Blowing it All Up and Starting Over

As gamers' thoughts turn to a New Year, it's worth remembering how the Forgotten Realms has reinvented itself with each iteration of Dungeons & Dragons.

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Dungeons & Dragons has been through several iterations, but because the standard fantasy campaign world has morphed from edition to edition, those changes were usually independent of the game world itself. The Forgotten Realms went through some startling in-universe changes to reflect the new rules set -- three times: The Time of Troubles, the Spellplague, and the Second Sundering.
[h=3]2nd Edition: The Time of Troubles[/h]Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was a hit in the 80s. It was also a focal point of the Satanic Panic, a belief in America that children were being corrupted by media, including Dungeons & Dragons. TSR planned to consolidate the disparate rules for AD&D, but it also had another goal in mind. Shannon Appelcline explains in Designers & Dragons:

TSR (re)announced the new edition of the game in Dragon #117 ( January 1987). In the next issue, project lead Zeb Cook famously penned a column title “Who Dies?” It mentioned that part of the revision would involve deciding which character classes to throw out. The column was remarkably prescient, spotlighting the two classes that were eventually removed from the game — saying that assassins had always been bad for party unity while monks had been better covered by Oriental Adventures. However it also threatened many other favorites, from clerics and thieves to illusionists and druids. The result was a huge outcry, thousands of letters, and a lot of debate about the new edition. Cook would later say that he was trying to evoke a reaction. Whatever the purpose, it allowed players to have a real hand in the revision of the game, first through their letters, then through a massive questionnaire. Players even saved the bard, another class that Cook had marked for extinction.

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The changes went beyond classes. Appelcline explains:

James M. Ward, who had instituted the removal of demons and devils, explained in Dragon #154 (February 1990) that “[a]voiding the Angry Mother Syndrome has become a good, basic guideline for all of the designers and editors at TSR, Inc.” Apparently, TSR had received one letter a week complaining about the demons and devils since the original Monster Manual was printed, and those 624 letters, or what Ward called “a lot of letters,” had been the reason he’d removed the infernal races.

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The end result was that D&D's rules didn't just change, its policies did too:

The release of AD&D 2nd Edition corresponded with important policy changes at TSR. An effort was made to remove aspects of the game which had attracted negative publicity, most notably the removal of all mention of demons and devils, although equivalent fiendish monsters were included, renamed tanar'ri and baatezu, respectively. Moving away from the moral ambiguity of the 1st edition AD&D, the TSR staff eliminated character classes and races like the assassin and the half-orc, and stressed heroic roleplaying and player teamwork. The target age of the game was also lowered, with most 2nd edition products being aimed primarily at teenagers.

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To reflect these changes, the Forgotten Realms experienced a world-spanning event known as the Time of Troubles. Lord Ao, over-deity of the Forgotten Realms gods, decided to shake things up by demoting all deities to avatar status to teach them some humility. Some deities died during this time, while other mortals ascended to godhood. MerricB explains the mechanical end results:

Now, the point of this was to update the world to the new rules. The change in clerical spell lists could be attributed to the gods now paying more attention to mortals. Half-orcs, demons and devils were just pushed aside in the new Realms… they existed, they just weren’t talked about much. Monks had never been that much of an issue. But assassins… TSR had a special plan for them. You remember how Bhaal, the god of assassins, got himself killed? Well, when he was killed, that act also killed every assassin in the Forgotten Realms. Sucks to be them! (Or to have an assassin PC!)

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Much of these changes were expressed through fiction and comics, while other changes were hinted at and explained only later. And of course, Bhaal's death was an excuse to remove assassins from the game. You can see the full list of changes on the Forgotten Realms wiki, but suffice it to say that these changes were far-reaching.
[h=3]3rd Edition: Nothing to See Here[/h]Third edition passed the Forgotten Realms without incident:

The introduction of D&D 3e was exceptional in that there was no overarching, global in-setting event introduced to explain the rules changes. Oddly, the adventure Die Vecna Die! was intended to explain the rules changes (for all D&D settings), but its events were never made FR canon. WotC just proceeded with the 3e rules and setting changes without adding any corresponding historical events. The 3e change is thus “silent” in FR's historical record.

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This isn't to say that the Forgotten Realms weren't changed in significant ways, but rather that the campaign wasn't adjusted to reflect the rules. The next edition would not be so kind to the Realms.
[h=3]4th Edition: The Spellplague[/h]The Spellplague didn't have nearly the amount of fictional support but its effects were just as far-reaching -- if not more so -- as The Time of Troubles, Mystra was assassinated by Cyric and Shar -- Cyric and Midnight were adventuring companions at one point before the Time of Troubles -- causing the magical essence behind the Forgotten Realms to be warped by the Far Realm. 4th Edition's changes to D&D were significant, so the impact felt on the Forgotten Realms was equally disruptive. Planes were shuffled, including the creation of the Feywild and the introduction of the Elemental Chaos. Deities were shuffled too, with Asmodeus ascending to godhood and bringing the Abyss into the Elemental Chaos (demons were reclassified accordingly). Spells and magic items worked differently, with items that possessed charges no longer functioning the same way.

