D&D 5E Forgotten Realms

[Giltonio_Santos]

I used to buy lots of 3e FR books, love the setting and my best campaigns were based there, haven't bought any 4e realms book, I realy hated what they did with it and even though I played 4e since it came out I couldnt stomach what they did to the realms.

While I'm no 4E fan, I believe WotC lost a great opportunity with 4E Realms. Instead of showing fans that the system could deliver in versatility and emulate their experience from previous editions and implied settings, they took the most popular D&D Campaign Setting and added points of light, dragonborns and shadowfell to it. It basically said: this is all about the kind of setting and gameplay we will enforce from now on, evolve or die. I can't believe someone really thought that people would be just fine with that.

Cheers,

 

[DEFCON 1]

The funny thing about people's reactions to the 4E Realms is that at the time they decided to do it... I think the folks at WotC really seemed to think that what they chose to do was doing all the players a favor. Something that many of them actually were clamoring for. At least, as far as I remember of the time.

It seemed like there was genuine unrest in the community through the end of 3.5 about the amount of "canon" that the Realms was weighed down with, as well as the amount of "super-characters" running around, theoretically taking the spot of importance from the PCs that were playing. There was just "too much stuff" in the way for players to feel as though they could jump in. Plus, you add in the fact that 4E was going to introduce a whole bunch of new stuff that had not been seen before (thus requiring retconning up the wazoo like they did for Eberron)... just continuing the Realms from where 3.5 left off was not going to solve any problems players had, and indeed might have made the Realms worse.

So the 100 year jump I think they genuinely thought was going to be a good one. Not only did it clear the table so-to-speak for all players to not have decades of history to worry about and thus they could make their own histories... not only did it remove or lessen the influence of all the super NPCs and thus the player's PCs could have more of an impact... but it also gave a reason to explain away the stuff 4E was bringing into the game without invalidating or retconning any of the Realms that had occurred before.

The upside for the idea was a good one. It probably seemed to solve a lot of the problems players were complaining about, plus as an added bonus, it gave all the novel writers a much more open playground to write in... rather than having to try and jam their stuff into a Realms that by that point had been already filled to the brim with detail.

But the downside of course being that players of the 3.5 timeline would feel like their portal to current Realms history was being cut off, plus feeling like WotC was asking them to discontinue their own campaigns to make the 100 year jump, especially if they were going to transition to playing 4E.

But the reason why the 4E Realms didn't take off? I imagine it was two-fold... one, what they actually DID with the idea of the 100-year-jump (both the explanation of what happened and the fallout from what did) was too far afield from the feeling of the Realms for many players... and two, they under-estimated the proportion of people who were happy playing 3.5 in their current Realms, unwilling to transition to 4E. With the former... the efforts to bring in 4Eisms I imagine caused just too much of a change for Realms players to be happy with or to keep the Realms feeling like the Realms... and with the latter... perhaps the voices complaining about the situation of the Realms during 3.5 were loud, but in reality not as numerically large as they originally thought. The need for a cleared slate was not as wanted by the populace as they thought it was.

In both cases... WotC messed up. Their changes were not good, and the voices they listened to were not as popular as they thought. And that's on them. Which I think is why they are coming right out and being honest about it.

Which at the same time is why it's intriguing to see what becomes of the Realms following The Sundering... because just like R&D team went back into Dungeons & Dragons as a whole to try and get at the core of the game to inspire their designs of 5E... they seem to have done the same thing with the Realms. They've gone back in, alongside many of the writers who have had a hand in its creation, to get at the heart of what makes the Realms the Realms, such that when it comes out the other side of The Sundering, it'll be a Realms that, while it isn't a duplicate of the Realms before the Spellplague... it at least will hopefully invoke the feel of the Realms in whatever its iterations have been over the several decades it existed throughout 1, 2, & 3E.

*EDIT* And just to not make you think they are abandoning the players who actually enjoyed the 4E Realms... the fact that they are not "rebooting" the Spellplague, the time jump, nor everything that resulted from it... tells us that they care about the 4E Realms players as well. The shadow of the 4E Realms will still be layered across the 5E Realms landscape after The Sundering. It won't be a duplicate of the 4E Realms either, but it will still invoke it in many ways.

 

[DMZ2112]

I think I might "get" 4e FR.

I had always avoided the Forgotten Realms like the (spell)plague because I found the wealth of intertwined history intimidating. I never knew where to start getting to know the place. The Spellplague was a big help, because suddenly it didn't matter nearly as much. I was able to engage the setting without feeling like I was getting everything wrong.

