FR Update at WotC-Year of the Ageless One

[Traycor]

Meh.

I was waiting for this and I thought it would be a lot more exciting....

Yeah. Instead of using the article to showcase the new realms, it looks like they used most of the space to calm the worries of the old school FR fans.

Really, the only true change we saw was the dragonborn stuff. The rest of the entire article was, "Not much has changed. Be at peace."

...kinda hard to get excited over that.

 

[The Human Target]

Sorry Whiz, but even if they announced they weren't "fixing" Waterdeep, the North and Cormyr, the final story they put together is plain poor. The rationalization for why the epic and devastating Spellplague that could devastate gods and empires but failed to touch 3 locations is ... what again?

What would the rationalization been had they destroyed Waterdeep and left Thay alone?

Random chance.

Did you want them to make a fortitude save for all the locations in the Realms to see if they lived or died?

They took what worked and was popular, altered it a little bit, and rehauled everything else.

 

[BlackMoria]

Yeah. Instead of using the article to showcase the new realms, it looks like they used most of the space to calm confirm the worries of the old school FR fans.

The above is more like it.

As an old school FR fan, I am not 'calmed' by the article. More like a rapid heightening of my apprehensions and concerns. The initial reaction to the article on Candlekeep is not postive. I expect a lot of angst once more see the article.

 

[Traycor]

The above is more like it.

As an old school FR fan, I am not 'calmed' by the article. More like a rapid heightening of my apprehensions and concerns. The initial reaction to the article on Candlekeep is not postive. I expect a lot of angst once more see the article.

You are most likely correct, which is why I'm confused that they took this direction. Older fans that enjoy FR the way it is were going to get worked up one way or another, so why not just hit us with the changes and try to get folks excited about them... instead of tap-dancing around, leaving the old fans pissed and the new fans bored.

 

[JoelF]

The above is more like it.

As an old school FR fan, I am not 'calmed' by the article. More like a rapid heightening of my apprehensions and concerns. The initial reaction to the article on Candlekeep is not postive. I expect a lot of angst once more see the article.

I agree 100%. This article pretty much confirmed for me that the 4E realms is not a place I want to game in. Not that it will necessarily be bad, but it won't be the realms I've bought every supplement and novel of, and love. They should have left the realms intact and did a 3E style conversion and said that the new rules were always there, we just didn't realise that some of the characters were actually sorcerers, etc.

I may continue reading the novels, but don't have any desire to buy/read/or play in the 4E realms. In particular, not only did they destroy entire countries, but I'm pretty shocked that Baldur's Gate is now the largest city, bigger than both Waterdeep and Calimport.

 

[The Human Target]

I agree 100%. This article pretty much confirmed for me that the 4E realms is not a place I want to game in. Not that it will necessarily be bad, but it won't be the realms I've bought every supplement and novel of, and love. They should have left the realms intact and did a 3E style conversion and said that the new rules were always there, we just didn't realise that some of the characters were actually sorcerers, etc.

I may continue reading the novels, but don't have any desire to buy/read/or play in the 4E realms. In particular, not only did they destroy entire countries, but I'm pretty shocked that Baldur's Gate is now the largest city, bigger than both Waterdeep and Calimport.

Baldur's Gate is without a doubt the most famous Realms city to non-Realms players, due to the video games.

Its not surprising they decided to make it a bigger focus of the 4E Realms.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I never really got interested in the Realms before, but the setting described in this article is interesting. Civilization trying to recover from magical cataclysms, fear that the cataclysms may come again, ancient empires rebuilding, a few cities that miraculously survived, flooded with refugees and suffering internal strife...

It is something of a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting, which might be fun. I am tempted to pick up the FRCS now.

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

I am not a Realms fan (I'll be playing the Realm for the first time in over 20 years of playing D&D shortly, in fact) so I don't have an investment one way or the other. however, the Realms has been a keystone D&D setting for as long as I have been aware of such things, and it strikes me as a little worrisome that in order to make a fundamental D&D setting work for the new edition they have to not only advance the timeline 100 years but enact a Crisis on infinite Earths level "event" to make it mesh with the new rules set.

If anything says "4E isn't D&D anymore", that's it.

thank you for saying that. i am a realms player and dm and i find this well shoehorned in. it doesnt even look like the realms any more . ya know i could swear the old grey box and 2e stuff pretty much said that without the weave there is no magic , sorry i dont get the spellpleauqe thing . the goddess mof magic has been killed 2 times and magic stoped working that simple without a goddess to control the weave it cant be accessed corse i could be wrong who knows(dont say wotc ).it just seams like a big middle finger to all oldschool realms fans to me. i'll stick with my 1e,2e, and 3e books at lest they can be used togather

 

[Traycor]

It is something of a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting, which might be fun. I am tempted to pick up the FRCS now.

It would have been post-apocolyptic if it had been set 80 years prior, but a 94 year (or 104) year advance in the timeline is a long time. Things would be fairly settled back to normal after such a long time.

Think about the difference between 2008 and 1904. Not only have we recovered from disasters from back then, but we've had many other disasters in the mean time.

I doubt folks in 4E FR would even much think about the Spellplague anymore. It would be ancient history.

 

[Raloc]

My only problem with the new changes is that it makes a lot of stuff I have unusable. In 3e games, I can "mostly" use the FR atlas almost unaltered. 4e? Nope. Even the fluff from lot of the 2e stuff is unusable now.