Like many changes tied to Fourth Edition, the reception was mixed, including one of the authors who had a significant stake in the Forgotten Realms, R.A. Salvatore. Aldrick explains on the Candlekeep forums:

Salvatore and presumably the other authors were called in and basically told what the changes were going to be; they weren't consulted at all. So it was a major shock. They were basically told, "Hey guess what, we're advancing the world 100 years." Salvatore was very, very, very upset. Since over half his main characters were human, he basically didn't see how it could work for him. In his words, "140 year old humans don't fight very well." Salvatore wrote a really long letter to several Senior Editors at WotC pleading with them to reconsider the 4E changes, but clearly it fell on deaf ears. Presumably a lot of other authors were also very upset, and more specifically Ed Greenwood. Salvatore talks about coming out of that 2006 meeting where the changes were revealed with Ed Greenwood, and Ed was basically about to cry. Ed turned to Salvatore and asked, "What are we going to do?" It seemed that they couldn't stop it or change their minds. So Salvatore responded to Ed with, "We're going to be smarter than them. We're going to think long term." That's when Ed and Salvatore got together secretly and started brainstorming on how to fix the Realms when WotC realized how much it was going to be despised by most of the fans.

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They would get their chance with Fifth Edition.
[h=3]5th Edition: The Second Sundering[/h]To understand the Second Sundering it's helpful to understand the First Sundering. It was a magic ritual cast by elves that created the Isle of Evermeet -- but also blew up much of the Forgotten Realms:

Hundreds of High Mages assemble in the heartland of Faerûn at the Gathering Place. Ignoring the lesson learned from the destruction of Tintageer centuries earlier, they cast a spell of elven High Magic designed to create a glorious elf homeland. On the Day of Birthing, the magic reaches its apex as the spell extends both back and forward in the mists of time. Faerûn, the one land, is sundered apart by the unbridled force of the Sundering. As a result, hundreds of cities are washed away, thousands of elves lie dead, and the face of Toril is changed forever. The name Faerûn, no longer the One Land, is given to the largest continent. Surrounded by vast expanses of water, the island of Evermeet, thought to be a piece of Arvandor and a bridge between worlds, breaks the surface of the Trackless Sea. Blessed by the goddess Angharradh, verdant forests and wildlife soon flourish across the island. Corellon Larethian wards Evermeet against Lolth, Malar, and the other powers of the anti-Seldarine and entrusts a unique seed to the Fair Folk of the isle. The seed soon sprouts, growing into a miniature tree known as the Tree of Souls. Over time, the souls of ancient elves who choose to stay on Toril, rather than pass on to Arvandor, merge into the Tree of Souls, slowly augmenting its power. Prophecies reveal that the Tree of Souls will someday be planted on Faerûn when the Fair Folk finally return to the mainland after a period of exile on the Green Isle.

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The Second Sundering reversed a lot of what happened due to the Spellplague, with Ao restoring much back to pre-Fourth Edition changes. This video of a seminar on the topic explains the Sundering in more detail. Aldrick picks up the thread:

Fast forward to a couple of years ago at Gencon when 5E was announced. James Wyatt pulls Salvatore aside after he's done a seminar, and begins bringing up 5E Forgotten Realms. At that time WotC hadn't planned on what to do, but according to Salvatore, James Wyatt said that 4E FR had "gone off the rails" and then started outlining everything that needed to be done to fix it. That's when he took James aside and for over 20 minutes outlined everything he and Ed had been planning for years. Salvatore basically sees all of this as an attempt to try and fix "Ed's Realms" - that's how everyone is basically looking at it. He said that he's willing to take personal responsibility for 5E FR because he had a direct hand in it, but he also said that he's "very proud" of what they've come up with.

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And that brings us to now, the 5E Forgotten Realms that looks a bit like the same Realms before changes wrought by the Spellplague. The Forgotten Realms wiki illustrates how everything old was new again:

By the end of the Sundering, the world began to look very much alike to how it was during the 1300s...At the end of the Second Sundering, most of the consequences that the Spellplague had wrought upon Toril were nowhere to be seen...Many deities previously presumed dead or missing managed to return to life (or to re-emerge) during the Second Sundering, and then to quickly amass new followers (or to win back their old faithful), and to reclaim at least some of their former portfolios (resulting in a new distribution of spheres of influence among the Faerunian deities)...The Sundering of Toril and Abeir had extensive repercussions on the arrangement of the planes of existence and of the divine domains. The World Axis cosmology was rearranged in a new Great Wheel, which only differed from its previous iteration because of the presence of the Elemental Chaos and of the Feywild and Shadowfell.

