of the Elemental Chaos. Deities were shuffled too, with Asmodeus ascending to godhood and bringing the Abyss into the Elemental Chaos (demons were reclassified accordingly). Spells and magic items worked differently, with items that possessed charges no longer functioning the same way.

Like many changes tied to Fourth Edition, the reception was mixed, including one of the authors who had a significant stake in the Forgotten Realms, R.A. Salvatore. Aldrick explains on the Candlekeep forums:

Salvatore and presumably the other authors were called in and basically told what the changes were going to be; they weren't consulted at all. So it was a major shock. They were basically told, "Hey guess what, we're advancing the world 100 years." Salvatore was very, very, very upset. Since over half his main characters were human, he basically didn't see how it could work for him. In his words, "140 year old humans don't fight very well." Salvatore wrote a really long letter to several Senior Editors at WotC pleading with them to reconsider the 4E changes, but clearly it fell on deaf ears. Presumably a lot of other authors were also very upset, and more specifically Ed Greenwood. Salvatore talks about coming out of that 2006 meeting where the changes were revealed with Ed Greenwood, and Ed was basically about to cry. Ed turned to Salvatore and asked, "What are we going to do?" It seemed that they couldn't stop it or change their minds. So Salvatore responded to Ed with, "We're going to be smarter than them. We're going to think long term." That's when Ed and Salvatore got together secretly and started brainstorming on how to fix the Realms when WotC realized how much it was going to be despised by most of the fans.

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They would get their chance with Fifth Edition.
[h=3]5th Edition: The Second Sundering[/h]To understand the Second Sundering it's helpful to understand the First Sundering. It was a magic ritual cast by elves that created the Isle of Evermeet -- but also blew up much of the Forgotten Realms:

Hundreds of High Mages assemble in the heartland of Faerûn at the Gathering Place. Ignoring the lesson learned from the destruction of Tintageer centuries earlier, they cast a spell of elven High Magic designed to create a glorious elf homeland. On the Day of Birthing, the magic reaches its apex as the spell extends both back and forward in the mists of time. Faerûn, the one land, is sundered apart by the unbridled force of the Sundering. As a result, hundreds of cities are washed away, thousands of elves lie dead, and the face of Toril is changed forever. The name Faerûn, no longer the One Land, is given to the largest continent. Surrounded by vast expanses of water, the island of Evermeet, thought to be a piece of Arvandor and a bridge between worlds, breaks the surface of the Trackless Sea. Blessed by the goddess Angharradh, verdant forests and wildlife soon flourish across the island. Corellon Larethian wards Evermeet against Lolth, Malar, and the other powers of the anti-Seldarine and entrusts a unique seed to the Fair Folk of the isle. The seed soon sprouts, growing into a miniature tree known as the Tree of Souls. Over time, the souls of ancient elves who choose to stay on Toril, rather than pass on to Arvandor, merge into the Tree of Souls, slowly augmenting its power. Prophecies reveal that the Tree of Souls will someday be planted on Faerûn when the Fair Folk finally return to the mainland after a period of exile on the Green Isle.

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The Second Sundering reversed a lot of what happened due to the Spellplague, with Ao restoring much back to pre-Fourth Edition changes. This video of a seminar on the topic explains the Sundering in more detail. Aldrick picks up the thread:

Fast forward to a couple of years ago at Gencon when 5E was announced. James Wyatt pulls Salvatore aside after he's done a seminar, and begins bringing up 5E Forgotten Realms. At that time WotC hadn't planned on what to do, but according to Salvatore, James Wyatt said that 4E FR had "gone off the rails" and then started outlining everything that needed to be done to fix it. That's when he took James aside and for over 20 minutes outlined everything he and Ed had been planning for years. Salvatore basically sees all of this as an attempt to try and fix "Ed's Realms" - that's how everyone is basically looking at it. He said that he's willing to take personal responsibility for 5E FR because he had a direct hand in it, but he also said that he's "very proud" of what they've come up with.

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And that brings us to now, the 5E Forgotten Realms that looks a bit like the same Realms before changes wrought by the Spellplague. The Forgotten Realms wiki illustrates how everything old was new again:

By the end of the Sundering, the world began to look very much alike to how it was during the 1300s...At the end of the Second Sundering, most of the consequences that the Spellplague had wrought upon Toril were nowhere to be seen...Many deities previously presumed dead or missing managed to return to life (or to re-emerge) during the Second Sundering, and then to quickly amass new followers (or to win back their old faithful), and to reclaim at least some of their former portfolios (resulting in a new distribution of spheres of influence among the Faerunian deities)...The Sundering of Toril and Abeir had extensive repercussions on the arrangement of the planes of existence and of the divine domains. The World Axis cosmology was rearranged in a new Great Wheel, which only differed from its previous iteration because of the presence of the Elemental Chaos and of the Feywild and Shadowfell.

