Another Chris Perkins Interview - 4th Edition Realms

[Uzzy]

Gamer Radio Zero just put up his interview with Chris Perkins about the 4th Edition Realms, here.

Listening to it now!

 

[Uzzy]

My own summarization of the podcast.

They have a plan to reveal information in both Dragon and Gamer Radio Zero, but they don't want to reveal the information now to avoid spoiling some of the secrets of upcoming novels.

Rest of the key points coming up asap.

Overarching Goal for The Realms: 'All Campaign Settings will need to change to adopt 4th Edition'. One of the key things that defines the Realms is magic. Wanting to make the setting more accessible to a broader audience. The setting comes with '30 years of baggage, a lot of it is good stuff to have around, a lot is not so good to have around.' Wanting to stop people being daunted by the Realms.

How Drastic are the Changes: Changes are Dramatic, most having to do with rebuilding some of the gods, cosmology, pantheons. There is a time jump, but it won't be revealed how much of a time jump till the new year.

Ed's Involvement: Pretty much in every stage. Tackling the most interesting new material in the book, in new places. Writing novels in the new timeframe. Some of Ed's backlog of information may be put on the FR Wiki.

Broad Themes to keep the Realms the Realms: First discussion about FR was what makes it so likeable. 'Setting that has a thousand.. a million stories to tell' Lot's of things going on all around the world. High magic setting. 'A place with a feeling of age and legacy to it'. All those in the new setting.

Side Areas: Maztica, Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim. Not exploring those areas specifically, but taking a more holistic look at the world in the new setting. Will go beyond Faerún. 'A glimpse of the whole world'. Ed taking the lead on this, focusing his work on the world beyond Faerún.

High Level NPC's: Goal to remove them. 'There is a feel in the current game that High Level NPC's save the day'. Mystra's Chosen will not be around. PC's accomplishing the epic goals. Good for the setting that PC's feel like the movers and shakers in the world. Threats at all levels. High Level threats and high level organisations that the PC's can join, but those new organisations aren't going to get in the way of the story, the way some of the current ones do.

'New' Realms: Decision to make the Realms new again taken at the Corporate level. Doesn't mean someone from Hasbro came in and told them to do it, but it was talked about all the way up the chain internally. Initiated by the Team.

The Weave: 'We understand what the Weave does'. Weave didn't fit in 4th Edition though. What steps in is new, but not something completely alien. 'It will work really well within the setting'

Realms Campaigns run by the Designers: Internal Realms game was going for a while, stopped about a year ago. Realms info plundered for their own campaigns, so lots of FR in all their campaigns. 'Lot of stuff within the FR world that can easily be imported over (into their own campagins)' Didn't run FR campaigns due to thinking that they couldn't absorb all the information to run a true FR campaign, which influenced them and gave them an awareness of this 'problem'.

Other Designers working on the Realms: Eric Boyd, Brian James working on stuff. 'As FR continues we will need more folks in.' Rob Heinsoo with Logan Bonner working the mechanical design, the players content. New races, new powers.

 

[Sammael]

All settings will change to accommodate new rules
Major changes to magic - Mystra, Weave
Setting must be more accessible to beginners (too much baggage)
Scope of changes - dramatic (e.g. rebuilding / re-concepting gods and cosmology)
Year - to be announced later (New Year)
Ed is involved in every stage, tackling a lot of the new stuff, new locations, novels set in the new timeline
Broad themes kept - setting with a million stories to tell (all stories equally important), lots of villains, plots, and heroes, high magic setting (many different sorts of magic), feeling of age and legacy (ancient ruins, spells, monsters)
Maztica, Al-Qadim, Kara-Tur - not going to be explored in detail, but enough detail to get you started anywhere on the planet - beyond Faerun (Ed working on this)
High-level NPCs - Mystra's Chosen not around anymore, PCs are the ones accomplishing stuff - focus on PCs in heroic, paragon, epic stories; high-level NPCs who can steal PCs' thunder are being "nuked" and "eliminated"
Threats of all levels (1-30) will be present, more new bad-guys, high-level organizations
Rich is not to blame for "New Realms" - decision made at the CORPORATE level (WotC, not Hasbro) - the team proposed the changes, not the suits
The Weave - gone, unraveled, there is something new in its place (which is completely new), he thinks that some people may not like it at first, but "it's good for the game"
WotC people don't have any internal FR campaigns going now (haven't had for a year), instead they plunder FR for their home campaigns
Many people (WotC employees included) won't run FR games because they are afraid they don't have enough knowledge of the setting to achieve a "true FR feel" - they tried to deal with this problem
Other designers working on 4e Realms now: Eric Boyd, Bryan James, Rich Baker, Chris Sims, Bruce Cordell, Rob Heinsoo & Logan Bonner (mechanics - new races, new powers)
Team sat down with Phil Athkins to determine the schedule for revealing the changes (year, Spellplague, etc) - bulk of info will be revealed in GamerZero and D&D Insider
Another implication that "they know the best time to reveal info, trust them" (they openly admit they want to hype the game)

