Forgotten Realms 5E News

[Grumpy RPG Reviews]

I am among those who hates 4E Forgotten Realms.


F.R. was discussed much in the presentation on D&D Next at GenCon 2012, though it was short on details aside from a promise of something called "the Sundering."

F.R. fiction writer Paul S. Kemp discusses it at reasonable length and with details on his site.

In short;

• The novels will include the Realms Icons alive in 4E and "little people,"
• The Sundering does, in fact, seperate Aber and Toril,
• Lord Ao (a power to which the gods answer) is rewriting the Tables of Fate (the rules by which the gods all must abide),
• Writers include R.A. Salvatore, Paul S. Kemp,Erin M. Evans,Richard Lee Byers, Troy Denning and Ed Greenwood.
• "It is not a reboot of the setting. It’s not a retcon. Everything that happened, happened."

So, this is the novel series. What do you think it says about the setting of F.R. in 5E?

 

[delericho]

"It is not a reboot of the setting. It’s not a retcon. Everything that happened, happened."

I suspect he's wrong about that. I expect the Sundering to be a quasi-reboot of the setting, rolling back most of the changes of the 4e Realms (and probably the 3e and 2nd Ed Realms as well), to go back to a model much closer to the Grey Box.

My expectation is that that rewrite of the Tablets of Fate will probably either bring back the gods that died in the Spellplague/ToT, or introduce new gods that do the same things. But also, I expect them to require the gods to have much less direct influence on the world.

Likewise, I would expect the Sundering to do something to shorten the shadows cast by Drizzt, Eliminster, et al - none of them will simply be killed, but I expect that they'll probably end up being much more bound to fairly small geographic areas - Elminster is involved in Shadowdale, but has little influence elsewhere; likewise Drizzt and Mithral Hall, and so on.

The net effect of this should be that PCs are much more free to be the stars of their own adventures without any overshadowing by the 'star' NPCs (real or imagined), and yet being able to adventure in a world much more like the 'classic' Realms.

(I hate to say it, but I also suspect that the six novels in the Sundering series may be quite poor. Like the Avatar trilogy, I suspect they'll exist to do the job of revising the Realms, rather than because they're good books in their own right, and that may well compromise their quality. Of course, I could well be wrong about that...)

 

[BlueBlackRed]

The grey box set I loved.
Subsequent campaign setting books for FR were gradually less interesting to me.

Returning FR to something akin to the grey books would be a huge step in the right direction IMO.

 

[Agamon]

I suspect he's wrong about that. I expect the Sundering to be a quasi-reboot of the setting, rolling back most of the changes of the 4e Realms (and probably the 3e and 2nd Ed Realms as well), to go back to a model much closer to the Grey Box.

What's being said is that it isn't a mulligan. Reboot/retcon means forgetting what happened before and just starting all over again. While it looks like, yes, they are going to back to a more grey box style setting, they are moving forward towards it, not restarting.

 

[dm4hire]

I think what would be a good approach would be for Ao to set the rules in place for the gods. They are allowed to keep a handful of servants which they take with them to their domain for a few centuries. Advance the time line where everything that happened is now legend and the gods have been allowed to return their selected chosen to the world with limited influence.

 

[Alzrius]

Bear in mind that WotC will also be releasing two FR adventures between now and the official release of 5E, and will be collecting feedback on how these turn out for various groups; the overall results will be what officially happens to the world.

As such, I propose that every group send results of "and then the PCs went back in time and stopped the Spellplague from ever happening!"