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As gamers look forward to new games and new worlds to play in 2018, they can take comfort in the fact that even the Forgotten Realms goes through cycles. Happy New Year everyone!

Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Replying as this really was IMHO a good article and representative of the reason I continue to frequent ENWorld. Nice job. Beyond this, I'll state that my personal opinion of FR is that I absolutely loved the grey box. It basically gave me my first overview of how to design a world from the very simple perspective I had at the time. If it was in the boxed set, it was something that I'd need to think about for my own stuff. I'd even go so far as to say that if it hadn't been released I may have given up gaming.

Over time I backed away from FR, simply because everyone was using it. Once it became defacto D&D, it wasn't as cool to me but by then, I had my own setting. So FWIW, I didn't really know about the Time of Troubles or the Spellplague other than to just see that the setting had changed to reflect the current rules at the time and in a completely meta way, it made sense. If rules change significantly, the setting needs to change. Personally, I don't know that I'd have spent time on "we got rid of assassins so there needs to be a story reason why". Seems unnecessary.

The assassin class goes away.. great. That doesn't mean that no poison exists that can assassinate someone or that every person ever assassinated was done by an assassin class. Rogue covers a lot of ground. Same with Fighter. Assassins guilds can still exist and there's no need to have an assassin class. Retcon what you need to and move on.

On the alternative realities for FR. This is rather elegant given the position the design team is in and how clumsy/high fantasy some of the storylines have been. (Again, all assassins in the world are now dead because the god of assassins is dead.. wow- live and die by the absolutism and make everyone cry.)

Here's one option for the person who asked how characters could be in alternate realities and "see the changes as they happen". Timeline/Reality fork. The character who lives through the change isn't the same character that still exists in the previous rules set's timeline and everything that happened previous to the hard change is retconned somehow to be consistent with the new rules set. Think Flashpoint. (DC).

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Here's one option for the person who asked how characters could be in alternate realities and "see the changes as they happen". Timeline/Reality fork. The character who lives through the change isn't the same character that still exists in the previous rules set's timeline and everything that happened previous to the hard change is retconned somehow to be consistent with the new rules set. Think Flashpoint. (DC).

Yeah, adding the "Rules Realities" concept to the existing "Multiverse" concept is no more "meta" and complex than what DC has done. And still less complex than the Transformers universe, which probably has the most intricate canon concepts of any fictional world. In Transformers, every variation seen in any product (coloring book, stickers, comic book, crossover, and so forth) is given a canonical serial number, as an alternate timeline, making for hundreds of official alternate realities. They have some serious canon enthusiasts on the design team.

If Transformers enthusiasts can grok that gigantic tangle of continuity, then D&D enthusiasts could handle the Realities concept.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

The fact that the world actually worked differently - that vampires used to drain levels, and are now reduced to a shadow of their former selves - that individuals might remember when magic worked differently, and they had to re-learn everything - created a lot of opportunity for stories that couldn't exist anywhere else.

Well, if the WotC design team were to consciously take up the Realities framework, it wouldn't change any of that. The ToT, Spellplague, and 2nd Sundering happened in all nine Realities of the Forgotten Realms:

• Original D&D Forgotten Realms (never seen in an official product)
• Classic/BECMI D&D Forgotten Realms (never seen in an official product)
• AD&D 1E Forgotten Realms (past, present, and future is always 1E)
• AD&D 2E Forgotten Realms (past, present, and future is always 2E; the past of this reality is seen in the 2E Arcane Age books)
• SAGA Forgotten Realms (only glimpsed in the DRAGON magazine article which showed how to convert other worlds into SAGA rules)
• D&D 3E Forgotten Realms (past, present, and future is always 3E)
• D&D 4E Forgotten Realms (past, present, and future is always 4E)
• D&D 5E Forgotten Realms (past, present, and future is always 5E)
• Transitive Forgotten Realms (where the underlying rules reality did shift from 1E, to 2E, to 3E, to 4E, to 5E at particular moments in the chronology. Given that the D&D Multiverse was not coherently portrayed in OD&D, which consisted only of Oerth and Blackmoor, it's not certain if there was an OD&D era in the Transitive Reality. Same for BECMI, only a few of worlds of the D&D Multiverse have been seen: Mystara, Blackmoor, Pelinore, and a bit of Oerth (some of the first BD&D modules were set in both Oerth and Mystara).)

As suggested in the 2E Arcane Age products, the way magic worked before the crises could be somewhat modelled within each Rules set; for example, by designing "lost" 1E-style spells and spellcasting but molded to fit with 2E rules. Same for other in-story facets, such as the vampires...could call the pre-crisis level-draining vampires "archaic vampires" or something, and stat them out with all eight rules sets, and also stat out the post-crisis non-level draining vampires in all eight rules sets. Or perhaps these distinctions would only be done in those worlds (such as Toril) which had in-story references to the changes.

