The New Forgotten Realms - (About) A Year Later

[JeffB]

I agree with all of this. I find the 4E FR book much more useful as a DM than its 3E counterpart. Until I got my hands on 4E Eberron, I considered the FRCG to be an excellent and underrated book. After Eberron, I wish they would have done FR in the same manner they did 4E Eberron, even if it meant buying five or more books.

I've not seen the 4E Eberron books yet-though they are on my "to get" list. If they are better than the 4E FR books, thats high praise in my estimation. Makes me all the more eager to check them out!

 

[filthgrinder]

Wonder why this "three and out" model was implemented in the first place.

The same reason they "blew up" the Realms, to create space. The idea is that, here is a book for players, here is a book for DM's, and an adventure. The rest is up to you. You are free to create whatever you want, drop whatever elements you want, and create your own stories. You are no longer hand-cuffed to the setting. You no longer have to worry about obtaining an encyclopedia worth of knowledge of a setting. As a DM, you don't have to experience a player mentioning something from some book you don't have that makes your current story seem silly. You don't have large detailed accounts of cities that you need to adhere to.

The settings are left as open sandboxes for you to create and play in. You don't have to worry about squeezing your story into the incredibly shrinking empty spaces of the setting.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Because where settings are concerned, it's a much stronger economic model than continued support. Every setting book beyond the first is drawing on a smaller and smaller niche market of potential buyers, far more so than even relatively narrowly focused core books.

I talked about that particular topic in a lot more detail in another thread a few months ago, if you're interested: http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...-thread-where-does-idea-come.html#post4859396

This sounds pretty spot on to me, and even so I don't that the three and out was the right model for Forgotten Realms. To me the right model would have been the FRPG and adventure as is, with the FRCG more in the manner of the original gray box. Put in the bestiary, pantheon, general world info and brief history, and then do Eberron style writeups on a few core locations and organizations and focus specifically on those. If the demand was felt, do additional setting books to flesh out the rest of FR in crunch free books.

 

[Falstyr]

To me the various realms have always been interchangeable. It never felt as if the campaign was one realm specific. There were parts of Vanilla, Ebberon and the Forgotten Realms with some adjustments to make it one big universe. It was great to play in and left a lot of flexibility and things to do. With 4e there hasn't been a lot of change in that regard for my games. In fact now a days we stick more to the FR setting than any other.

Previous editions had a lot of supplements and in depth history which made each realm come to live. In 4e we get articles that flesh out certain areas such as Cormyr or the city of Genasi etc. It is still great, but just like previous editions it will take some time before there is enough supplemental material to work with. But I still feel the hardcore FR fans are just a bunch of people who moan without a just cause. Complaining how certain gods no longer exist, how history suddenly has a gap of a few decades. Well boohoo. I can see no reason why people can't use supplements of previous editions in their 4e FR setting. The changes aren't that huge making it impossible to implement. Spellscarred can easily be added and the geographical changes aren't that influential either.

The only people who might have a decent reason to moan about the realms are those new to D&D. Then again...what is there to bitch about when they don't even know the past and what there might be different hehe. For new comers the books are clear and easy to comprehend. Low learning curve to get into and start playing. 3.x was like gibberish the first few times I read through it and took quite some time to get used to.

Using underdark supplements and races of Faerun are still very usable in 4e luckily

 

[JeffB]

Because where settings are concerned, it's a much stronger economic model than continued support. Every setting book beyond the first is drawing on a smaller and smaller niche market of potential buyers, far more so than even relatively narrowly focused core books.

And business implications aside, as a DM I really prefer this new model. I'm the kind of guy who liked the original GH folio, over Gary's boxed set. The OGB over the FR 3E CS. the Scarred Lands Gaz over the hardcover. The scant few pages detailing The Known World in the Cook/Marsh Expert set and X1 over umpteen Gazetteers. The..well...you get the idea

Of course at times I wish there WERE more setting specific books coming down the pike , but at the same time I know from past experience that I usually find the core setting book great, and subsequent books become significantly less useful to me and are not a good value for my $. The 4E model of "highly adaptable core" books (something like Open Grave or AV1, e.g.) fills in the gaps for giving me material I can plug and play whether it's FR, GH, my Nentir Vale "homebrew", or whatever setting I may want to use.

 

[ggroy]

So far I've only used the 4E FR setting for a short campaign, which didn't have any hardcore FR "canon lawyers" as players. Most of my friends who are hardcore FR "canon lawyers", absolutely refuse to play in the 4E FR setting.

These days I've been playing my 4E games in the Pathfinder Golarion setting.

