But it's not the only thing I mentioned, is it? I only mentioned harming in reply to your mention of benefit. Because clearly whatever product comes from this could be great. In which case, many would benefit.
But I also said that the adventure must stand on its own and not rely solely on the gimmick of using the shared D&D cosmology. Ultimately, the adventure (if that's indeed what comes of all this) will be good or bad largely due to its own merits, and the crossover appeal will most likely neither make nor break it.
I said that there's not many people who benefit from chucking the ToH into FR. There are lots of people who benefit from a great adventure, but I wasn't griping about a great adventure, I was specifically griping about chucking ToH into FR, which doesn't set up things well to be a great adventure. It might be great despite that, sure! But even if it's a great adventure, it's still a hackey crossover.
So, I'm still voicing my concerns about crossovers, and about a potential ToH adventure that is a crossover.
Well the adventure that took the Tomb of Horrors and elevated it beyond a location on Oerth has already been written. And it's a great adventure. Far better than the original. It took what Gygax had put down...which was pretty much just his player breaker ("oh you think you're good at D&D?")...and gave it all a story. A story that moves things beyond the world of Greyhawk.
So the insistence seems odd. Especially when your main point seems to be purely aesthetic. "Use a Forgotten Realms lich with its own mega dungeon". Certainly they could do so...they also could have used a vampire other than Strahd. The point seems to be that have an idea about that specific vampire...or lich...that they'd like to tell. There is a whole level of lore at play that maybe you are not aware of.
When they told Strahd's story, they didn't relocate Barovia to FR. They don't need to relocate the ToH, either. The idea should always be to tell the best story, and a crossover is giving you a handicap right out of the gate, regardless of the lore reasons for it.
And there are those of us who like the shared universe of D&D's cosmology. My campaign takes place across Faerun, Oerth, Golarion, a home brewer world, and Athas, all connected by Sigil and the planes. So nods to that larger world...which has long been established...are something I enjoy quite a bit.
Is there an element of targeted nostalgia at play in cases like this? Sure. Does that mean that must be all there is to it? Of course not. Does it mean an adventure must be terrible? Of course not. Each of their adventures has had at least a pinch of nostalgia in the mix.
No no one is taking Westeros and smashing it together with Faerun, which is more what your examples would equate to. Faerun and oerth are already connected. It's canon. Based on the things I've seen you say about canon, your stance here seems a bit at odds .
I'm not necessarily objecting to it's canonicity / authenticity here. I'm objecting to it's lameness. Crossovers are lame. It's an ancient, stale, pandering, and over-used trope that speaks to a lack of confidence in either of the stories individually. It was lame when Elminster went and had tea with Mordenkainen or whatever. Even a
good crossover can't escape the sucking black pool of lame that is at the center of it.
I mean, from my perspective, as an example, one of the best crossovers is maybe
Kingdom Hearts. Disney characters and Final Fantasy characters all mixed up and you wouldn't necessarily expect a narrative where Mickey Mouse is some black-robed key-wielding Jedi figure and Maleficent and Pete From Goof Troop lead armies of shadow to destroy the Beast's castle and where you can fight Sephiroth in the coloseum made for training Disney's Hercules to really
work. And it's a convoluted mess, but it kind of pulls it off! A new narrative, new characters, a good 'verse...yeah, it's pretty juicy as a setting and as a set of stories.
...and it's still pretty lame on the face of it. One of the things one always says about
Kingdom Hearts is that it's a lot better than it sounds.
(and, one of the reasons it kind of pulls it off, is because it isn't interested in mimicing the experience of watching
Mulan or Playing FF7 or whatever - it's using Mulan and Cloud for it's own purposes)
Even if this was the best adventure since ever, it would still have that little asterisk next to it that says "Okay, guys, I know this
sounds bad, but it's actually really great!"
And with a start of "Let's put the ToH in FR!" I'm not filled with a whole lot of confidence.
That lack of confidence is what I'm voicing.