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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6682982" data-attributes="member: 37579">Well, at the start of Princes of Apocalypse, a few miles away might very well be a group of heroes who saved the Realms from Tiamat. Why not get them?Or, as was brought up in a thread reviewing PotA, why doesn't the PCs immediately run off the Waterdeep and alert the lords and guards there of the cultists? And, of course, no one really expects the bad guys to win. The world will never be destroyed because the PCs failed. Because who wants to rewrite their entire campaign setting to accommodate the problems of one TPK? Instead, you either move to a new setting (and the failure has no consequence) or someone else saves the day (and the failure has no consequence) or you just ignore the TPK. Yeah, I'm sure in homegames some DMs will rewrite their world to accommodate the party wipe and failure. But, if you're making your own world and willing to do that much writing/work, then the existence of published settings and adventure paths is irrelevant. You're not likely to be using them. I'd say it's less a problem of transmedia and more a problem with persistent worlds with multiple narratives. As mentioned above, any time you have multiple campaigns in the same setting there's the lingering question about what the other PCs are doing. Or if one of the current heroes dies in that permanent yet underwhelming way, suddenly a new hero who has no established deeds to their name will appear who's exactly the right level to help contribute with those threads. Which is a problem other media doesn't have to deal with and is much weirder and more problematic than a high level hero not getting involved.  Because, why was this lone adventurer not involved earlier? How unique and exceptional adventurers are really varies from setting to setting and campaign to campaign. In the Realms, adventurers aren't really all *that* unique. But there'll always be enough. If you want rarer adventurers or a world where the PCs are the *only* heroes, then that's cool. There are other settings that do that (Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Eberron, Greyhawk, pretty much all the others really except for DL and FR...). But for people who don't want that tone, who want a cast of characters they can use, it's nice to have an alternative. And, really, the difference between "they don't exist" and "they're busy with their own stuff" is cosmetic. However, if you want the high level NPCs then it's handy to have them. Sometimes it's fun to drop in the Name character and have the player's react to them. Like meeting Darth Vader or Han Solo in a Star Wars campaign. How dare WotC use some of their most recognizable intellectual property! It's not like there are dozens of adventures featuring the characters. It's not like they launched the edition featuring those characters or every adventure to date has included them. If every adventure moving forward has the PCs working for Drizzt and/or Elminsters I'll complain and call foul. But as a one-off it's not a big deal. And it should be pretty darn effortless to rename and reflavour if you don't like the character. It's not the most interesting thing, but it's an interesting thing. One of the strengths of the Realms is that the details are all there if you want to look for them, which includes NPCs and characters. If you don't want to make a hero then you don't have to make one.</blockquote>

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