Another Chris Perkins Interview - 4th Edition Realms

[JohnRTroy]

I still say, as heretic it sounds, that the Greyhawk PURIST GROGNARDS have a GOOD part in killing the setting much.

Greyhawk got abused in the first few years when Gary was removed from TSR, with the "joke dungeon", the Rose Estes novels, the War...it was just abused. And with its creator removed there will always be some resentment. At least Wizards is treating Greenwood well. I don't think the same thing applies.

The reaction of the FR ones sound like it may be a good idea... Just to stop the setting from harden into a rigid, unfriendly canon. May be too late...

I means, I agree with the guys who said that the canon purists are forgotting finally the point of the setting - a fun game-driven setting.

Actually, the big thing against the realms is it's a lot more "plot heavy" than Greyhawk ever was. So you have to take that into account.

And the one thing people shouldn't forget. Continuity is important nowadays. It should not be ignored. It's now becoming cool to bash the hard-core fans now--people are using the Battlestar Galactica reboot to justify pissing off all the fans who want the classic versions continued. It's probably better not to piss people off. For every BSG there's a whole ton of reboots that cause people to leave and totally damage the property. Some properties need tweaking, but others to be retired and preserved in amber.

 

[Guild Goodknife]

I'm really interested in the new Realms and that comes from a longtime FR player and dm. I particuliarly like that they advance the timeiine, which is much better imho than "reimagining" the setting. That way, all the history of the "classic Realms" is retained and can be used in future campaigns as the stuff of legends. Just think about how cool it would be to find reminders and artifacts of your old pcs in your new game! It gives the DMs and players lots of cool possibilities to revisit important sites of past campaigns and see where the old PCs have left their mark. Maybe one has founded a fighter school, or a guild or even a kingdom, and now you can see how it all flourished or decayed.
Also, i like it when the flavor of the setting acknowledges the mechanical changes. I'd rather have a good story telling me why magic works differently now.

 

[The Little Raven]

It's now becoming cool to bash the hard-core fans now--people are using the Battlestar Galactica reboot to justify pissing off all the fans who want the classic versions continued.

I think it's more a case of the hardcore fans immediately hating anything that deviates from their pre-conceived notion of what a property should be, with no regard for whether maintenance of their vision is viable for the property to continue. Case in point, the BSG re-imagining: the hardcore old-school fans want their campy version back, despite that version not being viable for a company to produce in an era when campy sci-fi is not popular.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Elminster still around.

Drizzt still around.

Novels still considered cannon.

I"m seeing a pattern of denial here and it ain't by the fans.

 

[The Ubbergeek]

Elminster still around.

Drizzt still around.

Novels still considered cannon.

I"m seeing a pattern of denial here and it ain't by the fans.

Albeit even them may not escape unscathed.... Some rumor spoke that El may become a striken, powerless man, and who know if Drizzt will not be a fugitive now....

It shows what i say though - it is STILL FR.

 

[3catcircus]

I just get the sense that WotC is having a Yoda Crisis: "Do or do not; there is no try."

Either they should reboot the Realms completely from scratch or don't mess with it at all - unfortunately they don't seem to be doing either. It isn't as if they, for example, couldn't keep the Weave and schools of magic as an alternative magic system that is part of the Realms. There is precedent - Magic of Incarnum and Tome of Magic presented alternative magic systems for 3.x, for example.

I also really don't like the intent to use a "holistic" approach to the Realms when they never accomplished it in 3.x (or even prior editions) - are they planning on doing this in the 4e FRCS and if so, how the heck are they ever going to be able to do it justice within the scope of a 288 page book? How holistic? Are they planning on including information for Anchorome, The Utter East, and Osse, for example?

This is one area where they should take a cue from Eberron - a book dealing with each continent.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Albeit even them may not escape unscathed.... Some rumor spoke that El may become a striken, powerless man, and who know if Drizzt will not be a fugitive now....

It shows what i say though - it is STILL FR.

Elminster as a powerless old man would be entertaining until the first Ed novel when he manages to hook up with Tymoria. "Hey baby, don't feel bad about all that death and destruction. Let old El take care of it."

And man, Drizzt being alone and a fugutive again. I wonder if we've ever seen the drow on his own against a horde of enemies.... Nah.

 

[The Little Raven]

the scope of a 288 page book?

Two books, actually. The Campaign Guide appears to be the DM's book, and there's also a Player's Guide the following month.

 

[humble minion]

I think it's more a case of the hardcore fans immediately hating anything that deviates from their pre-conceived notion of what a property should be, with no regard for whether maintenance of their vision is viable for the property to continue. Case in point, the BSG re-imagining: the hardcore old-school fans want their campy version back, despite that version not being viable for a company to produce in an era when campy sci-fi is not popular.

