Well I want to fire Wizards in return. Not for political reasons or any other stupid social cause junk. My reason is quite simple.
I want to fire specifically the design team for giving us FIVE EDITIONS of DnD and still not being able to get away from the FR which to be honest are the most "lets cover every possible stereotype" bland meaningless default setting of any RPG.
1st Edition AD&D was Greyhawk. The Forgotten Realms was not purchased until 1987, two years prior to 2e.
2e had no default setting and a myriad of non-FR settings were published.
3e was Greyhawk by default.
4e was the Nentir Vale by default.
Why would they get away from FR? The whole point is that it's generic so it's easier to file off the serial numbers to use it in a homebrew world.
Because if they make an actually generic world—like they did in 4e—they just end up slowly building a whole new setting piece by piece. And not having any details of the setting just means more work for DMs who don't homebrew.
Seriously, out of all the supplements released for 5E only one of them was not FR based. The second one that could have been the Elemental Evil book which was initially from Greyhawk was instead pointlessly shoehorned into FR.
Because... the multiversal threats that are the Elemental Princes of Evil are limited to one single world?
(And yes I know we can fire them at any time by not buying their product, this conversation is about why Wizards cannot get away from FR and keeps running back to it)
The reasons are pretty simple:
* The majority of DMs use homebrew
* The more non-generic the location, the harder it is to adapt to homebrew
* Of the minority that doesn't use a homebrew setting, the Realms is the most popular by a wide, wide margin. (IIRC something like 5x as popular as the next most popular setting.)
* As stated above, having completely generic locations is boring. (Who wants to adventure in the
Ghost Tower of I_____???)
* Going brand new actually makes much more work for the writers, as they have to invent 100% of the location rather than pulling from previous book. I'd rather them spend that time on the adventure and plot
* If they don't publish Realms material each few year, the rights revert back to Ed Greenwood.
Seriously if 6E comes out in a couple years and FR is still the default setting then I am done, I am moving to PF2 or any number of other options. Very tired of the Misbegotten Realms and campaign books set in them.
They're not doing 6e in a couple years. 5e is selling far to well. And they're likely not leaving the Realms any time soon, beyond small side books to
Magic the Gathering settings and PDFs.
So... goodbye.