D&D 5E 5th edition Forgotten Realms: Why can't you just ignore the lore?

[Hussar]

Continuing to screw up and pretend it's just because you've screwed up in the past is not a good justification.

Also, depends on the scale of what is introduced. Adding in a race isn't as bad as adding in "another" deity when the line up is already over crowded is a bit much.

Making changes for the sake of changes is also a problem that a lot people have, especially when it's extremely obvious *coughs* (dragonborn).

Hrm, adding one more god to a list of several hundred isn't going to change the setting anywhere near as much as adding a new playable race, which will crop up in FAR more games than yet another deity. What "justification" is there for adding Tieflings and Genasi to the setting? After all, was the setting somehow missing not having plane touched races? Was there some need that wasn't being filled? Or was it that the makers of D&D had a new race that was gaining traction among players, getting popular, so they stuffed it into the flagship setting? I'm betting pretty hard on that last one.

If you're going to complain about Dragonborn, why are you not equally complaining about Tieflings and Genasi?

Heck, if you're a Realms purist, which you've complained about Tharizudun being added to the Realms, why are you okay with Lolth in the setting? After all, Lolth is a Greyhawk deity LONG before FR was even a gleam in anyone's eye. Heck, the most loved module series of all time features Lolth and is set directly in Greyhawk. So, shouldn't you be just as loudly decrying the pollution of FR with Lolth?

Or maybe Gruumsh and Corelon? After all, both of them predate FR by darn near a decade, and both are firmly Greyhawk deities, complete with backstory of Corelon putting out Gruumsh's eye. Shouldn't that be a prime target of your ire in polluting the setting?

The ship sailed years ago for trying to claim any purity to Realmslore, either from outside influence, or continuity. Why should Spell Plague be treated any differently than any other event. Heck, from a continuity standpoint, there's no real problem with Spell Plague - it fits within the established lore of the setting. Continuity is not defined by personal preference.

 

[Irennan]

Honestly, even as a FR fan, at this point I don't care about ''purity'' or ''continuity''. Not only because FR has issues with its continuity, but because -as others have already stated in this thread- the setting has turned into a mess of random godly drama, explosions and cataclysms and munchkins running all over the place. Every NPC is turning out to be some sort of time traveler or something (in order to survive 100 years), lands have been swapped and continents rained from the sky and some more cheesy crazyness (the premise of the Sundering is just, well, jaw dropping and WTF inducing).

At this point -since they won't reboot, mainly because Drizzt&novels IMO- all I care for is that the good things that were taken away are restored with the Sundering. I want the drow deities back (and ironically, on what Hussar said, Eilistraee and Vhaeraun are more -or at least as much- FR than Lolth, yet they were taken away...), I want to see Halruaa rebuilt, the destroyed continents restored (Lantan, Mulhorand/Unther in particular, and not necessarily by removing Tymanther&Laerakond), I want Thay to not be a mere zombieland anymore and so on.

The reason I'm disappointed with the Elemental Evil module, is that they could have taken a more FR specific threat instead of Tharizdun. They talk about restoring the feel of the setting and embracing its complexity, but this choice of villains isn't exactly encouraging in that sense. However, I won't complain about it, if they give us a good load of lore and updates on the status of FR after the Sundering with those books.

 

[Imaro]

You cannot point to one change and try to claim that everything that came before was somehow better handled. Not when you have a setting that has been rewritten as many times, by as many people, as FR.

Why can't you? Are you saying there can be no difference in how changes are handled, the magnitude, etc.? If so why can't you claim certain one's were handled better than others?

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

The problem with many a Realms purists is that they view anything new added to the setting as a change.

Or, if we're to use the term incorrectly, a retcon.

It would appear this attitude isn't limited to them, however.

 

[SirAntoine]

They could elect a council of nine devoted fans every year to approve major changes.

 

[Staffan]

Honestly, even as a FR fan, at this point I don't care about ''purity'' or ''continuity''.

Yeah, complaining about the "purity" of FR makes about as much sense as complaining about the purity of the English language. FR has always been the place where everything gets thrown in. You want to retroactively put the Bloodstone adventures in FR? Well, I guess we can melt off part of the Great Glacier. Spelljammers? Sure, Evermeet is one of the Imperial Elven Navy's main ports.

That said, I think the best edition transition for FR was the 2e to 3e one. Essentially, Wizards said that the Realms were not a place where the D&D rules as such held sway, but rather that the rules were a way to model the Realms, and that the 3e rules were a somewhat different way of modeling them. There was nothing in-setting, for example, that turned the Simbul from a wizard to a sorcerer - it's just that AD&D didn't have any way of modeling the innate magic of a sorcerer, so it called her a wizard instead.

1e to 2e, on the other hand, used a major in-setting event as explanation for why there suddenly weren't any more assassins, and why magic worked differently now, and why some priests had more specific divine powers. The same, but even more so, applies to the 3e to 4e change.

Me, I'm a fairly eclectic guy, so I'm going to take what works from various eras and ignore what doesn't. Currently, that looks like it be fairly close to a 2e/3e-era Realms, but with a nuked-and-rebuilding 4e-style Neverwinter (because that kind of thing is cool).