It's always a balancing act. Whatever you might say about hardcore fans, they are far and away the most likely to be interested in any reinvention, even if they don't like the details or the implementation. It's a lot easier to get a fan of campy-BSG to give modern-BSG a go than it is to convince someone who's never heard of it to watch it. Your hardcore fans are the bedrock of your market segment. Any reimagination WILL alienate some of them, granted, and the internet being what it is they will likely be loud about it. What you're always doing is gambling that your reinvention will attract more new fans than it alienates old ones. And the history is decidedly mixed:

BSG reinvention (campy->modern version) - success
D&D reinvention (1e/2e -> 3e) - success
Dragonlance reinvention (Saga, Summer Flame, War of Souls, etc) - failure
Dark Sun reinvention (revised box) - failure, though I blame that more on the horrendous mess that the Prism Pentad left the setting in
Greyhawk reinvention (Wars) - failure
Buffy reinvention (movie->series) - success beyond wildest dreams
Star Trek reinvention (anything beyond Next Generation) - failure
World of Darkness reinvention (post-Gehenna) - arguable failure. I'm admittedly not sure about the exact numbers, but I get the distinct impression that NWOD isn't a patch on OWOD sales-wise, though WW has Scion and Exalted to take up the slack these days.

Looking at this list (which were the obvious examples of reinventions off the top of my head - feel free to point me at more), the thing that jumps out at me is that the successful ones have almost always been marked by a long wait between when the old version petered out and the new one showed up. Perhaps this is because the hardcore fans have some cooling-off time in which to get the hankering for *something* new even if it might not be exactly what they want, and the new fans don't have to deal with confusion between the old and new versions. The two in the above list that possibly don't quite fit the pattern are Buffy (though I'd argue the throwaway movie didn't really have much in the way of a rusted-on fanbase so the show could generate its own fans from scratch) and D&D (though I'd again argue that 2e had been pretty effectively comatose, if not quite dead for a long time before 3e came along)

I reckon the closest parallel to what we're seeing now with 4e is the oWod->nWod transition. An established, well-selling and active line getting wound up because of a) legacy artifacts and other deep-seated detritus in the ruleset that affect balance and make the game work in a way it's not intended, and b) the desire to refocus on PCs rather than deal with the limiting factors that are powerful NPCs and other fluff built up over the years. The impression i've got as to how it NWoD turned out (I haven't played it, personally) is that it's robust, flexible, and functional but is somehow bland, uninspiring, lacking character and charm, and generally giving off a 'tries-too-hard' vibe, and that a high percentage of the hardcore fans have either ignored it or adopted the best bits of the rules modification to their OWoD games. I could very easily envisage 4e going the same way, especially if one or two of the bigger and better 3rd-party d20 companies (Paizo in particular, who through their stewardship of Dragon and Dungeon have a considerably higher profile among non-internet, non-ENWorld gamers than people like GR or Necromancer) continue supporting the system.

And that (longwinded though it might be) is my big worry, about 4e in general and not just the Realms. 4e may very well solve a bunch of annoying problems that have beset earlier editions and be nifty to play, but I think it's a) inevitably going to lose a fair few hardcore fans who will keep happily on with 3.Xe or whatever, and b) I don't think it's looking to be EXCITING enough to attract new gamers to D&D. The release of 3e got covered in mainstream news. 4e almost certainly won't. And while it'll be great for WotC's D&D sales figures (blind Freddy could tell you they'll sell more of 'PHB 4e' than they would of 'Scroll of the Fey' or 'Fighting Yet More Drow And Shar-Worshippers In A Shadowdale From Which Elminster Is Mysteriously Absent (Again)' or 'Complete Oozewrangler' or whatever other niche 3.5e concept they scraped up to fill up the product schedule) and that means D&D is likely to justify its existence to Hasbro for a little longer, I can't really see any appeal here that's going to attract the new gamers in that will be needed to offset that percentage of old-school types who will drop off.

 

[Terramotus]

Elminster still around.

Drizzt still around.

Novels still considered cannon.

I"m seeing a pattern of denial here and it ain't by the fans.

Eh, Elminster is a problem, but Drizzt isn't. At least not in anything remotely close to the way that the Chosen are - he just annoys the hell out of some people. He's just a 16th level warrior (and not a very well optimized one in 3E, at that). In fact, if your players have an attachment to him, he's one of the "good" type of NPCs. He can show up, help them maybe, and give everyone a warm fuzzy feeling, but he doesn't have anywhere close to the power to just solve a region's problems for them. He still has to kill those orcs one at a time.

In my extremely long running FR game, when things got into epic levels, though, and I wanted to run a final apocalyptic "save the world" adventure line, I felt compelled to address why the hell they were doing this instead of Elminster and his buddies. It was Shadovar related, and I just had a day where all the heavy-hitters went missing as a first strike from them invading. The players went unnoticed because they were newly risen powers, and weren't well known outside of Cormyr and some places on the Sea of Fallen Stars.

It worked, but it was extremely annoying to have to account for where not only the first string world defenders went, but also the second, the third...