 

[Primal]

False.

The "three and out" model was the plan from well before the publication of the FR books.

I don't know what Rich asked, or when. (Maybe he was asking about DDI stuff.) I don't know exactly when the decision was made to do "three and out." But I do know it was before the FR books were published, or even heavily previewed, because that decision was in place by the time the 4E PHB actually came out.

And I admitted that I might have been wrong in saying it happened after the 4E FR books were out; I do however remember Rich commented last year on the 'Ask the FR designers'-thread that they are planning new supplements after the Spellgard-adventure; after the outrage on various message boards he said there will be only three books and out. And I think this happened after all the previews for 4E FR were out and the overwhelming negative reaction had been apparent for some time (on March or April?).

The first 4E FR previews were published, I think, in January 2008 (or December 2007?), and the boards exploded with fan rage pretty much the same day. Was that before the business model was finalized? I don't know (maybe you do, or can ask an "insider"?), but I definitely think this model was cemented as they suspected that 4E FR wouldn't sell as much as expected (and hence it would be a waste of time and money to produce more than the books that were already in development). As I said above, it wasn't an instantaneous reaction; Rich did discuss the things over with the fans for some time, but eventually said there won't more than three books.

If he already knew that there wouldn't be more than three books -- and I know he's a guy who wouldn't talk of it unless they really planned to do something -- why make such claims?

Anyway, that's the way I see it. YMMV.

 

[Jack99]

Sorry, Jack... that was a bit of a hyperbole on my part to drive the point home (I didn't mean to single you out or insult you); I was referring to the fact that a lot of posters (at least on other boards) claimed that the result was "rigged" because you could vote multiple times, and this was countered by people defending the EnNies and saying that this vote is a proof of 4E's success (and I think it is).

As for the judges picking the products... I don't always agree with their nominations, but usually they pick the "best" of the year's publications (and both from mainstream RPGs and indie RPGs). For example, I don't think many people would actually say that Mouse Guard or CthulhuTech didn't deserve to be nominated. Therefore, I think the list is pretty reliable on the "quality stuff published this year" (I've compared the lists from the previous years, and I have to say that from my perspective the EnNies nominations are 90% "dead on"). Now, I'm fairly sure (based on what I've seen and heard about the books) that Eberron will make the list next year, and maybe even win the gold. However, the fact that 4E FR didn't even the list, and maybe I just missed it, but I haven't even seen any threads about this being a surprise to 4E FR fans (in fact, apart from the Candlekeep and the WoTC boards, which have seen very little activity during the last year -- also according to the numbers posted by Lord Karsus, there have been only a few threads about FR). To me it tells a story that FR is less popular than ever before; nobody really seems to care one way or the other. YMMV, of course.

FRPG may have sold well because of the Drow, Genasi and Swordmage, but if I had to take a wild guess I'd say that the *vast* majority of the guys who brought the book play either in an Eberron or homebrewed setting.

Fair enough mate.

Btw, I am not saying that I think 4e FR would have won. Even though I like the newest version of the realms (grey box set ftw though), I would still have voted for Golarion.

I also have no doubt that 4e FR lost a lot of it's old fans, especially those that became fans due to the 3.x version.

So in many ways, we do agree

Cheers

 

[Invisible Stalker]

Finally Forgotten Realms looks like something I'd be happy to DM. Of course, none of the FR fans in my group want to have anything to do with the 4E setting.

 

[Mournblade94]

Finally Forgotten Realms looks like something I'd be happy to DM. Of course, none of the FR fans in my group want to have anything to do with the 4E setting.

My gaming group split over this as well.

Only 2 of us were ever willing to DM. Those 2 of us do not like 4e let alone 4e FR. SO the other 4 get mad at us for not DMing the game they want to play, and then blame us for the groups disintegration. I ran 4e for them for 5 months, that was more than enough for me.

Now of course the 2 of us who were DM's have moved on to pathfinder and Golarion (though I might just run the FR 3rd edition), and the others complain they only get to play 4e in eberron and genric and not in 4eFR, which is what they want.

So the two people that put work into the game and really knew FR lore left it when it got stunted. the other 4 that just liked playing in it and didn't care all that much because they like the game I had set up, want to continue on with 4e realms.

It seems to be a trend. Those that REALLY knew the setting, that I know of, moved on to better things. Those that really didn't know or didn't care still like 4eFR.

I guess DMing is like driving stick shift. If you know how to drive stick you can drive just about any car anywhere in the world.

For RPG's if you are not a DM you are stuck playing what people want to DM.