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As gamers look forward to new games and new worlds to play in 2018, they can take comfort in the fact that even the Forgotten Realms goes through cycles. Happy New Year everyone!

Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

What's mind-boggling for me is that from a canonical perspective, each edition of the Rules is a distinct Reality, which has subtle effects on the world itself, which only the gods notice (see the quote in the DRAGON magazine article by Bruce Heard):
https://sites.google.com/site/dndphilmont/d-d-realities

I don't know if I'd consider DRAGON as canon here. I mean, how do you reconcile the fact that individuals within the Realms can observe the changes as they take effect?

Because the "Rules Realities" aren't "parallel storylines", they presumably model the in-story events from all eras as closely as possible, but using their own "rules lense". So, though no WotC product would actually depict it (because it would confuse customers), the ToT, DVD!, SP, and 2ndS events took place in all Five Realities.

That's simply not possible, from a causality standpoint. You can't have different natural laws producing identical results in every case. The events that led to the fall of the Assassins, circa 1358 DR, would necessarily play out differently under a 1E ruleset than under a 3E ruleset - especially since 3E assassins were all high-level characters; and under a 4E ruleset, it's impossible to assassinate anybody, so they should never have existed in the first place!

Even considering infinite worlds and infinite planes of existence, this whole "multiple realities" theory is poorly conceived.

 

[Derren]

So that's what happened in Shadowrun. I wondered.

Basically a combined nuclear and viral terrorist attack on the Matrix coincided with Deus hijacking big parts of it to upgrade itself and that combination caused most of the Matrix to become infected and destroyed. And when it was rebuild they switched to wireless technology.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

I don't know if I'd consider DRAGON as canon here.

Well, of course the word "canon" is debatable. Nevertheless, it was written by the TSR-employed D&D Brand Manager. The different "rules multiverses" was also touched on in Frank Mentzer's Book of Marvelous Magic, which had Alternate World Gates between the Classic D&D Reality and the AD&D 1E Reality, and other Game System Realities.

I mean, how do you reconcile the fact that individuals within the Realms can observe the changes as they take effect?
That's simply not possible, from a causality standpoint. You can't have different natural laws producing identical results in every case.

I didn't say they were *identical results*. It's just that the events differ as little as feasible.

This is not a quantum physics lab. It's authored fiction. Of course the effects can be written to end up nearly identically.

The events that led to the fall of the Assassins, circa 1358 DR, would necessarily play out differently under a 1E ruleset than under a 3E ruleset - especially since 3E assassins were all high-level characters; and under a 4E ruleset, it's impossible to assassinate anybody, so they should never have existed in the first place!

I like how you're delving into the details. I couldn't do that in my short overview post. You make some good points.

Yes, perhaps in the Third Reality and Fourth Reality, there really was a 3E and 4E Assassin core class whose powers approximated the 1E class abilities, but which disappeared in the ToT. Or maybe in those realities, the "assassins" were actually of various classes all along, only some of which had the Assassin prestige class - but they were still all slain by the events in ToT.

AFAIR the 2E Arcane Age series had suggestions for how to model certain 1E spells in 2E, which later disappeared in the ToT.

These details would and could be creatively worked out.

If you look at the details of how Krynn has been depicted using the 1E, 2E, 3E, and SAGA lenses, there is quite a lot of artistic leeway for how to depict the same in-story era with different rules sets.
Same for the Classic D&D Mystara versus 2E Mystara. We found out in 2E Mystara came out that a few of the famous Thief NPCs were really Bards all along. And a few of the Fighters were really Rangers or Paladins. There's a whole appendix in the CD&D Rules Cyclopedia for how to convert from one Reality to another. As a Mystara-enthusiast, I'm used to half-artistically/half-scientifically re-casting a character or monster in two very different rules sets.

You could argue that from a ultra-scientistic perspective, there's no way that a Fighter was actually a Paladin all along -- there'd be too many in-story changes. But in practice, only so much of the life-story of any particular NPC is displayed via game fiction and so forth, or condensed into a stat block.

Even considering infinite worlds and infinite planes of existence, this whole "multiple realities" theory is poorly conceived.

While it certainly could use some fleshing out, nevertheless, the "Rules Realities" concept is an existing facet of D&D continuity which has been overlooked by later generations of WotC designers, and which, if fully grasped and fleshed out, could serve as a useful conceptual tool.

 

[Sunseeker]

Selling product is one thing - there will always be a market for settings that make use of the current ruleset compared to past rulesets. World-altering special events, however, is another animal (and one that should probably be shot on sight).

