D&D 5E Forgotten realms recent history

[Ibrandul]

And here I was sure you were going to mention the retconned timeline for H4 Throne of Bloodstone.

That said, the 5E lore has had a few issues, such as Storm King's Thunder apparently forgetting that only members of the Shanat bloodline can use the Wyrmskull Throne (as established in the appropriately-named 2E adventure, Wyrmskull Throne). There's also the apparent misdating of when Mount Hotenow erupted in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide (which is discussed more over here). But overall I agree that the lore for the 5E Realms isn't necessarily a mess per se...though I likewise agree that it has a lot to do with the comparative dearth of materials.

Those are good counterexamples (though the Hotenow thing doesn't seem like a big deal to me; "some fifty years ago" in Icespire Peak is off by almost twenty years, but it's explicitly an approximation, hence the "some").

There are also other minor timeline problems in the 5e lore that result from WotC's new policy to avoid explicitly dating adventures—the idea being that players might not want to move on to an adventure that precedes the one they just finished, and this undermines WotC's current approach, where they want every D&D adventure to be an evergreen product perpetually in print.

 

[Alzrius]

Those are good counterexamples.

There are also some minor timeline problems in the 5e lore that result from WotC's new policy to avoid explicitly dating adventures—the idea being that players might not want to move on to an adventure that precedes the one they just finished, and this undermines WotC's current approach, where they want every D&D adventure to be an evergreen product perpetually in print.

Well, as Alphastream's blog notes, there are enough on-the-sly references that you can generally figure out what happens when.

Though honestly, I'm still surprised at the idea that anyone balked at the idea of linking Tiamat to the Cult of the Dragon in 5e. As you correctly noted, her wanting to take them over had been referenced for years; the 2E Powers & Pantheons supplement even noted that she made an undead avatar (the "Undying Queen") specifically to make herself more appealing to the Cult. It was similar to how some people complained about Lathander becoming Amaunator in 4E, despite the fact that the change was heralded by a fairly successful religious heresy from Lathander's church in 3E's Power of Faerun.

That said (and I'm on shakier ground here, as I haven't finished the Brimstone Angels series), I don't recall Tiamat being trapped in Hell and needing help to get out in order to invade the mortal world before 5E. That seemed awfully "Takhisis in the Abyss" to me, rather than adhering to Realms lore.

 

[Ibrandul]

That said (and I'm on shakier ground here, as I haven't finished the Brimstone Angels series), I don't recall Tiamat being trapped in Hell and needing help to get out in order to invade the mortal world before 5E. That seemed awfully "Takhisis in the Abyss" to me, rather than adhering to Realms lore.

That's another good counterexample. How'd her status change from its previous Realms description to what we see in ToD and Descent?

Ed Greenwood has given us a semicanonical answer.

 

[pukunui]

@jeremypowell: I agree with you regarding the official 5e adventures downplaying the effects of the Sundering. In the SCAG, it talks about how the Sundering messed up the seasons, pushing back the start of each one by months. I've been including that little tidbit in most of my 5e FR games.

If/when I eventually get to run Rime of the Frostmaiden, I'll be using that part of the in-game justification for why the inhabitants of Icewind Dale didn't take the everlasting winter seriously at first ... that is, they just assumed spring and summer were running late like they had been for several years already but now that it's technically heading towards autumn and it's still wintry, they're starting to realize something is very wrong ...

I also make sure to mention the Spellplague at every opportunity. Like just last session in my Tomb of Annihilation campaign, the players wanted to know why so much of the jungle was overrun by undead, so I was able to talk about Ras Nsi and how the Spellplague took away his control of his undead army, allowing them to spread through the jungle.


That being said, I think the main reason the Sundering has a minimal to non-existent presence in the 5e adventures is two-fold: 1) it makes it easier for people to run the adventures in the 1e-3e FR timeline as well as the 5e timeline and 2) it makes it easier for people to cut-and-paste the bits they like into their homebrew campaigns. This second one is the real clincher, I think, because pretty much every 5e hardcover adventure is written in such a way that it's relatively simple to break it down into all its parts and just use them separately. I've done that to great effect with both Princes of the Apocalypse and Out of the Abyss and to a lesser extent some of the other adventures.



EDIT: As for how Tiamat got stuck in Avernus ... I'm uncertain of how she ended up there in the first place, but the idea that she's "trapped" there does in fact relate to one of the changes that Ao made during the Second Sundering. By reforging the Tablets of Fate, he made it so the gods can't just show up in Faerûn whenever they feel like it. They've become more distant and remote, forced to communicate through dreams and prophecies, etc etc. So in order to make it so Tiamat could manifest in Faerûn again (something she's done previously in the Old Empires IIRC), she needed her minions to undertake a massive magical ritual to break through Ao's restrictions, thus "freeing" her from her supposed imprisonment.

 

[twofalls]

"That said, the 5E lore has had a few issues, such as Storm King's Thunder apparently forgetting that only members of the Shanat bloodline can use the Wyrmskull Throne (as established in the appropriately-named 2E adventure, Wyrmskull Throne)."

This doesn't phase me so much in running my current SKT game. Giants are so ancient, heirs of fallen Empires that once held world dominance, that I portray their leaders as still in possession of scraps of magical lore that rivals the height of ancient elven power. Thus this deep magic can be tapped to allow use of the Skull by giants.

 

[pukunui]

This doesn't phase me so much in running my current SKT game. Giants are so ancient, heirs of fallen Empires that once held world dominance, that I portray their leaders as still in possession of scraps of magical lore that rivals the height of ancient elven power. Thus this deep magic can be tapped to allow use of the Skull by giants.

Yeah, that bit didn't bother me either. We're talking the king and queen of the storm giants here. If anyone can override that restriction, they ought to be able to.

Also, who knows what the Spellplague did to all the magical artifacts out there. It could very easily have stripped away the Shanat bloodline requirement. When I come across an inconsistency relating to magic (like how none of the big-name dragons have access to any of their old unique spells and abilities any more), I just chock it down to the Spellplague taking it away.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

I played 4e once, and decided I'd rather play WoW on the computer than using pen and paper.

Don't play this tired edition war trope.

 

[twofalls]

Don't play this tired edition war trope.

I don't require that you agree with me by any means, but as I played that one session it jumped out at me like a hammer in the face.

 

[pukunui]

I don't require that you agree with me by any means, but as I played that one session it jumped out at me like a hammer in the face.

4e had some good stuff in it. I miss the way it handled monsters, for one thing.

5e monsters, in comparison, tend to either be really bland and boring (ogres, beasts) or ridiculously over-complicated (just about any spellcaster).

 

[twofalls]

I'm certain that you aren't alone in liking 4e, and I'm glad that some folks enjoy it. I'm also certain that you are all in the minority, but that isn't in itself a bad thing.