I don't know that Krynn or Oerth ever acknowledged the changes, so it's probably easier to just to handwave it as different dimensions.

AFAIK, Krynn did have in-story crises tied to edition changes:

• Chaos War (1e Krynn to SAGA Krynn)
• War of Souls (SAGA Krynn to 3e Krynn)

Oerth did too:

• Fate of Istus (1e Oerth to 2e Oerth)
• Die Vecna Die! (2e Oerth to 3e Oerth)

 

[The Crimson Binome]

As suggested in the 2E Arcane Age products, the way magic worked before the crises could be somewhat modelled within each Rules set; for example, by designing "lost" 1E-style spells and spellcasting but molded to fit with 2E rules. Same for other in-story facets, such as the vampires...could call the pre-crisis level-draining vampires "archaic vampires" or something, and stat them out with all eight rules sets, and also stat out the post-crisis non-level draining vampires in all eight rules sets. Or perhaps these distinctions would only be done in those worlds (such as Toril) which had in-story references to the changes.

It seems like an awful lot of work for very little payoff. I don't particularly care that Toril has survived eight negative space wedgies, if none of them actually correspond to anything meaningful. At that point, it's just additional complexity for the sake of introducing complications.

A more elegant solution would be if Toril was unique in that it actually shifted between Realities each time, where other settings remained fixed. That way, we don't need eight different versions to model the exact same event.

 

[Mortellan]

Great article. I used to rail on 4E for a lot of things and wrecking Faerun was the worst of it. And I'm a Greyhawk fan! The part about RA and Ed in those meetings would've ticked me off if I had heard them 10 years ago.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

It seems like an awful lot of work for very little payoff. I don't particularly care that Toril has survived eight negative space wedgies, if none of them actually correspond to anything meaningful. At that point, it's just additional complexity for the sake of introducing complications.

That's your view. As you wish. Blowing up the world everytime there's an edition change is also a lot of work - with a mixed payoff.

In my view, the Realities concept is very elegant. It simplifies things. If consciously taken up again by WotC, it would untangle the designers' minds, so that it's no longer necessary to blow up the world every time there's a new edition. We just shift the lens to the Sixth Reality of the D&D Multiverse, which has always existed.

Sure, there could be some sort of "event", just for the fun of it, for marketing purposes, but the nuts and bolts of it would be taken care of by the Reality Shift.

A more elegant solution would be if Toril was unique in that it actually shifted between Realities each time, where other settings remained fixed. That way, we don't need eight different versions to model the exact same event.

So what Reality are the 2E Arcane Age products set in then?

The other settings did shift through the different rules sets too. Yes, there could be a Reality which painstakingly modeled which rules sets were used by which setting at which time (with a 2E incursion during the Arcane Age?!). That's what I call the Transitive Reality - there could be more than one way of figuring that out - someone would need to sit down with the "Temporal Chronology of the Primes" and see how the edition changes matched up with the calendar dates of each world. Yes, you're right, there could be a Mixed Reality, where the D&D Worlds do not all shift to the same "rules reality" at the same time. If the dates don't all match up, it would mean that a Reality Shift occurs when travelling to that world via spelljammer or planewalking.

Such a Mixed Reality would be especially strange in regard to Mystara. Since the 2E Mystara appeared in the Planescape cosmology all of a sudden, without comment, as if it had always been there. And the OD&D Mystara had explicitly said that the entire 1E Multiverse was in a separate Reality not reachable by ship or planewalking - only reachable by Alternate World Gate or *reality shift* spell.

Yes, such a Transitive-Mixed Reality could be figured out. And that's actually sorta what TSR/WotC did, but unconsciously, with much unspoken, convoluted handwaving.

And yet...once the 2E Mystara walks on screen (without comment or event), does the Classic D&D Mystara which is featured in hundreds of products just not exist anymore?

What about when the 2E Mystara then refers to events in its past which are depicted with 2E rules? Did the Classic Mystara Reality never exist?

The Realities concept - which is already an official or semi-official (though overlooked) part of the D&D Multiverse - respects that the different depictions of each world still exist (past, present, and future) - it's just that they're no longer supported by the current product line.

 

[jasper]

Basically a combined nuclear and viral terrorist attack on the Matrix coincided with Deus hijacking big parts of it to upgrade itself and that combination caused most of the Matrix to become infected and destroyed. And when it was rebuild they switched to wireless technology.

PTTTSSS.
Xena Warrior princess, " A wizard did it Bart!"

 

[Kobold Boots]

That's your view. As you wish. Blowing up the world everytime there's an edition change is also a lot of work - with a mixed payoff.