So, what, you're suggesting that they have to keep making up brand new settings? Or that they only produce small, incremental adventures to the setting?

Quite frankly, that sentiment is more fantastical than the game itsself.

Literally nobody does that. Nobody.

Heck, the only reason we're even playing at a table (you, me, everyone) is because something incredible is taking place within the setting. We're not getting together so we can farm crops, live like peasants or generally watch the days go by. We're playing because something BIG happened. If nothing of import happened, it would be covered in the Text of Scrolling at the start of the session.

Getting together to witness the birth of King Kinglyton's 12th child may seem mundane, and it is...except that the reason we're playing through this at the table is because the child was born half-fae! Which means something strange is afoot! The fact that relations with the Fae kingdoms have deteriorated in the past 30 years only leads us back to the same conclusion: we are all playing the game today because something big is happening.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

While it certainly could use some fleshing out, nevertheless, the "Rules Realities" concept is an existing facet of D&D continuity which has been overlooked by later generations of WotC designers, and which, if fully grasped and fleshed out, could serve as a useful conceptual tool.

The big problem that it creates, specifically for the Forgotten Realms, is that it completely destroys the one redeeming quality of an otherwise-bloated generic kitchen-sink setting. The fact that the world actually worked differently - that vampires used to drain levels, and are now reduced to a shadow of their former selves - that individuals might remember when magic worked differently, and they had to re-learn everything - created a lot of opportunity for stories that couldn't exist anywhere else. The transcendent nature of the Realms was the one unique thing that it brought to the table.

It's probably a step in the right direction for other settings, though. I don't know that Krynn or Oerth ever acknowledged the changes, so it's probably easier to just to handwave it as different dimensions.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Basically a combined nuclear and viral terrorist attack on the Matrix coincided with Deus hijacking big parts of it to upgrade itself and that combination caused most of the Matrix to become infected and destroyed. And when it was rebuild they switched to wireless technology.

That's kind of weird. I would think that a crazy AI taking over most of the Matrix would cause them to rebuild so that systems were more wired. Oh well.

 

[kenmarable]

So, what, you're suggesting that they have to keep making up brand new settings? Or that they only produce small, incremental adventures to the setting?

Quite frankly, that sentiment is more fantastical than the game itsself.

Literally nobody does that. Nobody.

Heck, the only reason we're even playing at a table (you, me, everyone) is because something incredible is taking place within the setting. We're not getting together so we can farm crops, live like peasants or generally watch the days go by. We're playing because something BIG happened. If nothing of import happened, it would be covered in the Text of Scrolling at the start of the session.

Getting together to witness the birth of King Kinglyton's 12th child may seem mundane, and it is...except that the reason we're playing through this at the table is because the child was born half-fae! Which means something strange is afoot! The fact that relations with the Fae kingdoms have deteriorated in the past 30 years only leads us back to the same conclusion: we are all playing the game today because something big is happening.

To be fair, you are making a bit of a false dilemma there. World shattering events are absolutely not necessary to a product line (as you can see in just about every RPG setting other than FR).

There's plenty of other possibilities. Setting books can go into more depth with different regions or organizations in a world. Dozens if not hundreds of adventures can be published without completely shattering and fundamentally changing the world. Plenty of products that have nothing to do with a campaign setting can be published (and usually seem to be even more profitable anyway - there are even some gamers who never buy a single campaign setting product!).

So, yes, publishing 1 campaign setting book and nothing else is absurd, but so is thinking that no one will play the game unless you have Realms Shattering Events. Also, a quick glance at any company's RPG products shows how fantastical of an idea it is that the only alternatives are RSE's or brand new settings!

 

[billd91]

So, what, you're suggesting that they have to keep making up brand new settings? Or that they only produce small, incremental adventures to the setting?

Quite frankly, that sentiment is more fantastical than the game itsself.

Literally nobody does that. Nobody.

Didn't the OP to this very thread point out that in 3e, they published a FR setting that was pretty much just small, incremental changes to the setting? And didn't other people mention how good those materials were? Didn't I just see that somebody in fact did this to good effect?

It's also worth noting that Green Ronin does exactly this with their Mutants and Masterminds products too. So it's not like literally nobody does this.

 

[Derren]

That's kind of weird. I would think that a crazy AI taking over most of the Matrix would cause them to rebuild so that systems were more wired. Oh well.

As usual greed trumped common sense. You have NeoNET (formerly Novatech) and Villers to thank for that.

 

[Eltab]

The dis-continuity(ies) created by the various Realms-Shattering Events is probably the biggest weakness of the Forgotten Realms setting.

The 4e 're-boot' of Dark Sun made the setting stronger (imho) by removing the part where the gaming company itself changed one of the foundational principles of the setting (the undying sorcerer-kings).
This gave new PCs a big thing to aspire to achieve at the end of their campaign.