D&D 5E Mike Mearls interview - states that they may be getting off of the 2 AP/year train.

[DEFCON 1]

They want to play in a current ever growing world because it allows their characters to either be a part of it...

No it doesn't. Not a single thing a player does in any DM's Forgotten Realm campaign game is reflected in the official story of the Forgotten Realms. So no one is ever actually a "part of it". Rather, they are the protagonists of an alternate universe Forgotten Realms.

...or witness those changes happening.

And this also isn't true, because by the time you play in a FR campaign, the book has already been written. The changes have already occurred, none of which came from anything any of the players did. EVERY change happened because the authors of the products made something up.

The only time any FR player could suggest they actually had a part in the "official canon" of the Forgotten Realms are the few times WotC has run some of their Epic convention adventures where what happened at most tables got actually incorporated into the official story. But that's the only time. Anything else has come from the minds of the writers of the material and that's all.

Look, I can understand the desire to have a setting book that is "current", because it feels like time going forward is open to you, and thus you can play in your game and not contradict anything (because there's nothing in front of you to contradict.) But in truth none of that matters. Whatever you do in your game isn't contradicting ANYTHING, because your Forgotten Realms isn't "real".

So you can play Tyranny of Dragons (which is now currently "in the past") and there's quite possibly a chance that Tiamat actually shows up and rampages across the Realms. And your Realms campaign will have to deal with that. But... in truth it never "actually happened". Because it didn't happen in the "official canon". And thus insisting you need an "official canon" setting book so you can set your game there is pretty much pointless. You aren't playing in the "official canon" and never will.

 

[Demetrios1453]

It is obsolete *only* if you continue to think of the Realms as this millenia-long "story" that needs constant updating with all new information in every single section of the entire Faerunian continent. Now... my guess is that those of you who want a new FRCS are the ones who do think that. Which is fine, I guess. You want what you want. But let's be honest here... you aren't wanting this book for gaming purposes.

When it comes to gaming in a campaign setting... the thing that always amazes me is people who think that they are actually "playing in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting" once they start their game. Which isn't true. Because as soon as you start your own campaign, you are no longer playing in the "official" Forgotten Realms (the one who has this millenia-long "canon" people get so amped up about)... you are playing in YOUR Forgotten Realms. YOUR campaign will change things. Change things AWAY from the "official" setting. Your game will oftentimes directly contradict things established in the "official canon". Which quite frankly is exactly the point! YOUR campaign is not beholden to the "official" setting whatsoever!

But you know what that means? It means that if the setting for your game is not the "official canon" of the game as soon as you start playing... then it doesn't matter what information you use to create your setting.

If your group of players decides to go to Halruaa for a story arc... you are going to create a whole bunch of stuff that isn't "official canon" for Halruaa-- plotlines, adventure sites, NPCs. Mainly because not a whole bunch of stuff has been written for Halruua, certainly not enough to run a full 20-level campaign in. So if you are going to do that-- make up a whole crapton of stuff about Halruaa... then there is absolutely no difference in just using 1E or 2E Forgotten Realms campaign book past info about Halruua than there is in either making stuff up out of whole cloth, or incorporating other game material from other products and "calling it" Halruaa setting material for your game.

Which means to me... nobody NEEDS an "official canon" campaign setting book of the "current year" of the Forgotten Realms for their games. Because as soon as you start a game there, you're off the reservation anyway! Your game is no longer "official canon", so you gained absolutely nothing by using an "updated" 5E setting book as opposed to using the 4E setting book, or the 3E setting book, or the old grey box. And you certainly don't need "new information" about obscure parts of Faerun... parts you've never played in before and thus all the information that has already been written about them in previous books might as well not even exist... in order to play your game.

You're going to gerry-rig your campaign using anything and everything under the sun. So it doesn't matter whether Perkins and Co. spend their precious hours writing a bunch of "new details" about Halruaa to make it "current", or you just use any or all of the details previously written about Halruaa. Because if you've never played a game there before, ALL of it is going to be "new details" for your game.

Apparently, we are coming at this from completely different, utterly incompatible points of view, so further conversation on this would be pointless. We'll agree to disagree then.

 

[Mistwell]

Sure Paizo isn't the richest or the biggest, but they give their customers what they "all" want and they are doing just fine.

See, it can be done when you aren't a slave to the profit treadmill.

Just to clarify, since you asked last time, I am laughing with your post because I assume this part was sarcasm. The idea that Paizo gives their customers what they ALL want, or that they are not profit focused, must be sarcasm. And I am showing appreciation for your subtle but clever humor.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Just to clarify, since you asked last time, I am laughing with your post because I assume this part was sarcasm. The idea that Paizo gives their customers what they ALL want, or that they are not profit focused, must be sarcasm. And I am showing appreciation for your subtle but clever humor.

For clarification, I am laughing with this post because it's a SICK BURN!

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I want a new Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. I want to run adventures in the setting as it exists today. I have older books, and using them is frustrating to me because I don't know what is accurate anymore. Sure, it can decide what is and isn't true in my game. But I want the confidence that my game only contradicts the canonical setting when I make an informed decision to do so.

The reason I run in a published setting is so that I, my players, and the players and DMs of other games can have a shared understanding of the setting. The current broad uncertainty surrounding most of the setting is frustrating.

Now, if you don't care about that shared understanding, and just want a published setting so you don't have to do all the work yourself, then you have no reason to care about an up-to-date campaign setting. But that's a different motivation than I have.