Poster's personal opinion: 4e FR is not really FR. They will try really hard to sell it as FR, but really, it's a whole new setting. Also, hype sucks and can only lead to disappointment.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

Really cool information, thanks for the summary. I´m looking forward to these new realms. I own the old one, can´t wait for the new.

Main likes: overturning planes, nuke high lvl npcs, cutting down baggage.

 

[Wolfspider]

I really need to stop drinking this early in the day.

I'm seeing two of these same threads where I'm sure there's only one.

 

[DaveMage]

I really need to stop drinking this early in the day.

I'm seeing two of these same threads where I'm sure there's only one.

Dang overlapping parallel universes....

 

[Perun]

Dang overlapping parallel universes....

Could that be... the announced disastrous joining of two worlds?

 

[Nyeshet]

Poster's personal opinion: 4e FR is not really FR. They will try really hard to sell it as FR, but really, it's a whole new setting. Also, hype sucks and can only lead to disappointment.

Two phrases come to mind, having read every post thus far:

"The Realms are Dead. Long Live the Realms."

and

"To save the [Realms] it became necessary to destroy it."

(Can't recall who made the latter quote (about a village in korea or veitnam, as I recall), but it seems to really come close to the meat of what they are doing to the realms.)

In the end, they are removing most of the NPCs (and deities, although technically they are also NPCs, just at the other end of the scale), utterly redefining how magic works in a setting where magic is everywhere and of high level, re-defining the cosmology (again), and moving the setting far enough into the future that few of the actual kingdoms (and even longer lived NPCs) will still be around.

So, in basic, the (physical) map is the same, but the cosmology, deities, magic system, (recent) history, organizations, NPCs, and so forth are all different.

...

I agree with the quoted poster. What remains may superficially *look* like the realms (at least in terms of the map and perhaps a few NPCs and deities), but in every other respect it is a completely new setting.

Perhaps instead of "Forgotten Realms" they should refer to it as "Re-Discovered Realms" or even "Reincarnated Realms." The latter is especially good, as you can come back as a different animal entirely from what you were the first time around, yet still in some respects remain you.

 

[Shazman]

Two phrases come to mind, having read every post thus far:

"The Realms are Dead. Long Live the Realms."

and

"To save the [Realms] it became necessary to destroy it."

(Can't recall who made the latter quote (about a village in korea or veitnam, as I recall), but it seems to really come close to the meat of what they are doing to the realms.

In the end, they are removing most of the NPCs (and deities, although technically they are also NPCs, just at the other end of the scale), utterly redefining how magic works in a setting where magic is everywhere and of high level, re-defining the cosmology (again), and moving the setting far enough into the future that few of the actual kingdoms (and even longer lived NPCs) will still be around.

So, in basic, the (physical) map is the same, but the cosmology, deities, magic system, (recent) history, organizations, NPCs, and so forth are all different.

...

I agree with the quoted poster. What remains may superficially *look* like the realms (at least in terms of the map and perhaps a few NPCs and deities), but in every other respect it is a completely new setting.

Perhaps instead of "Forgotten Realms" they should refer to it as "Re-Discovered Realms" or even "Reincarnated Realms." The latter is especially good, as you can come back as a different animal entirely from what you were the first time around, yet still in some respects remain you.

The only way to save the Realms would be to keep Richard Baker and his lackeys away from it.

 

[MerricB]

I liked the Realms back in the days when I understood it... but that was back during AD&D 1st ediiton.

This is probably good for lapsed Realms-fans like myself and new Realms fans, but not so much for current Realms fans.

Honestly, I'd probably prefer it if they took more of a Classic Battletech approach... but that's probably not feasible.

Cheers!