D&D 5E What happens in the sundering?

[Ezequielramone]

I'm about to start hoard of the Dragon queen, i have tons of Forgotten Realms books from adnd, 3rd and 4 Rd edition. But I have no idea what are the last news on the realms. who is in charge and which organizations are still alive. Is there a summary of mayor changes or events out there to update me?

 

[Tormyr]

Ah, the Sendering. An apocalyptic age in the Forgotten Realms. Young, whippersnapper mages-in-training decided to mostly forgo their studies and spend most of their time using globally linked sending stones to broadcast inane messages, pointless rants, childish insults and images of cats.

EDIT: The Sundering on the other hand dealt with the restoration of the weave, removal of Abeir from Toril and the ending of the Spellplague. Several gods acted through the Chosen agents to try to increase their portfolio as Ao rewrote the Tablets of Fate. http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Sundering_(event)

 

[Ezequielramone]

title edited. thanks for the info. I'll check the link.

 

[Dahak]

That's the 25000 GP question, isn't it? I don't think anyone knows what happened during the Sundering, other than the planets Abeir and Toril unmerged. Six novels and two epic modules later and I know about as much as I did when the announcement of the Sundering event was made.

Edit: in fairness, I am certain of one thing -- Anauroch is back.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

You know, it kind of sucks that we have almost no idea of what actually happened with this sundering thing. Someone will open a thread like this in EnWorld about every 15 days, and it's probably not different in WotC's own forums. If I wanted to start a Realms campaign now, I'd go with one of the pre-4E incarnations. Heck, I'd play 4E Realms before playing anything but the Tyranny of Dragons adventure in 5E Realms. While I don't believe every setting needs to be updated every edition to be played, it's stupid to introduce serious changes in a setting without clearly explaining to people interested in the setting what they are. /rant

 

[TheSleepyKing]

You know, it kind of sucks that we have almost no idea of what actually happened with this sundering thing. Someone will open a thread like this in EnWorld about every 15 days, and it's probably not different in WotC's own forums. If I wanted to start a Realms campaign now, I'd go with one of the pre-4E incarnations. Heck, I'd play 4E Realms before playing anything but the Tyranny of Dragons adventure in 5E Realms. While I don't believe every setting needs to be updated every edition to be played, it's stupid to introduce serious changes in a setting without clearly explaining to people interested in the setting what they are. /rant

Yep, apart from little bits here and there (Mystra and Lathander are back and kinda-sorta Mask too, the Sea of Fallen Stars has been re-embiggened, the weave is restored, the Shades are mostly dead and so on) we don't yet have much official confirmation of what exactly the Sundering entailed. Are Tymanther and Akanul gone? Are Mulhorand, Calimshan, Anauroch, the Vilhon, Luiren, Evermeet, Maztica, the Chultan Peninsula and Unther restored? What about the other gods? The Aboleths? We pretty much have no confirmed info at this stage, just guesses.

Which is why I felt it was so disappointing to hear that Wizards hadn't even started on an FR sourcebook yet, which means it's likely at least a year before we see one. I'm just hoping that in the meantime we get some kind of gazeteer or update on the status of the Realms and the Gods.

 

[Jester David]

We just don't know.

The novels took a micro approach to the event, so we saw snippets and fragments. They've compared The Sundering to WW2 and it's a fair comparison.
The books we've been given being Pearl Harbour, Dirty Dozen, the Great Escape, Schindler's List, and Saving Private Ryan. But if you flunked history and know nothing about the Second World War watching those films wouldn't tell you much, and many of the details would be lost because you're only getting half the picture. You might wonder why the Japanese are the "bad guys" in one film while the Germans are the villains in so many others.

Really, WotC has been a little too vague with this event, especially given that it's a status quo changing Realm Shaking event. There's really nowhere close to enough information to run a Forgotten Realms campaign using the 5th Edition rules. You really have to stick to the provided APs. And it doesn't sound like WotC is even planning to release a campaign setting book any time soon.

 

[Lalato]

What happened is exactly what you need to make your perfect version of FR.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

What happened is exactly what you need to make your perfect version of FR.

That would be true of Greyhawk, Dark Sun and maybe even Planescape, but this is not the reason why people have chosen the Realms for some decades now. People like Forgotten Realms because it is highly detailed. If you won't bother to give lots of information, you'd be better not bothering with the Realms at all. As I said earlier, it's possible to play with older supplements, but saying "look, we have this earth-shaking event that is changing everything, but we're not describing it" is just stupid.

 

[GameDoc]

I just found a great deal on a near mint copy of the original gray boxed set on Ebay and I think I'm going back to that in terms of general geography and flavor. The only thing I may keep is the destruction of Mulhorand and Unther to explain the presence of dragonborn on Faerun. Maztica is back.

I always liked that Toril was home to Faerun, Kara-Tur, Maztica, and Al Qadim. You could contain yourself to one area to stick with a theme or move back and forth without planar travel involved. I will probably set my campaign up with an eye for the possibility of venturing to those realms and of having characters from them as well.