D&D 5E Listened to latest "Lore you should know" and......

[corwyn77]

I presume you at least asked those people to find out if they cared or not? Or is the chance of that, as you say, a number approaching 0.

Explicitly asked that specific question? No. But I've many conversations/play sessions on both sides of the screen with scores if not hundreds of gamers. The older ones tend to only play in the Realms because that is where the APs are set - they don't use the Realms in there own games. The bulk of the players are new and don't even realize there is a shifting Realms canon. If they've read any at all.

So yes, I firmly believe there are far more players/DMs who play/DM the APs that don't care about the canon than do. Yes, it's anecdotal, IME, and all that, but there it is.

It's undeniable that there are some fans playing in the Realms because that's where most of the available commercial campaigns are set. All except CoS, I believe (and even there, the main character hooks are FR-related). How many, no one knows, but I believe it's a significant number and AP sales are not an indicator of interest in the Realms - it's an indicator of interest in those APs. SCAG sales are another kettle of fish.

 

[ProgBard]

It's annoying when they said that in this lore you should know we will be telling you about XYZ but when you listen to it they say you don't need XYZ.

Your "annoying" is my "a great relief."

I find it, indeed, enormously refreshing that the official stance on Realmslore canon for this edition is, "Don't worry about it, unless of course worrying about it is your kink." It may be a letdown to find out they're not going to specifically cater to your kink anymore, but sometimes that's what a big umbrella means.

(No, I didn't need to get WotC's permission to ignore FR canon, which I've been doing long since anyway and would continue no matter what. But it is nice to know that, among iother things, the plan for ongoing releases is not nudging DMs to wrestle with 30 years of metaplot to get the best use out of them.)

 

[ProgBard]

To expand a bit on my previous:

Many fans who engage immersively with complex, long-running fandoms have a difficult time understanding that the things they find rewarding - complexity, long histories, the connections that can only be made throught deep immersion - are offputting to folks who are coming to the same material for the first time. The comics world has been dealing with this forever, obviously, and continuity fetishists in the funnybook realm can be relied on to make the same complaints we're hearing here every time there's a reboot or a retcon - including the accusation that those money-grubbing so-and-sos at Big Corporate Media HQ are catering to the shallow, lumpen masses who don't know this stuff like we do and don't want to. But the thing is that the lumpen masses have just as legit a claim on the material as anyone, and making them feel welcome is a good and wise thing (and not just for the bottom line).

I say that some fans have a hard time getting this, but at their worst, they get it perfectly, and it's just what they want: the ability to draw tribal boundaries so the Real True Fen get rewarded for their engagement and the hoi polloi are kept outside the gates. I hope I don't need to draw a line under how ugly this is.

Fandom isn't like marriage; you don't get special prizes for multiple decades of commitment. Nor do you get to demand gold stars from content creators because you did work the rabble weren't willing to do by digesting and internalizing years upon years of continuity. You might feel like that's what makes your stuff special and exciting, but the folks who appreciate it for other things aren't wrong. Believe me, as someone who loves a number of things that are long, old, complex, and more interesting the closer you examine them - Thick as a Brick, I'm looking at you - I get how tempting it is to roll your eyes when someone comes along who's only digging on it for the surface aspects. But the truth is that the surface aspects need to be the point. If Thick as a Brick isn't first of all a good album, all the rest of it is just wankery; it has to be listenable to someone with a baseline interest in the style of thing it is but who isn't on the inside about the history of why it's an in-joke about concept albums and who isn't interested in reading the album sleeve.

All the above applies even more strongly to interactive media like RPGs. Which is why I think the D&D team is making a savvy choice in the way they're looking at the Realms and continuity. They're not saying the folks who engage immersively with Realmslore are stupid for doing so - indeed, what I'm hearing is that folks who know it all that well are going to appreciate various Easter eggs and internal connections that are going to pass everyone else right by - they're just saying, in essence, that each book in the 5e line needs to be a good album first. If everything you need to play it isn't in the game, it's not doing its primary job. And, to flail on my point a little more, the players who never look beyond the covers of the 5e books but still fall in love with the setting are not Doin It Rong. They get to call themselves fans too.

Our hobby is a big enough world for all kinds of players. It has to be, if it wants to survive. So maybe wishing for a playground that makes it smaller and more insular isn't such a great thing - no matter how special and unique that playground would be.