 

[Dausuul]

I want a new Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. I want to run adventures in the setting as it exists today. I have older books, and using them is frustrating to me because I don't know what is accurate anymore. Sure, it can decide what is and isn't true in my game. But I want the confidence that my game only contradicts the canonical setting when I make an informed decision to do so.

The setting doesn't change until WotC changes it. Your old books remain current until a new book supersedes them. So if you want to be sure your FR setting is "canonical," why on earth do you want new books to come out?

 

[Oofta]

I want a new Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. I want to run adventures in the setting as it exists today. I have older books, and using them is frustrating to me because I don't know what is accurate anymore. Sure, it can decide what is and isn't true in my game. But I want the confidence that my game only contradicts the canonical setting when I make an informed decision to do so.

The reason I run in a published setting is so that I, my players, and the players and DMs of other games can have a shared understanding of the setting. The current broad uncertainty surrounding most of the setting is frustrating.

Now, if you don't care about that shared understanding, and just want a published setting so you don't have to do all the work yourself, then you have no reason to care about an up-to-date campaign setting. But that's a different motivation than I have.

Why not just pick a point in time? Say your campaign is set before the spell plague silliness (or whenever makes sense) and make it clear that your campaign picks up from that point and events going forward will be based on what the characters do?

I understand why you want a campaign book, I just don't see it happening considering how much of a hash out of the setting with 4E. It would be a massive undertaking to figure out all of the details and I'm not sure there would be enough of a return on their investment to justify it. They'd probably be better off coming up with a clean setting or revisiting some other campaign setting.

 

[Demetrios1453]

The setting doesn't change until WotC changes it. Your old books remain current until a new book supersedes them. So if you want to be sure your FR setting is "canonical," why on earth do you want new books to come out?

The problem is (and I alluded to it a few pages back) that WotC has changed the setting since the last setting book - but hasn't actually detailed many of the changes yet! Take Cormyr or the Dalelands, two of the more notable regions of the setting, for example. We know that there have been massive changes there in the past few years, but beyond some scant details, we hardly know what those massive changes may be! We're stuck in a sort of limbo as a result.

Sent from my VS987 using EN World mobile app

 

[PMárk]

Apparently, we are coming at this from completely different, utterly incompatible points of view, so further conversation on this would be pointless. We'll agree to disagree then.

Yeah I came into that conclusion too. It's just not worth the time and energy to try to convince the other side, because we're speaking about personal tastes, not objective "what is better" truths. If some people here would acknowledge that...

In the end, I think there will always be a schism between people who like living worlds and metaplot and having novels etc. from their favorite world and people who want cool ideas and basic premises but don't want a filthy metaplot meddling with their games or altering the original setting they liked in any way. Both are understandable and neither is better, it's just that the prominent members on these boards tend to lean to the latter direction.

Frankly, the same schism exists everywhere. There are people, who hated the WoD metaplot with a passion and cheered that NWoD became a total sandbox for them to tinker with. Some of them would never have touched WoD with a ten foot pole before NWoD, because of that. Other people mourned the feeling of an ongoing world and story and glad it's coming back and some of them never found their place with NWoD. Some like both. WoD was/is much bigger, than NWoD, and that's telling, but it's a complicated question and isn't just because of metaplot existence, but I believe it's a part of it.

Shadowrun always kept the metaplot, but I'm sure there are a fair number of fans out there who are ignoring it completely.

Before leaving, I just wanted to react to this:

That's a lot of stuff happening in quick succession. For someone jumping in at this point in the setting's history, that's a lot of recent events to take in and try to make sense of - and that's another problem with metaplots: they make it harder for new people to become accustomed to the setting, because they can't just get the core book and some random sourcebook. Because the sourcebook will probably refer to a bunch of stuff that happened in between the release of the core book and that particular sourcebook, and the new customer will go "What the heck is this? Why are they talking about the Banedeath a lot - there's nothing about that in the core book? Is that something I'm supposed to know about? Screw this, I'll go back to Diablo."

There's one teeny-tiny bit of a problem with your reasoning. Namely that that effect works for every long-lasting novel series, tv show, comics, video games, movie franchise, everything. Still, people like them and not just watching/reading one-shots and short stories, but watching and reading GoT an Once Upon a Time and Dresden Files and Wheel of Time and every superhero comic. You could counter the effect with explanations and that's what writers do and partly that's the reason for updating CSGs, to bring new people up to date.

I think SR 5e did it right, when in the corebook they showed the world as it is right now, however I enjoyed the lengthy history lesson at the beginning of 3e, but I'm just that kind of person and it's up on their website for free, so all is good.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Yeah I came into that conclusion too. It's just not worth the time and energy to try to convince the other side, because we're speaking about personal tastes, not objective "what is better" truths. If some people here would acknowledge that...

I freely acknowledge it is your personal taste to want a book that has everything that has been written "up-to-date" in the Realms put together in a single volume. I just disagree that it is a necessity that WotC needs to act on.

And I'll continue to state that philosophically-speaking, what you want you never actually get, even *if* WotC was to print a new setting book. Because all it takes is one novel, one comic book, or even more importantly the very first session of the game you set off that new book to render that setting book as no longer up-to-date. Thus, "official canon" doesn't actually exist for the game, and only exists as a readable timeline.

So if you're going to play the game, then don't beat yourself up about a timeline you can't actually play and instead take what you already have and create a game you actually can.