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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 4002537" data-attributes="member: 22779">The way I see it, here is what I consider to be facts:A) The FR as a product is not performing as well as it had in the past.  We can infer this pretty strongly by the fact that they are changing things.  If it was making money strongly, it wouldn't be changed.B)  While there is a strong core of dedicated fans, they aren't numerous enough on their own to keep the line viable.  They could buy every book published, but, it doesn't matter.  They are certainly important, but, on their own, not bringing in enough money.So, with these two "facts" you have three options:1.  Keep the Realms more or less unchanged and relagate FR to the backwaters.  Drastically reduce the number of new titles per year in order to reflect this.  The Realms still get support, but, that support reflects the cash coming in.2.  Try to redo the Realms in a sort of Infinite Earth Crisis way to clear the slate and appeal to both existing fans and bring in new fans who won't be chased away by the bulk of canon that exists currently.3.  Try a RSE to reduce the amount of canon while still keeping the history built into the setting.IMO, 1 just isn't an option.  The novel lines are too profitable to reduce publications to appease core fans.  If they continue publishing novels, they have to continue publishing setting books to supplement the novels.  It becomes a vicious spiral.  2 isn't an option either.  A redo will truly piss off the existing hard core gamers because it completely invalidates their collections.  It's also not viable because the novel fans won't accept it.  Why should they?  They don't care about the setting in the same way that gamers do.  It's the plot that's important in novels, not setting.So, your only real option is 3.  And a simple timeline change won't do it either since that won't actually change very much.  Most of the big NPC's are immortal (or close enough) and the politics of the Realms shouldn't actually change all that much in a 100 years.  After all, what's 100 years to an Elf or a Dwarf?  So, bring on the spell plague.  I've yet to see a really convincing fourth option.</blockquote>

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