The Sundering has launched...

[Shemeska]

What they did with the 4E realms killed any interest I have in it going forward.

(Unless, of course, it was all just a dream. Ha!)

Largely my feelings as well.

From what I've seen they admit the mistakes made with 4e FR and honestly intend to make 5e FR something that resembles the popular setting prior to that point. I loved FR prior to 4e, and I want to love it again, but leaving the 4e changes and 4e's own bevy of retcons to the setting in place in some capacity really sours me on the Realms as a whole moving forward. Other settings have since caught my eye for the atmosphere and style that initially attracted me to FR, and while I'll look at the 5e material, because of what happened in 4e, there's going to be a substantially higher barrier to overcome to gain and keep my attention.

 

[GSHamster]

That's what I'm not connecting with. I don't know how you act tastelessly towards a video game.

I'll try for another stab at describing the issue.

To me, Baldur's Gate is fan fiction. It's authorized fan fiction, and quite good fan fiction at that. But it's still fan fiction. To see the original authors drop their own work and embrace this one is a little ... disconcerting, I guess.

WotC's Forgotten Realms should be Waterdeep and Shadowdale. Helm, Torm, and Mystra. Sure, Baldur's Gate and Bhaal should be present. But they should be secondary characters, not primary ones.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It's a problem with authenticity.

Which ultimately feels a lot to me like some pointless tribalism. "No, you're not allowed in, you're a videogame. That's not what we are."

....hmmm....

/me goes to write an article....

 

[Plaguescarred]

There is also lots of interviews and announcements on the web released yesterday. Here's a few;


CNBC www.cnbc.com/id/100942206
IGN ca.ign.com/articles/2013/08/06/dungeons-...
IGN talkgeek.net/community/threads/massive-y...
Forbes www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/08/06...

 

[Plaguescarred]

What they are doing is that they are using the fame of a product they had hardly any contributions to (no meaningful ones in my eyes) which they also have ignored for 15 years to now promote their own stuff because they apparently don't think their stuff is good enough or because they ran out of ideas.

There was hype about Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition in end of 2012/start of 2013 and the D&D Website http://www.wizards.com/dnd/videogames.aspx has a link to it. WoTC cares so much about its IP that the game was removed from sales due to disagreement with publishing partners, as they announced. http://www.baldursgate.com/

 

[dd.stevenson]

There was hype about Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition in end of 2012/start of 2013 and the D&D Website http://www.wizards.com/dnd/videogames.aspx has a link to it. WoTC cares so much about its IP that the game was removed from sales due to disagreement with publishing partners, as they announced. http://www.baldursgate.com/

I suggest you google "atari baldurs gate" and bask in the glory of the information age.

 

[Plaguescarred]

Just did thanks. Because the publishing partners wasn't mentioned in BG site, i thought it was a disagreement with WoTC, like for the upcoming D&D movie by Solomon, but it appears its with Atari sorry my bad.

 

[dd.stevenson]

And I in turn apologize for any unnecessary sarcasm on my end. Alcohol and posting don't mix so well. To say nothing of the endless Jdramas I'm being forced to endure.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Out of my own curiosity I went back and watched the author panels from the 2012 GenCon on The Sundering event... what the first six novels were going to do, and how the event would play out in the FR timeline and in the D&DNext game itself. If you haven't watched it, it'll answer a lot of questions.

First... The Sundering isn't a true "reboot" or "remake"... because the setting is not going back in time. The timeline is advancing just as it always has. So it is still post-hundred-year-jump, post-Spellplague.

Second... the story is playing directly off of a plotline established in the Times of Trouble novels-- Shadowdale, Tantras & Waterdeep. Towards the end of that series, Ao the overgod destroyed the Tables of Fate... thus allowing the gods to go nuts on Toril (and apparently the primordials similarly to go nuts on Abeir). As James Wyatt and the other authors talk about it in the video... this "Third Sundering" (there have been three according to canon) is Lord Ao bringing to an end these 150 years (approx.) of rampart deity nuttiness (called The Era of Upheaval)... recreating the Tablets of Fate, and bringing all the gods (on Toril) and primordials (on Abeir) back under the strictures of their portfolios and shunting them back to their divine realms to stop them from screwing around on the planet so much anymore. And thus... the Forgotten Realms will now be more about the peoples of the Realms and much less about the gods flittering about.

Now yes... you could say that parts of the Realms are like a "reboot" in that now that Ao is basically cleaning up the mess from the Era of Upheaval that began with the Avatar Crisis. So a lot of what occurred during these 150 years will be wiped up... the Spellplague fixed, dead gods brought back, current gods who had ascended being dropped back down, the parts of Abeir that showed up from the Spellplague merge getting sent back etc. But none of it is being erased from "history" as far as I can tell. Ao isn't going to wipe the memories of every single god and creature to make them forget what has happened these last 150 years. Historians will still know that the first Mystara died during the Avatar Crisis, Midnight ascended to become Mystara, Cyric then killed Midnight/Mystara to being the Spellplague... even though the original Mystara now returns to her place as the holder of the arcane magic portfolio post-Sundering.

"Soft reboot" is perhaps what you can call it. But time in the Realms is moving forward, and we are now in a new era of mortals holding their own destiny, rather than just as playthings of the gods.

 

[BC1]

1) WotC did bring "Baldur's Gate" into the PnP world - they put out a whole "Volo's Guide to Baldur's Gate II", one of the first books they produced after getting the D&D franchise and one of the last of the 2E books. So, they never completely ignored it. "Neverwinter Nights," "Icewind Dale" and "Torment," those are different stories. 2) This wouldn't be the first time WotC piggybacked their PnP material to a video game. Does no one remember the massive push behind "Neverwinter" (novels, source book, Encounters adventure) - years before the game itself even came out? 3) Yes, Bioware created fan-fic. Actually, they created a campaign that everyone could play and TSR could use for their purposes if they saw fit. In other words, TSR outsourced writing an adventure. For them not to use it is silly (again, see the other video games mentioned above). 4) So what if they haven't gone back to this well in a while? How many of you heard of "Guardians of the Galaxy" before the movie was announced? Pretty good series from the 80's, revived in the 90's, revived again in the 2000's, now subject of a major motion picture. See, happens all the time.