D&D 5E Current state of the Forgotten Realms

[theopacman]

Having not played a lot of Forgotten Realms in the last 10 years or so (original grey box) Is there somewhere online that has a summary of the Realms history that can bring me up to speed?
From Grey box to current 5e?

 

[Sammael]

First, here's a free PDF you may find useful: http://fr.dungeons.ru/file/A_Grand_History_of_the_Realms052005.pdf

Major stuff that has happened since the Grey Box:

1. There was a Realms-Shattering event set in 1358 called the Avatar Crisis or Time of Troubles. Gods were forced to take the form of avatars and made a mess. Several gods were destroyed, chiefly Mystra, Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul, and new gods arose (Mystra II, Kelemvor, Cyric). Bane later managed to bring himself back from the dead.

2. Several Faerunian nations invaded the continent of Maztica (pseudo-American setting)

3. There was a pseudo-mongolian invasion and countless minor wars/invasions

4. Several cities from the distant past returned

5. Elves started returning from Evermeet

6. There were several schisms among the secret organizations, including both Harpers and Zhentarim

7. 4th edition brought another Realms-Shattering event, the Spellplague, that destroyed a good part of Faerun and transplanted parts of another world ("Abeir") into it. Along the way, Mystra was killed again, and so were several other gods. Then the timeline was advanced by a 100 years or so. People who didn't like 4E generally ignore this canon.

 

[Yora]

I think I heard that there will now be a new event which makes most of the new things that appeared in 4th edition disappear again. No idea if there are intentions to restore the countries that had been destroyed.
Mayb "it was all a dream"?

 

[Ebony Dragon]

I think I heard that there will now be a new event which makes most of the new things that appeared in 4th edition disappear again. No idea if there are intentions to restore the countries that had been destroyed.
Mayb "it was all a dream"?

I sure hope so. It was a terrible dream.

 

[Atomo]

I think I heard that there will now be a new event which makes most of the new things that appeared in 4th edition disappear again. No idea if there are intentions to restore the countries that had been destroyed.
Mayb "it was all a dream"?

No, the timeline is still advanced (about 10 years after 4e). And the state of things is returning even more, restoring gods as Bhaal, Myrkul, and even Leira, while still keeping "new" gods as Kelemvor and Cyric. To resume the situation, Ao is very pissed.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

I think I heard that there will now be a new event which makes most of the new things that appeared in 4th edition disappear again. No idea if there are intentions to restore the countries that had been destroyed.
Mayb "it was all a dream"?

It's called The Sundering.

Basically, a lot of the changes to the map and to the nations of the Realms were caused by a merger of the two worlds of Abeir and Toril. That is now being reversed and the worlds separated - hence the name The Sundering - and the old nations will be restored. The return of the dead deities is apparently related to Ao rewriting the Tablets of Fate to bring them back.

Urgh.

 

[Yora]

At some point you should accept that your work went FUBAR and it might be time to do something else, ot start back at 0.
But apparently people are still buying all the new stuff.

 

[delericho]

At some point you should accept that your work went FUBAR and it might be time to do something else, ot start back at 0.

The problem is that when you get to that state there's not a single obvious way to proceed. Pretty much whatever you do (reset, reboot, Realms-shaking event) will upset some chunk of your fans.

If I were WotC, I think I would detail the events of The Sundering then spin on the clock a decade or more, and then do a new "Grey Box" version of the Realms that presents the world as it is now, with the events of the Sundering tucked away in the History section as something that happened, but not tightly wound into the whole setting.

What that gives is a sort of "soft reset" - new people can just jump in without worrying too much about canon; fans of the ongoing story can just carry on from there; and people who hate the various RSEs can just ignore them and get on with their games. Plus, each group can use as much or as little of the lore as they wish, and can probably adjust it to suit themselves as well. That's probably about as good as they're going to get.

 

[Jer]

The problem is that when you get to that state there's not a single obvious way to proceed. Pretty much whatever you do (reset, reboot, Realms-shaking event) will upset some chunk of your fans.

Especially since so many of the fans of FR are actually fans of the novels. If you do a reset, what does that do to the novels? If you pull a retcon (it was all a dream) then what about the novels set during that time period? Whenever you get long-running continuity involved you end up with that kind of problem. (Frankly I think rebooting is a bad idea though - for just about any property - reboots are a great jumping off point for old fans, you almost never get more new fans jumping on just because of the reboot, and even when you do it's hard to keep the momentum of a reboot going).

If I were WotC, I think I would detail the events of The Sundering then spin on the clock a decade or more, and then do a new "Grey Box" version of the Realms that presents the world as it is now, with the events of the Sundering tucked away in the History section as something that happened, but not tightly wound into the whole setting.

What that gives is a sort of "soft reset" - new people can just jump in without worrying too much about canon; fans of the ongoing story can just carry on from there; and people who hate the various RSEs can just ignore them and get on with their games. Plus, each group can use as much or as little of the lore as they wish, and can probably adjust it to suit themselves as well. That's probably about as good as they're going to get.

I think that's the best option, frankly. Don't jump a century into the future like they did with 4e because that screws with all of your novel series authors. In fact they should probably work with the major authors of the FR line to plan how far to jump ahead and what the general shape of the politics of the Realms will look like, because it's going to impact the authors as much as it does the gamers. (More actually because the gamers can always choose to ignore whatever they feel like ignoring, while the authors are kind of stuck with whatever decisions Wizards makes about their campaign settings if they want to keep writing for them.)

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

The problem is that when you get to that state there's not a single obvious way to proceed. Pretty much whatever you do (reset, reboot, Realms-shaking event) will upset some chunk of your fans. (snip) [/quote

That's true.

I think the diehard Realms fans and those who thought the OGB was, originally, a breath of fresh air are essentially united in preferring a reset to the OGB and something closer to Ed's original vision.

Unfortunately, R A Salvatore's books sell about a hundred times as many copies as any FR RPG book so the timeline has been advanced largely to keep RAS and his fans onside. And that's a business decision.

(snip) If I were WotC, I think I would detail the events of The Sundering then spin on the clock a decade or more, and then do a new "Grey Box" version of the Realms that presents the world as it is now, with the events of the Sundering tucked away in the History section as something that happened, but not tightly wound into the whole setting.

What that gives is a sort of "soft reset" - new people can just jump in without worrying too much about canon; fans of the ongoing story can just carry on from there; and people who hate the various RSEs can just ignore them and get on with their games. Plus, each group can use as much or as little of the lore as they wish, and can probably adjust it to suit themselves as well. That's probably about as good as they're going to get.

I wouldn't be surprised if that's actually what we see. Get the turgid dreck of the RSEs out of the way - both The Sundering and the Tyranny of Dragons - and then have a short break in the timeline, et voila, we now have the new campaign setting. WotC has been on record as saying there will be no more RSEs but I suspect that will last until 1 January 2015....