D&D 5E (2014) What lore update do you want from the Forgotten Realms?

James Gasik · Sep 3, 2022

8 years into 5e, and there's still a lot about what's going on in the Forgotten Realms that's a mystery. So what are questions you'd like answered about the current setting?

Mine include:

*So the Spellplague's threat is over, but what about the changes it wrought to the setting? Is Unther still home to a foreign kingdom of Dragonborn? What's there now that it was crushed flat?

*What are the Netherese up to? Last I heard, they had basically turned Sembia into a puppet state.

*For that matter, what are the Red Wizards doing these days?

*Cormyr!

*Raven's Bluff!

humble minion · Sep 3, 2022

The big one for me is the deities. If WotC never bothers fleshing out and updating the non-Sword-Coast parts of the realms, fine. I hate it, but it doesn't affect a game on the sword coast if we never hear about what's going on in Cormyr or Turmish or Unther or Myth Drannor or whatever. But the Gods are everywhere, and a lot of the 4e metaplot turned their lore inside out and upside down, and that directly affects what a PC (cleric, or paladin, or just worshipper) knows or thinks of their (or someone else's) god, church, religion, etc.

I mean, Tyr killed Helm and then gave up his godhood and disappeared and came back. Tyr is the lawful Good god of justice, for pete's sake, and so that's a very big deal. What impact did that episode have on Tyr's church, on Tyr's clergy, on Tyr's doctrine, on how Tyr is perceived in the Realms? SCAG just airily assumes the Tyr/Torm/Ilmater triad took up where it left off once Tyr came back, but that ... strains credibility to the breaking point. Or what about Hoar-Assuran? The god of revenge - he became the minion of Bane for what, a hundred years or so? Bane is the sort of god that many, many people want to take revenge AGAINST, so what did that do for Hoar-Assuran's credibility, or clergy, to be his flunky for so long? What does Hoar-Assuran have to say for himself? What's the official line from the church of Hoar-Assuran when asked 'hey, X years ago my family were murdered in cold blood by Bane-worshippers and Hoar-Assuran denied me help and sided with the Baneites when i asked for revenge, what's up with that?'

Strong feeling is that modern WotC fervently wished that the Spellplague era had never been written, and just wish the whole issue would go away so they never talk about it much. And frankly, the Spellplague lore wrote realmlore into such an messy place that there's probably no plausible way to fix it. It looks to me like WotC has chosen to deal with by simply advancing the timeline, returning to something kinda-sorta similar to the status quo ante and never talking about details ever again.

Henadic Theologian · Sep 4, 2022

James Gasik said:
8 years into 5e, and there's still a lot about what's going on in the Forgotten Realms that's a mystery. So what are questions you'd like answered about the current setting?

Mine include:

*So the Spellplague's threat is over, but what about the changes it wrought to the setting? Is Unther still home to a foreign kingdom of Dragonborn? What's there now that it was crushed flat?

*What are the Netherese up to? Last I heard, they had basically turned Sembia into a puppet state.

*For that matter, what are the Red Wizards doing these days?

*Cormyr!

*Raven's Bluff!

Parts of Tymanther are still in Unther, the two major cities mostly, they were shielded from the Sundering by the God Enlil, plus I believe some outlying villages were beyond what got shifted back to Abeir. So far Tymanthar remains independent of Unther despite attempts at conquest by Gilgeam. This is cover in part by the SCAG and much more detailed in the last two novels of the Brimstone Angels Saga before WotC stopped doing novels (a great act of stupidity).

The Shadovar lost a massive War against the Dales, Cormyr, and Myth Drannar, and their main cities (at least the ones on the Material Plane, Gloomwrought on the Plane of Shadows is fine), were all destroyed (so was most of Myth Drannar when Shade crash landed on it). There are suvivors of Netheril, but their Empire is toast. This is detailed in the SCAG & Sundering series of novels.

We have a broad strokes of what happened during the Sundering, what we don't have is usable practical details and maps for what things look like outside the Swordcoast and Chult. Major changes happened like Mulhorand's Gods returning in the form of Human, Aasimar, and Tiefling Gods and kicked High Imaskar's ass to the point where High Imaskar retreated to Extradimesinal spaces (most likely the Celestial Nadir) and the Plains of Purple Dust.

Post SCAG the weird thing is the only source books that even mention parts of FR outside of the Swordcoast are the adventure anthologies. A couple of mini adventures in Candlekeep Mysteries are set outside of the Swordcoast, Tales of the Yawning Portal has an adventure in Thay, and Radiant Citadel has a bunch of mini settings intended to be set on mostly different worlds, but the book gives suggestions on where in the Forgotten Realms you can place these minisettings.

James Gasik · Sep 4, 2022

Yeah I had someone point out to me that I should read the SCAG more closely, lol. And while yes, Yawning Portal has Dead in Thay, that isn't a new adventure, so I don't think it's a good indication of what's going on in Thay these days.

aco175 · Sep 4, 2022

I would like some sort of shell to hang a timeline on. A few paragraphs of what is going on in each of the areas of the world. Give me a few ideas that I can steal and expand on to make a campaign out of. Another idea if to take the DMsGuild and give some ideas of what is happening in some area they do not plan to do anything with like Cormyr and let 3pp make something out of it.

humble minion · Sep 4, 2022

aco175 said:
I would like some sort of shell to hang a timeline on. A few paragraphs of what is going on in each of the areas of the world. Give me a few ideas that I can steal and expand on to make a campaign out of. Another idea if to take the DMsGuild and give some ideas of what is happening in some area they do not plan to do anything with like Cormyr and let 3pp make something out of it.

I suspect WotCs plans for FR are on hold a bit now. If the D&D film is a big hit, I expect them to milk it hard with FR supplements. They might even release a new FR setting book replacing SCAG once One D&D comes out, regardless of the film.

Muso · Sep 4, 2022

I would like to have a source book similar to that made for the 3rd edition. That was really cool.

LuisCarlos17f · Sep 4, 2022

Drizz't children.

Parmandur · Sep 4, 2022

I'd like them to formally reboot the Setting to the Grey Box and kill the metaplot on a full official basis. Barring that, the current status quo is fine.

I do expect the Phandelver campaign next year is going to book-end the 5E "Sword Coast Cycle" of Adventures with the Obelisk situation coming to a head, maybe after that they will do some form of reset.

The movies aren't going to be in any sort of "canon" with the books per the official canon policy, so if the movie is successful that may oddly help them walk away further from metaplot.