 

[Eubani]

To expand a bit on my previous:

Many fans who engage immersively with complex, long-running fandoms have a difficult time understanding that the things they find rewarding - complexity, long histories, the connections that can only be made throught deep immersion - are offputting to folks who are coming to the same material for the first time. The comics world has been dealing with this forever, obviously, and continuity fetishists in the funnybook realm can be relied on to make the same complaints we're hearing here every time there's a reboot or a retcon - including the accusation that those money-grubbing so-and-sos at Big Corporate Media HQ are catering to the shallow, lumpen masses who don't know this stuff like we do and don't want to. But the thing is that the lumpen masses have just as legit a claim on the material as anyone, and making them feel welcome is a good and wise thing (and not just for the bottom line).

I say that some fans have a hard time getting this, but at their worst, they get it perfectly, and it's just what they want: the ability to draw tribal boundaries so the Real True Fen get rewarded for their engagement and the hoi polloi are kept outside the gates. I hope I don't need to draw a line under how ugly this is.

Fandom isn't like marriage; you don't get special prizes for multiple decades of commitment. Nor do you get to demand gold stars from content creators because you did work the rabble weren't willing to do by digesting and internalizing years upon years of continuity. You might feel like that's what makes your stuff special and exciting, but the folks who appreciate it for other things aren't wrong. Believe me, as someone who loves a number of things that are long, old, complex, and more interesting the closer you examine them - Thick as a Brick, I'm looking at you - I get how tempting it is to roll your eyes when someone comes along who's only digging on it for the surface aspects. But the truth is that the surface aspects need to be the point. If Thick as a Brick isn't first of all a good album, all the rest of it is just wankery; it has to be listenable to someone with a baseline interest in the style of thing it is but who isn't on the inside about the history of why it's an in-joke about concept albums and who isn't interested in reading the album sleeve.

All the above applies even more strongly to interactive media like RPGs. Which is why I think the D&D team is making a savvy choice in the way they're looking at the Realms and continuity. They're not saying the folks who engage immersively with Realmslore are stupid for doing so - indeed, what I'm hearing is that folks who know it all that well are going to appreciate various Easter eggs and internal connections that are going to pass everyone else right by - they're just saying, in essence, that each book in the 5e line needs to be a good album first. If everything you need to play it isn't in the game, it's not doing its primary job. And, to flail on my point a little more, the players who never look beyond the covers of the 5e books but still fall in love with the setting are not Doin It Rong. They get to call themselves fans too.

Our hobby is a big enough world for all kinds of players. It has to be, if it wants to survive. So maybe wishing for a playground that makes it smaller and more insular isn't such a great thing - no matter how special and unique that playground would be.

Or maybe Provide the updated Lore and those who don't want it can choose to ignore it, thus both gets what they want. There is far too much One group does not want something so nobody gets it happening in 5e.

 

[Irennan]

Listened to latest "Lore you should know" and...... It was an absolute cop out. It was suppose to be about the current timeline in FR what was happening and where the adventures fitted in. Chris Perkins spent the whole time wobbelling on about that cannon is what you want it to be rather than giving any information. Not a single fact was put out to events since the Sundering. There are many people who wish to know what the hell is going on in the Realms such as which gods are back (and how) who is ruling what, what are the current relationships between powers, who are the new important people, what has happened with old issues, etc. I know many will say just use old supp;ements but that does nothing for those who want up to date info for many a different reason. To be honest it sounded a lot like Perkins was saying that they did not want to create anymore cannon and that cannon simply does not matter. For some that holds true but for others that is a kick in the balls.

I'm surprised that no one mentioned that some of your questions have actually been answered--albeit not in a detailed way--more than 1 year ago. The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide provide some of the info that you're looking for, especially if combined with the latest Erin Evan's and Ed Greenwood novels.

Nearly all the gods are back and active again, although the SCAG doesn't specify how they came back, it handwaves their return with things like "it was Ao, mortals don't know, etc...". However, you can find some more info in the novels. For example, Erin Evans discusses the return of Gilgeam, Enlil and Azuth in detail in The Devil you Know. In Death Masks Ed lets us know that Eilistraee is back and has been quite active with her people, and elaborates on the new status quo of Waterdeep in 5e that the SCAG had already described. He also discusses the current whereabouts of the 7 sisters, Mirt, Volo and other known characters that you might be interested in.

That book also gives a general picture of how Faerun would look like as of the 1490s DR, describing major changes that happened with the Sundering, and it provides more details about the Sword Coast and its politics as well. It's not a FRCS, far from it, but at least it describes the status quo of the Realms and its gods in broad strokes.

