Another Chris Perkins Interview - 4th Edition Realms

[Wormwood]

Wow, I had no idea that Doctor Who was still around. I totally thought that it was only an active franchise when I was a kid.

Get thee to Netflix!

 

[Keldryn]

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.

I'm as hard-core a fan of Star Wars, Ultima games, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer as they come. And yes, continuity is important -- at least within the original form of the property itself.

At a certain point and after several years of spin-offs, there is unavoidably an obscene number of stories and characters that have been added to the original property -- much of very questionable quality -- and trying to shoehorn everything into a single continuity makes for an extremely convoluted mess that newcomers may find intimidating and that some old-timers such as myself just find off-putting.

The way I see it, the best solution is to take the original property as the baseline (e.g. The six Star Wars films, the Buffy and Angel TV series, the Dragonlance Chronicles & Legends, the original "Campaign Setting" boxed set/hardcover of Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, etc) and supplement it with whatever other stories/characters/sourcebooks/etc that appeal to you.

The corporate-level drive to cram everything with the property's brand name and logo into one gigantic continuity pretty much always creates a monster that gets out of control (at which point the quality tends to drop dramatically and many fans stop buying new product). Particularly for an RPG campaign setting where it is intended that every group experience it differently and make it their own, I think it's important to establish a relatively limited baseline and then not declare any further releases as "canon" or "in continuity." A revised campaign setting book/set to accompany a brand-new revision of the rules would be one case where I think establishing a new baseline would be useful.

 

[dimonic]

Hear hear!

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.

I am truly looking forward to actually having content for old scrolls found in treasure pretty much ready made. Old maps, descriptions of forgotten techniques, everything!

 

[med stud]

My only experience with franchises with a long history was when I tried to get into a oWoD Vampire group. Everyone was nice and patient with me but there was so much history, so many considerations and so many important things I didn't know that I gave up on trying. If you are new in a new setting you can be there "at the beginning", breaking new ground and learning along with people.

I don't know more about FR than what I have gotten from BG I & II but from the discussions about it it seems like FR may be the same deal as Vampire. If you are new into a group that likes to learn and use details from a setting it must be as frustrating to get into that as it was for me to get into old Vampire. I can only imagine how frustrated and pissed off you must be if you are getting badgered for not knowing as some people here appearantly have been.

For groups who have used FR for a long time and like the continuity I can understand the frustration that the Spellplague brings. I wouldn't be happy about it. But I think a remake may be necessary. FR is an interesting world and the fact that it has stayed popular for almost 30 years shows that it is a good setting for getting new blood for the game.

If WotC wants to keep D&D alive for longer than the lives of the existing fanbase they have to take these kinds of risks. It might fail, it will be uncomfortable for the existing players but since D&D players aren't immortal I think the choice WotC has to make for the 21st century is to change and take the risk to go down in a blaze or stay the same and die of old age.