D&D 5E Do you want a Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide?

[Ilbranteloth]

Heretic, of course I have to know, the consquences of the Sunder are massive!

They covered a lot of the post-Sundering in SCAG, although in a fairly high-level way. But from what I can see, in the APs and SCAG, along with tweets and interviews from those at WotC, the new approach seems to be:

1) Don't reprint stuff that's already out there. The 3.5e FRCS was great, but a significant chunk of it was copy and paste from earlier materials.

2) Don't get too deep in the lore and events so they won't interfere with everybody's home campaigns.

I would like to see a return to the Current Clack style of updates, particularly in the style of the 1e products where they are truly just adventure hooks rather than always tying into novels and such. Some of that (obviously tying into the APs) is OK, but it became a problem when DMs such as me would expand on one of the rumors, only for a later product to do the same.

They also sort of released a FRCS shortly before 5e in Ed Greenwood Presents Elminster's Forgotten Realms and I suspect the success of that had something to do with the current direction of the Realms.

Most importantly, with the DMsGuild open, I'm looking forward to what Ed Greenwood releases. My suspicion is that if his releases do very well, then the future of the world may end up largely in Ed's hands, with the WotC releases focusing on the APs and things of that nature. I would love if that were the case.

Even better, if that does well, it paves the way for other settings to pick up where they left off with their most popular authors to put together not only updates to the setting, but to prove there is a customer base large enough for WotC to start publishing APs in those worlds.

So I surprised myself in voting "no" because I've been looking forward to new material as well. But I guess that's really it, I want new material, not the stuff that was already in the first four Campaign Settings.


The FR APs have detailed a lot of areas that haven't been covered in that depth before as well, and the SCAG filled in some holes in those. No, it's not as in depth as the older editions, but then I already have those.

I can't wait for Ed's new Volo's Guide that's coming to the DMsGuild soon - I think that will help point a way to the future of Realms products.

 

[Lanliss]

I voted "No" because I can simply not bring myself to care about someone else's setting apocalypse, or its effect on that world. Of course, I don't read any FR novels, so I am not attached to it beyond the crunch I like.

From what I have seen others say, it wouldn't even really be possible to do a "good" one by most people standard. The 3e ones comes up a lot, and sounds like it was massive and informative book, but the Sundering would not have changed everything. every single thing in that book that did not get changed is something that will be a repeat in a new Campaign guide. As a result, going through the checklist of "changed" vs. "not changed" material will result in the new guide getting smaller and smaller, as more things are cut out that don't need to be repeated. By the end, you can probably expect something the size of SCAG, with a page or two detailing each small change to a given area.

 

[gyor]

I voted "No" because I can simply not bring myself to care about someone else's setting apocalypse, or its effect on that world. Of course, I don't read any FR novels, so I am not attached to it beyond the crunch I like.

From what I have seen others say, it wouldn't even really be possible to do a "good" one by most people standard. The 3e ones comes up a lot, and sounds like it was massive and informative book, but the Sundering would not have changed everything. every single thing in that book that did not get changed is something that will be a repeat in a new Campaign guide. As a result, going through the checklist of "changed" vs. "not changed" material will result in the new guide getting smaller and smaller, as more things are cut out that don't need to be repeated. By the end, you can probably expect something the size of SCAG, with a page or two detailing each small change to a given area.

Since the 3e book the Spellplague nuked the realms, various wars happened, a jump over a 100 years happened, Gods died and came back and new Gods appeared, the Sundering happened, the entire cosmology changed twice, the weave, the very foundation of magic was distroyed and put back together, empires rose and fell and rised again, cities were destroyed and rebuilt, the very lands itself strank and the grew by miles, the boundaries of Oceans and Seas changed, flying earth motes rose up and then floats back down to ground, new races appeared, we found out about an entire new world Abeir appeared, the boundary between Toril and Oerth is thinned, new planes of existance appeared and others collapsed, only to be pulled out of mothballs, Tieflings were radically transformed, Aasimar were radically altered twice, entire continient has shifted back and forth between worlds on multiple occasions, oh and a over 100 year time jump.

But hey its basically the same as 3e right/s (answer to that is a massive no, its radically altered in just about every way possible).

 

[gyor]

They covered a lot of the post-Sundering in SCAG, although in a fairly high-level way. But from what I can see, in the APs and SCAG, along with tweets and interviews from those at WotC, the new approach seems to be:

1) Don't reprint stuff that's already out there. The 3.5e FRCS was great, but a significant chunk of it was copy and paste from earlier materials.

2) Don't get too deep in the lore and events so they won't interfere with everybody's home campaigns.

I would like to see a return to the Current Clack style of updates, particularly in the style of the 1e products where they are truly just adventure hooks rather than always tying into novels and such. Some of that (obviously tying into the APs) is OK, but it became a problem when DMs such as me would expand on one of the rumors, only for a later product to do the same.

They also sort of released a FRCS shortly before 5e in Ed Greenwood Presents Elminster's Forgotten Realms and I suspect the success of that had something to do with the current direction of the Realms.

Most importantly, with the DMsGuild open, I'm looking forward to what Ed Greenwood releases. My suspicion is that if his releases do very well, then the future of the world may end up largely in Ed's hands, with the WotC releases focusing on the APs and things of that nature. I would love if that were the case.

