Are you excited about the Forgotten Realms setting changes?

[Steely Dan]

I'll be into it, my ongoing Realms campaign (18 years) has already deviated enough – Elminster slain by Asmodeus around the time of the Yamun Kahan invasion (Horde), Drizzt now working as rough trade on the streets of Skullport, and many other changes, so why not.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Well, are you? Now that we know some of the changes coming, what are your first impressions? I would like to see the results in the poll.

thanks

You kind of missed my option:

"I used to like the FR but drifted away. I like the changes and will come back." so I voted for the "I didn't like the FR before but will play it now." one.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I actually want a setting that has been created to showcase 4E, not a setting that has had so much cosmetic surgery done to it that Elminster now looks like Joan Rivers.

Some of the changes might be good, but the amount of history I have with the current FR, will make comparisons between the 2 versions a constant. I always respected the opinions of those players who just plain didn't like the "classic" FR. The choice of any setting for your campaign is a very personal and important decision. For me the changes are just too dramatic and arbitrary with too little fluff that gives it any real sense of being the Forgotten Realms I've always known.

For those of you who like it, great! Glad you're happy.

Time to start a "Classic Forgotten Realms" site for the rest of us.

What would be cool if it was possible to play in the FR at multiple eras. Basically, all the cataclysmic change mean that you can do very "crazy" things in your game, but after one of these events happend, you start with a more or less blank state.

Though it might not be to everybodies taste, if everything you did will be undone after the next ToT/Spellplague event. But that doesn't have to be the case - you still rescued the lives of some people, and you might even end up as one of the "Heroes of Note" of your time period. And if a smaller city was rescued by the heroes efforts, whose to say that they won't survive something like the Spell Plague, or that some survivor of that event from that city won't have the chance to do something great later?

Hell, you could even rune some time-travelling campaigns - you can safely travel to an era before such an event and fiddle around with the time-stream - unless you get to kill some gods before their time, many of the "ripple" effects will be compensated by things like the Spell Plague. (And the only real lasting effect is exactly the one you wanted)

 

[D20Dazza]

Where's the "I'll wait until more information is available before deciding" option?

 

[Jhaelen]

I've never liked the FR setting. Nothing I've seen about the 4E changes to the setting has changed anything about that.

Luckily 4E won't be a topic for my group in 2008, so I won't have to wait for an interesting 4E setting. Otherwise I'd probably just used the default setting or a homebrew.

 

[Wormwood]

You kind of missed my option:

"I used to like the FR but drifted away. I like the changes and will come back." so I voted for the "I didn't like the FR before but will play it now." one.

Precisely my situation.

Loved the Grey Box, loved FRA, even enjoyed the 2e campaign box. Then the setting started groaning under the weight of its own canon.

I welcome the opportunity to start fresh, with everyone on the same page (as it were).

 

[ferratus]

See, and that's why I think a reboot would have worked better. You still have to know about Unther and Mulhorand's ruins, even if scaly Dragonborn overrun the place. You still have to know about Sembia's merchant past, even if it is conquered by Netheril. You have to know why the Spellplague sucks by knowing all the stuff that happened in the past, and it still makes for adventure designing to be canonically a pain in the neck. The canon wasn't erased, it was just added to with a new time of troubles.

For example, now instead of having to know about Bane, you have to know that Bane was replaced by Cyric, Bane was ressurected, and that Cyric is now banished from Faerun. It is a long way to go just to get back to the status quo.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

See, and that's why I think a reboot would have worked better. You still have to know about Unther and Mulhorand's ruins, even if scaly Dragonborn overrun the place. You still have to know about Sembia's merchant past, even if it is conquered by Netheril. You have to know why the Spellplague sucks by knowing all the stuff that happened in the past, and it still makes for adventure designing to be canonically a pain in the neck. The canon wasn't erased, it was just added to with a new time of troubles.

For example, now instead of having to know about Bane, you have to know that Bane was replaced by Cyric, Bane was ressurected, and that Cyric is now banished from Faerun. It is a long way to go just to get back to the status quo.

I have to call shennanigans on this. It's extremely unlikely that any adventure, unless it was specifically about the history of death/evil gods in the FR, would require you to know all that. Mulhorand/Unther's ruins just provide convient Egyptian-themed dungeons and don't really need much more explanation than that.

 

[Toryx]

I've played FR in the past and though I enjoyed it, I got bored with the setting as it currently exists several years ago. So I'm interested in seeing how the changes play out and would enjoy playing in the setting once again.

 

[Odysseus]

What would be cool if it was possible to play in the FR at multiple eras. Basically, all the cataclysmic change mean that you can do very "crazy" things in your game, but after one of these events happend, you start with a more or less blank state.

One of the things I do with my Realms campaigns is set them historically, around some big event back drop. The big thing I like about FR is that there's some much history and wide ranging settings within the realms. I can run pretty much any sort of campaign some where some when in the realms. The 4E FR changes don't effect that so much. But what I will have to do, is adapt 4E to run in historical campaigns. And I don't know as yet how much of the core 4E will need tweeking.