 

[Laeknir]

Honestly, even as a FR fan, at this point I don't care about ''purity'' or ''continuity''. Not only because FR has issues with its continuity, but because -as others have already stated in this thread- the setting has turned into a mess of random godly drama, explosions and cataclysms and munchkins running all over the place. Every NPC is turning out to be some sort of time traveler or something (in order to survive 100 years), lands have been swapped and continents rained from the sky and some more cheesy crazyness (the premise of the Sundering is just, well, jaw dropping and WTF inducing).

At this point, I'd argue that the cheese IS the Realms. There was a time when the cheese was sprinkled on top, but including all the bizarre WTF cheese involved with the Spellplague and the Sundering, the Realms is defined by cheese.

If you took one of those giant holiday cheezballs from Hickory Farms and put the Realms next to it, could anyone really tell the difference? The holiday cheezball even has a nutty coating.

 

[Irennan]

At this point, I'd argue that the cheese IS the Realms. There was a time when the cheese was sprinkled on top, but including all the bizarre WTF cheese involved with the Spellplague and the Sundering, the Realms is defined by cheese.

If you took one of those giant holiday cheezballs from Hickory Farms and put the Realms next to it, could anyone really tell the difference? The holiday cheezball even has a nutty coating.

That's why I'm giving the 5e FR a fair shot, but in my mind I see the Sundering as a masked reboot (which they won't explictly do because otherwise those precious post-SP Drizzt's adventures would become non canon). I just don't try to figure it out how it can make sense anymore, I simply read it as ''insert random Deus ex Machina here'', so that they can restore what was taken away, like all the stuff that I mentioned in my previous post, and then start building again from there, giving us all the lore, depth, variety and complexity that make the FR feel like a living world, rather than a comics setting (or at least that is what I hope to see).

If they manage to restore stuff in a more ''logical'' way, I will like and appreciate that (and Ed and others surely have the skill to do so, http://forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=19841&whichpage=4 the second post on that page would explain in a good -IMO- way the return of Halruaa, for example), but I see what they are doing with FR as ''crafting'' it again from scraps, with the good and unique elements that they threw away returning, while all the cheese gets left behind (or -again- that's what I hope to see).

 

[Laeknir]

That's why I'm giving the 5e FR a fair shot, but in my mind I see the Sundering as a masked reboot (which they won't explictly do because otherwise those precious post-SP Drizzt's adventures would become non canon). I just don't try to figure it out how it can make sense anymore, I simply read it as ''insert random Deus ex Machina here'', so that they can restore what was taken away, like all the stuff that I mentioned in my previous post, and then start building again from there, giving us all the lore, depth, variety and complexity that make the FR feel like a living world, rather than a comics setting (or at least that is what I hope to see).

If they manage to restore stuff in a more ''logical'' way, I will like and appreciate that (and Ed and others surely have the skill to do so, http://forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=19841&whichpage=4 the second post on that page would explain in a good -IMO- way the return of Halruaa, for example), but I see what they are doing with FR as ''crafting'' it again from scraps, with the good and unique elements that they threw away returning, while all the cheese gets left behind (or -again- that's what I hope to see).

By "logical" and "restoration" though, do you mean no more cheese?

Generally, both people and companies tend to keep doing the same thing. And WotC in particular is mainly known for re-publishing and putting material in a new outside package with a little bit of added material.

That post in particular for Halruaa seems to use the cheese as the starting point for bring back an entire nation that was supposedly totally obliterated. The topheavy cheese of the Spellplague is still all over that, as is the god drama and so on. It's not all that terribly different than their method of saving another NPC by trapping them in an item or a shell of as-yet-unexplained weird Spellplaguey magic. Very selective, like the hand of god swooping down to save this here, and that there. It happens once, kinda cool. It happens to all the high-powered old NPCs and author favorites, it's cheese. I just don't see any evidence of complexity or lowered cheese there. Then again, I'm probably difficult to convince.

 

[Sailor Moon]

By "logical" and "restoration" though, do you mean no more cheese?

Generally, both people and companies tend to keep doing the same thing. And WotC in particular is mainly known for re-publishing and putting material in a new outside package with a little bit of added material.

That post in particular for Halruaa seems to use the cheese as the starting point for bring back an entire nation that was supposedly totally obliterated. The topheavy cheese of the Spellplague is still all over that, as is the god drama and so on. It's not all that terribly different than their method of saving another NPC by trapping them in an item or a shell of as-yet-unexplained weird Spellplaguey magic. Very selective, like the hand of god swooping down to save this here, and that there. It happens once, kinda cool. It happens to all the high-powered old NPCs and author favorites, it's cheese. I just don't see any evidence of complexity or lowered cheese there. Then again, I'm probably difficult to convince.

That's the problem with trying to fix too many people's mess ups. You get this really obvious attempt at trying to fix everything that it ends up being worse than an actual reboot.

They really have themselves backed into a corner with the novels.

Mod Note: Attempts to creatively spell to avoid the language filter are still use of inappropriate language. Just keep it clean, please. ~Umbran