Even better, if that does well, it paves the way for other settings to pick up where they left off with their most popular authors to put together not only updates to the setting, but to prove there is a customer base large enough for WotC to start publishing APs in those worlds.

So I surprised myself in voting "no" because I've been looking forward to new material as well. But I guess that's really it, I want new material, not the stuff that was already in the first four Campaign Settings.


The FR APs have detailed a lot of areas that haven't been covered in that depth before as well, and the SCAG filled in some holes in those. No, it's not as in depth as the older editions, but then I already have those.

I can't wait for Ed's new Volo's Guide that's coming to the DMsGuild soon - I think that will help point a way to the future of Realms products.

Unlike with 3.5 a 5e FRCG would not be just a reprint of large chunks, because too much has changed,while when 3.5 came out, only a handful of things had changed.

 

[JonnyP71]

Likewise, new players? They don't know (or care) who Ed Greenwood is.

This old player didn't know (or care) who Ed Greenwood was until very recently. And only then I saw him as a slightly annoying bloke with a beard with a questionable sense of humour in a youtube video showing a group of 'celebrities' who I'd also never heard of playing something that they called D&D, but which didn't look or feel anything like the D&D I knew, in front of an audience who laughed at all the in-jokes.

(I played from 1983 to 1992, we ignored all the 'Forgotten Realms' stuff we saw appearing on the shelves, and came back to RPGs in 2013)

 

[Lanliss]

Since the 3e book the Spellplague nuked the realms, various wars happened, a jump over a 100 years happened, Gods died and came back and new Gods appeared, the Sundering happened, the entire cosmology changed twice, the weave, the very foundation of magic was distroyed and put back together, empires rose and fell and rised again, cities were destroyed and rebuilt, the very lands itself strank and the grew by miles, the boundaries of Oceans and Seas changed, flying earth motes rose up and then floats back down to ground, new races appeared, we found out about an entire new world Abeir appeared, the boundary between Toril and Oerth is thinned, new planes of existance appeared and others collapsed, only to be pulled out of mothballs, Tieflings were radically transformed, Aasimar were radically altered twice, entire continient has shifted back and forth between worlds on multiple occasions, oh and a over 100 year time jump.

But hey its basically the same as 3e right/s (answer to that is a massive no, its radically altered in just about every way possible).

Ah, that's what I get for opening my mouth when I don't know Old school.

 

[SunGold]

Regardless of whether or not FR fans want it, I don't see it happening.

Mike Mearls in September (emphasis mine):

"I have this kind of personal philosophy for managing the product line," Mearls said last month in Renton, Washington. "I don't want to duplicate any product that's come before. I think that if people have seen it, then it's not really new and it's not really exciting."

Endless FR fluff is the very definition of "things we've seen before."

Also, Chris Perkins last September (emphasis mine):

"We’ve gone from being product-focused to being story-focused," Perkins told Polygon, "which means we think of a story that we want to tell, that captures the essence of D&D, and also that we think is going to energize our players and DMs. Then we develop a story bible for that story and propagate it through a number of different expressions."

I think they put SCAG out as a high-level overview for all the new players 5E has brought in. Beyond that, it seems they wish to detail settings through story as necessary, and let DMs fill in the blanks.

WotC has loads of data that we do not. I know people mention things like surveys or whatever as proof that tons of people want this or that product, but only a fraction of players do things like hang out on messageboards or take surveys. Might be time to take a deep breath and accept the new course WotC is charting with 5E, or get homebrewin'.

 

[Sammael]

The new course is out of necessity, they were downsized to a skeleton crew because the Hasbro overlords deemed them unprofitable. It may be for the best, but I personally found 5E FR completely impossible to run at the current era out of the box (i.e. with SCAG) - everything has changed, but I have very little if any info on what exactly and what the new status is. I could make it all up, of course, but if I'm at that stage, I'll just go full homebrew and not bother with the Realms.

 

[DEFCON 1]

everything has changed, but I have very little if any info on what exactly and what the new status is. I could make it all up, of course, but if I'm at that stage, I'll just go full homebrew and not bother with the Realms.

And that's exactly why they aren't going to produce a FRCS for 5E. If you'd just as soon make up your own material for a homebrew setting... they aren't going to spend 100s of man-hours writing a new FRCS on the off-chance people like you decide to buy and use it, rather than just make your own.

It'd only make sense in their eyes to produce a FRCS book if the overwhelming response of people was "If I don't have a FRCS, I just can't play!" Then they'd produce one just so people would start playing. But if people are going to play anyway, even if they have to make up their own setting material... then there's no reason for them to spend wayyyyyyyy too much time writing a setting book that only like 1 out of every 20/30/50 players actually care enough to buy.

 

[Sammael]

The thing is... it's only an off-chance if they have the numbers to support the conclusion that hordes of FR fans aren't likely to buy a CS book.

I bought every single FR setting book for 3.x. I bought Grand History of the Realms. I bought Elminster's FR which was system-agnostic. I bought SCAG even before I started to run 5E. I bought Volo's Guide to Monsters (which is not really a FR book as it turns out). If I see a FR product with even a modicum of useful FR lore, I will buy it.