In my view, the Realities concept is very elegant. It simplifies things. If consciously taken up again by WotC, it would untangle the designers' minds, so that it's no longer necessary to blow up the world every time there's a new edition. We just shift the lens to the Sixth Reality of the D&D Multiverse, which has always existed.

Sure, there could be some sort of "event", just for the fun of it, for marketing purposes, but the nuts and bolts of it would be taken care of by the Reality Shift.



So what Reality are the 2E Arcane Age products set in then?

The other settings did shift through the different rules sets too. Yes, there could be a Reality which painstakingly modeled which rules sets were used by which setting at which time (with a 2E incursion during the Arcane Age?!). That's what I call the Transitive Reality - there could be more than one way of figuring that out - someone would need to sit down with the "Temporal Chronology of the Primes" and see how the edition changes matched up with the calendar dates of each world. Yes, you're right, there could be a Mixed Reality, where the D&D Worlds do not all shift to the same "rules reality" at the same time. If the dates don't all match up, it would mean that a Reality Shift occurs when travelling to that world via spelljammer or planewalking.

Such a Mixed Reality would be especially strange in regard to Mystara. Since the 2E Mystara appeared in the Planescape cosmology all of a sudden, without comment, as if it had always been there. And the OD&D Mystara had explicitly said that the entire 1E Multiverse was in a separate Reality not reachable by ship or planewalking - only reachable by Alternate World Gate or *reality shift* spell.

Yes, such a Transitive-Mixed Reality could be figured out. And that's actually sorta what TSR/WotC did, but unconsciously, with much unspoken, convoluted handwaving.

And yet...once the 2E Mystara walks on screen (without comment or event), does the Classic D&D Mystara which is featured in hundreds of products just not exist anymore?

What about when the 2E Mystara then refers to events in its past which are depicted with 2E rules? Did the Classic Mystara Reality never exist?

The Realities concept - which is already an official or semi-official (though overlooked) part of the D&D Multiverse - respects that the different depictions of each world still exist (past, present, and future) - it's just that they're no longer supported by the current product line.

I think I'm going to side with [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] here.

Since all of the previous editions already have all of their rules and stat blocks inside their own books and it's the rare DM that wants a single reference for "all realities" simply because they're running a game with one set of rules at a time, it's probably better to just keep the alternate realities stuff in mind and story and let individual DMs restat things they need as necessary.

However, where I will disagree is static worlds vs a transitional Toril. The problems that face Toril in terms of transition would affect any DMs world that started in an earlier edition and migrated to a new rules set. I may be in the minority, but I've played with large groups in every edition since 1st ed D&D and I've had to "upgrade" my world twice so far (I never bothered upgrading my world to 4th ed due to what I perceived at the time as a larger than polite amount of work - I ran folks through the shadowfell module line instead and went world-lite).

Now that fifth is here I'm probably going to revisit things and restart the game about 20 years later to take into account aging characters and a new generation; However, you can bet I'll have some kind of event to commemorate fourth edition in the world's history for no good reason other than being complete.

 

[machineelf]

Argh. This is one of my biggest griefs. It was a huge mistake to go fiddle around with the FR campaign world and timeline. When they did, and when they moved the timeline up 100 years or so, they lost a lot of iconic characters who were original to the campaign world. They also lost a lot of lore and information that FR fans had gathered over the years. Just think of all the information on Waterdeep alone that is now not relevant to the current timeline of the FR.

It's why I and others ignore all or most of the changes to the FR. A campaign world, once published can be added to for the sake of greater completeness, but the core of the world should never be altered. They should take a page from Eberron, with its set timeline.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

I'm probably the only long-time FR fan who prefers the 4E version.

Sure, WotC did a pretty poor job with the execution (never leave your campaign worlds in the hands of designers who don't understand the world), but the idea really does work for me.

Unfortunately, when the cartographer couldn't complete his map of the world in time and sent in a diaper smeared with the faecal matter of his 6-month-old baby by way of an apology, surely he couldn't have realised that that would be what they would print as the world map. Yes, it's very hard to love a world when the map goes from a figurative shstain to an almost literal shtstain. Fortunately, a few regions got decent maps thanks to Mike Schley and Sean MacDonald.

I like the fact that the core Realms is more or less intact. Sure, the later crappy pastiche slapped on with no regard for whether or not it belonged in the Realms is gone, but that's a good thing IMO and IME. In place of that stuff that never belonged, you've got lots of "weird", always a good thing in a fantasy game.

Unfortunately, the Campaign Guide simply did a piss-poor job bringing the setting to life, or telling the story of the Spellplague in such a way that it inspires stories rather than internet arguments. That's why Ed should have been more involved, and not simply banished to create another tacked-on continent that doesn't belong. And with the enormous amount of white space in the book, there was definitely room for more content with the same page count.