So if WotC's goal was to make the setting more accessible to new players, I do think they succeeded on that count. Whether that should have been the focus of their efforts is a matter for debate. Personally, I tend to think not, even though it worked for me.

I also really liked what the rise of the Feywild did for the Moonshaes. That evolution felt natural.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

No, because Ed is the one who normally chips in with a reminder.

Minor quibble here: it's not Ed that does this, it's The Hooded One.

For those not in the know: several years ago a user started posting on the first iteration of the WotC forums under the handle "The Hooded One" (THO).

This person attempted to clarify some of the misconceptions about the Realms and its creator that were being bandied about (imagine a forum space filled with half a hundred people that post like Herschel) and that were making it a major drag to talk about the setting.

As one might imagine, these people were just as rude to her as they were to anyone else who had the bold temerity to disagree with them.

Some, however, met her with open-minded skepticism and were interested in what she had to say.

In time she moved over to the Candlekeep forums and eventually served as a go between for Ed and Candlekeep forum users who had questions about the Realms, about TSR and why things were done they way they were in the Realms, which these users posted to the Questions for Ed Greenwood thread in the Chamber of Sages section.

THO, who it was revealed is a player in Ed's long-running home Realms campaign, would forward the questions to Ed and then post his replies to the forum space once he responded to her.

She's been doing this for years and the "So saith Ed" archives at Candlekeep are quite extensive, going back as far as 2004.

With almost a decade of responses, we have good reason to believe she's real and that the information she's forwarded to users from Ed is real. Other users have made contact with Ed directly and confirmed it as well.

This post is so full of blind, fanboy rhetoric as to be ridiculous.

If that were true, the entirety of my post would have consisted of personal attacks directed at you, because that's what fanboys and fangirls do.

Instead, I served up (to everyone) a heaping platter of that most delicious of internet delicacies: the truth.

It's nice when people respond to such offerings with open-minded skepticism or polite disagreement, like Majoru Oakheart did, but you couldn't even be bothered to do that, which is disappointing, albeit not terribly surprising.

Ed's just a really nice guy and I happen to like nice people (especially on the internet) and I don't particularly care for it when people, for whatever reason, take it up a notch from opinion sharing to outright badmouthing of nice people.

You can dislike the guy, just don't be a jerk about it.

 

[Raunalyn]

I've never really had a problem with the Realms. In 2e days, it was one of my core campaign worlds. However, when the campaign I had been running there (that took place during and post Time of Troubles), I put away the setting and never picked it back up. I only occasionally looked to see what was going on.

I enjoyed everything I read from the realms, except for Salvatore's later novels (to be clear, I thought the Icewind Dale trilogy was a wonderful read, and I also truly enjoyed the Cleric Quintet...everything Drizzt after that annoyed me...that character was the absolute most blatant Mary Sue that I had ever seen. I also think that Drizzt is secretly evil, manipulating his companions into dying, etc. I also think that he was the second gunman on the Grassy Knoll).

I only have a minimal knowledge of the 4e realms, but I understand that they wanted to move the timeline forward to create new and different areas/stories. I'm interested to see where they take 5e

 

[Herschel]

In your opinion, only a very vocal minority of people didn't like FR4e and their only credit is that they are loud.

It's not opinion, it's fact. These message boards are demonstrably a tiny portion of the audience. As long as they get their books, play their game, the majority of gamers don't care. We (the message board community) aren't a statistically significant portion of the audience. We're not "the middle ground".

Then, of course, you dismiss any knowledgeable testimony supporting the idea that FR4e had issues/poor implementation as sour grapes but somehow embrace any similar testimony supporting your point of view as holy writ.

It's pure spin, not "knowledgeable testimony". Ed sold teh Realms, guys asked him questions, he took jobs to make money off the property still as a writer because he could and they asked. That's cool. Trying to say he was some sort of benevolent altruist is completely disengenuous. He sold his setting, was still able to make some more money contributing to it and that's all well and good, but that's what it was/is.

Example? The fact that the people who KNOW how FR 4e fared say it needs to be fixed is attributed to "their need to bring everyone together". To you, it's an after-the-fact justification instead of the very reason why they are doing it. They couldn't POSSIBLY be telling the truth: FR4e fared poorly and was not well received. They're LYING! so says Hershel!

This is your bias, not fact. 4E sold, it also caused a rift. They're trying to bridge that rift, just like what they say they're doing with 5E. It's not a surprise, they've billed this all along as the "unification edition". Saying 4E failed is false, unless AD&D, 2E, 3E, OD&D and 3.5 also "failed" and by nature every edition following will also "fail".

