Countdown to the Realms: Magic in the Forgotten Realms

[The Ubbergeek]

Blood Magic like Aztlan of Shadowrun....


Hum....


I could like it.

 

[Nyeshet]

Yikes!

Why bother retaining the "setting" at all if it is going to be so completely and utterly rewritten?

It is the difference between using a well known and liked Product Identity and starting anew while allowing a well liked and known Product Identity to fade due to lack of support.

The fact that they altered (literally) everything except most of the coastline and the names of a few NPCs, deities, organizations, and locations is immaterial in their eyes. So long as they who own the PI choose to call something "Forgotten Realms" that is what it is, irregardless of how little it resembles what others have come to like / know.

In the end it is a gamble. They will lose many who liked the former setting and see the new setting as too different, but so long as they gain as many or more new players than they lose of former players of the setting, the change will be judged a success. With all the encouragement they are giving the setting (Living FR, first CS guides, etc) they have reason to hope, especially as players entering D&D for the first time will likely have an interest in playing in an actually defined world instead of the mapless and vague suggested world.


I honestly do not know how it will turn out, but I think in the end they [WotC] will somehow make it work out for them. Despite that, I expect a few internet sites to pop up that specifically follow an alternate history, using 4e mechanics while constructing a completely different history - one not so disruptive / destructive to the Realms.


I personally have started to call the (new version of the) setting "Abeir-Toril" (AT) rather than "Forgotten Realms" (FR) (or "Faerun" or "the Realms") - mostly because I never commonly called the former version of the setting "Abeir-Toril," and calling it such now makes it feel (to me) more like the (almost completely) new setting it actually is. I find it much more easy to accept and view with interest the new AT when I disconnect it thus in my mind from the former FR. I find the changes that have been made to FR almost intolerable, but I must admit to having more than a little interest in further examining and playing in the new AT setting. The prior statement is only a contradiction if you view the AT and FR as the same setting - which I no longer do.

 

[The Ubbergeek]

And yet, this is a future, not an alternate history.

This IS FR.

To say otherwise is irritating, juvenile to me.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

And yet, this is a future, not an alternate history...This IS FR...To say otherwise is irritating, juvenile to me.

This is A Forgotten Realms, it happens to be the official FR now. But it's merely one way to do Forgotten Realms in 4e. If you're going to build an AU timeline distinguishing from the new RAW one is kind of necessary. And who cares what WoTC says about FR, at the table only the group's version of FR matters.

 

[The Ubbergeek]

This is A Forgotten Realms, it happens to be the official FR now. But it's merely one way to do Forgotten Realms in 4e. If you're going to build an AU timeline distinguishing from the new RAW one is kind of necessary. And who cares what WoTC says about FR, at the table only the group's version of FR matters.

This is THE Forgotten Realms, as canon.

of course, you are in the right of going against the canon - I would be hypocrite to say that a DM can't do it.

But it is the orthodox, canon, real base one. Others are AU, not canon.

 

[Mirtek]

The setting was starting to collapse under the weight of all that meta stuff, and geographically there were no open spaces, no mystery, very few frontiers left.

This is strange considering that they did shrink Faerun for the 3e FRCS because it had too many room for their liking back then.

 

[Primal]

Abeir and Toril were separated by the Sundering (selfish elves screwing up a planet just so they can make themselves a dinky little island that they can't even protect from the drow), which was bound into the Weave, and when the Weave went poof, the Sundering was undone.

Weird that Abeir is not (to my knowledge) mentioned in the Grand History of the Realms in any detail (I may be wrong, though). I also find it highly odd that Epic Magic or High Magic (i.e. 'Mythal-like magics') are able to "deflect" the Sellplag... Spellplague while even Gods and all the Demons of Abyss are powerless to prevent it from "reshuffling" the Planes. Talk about internal logic and consistency... :\

 

[The Ubbergeek]

Weird that Abeir is not (to my knowledge) mentioned in the Grand History of the Realms in any detail (I may be wrong, though). I also find it highly odd that Epic Magic or High Magic (i.e. 'Mythal-like magics') are able to "deflect" the Sellplag... Spellplague while even Gods and all the Demons of Abyss are powerless to prevent it from "reshuffling" the Planes. Talk about internal logic and consistency... :\

they do have the Seldarine on their side.

Also, things at times happen due to small actors. You don't need big canons to change a world.

A lone, single exalted serbian killed an emperor (?) and started so a world war (well, give an excuse to start the mechanism....).

 

[Nymrohd]

I reserve judgement for the effects of the spellplague to the planes until we get a more solid approach to it from Mr Baker. I honestly do not understand the mechanics of what happened in the Faerunian Cosmology. I get the Abeir thing after reading Stardeep but for the rest of the planes I am still fuzzy.

 

[Corinth]

Disappointed. Not mad, not angry, just disappointed. As there is only one game, there is only one world and to see it so thoughtlessly changed for reasons external to itself does naught but make me sigh.