What if you want to campaign outside the Sword Coast and the North, you simply don't have the intel to do so.
Well, first of all, that's what makes it a "good start" as I noted. Not just a good start for new players at this moment, but a good start to lead into future releases.
The pre-5e material covered (in quite a bit of detail) Baldur's Gate in
Murder in Baldur's Gate and Daggerford in
Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle and
Scourge of the Sword Coast, and Icewind Dale in
Legacy of the Crystal Shard. The first two APs covered a lot of ground geographically, but really didn't provide a lot of campaign material. PotA did, though, expanding on the material in the Basic Set and covering the Dessarin Valley. OotA covered the Underdark in the North, SCAG covered the Sword Coast and the north and SKT filled in a lot of the blanks remaining in the Savage Frontier.
There appears to be a very strong pattern here in the way they are presenting the material, and more importantly a sizeable focus on one region that pretty much provides and overview of the current state of that region, with NPCs, events, and where it stands after the Sundering and 4e. It's also more material (and more geographic ground) than probably most home-brew and even some published campaigns.
In the 3e FRCS the Geography portion covered 133 pages. SCAG is 44 pages, PotA 21, SKT 55, plus the additional material MiBG, GoDC, SotSC, and LotCS, even accounting for the larger font and more white space, that's a lot of material for just a single region with about the same page count as the same section in the FRCS for all of Faerun. Some of the History and the Organizations have been covered, along with the Deities. Although it's really non-edition-specific, I would consider
Ed Greenwood Presents Elminster's Forgotten Realms as a core setting book for the 5e as well, which goes into much greater detail regarding life in the Realms. Add the
Grand History of the Realms as another non-edition-specific core book, and you have a pretty respectable Realms collection already available for 5e. Is it as fast as earlier editions? Maybe not in geographic coverage, but for page count, number of adventures, etc., it's quite a bit (and may have already surpassed 4e?).
I think it also presents a sizable body of evidence that they are not likely to release a big campaign setting. There has also been surprisingly little duplication among those sources.
Instead, for those that want to campaign outside the Sword Coast you either have to go back to earlier editions (which is recommended even for the Sword Coast too), or be patient. If you look at the material so far, the Sword Coast has been pretty well covered in an every widening circle of what might be in a Campaign Guide. While there are certainly regions that could still be covered (one that makes sense would be a city adventure in Waterdeep), I think we're rapidly approaching the point where the APs will shift to another region of the Realms.
An AP set in Cormyr, the Heartlands, or Sembia would make sense to me. Heck an adventure that starts in Waterdeep and leads to Cormyr would be very cool as well. Of course, it's more likely an adventure in Waterdeep would lead to Undermountain...
Regardless, I think we'll see one or probably several APs set in another region of the Realms.
The focus is different than earlier editions. They've got a business plan that is centered around two APs each year, and those APs also include campaign information to some degree or another. In the last two years, they have also released a non-AP book - SCAG and VgtM. What's on the agenda for next year? Ravenloft Adventurer's Guide? Heartlands Adventurer's Guide? Another book of monsters, or a book of spells and magic items? Perhaps two non-AP books in addition to the two APs?
Another thing that is different (from my perspective anyway) is that they are focused on making things more accessible to a more casual gamer. The APs are designed for nearly the entire "playable" life of the characters, typical 1st to 15th level. In addition, the AP provides all of the campaign material needed for the DM to flesh things out, and add their own adventures in that region.
For the enthusiasts (like us), they provide pieces of the larger campaign, with a bunch of adventures/adventure sites that can easily be used outside of the APs if desired. Plus the newer non-AP books that provide additional support for those campaigns.
It's kind of a new approach to a campaign setting too. I loved the original Gray Box (a bit obvious I suppose, since I've been running in the Realms ever since). But it was a
lot of material to get all at once. That's actually a common complaint I see about the Realms, that some DMs don't want to run games in the Realms because there is too much. Instead, they are approaching it in the opposite direction. Start with a small region and expand from there. Taking the world one piece at a time.
It's not what we're used to, and may not be exactly the way you like it. But it certainly looks like it's a business model that is working better for them than (apparently) any other they've used in the past.
The Realms specific stuff is selling well, and allows them to tie into video games, comics, novels (if they continue), and reportedly the D&D movie. The system appears to be heavily invested in the Realms. To me, it's not really a question of whether they'll do other regions, it's when.