You seem to be mad that the "unwashed masses" didn't agree with you and a product you seemed to like tanked. Well, I'm sorry. The masses have voted with their feet/$$$ and left FR 4e in droves. You might disagree, as is your right, but WOTC is a company that, to survive, must follow the desires of their clients and, based on Wyatt/Salvatore/Greenwood 's comments in the videos above, the need to roll back/fix FR4e is clear to them thus supporting the premise that FR4e did NOT succeed.

Again, your supposition is unsupported. Where are your sales/numbers figures that it "failed"? Going by some internet threads does not a figure make.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

An extremist minority, regarless of how vocal, does not a majority make, despite their belief to the contrary.

Q.E.D.

 

[seregil]

It's not opinion, it's fact. These message boards are demonstrably a tiny portion of the audience. As long as they get their books, play their game, the majority of gamers don't care. We (the message board community) aren't a statistically significant portion of the audience. We're not "the middle ground".



It's pure spin, not "knowledgeable testimony". Ed sold teh Realms, guys asked him questions, he took jobs to make money off the property still as a writer because he could and they asked. That's cool. Trying to say he was some sort of benevolent altruist is completely disengenuous. He sold his setting, was still able to make some more money contributing to it and that's all well and good, but that's what it was/is.



This is your bias, not fact. 4E sold, it also caused a rift. They're trying to bridge that rift, just like what they say they're doing with 5E. It's not a surprise, they've billed this all along as the "unification edition". Saying 4E failed is false, unless AD&D, 2E, 3E, OD&D and 3.5 also "failed" and by nature every edition following will also "fail".



Again, your supposition is unsupported. Where are your sales/numbers figures that it "failed"? Going by some internet threads does not a figure make.

Ok, you are either being purposefully dense or you are simply not capable of understanding the facts.

Two opinions: FR4e was a success or it wasn't.

In this thread, we have testimony from people who KNOW the truth which indicates that FR 4e was not a success or, at the very least, was a mitigated one.

Those are my facts.

You, on the other hand, have NONE. For example:

It's not opinion, it's fact.

Other than your own opinion, do you have ANY information to back up your assertation? Because I (and the majority of others in this thread) have video evidence of people who work at WOTC IN the FR product line. You, as far as I can tell, have zip.

Saying 4E failed is false

I never said 4e failed, I said FR4e did not succeed, which is different. It did not go as well as they wanted, it went "off the rails in so many ways" to quote James Wyatt. I am arguing that the people who would KNOW how well it went (as opposed to guys like you and I) have indicated DIRECTLY that it did not succeed as well as they wanted and that it needed to be fixed.

You have NOTHING but fanboism to counter those statements. You have shown NOTHING of any substance (in this thread, at least) that would render the statements made in the videos false. And saying it's "pure spin" is just you spinning it to your liking.

Proof, find me some PROOF, some evidence, SOMETHING other than your opinion.

Because, as you said, you "aren't a statistically significant portion of the audience".

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?349407-Forgotten-Realms/page8#ixzz2mcnDcDDJ
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[Herschel]

Instead, I served up (to everyone) a heaping platter of that most delicious of internet delicacies: the truth.

No, you really didn't. You painted Ed as this wonderous being of altruism and benevolence. He's not. He had a setting TSR wanted to buy, he sold, they bought, they also offered him contractual work to keep writing for the setting, he accepted and makes a living.

That's the truth. Assigning these wonderous motives to him is not. The guy's a human being, and I've enjoyed a good deal of his work, just like I've enjoyed a good deal of Salvatore's. However, they're not "in the know" nor are they staff members who are part of the business end of things. They're freelancers/contractors who do signings at cons/shows for their fans. That's not the issue.

I was overly hard on Ed earlier but the thing remains that when you bad mouth something for taking a direction you didn't want to when you're a person trying to generate further income from said property after relinquishing your decision-making power for profit then yeah, that's not what's considered by many a ....professional move. He's fairly lucky. In many industries not only would he lose his contracts but also not be hired by similar/competing companies either. Entertainment and leisure tends to be far more lenient on these things though.

 

[Umbran]

Trying to say he was some sort of benevolent altruist is completely disengenuous.

It may be wrong. It may be misinformed. But to say that it is disingenuous says that is isn't sincere, that they actually know better, and are lying.

You've repeatedly used this disrespectful rhetoric, despite warnings.

Enough. Take a vacation.