Some of the old issues have been simply dropped, but that had already happened in 4e--it was the point of 4e and its timejump.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Or maybe Provide the updated Lore and those who don't want it can choose to ignore it, thus both gets what they want. There is far too much One group does not want something so nobody gets it happening in 5e.

But then what happens when they give people the lore and many don't like it? Each edition change has brought pretty significant changes in the default setting of the FR. And all of them have been at least somewhat polarizing. Some more so than others, for sure, but every time they change anything or introduce a new idea or present any alternate take on the Realms, there are fans who cry foul.

So I think it's a smart approach to stop making such changes. To give a loosely defined status quo that's meant to serve as a starting point for players and DMs to then make the Realms their own. Yes, such an approach may annoy some fans...but no matter what approach they take, some fans will be annoyed. So they've decided on an approach that will work for new players as well as the ones who won't be annoyed by the change.

Basically they're putting the answer to the question "what happens next?" into our hands. Which makes sense for a setting that is meant to be a game world.

 

[ProgBard]

Or maybe Provide the updated Lore and those who don't want it can choose to ignore it, thus both gets what they want. There is far too much One group does not want something so nobody gets it happening in 5e.

There are two issues with this, though, one practical and one aesthetic.

On the practical end, providing this takes work, and D&D is a skeleton crew. Everyone on staff has quite enough to do without adding "Keeper of the Faerun Timeline" to someone's list of titles.

But further, it's clear that the D&D team wants to avoid setting up one chain of events as the "official" version, artificially elevating its status to The Way Things Really Happened. Because what this does is subtly de-legitimize whatever decisions you made at your table, and they don't want to send that message. The furthest they're going to go is suggest that maybe the things going on in this other campaign had an effect on this one, but not so strongly that it won't work if that doesn't ring your bell. It's not a cop-out; it's a gift of empowerment to everyone's table that their version of Realms history from here on out isn't a poor shadow of the "real"* one.

So if that feels like a slap in the face to you ... well, I'm not about to yuck on your yum, but I have a hard time sympathizing with a point of view that's insulted by a message of "Your vision is no less important than ours." Do the hardback campaigns happen in chronological order? They do if you want 'em to. What are the Red Wizards up to these days? You tell us. And with this comes a subtle, but important, subtext that there will no longer be "correct" answers to these questions that That One Player who knows all this stuff better than everyone else can use to cudgel all the other players at the table.

I mean, I can't tell you how to feel about this, but I'll tell you how it feels to be on the other side of it: lousy, is what. There's a reason metaplot fell out of fashion in a hobby that's supposed to be about the stories you tell; there's no way to establish "official" ongoing lore without it running roughshod over someone's campaign and rendering it less important by comparison. The Spellplague was just the most egregious example of this (Hey, was your campaign set in Starmantle? Oops, we just wiped it off the map), but it's inevitable even if you don't ruin everyone's day with a Realms-Shattering Event. Which means that, unfortunately, there's no way to make everyone happy with this. WotC has recognized (rightly, to my way of thinking) that arbitrating certain kinds of canon is itself a problem, and they're not going to do that any more, and there's no way to both do it and not do it. Given that, I think they've threaded the needle pretty neatly here.

*Which, Frank Miller's kind of a wangrod, but there's perhaps some helpful perspective in his famous answer to a fan who asked if the events in The Dark Knight Returns "really" happened: "No. It's a comic book."

 

[ccs]

Or maybe Provide the updated Lore and those who don't want it can choose to ignore it, thus both gets what they want. There is far too much One group does not want something so nobody gets it happening in 5e.

Meanwhile, as they're wasting personell, time, $, etc writing up & publishing this update....
They aren't investing in the thing that will sell better & be usefull to the majority of us.

You cannon-lovers are just going to have to accept reality. Wizards is going to publish the material that'll make them the most $. And that is NOT your precious FRCS v.5 (+supplimants detailing every nook & cranny you can point to on the FR map).

 

[Mirtek]

I mean, I can't tell you how to feel about this, but I'll tell you how it feels to be on the other side of it: lousy, is what.

And that's how realms fans feel now. So a little less glee

 

[ProgBard]

And that's how realms fans feel now. So a little less glee

That thing I mentioned, where the hardcore canon-and-continuity buffs paint themselves as the Real True Fans and other people are fake, shallow pretenders?

You're doing that. Cut it out.