Ed Greenwood Presents: Elminster's Forgotten Realms

[Hellcow]

I am not terribly sure how different a Keith Baker Presents: Eberron would be from the published campaign setting...

I'll do a blog post about this at HDWT sometime in the next week, but there's certainly ways. One major example would be the Blood of Vol, which has slowly been creeping closer to my original vision but started out quite far from it in the 3.5 ECS. For that matter, my interpretation of Baator in the most recent Eye on Eberron article ignores a number of pre-existing things (such as the mention of Levistus in the Player's Guide To Eberron or the description of it as a full plane in the ECS).

Of course, one of the key differences is that Eberron has always taken the approach that the DM should be free to overwrite canon. As such, "Keith Baker Presents: Eberron" would be just that - MY Eberron. It might not match the canon Eberron perfectly, but hey, YOUR Eberron might not match either one!

 

[Nikosandros]

I highly doubt this. Dave Arneson and his business also lost all rights to publish Blackmoor on his death. I would think whatever arrangement that Gary had with Wizards would be similar. Remember that WotC did pay off both Gary and Dave upon the launch of third edition so some agreements were signed.

That's an unrelated issue. Gary was given the rights to reprint his Greyhawk novels and Arneson could use the name Blackmoor. This agreements probably have expired, but Gail Gygax still has all the notes about the original Castle. I don't think that it's terribly likely that they will actually publish it, but making use of the original notes, as well as using the proper copyrighted names, would certainly make it a product palatable to a respectable audience.

 

[Faraer]

Because this is apparently the notes from Ed's home game, and that hasn't even reached the Time of Troubles yet.

Well, a small selection of his notes out of the hundreds of boxes. His campaign may have reached that time frame, but his players voted not to use TSR's Godswar.

Anyone else notice the conspicuous absence of a D&D logo on this cover?

But the presence of a rather nice new Realms logo!

I also wonder what "era" these notes are set in.

The Company of Crazed Venturers campaign of the mid-1970s took place mainly in the 1340s DR, I think; the Knights of Myth Drannor campaign, late 1970s through to present, in the late 1340s through late 1350s.

As far as I know the Time of Troubles and Spell Plague were the only major upheavals of FR, but weren't there other smaller "adjustments" as well?

Apart from the many novel and sourcebook events set later than Ed's campaign, there are various differences we know about, including the Moonshae archipelago that was overwritten by Doug Niles's version, absence of Vaasa and Damara, certain differences in Netheril and Anauroch, less Earth-analoguy Unther and Mulhorand, his own pre-D&D dark elves rather than drow (though he may have later adopted the latter), and a lot of different emphases from the published material (discussed in the extensive lore he's contributed to REALMS-L and especially Candlekeep.com). I'm looking forward to being surprised by other differences.

 

[Sammael]

I am looking forward to this book. I am not entirely sure if Ed's own version of FR is the right one for me (since I really enjoy the work of other FR RPG authors, particularly Eric L. Boyd, Stephen Schend, and SKR), but I am sure it will be chock-full of interesting insights and new perspectives. After all, this is the first book in a very long time where Ed will actually be allowed to talk about his world publicly and hopefully without NDA constraints.

 

[Warunsun]

I will almost surely get this. I love the cover, i love that it is system neutral and not filled with statblocks, and it is something, as far as i can remember, D&D has not done before.

Actually D&D under TSR did produce many supplements for campaigns that were basically system neutral and also were not filled with stat blocks. I know of several of these books but there weren't tons of them but they do exist. Wizards of the Coast has also done it at-least once before with the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer. There isn't any rules at all and absolutely no stat blocks in 190 pages of campaign material. Lots of crunch started appearing in third edition source-books and later.