D&D 4E FR 4E SPOILER - Grand Histoy of the Realms info

[Kae'Yoss]

Masochist! I've read 11 Forgotten Realms novels and that was 10 too many.

I read all of them (minus a couple of books that are in my reading queue) and liked most of them.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Time will tell, but I think this might do exactly what they want. The devil is in the details, of course.

As one of the fans who has been ditched by this, I can only hope they fail horribly.

 

[Fobok]

Seems like they failed.

I don't know. A good half of people who say this ruined the setting for them also have said they haven't bought anything Forgotten Realms in 3-6 years, or more. So... they won't really be losing those people, since they'd already left.

 

[Wormwood]

As one of the fans who has been ditched by this, I can only hope they fail horribly.

I can understand not agreeing with changes to 'canon', but why would you hope the 4e Realms products fail?

Its not as if failure would translate into "Whoops you were right. Let's reset the Realms to 2006" (or 1989, depending on the dogmatism of the fanbase in question)

 

[Mirtek]

<Puts hand up>

I have a Tyr-related question.

Okay, he's the god of justice, right, and he's

Spoiler

hiding a murder/manslaughter? Uhhhhh forgive me but what? Isn't that going to mean that, as he killed Helm and no doubt took his already-overlapping porfolio, the FR god of justice will have a freakin' dirty secret? That's kind of both awesome and utterly appalling. Cyric will be semi-unjustly imprisoned. It's like a bad episode of Law and Order, only with FR gods...

Or am I misunderstanding the situation?

Well, who says that it's semi-unjustly ? Knowing

Spoiler

Cyric and his portfolios. Creating such an missunderstanding to even fool the deity of justice is something he would do.

As a huge fan of

Spoiler

Cyric

I am actually very pleased with this developement. Once again

Spoiler

Cyric is a prime example for the losers Bane and Bhaal to see how their job is done by someone competent!

. Of course, I still have to hope that this

Spoiler

imprisonment[/i] doesn't stop him from influencing Toril and his church and just means that he can't leave personally or manifest avatars but still watch and send spells and omens and all the stuff deities do that don't involve them appearing in person

Wuss! There are only 210 Forgotten Realms novels.

Hm, really? Only 62 to go

Unfortunately I think that I am actually failing to just compensate the new novel releases, I just need more time to read (or WotC should to me a favor and stop releasing so many new novels each year until I could catch up to at least 190/210 )

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I can understand not agreeing with changes to 'canon', but why would you hope the 4e Realms products fail?

I don't understand it either, but it's not unique to FR fandom. Many hardcore Greyhawk fans wished failure upon the setting when the From the Ashes era of Greyhawk took place because they were upset at the scope and breadth of changes.

 

[delericho]

I can understand not agreeing with changes to 'canon', but why would you hope the 4e Realms products fail?

There's a school of thought that runs that it's better for a franchise to be cancelled than to keep moving in a bad direction. That then opens the door for the following sequence of events:

1) The IP lies fallow for a number of years.
2) At some later point, a new group takes charge. This new management team look at the property, recognise all the wonderful things about the setting before it was 'messed up', and decide to do something about it.
3) The IP is relaunched. In essence, it returns to its roots, the way it was before it was 'messed up', while at the same time coming up-to-date with all the latest trends and techniques.

A very successful, albeit controversial, example of this is Battlestar Galactica. Another is Doctor Who.

Anyway, according to that school of thought, it would be better for the 4e Realms to fail rather than continue with the offensive changes.

However, looking at the huge numbers of IP that have not been revived (or, worse, have been revived badly), I can't say I agree with that particular line of thought.

Not being a FR fan, I'll refrain from commenting on the changes themselves. If I switch to 4e, I will be homebrewing settings.

 

[Fobok]

However, looking at the huge numbers of IP that have not been revived (or, worse, have been revived badly), I can't say I agree with that particular line of thought.

Having been a Planescape fan as long as I've been a Forgotten Realms fan, I totally agree. The setting likely won't be picked up again if it's dropped.

 

[Wormwood]

There's a school of thought that runs that it's better for a franchise to be cancelled than to keep moving in a bad direction. That then opens the door for the following sequence of events.

Now that is an interesting idea---and much more productive than simple spite.

But in any event, the chances of WotC dropping the Realms seems remote at best.



ps. as an aside: thanks to this very thread, I read the preview of "the Orc King", which led me to pre-order the sucker. That would be the first FR novel I've read in years. And it looks a whole lot like I'll be ordering the 4e FRCS when it comes down the pike.

Which is all really kind of annoying, since I swore off the Realms in favor of Eberron years ago. Just when I thought I was out...they keep pulling me back in!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Greenwood just used the name, the FR Ilmater is based on Issek of the Jug, from Lean Times in Lankhmar.

Yep, and this is why Illmater is such an absolute fantastic god. I love him dearly, stolen as he may be, and if he goes from the Realms, they can shove their book up Drizzt's ass, frankly.

Wonderful Leiber short story, btw, Lean Times in Lankhmar, really all of Leiber's stuff is horribly under-read, though.

Mean-eyed Cat - I hope not, the deities deal is one of the more attractive qualities of the FR for me. Sure, they could trim a few, but I bet those (like Siamorphe and most of the boring jerks in the second FR godbook from 2E) are not the ones they nail, but rather interesting gods like Eldath, Illmater, Mask and so on. They already killed off a lot of the more unique gods at various times (like Leira), so losing more wouldn't really be a good thing, imho.

I tend to agree with the suggestions that we're more likely to be disappointed with the lack of change, rather than overwhelmed by it. We know, for example, that "Waterdeep won't sink" (boooo! I say, boooo!), according to WotC.

I hear some people like Tolkien's writing, too.

De gustibus, etc.

Comparing the FR novels to Tolkien seems... somehow very wrong... even as someone who dislikes the over-emphasis placed on Tolkien... just not right...

I mean, some FR novels are certainly decent fantasy novels, but good lord, the rest are pretty questionable...

Seems like they failed.

'Cause judging from one chapter from a terrible novelist (with all due respect) and a timeline is a really good position to judge the success or failure of an entire setting from... Yeah...