Has traditional Forgotten Realms been "mined out"?

[MerricB]

Just a question that may relate to the changes to the Realms in 4e:

The Forgotten Realms has now been around a long time, and it has had a *bunch* of supplements. Probably more than any other setting. Probably way more.

Has the Forgotten Realms as it now stands reached the point where designers either go into esoteric areas that are of little interest except to completists, or have to revisit material that they've already covered once or twice or more times before?

Cheers!

 

[JoeGKushner]

The Forgotten Realms would've appeared to hit this problem in 2nd edition.

The real problem is events shaking novels, lack of details on places outside of the... core (Cormyr, Dalelands, Waterdeep, the North), and power levels that fluctuate all over the place depending on whose writing what you're read1ing.

I don't see those problems changing.

There was a lot of opportunity to open up different areas of the Forgotten Realms but before the books could be written, or had just been written, novels changed the realms. The North and Drizzt would be a good example of that.

 

[Belorin]

There were still plenty of areas not explored, but it seems writers want to stay in the comfort zone.

Bel

 

[Rechan]

I thought books like the Serpent Kingdoms/Shining South/Unapproachable East helped this?

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I posted this over on the Wizards Insider forum for discussion of the staff blogs on the D&D website.

There is wisdom in that direction. It won't be done though.

The coordination with the novel line is getting even deeper. Evidence the announced coordination between the Living FR campaign and the novel department.

At this point, IMO, WotC folk look upon the novel/setting link in FR as a feature, not a problem. The execution of the link has been a source of problems, but not the novel-driven nature of events.

 

[jollyninja]

I would guess that whatever changes are made to the setting will be prompted at least partially by the fact that this will be the fourth set of books to come out detailing the realms and anyone who likes the realms owns at least one set of them. From a purchasing standpoint, unless the books contain primarily new classes and character options, as the 3e ones did, there's no reason to buy anything you owned in the previous edition unless there have been major changes to the setting. When looking up information about the church of torm for example, one would be far better off looking at the 2e faiths and pantheons compared to the 3e version. I have often wondered if the lack of general fluff in the 3e books was at least partialy driven by the fact that it had all been written before and the timeline not advanced enough to make things substantially different.

could be that the books end up being better just because they actually have something new to say.

 

[Daztur]

The biggest problem with FR is making the novels canon. Every novel has to have a hero so the world gets littered with heros, every hero has to stop big evil plans and destroy baddies so the world is full of foiled evil plans and remnants of baddies. None of these things help make it a good RPG setting.

 

[PeterWeller]

The biggest problem with FR is making the novels canon. Every novel has to have a hero so the world gets littered with heros, every hero has to stop big evil plans and destroy baddies so the world is full of foiled evil plans and remnants of baddies. None of these things help make it a good RPG setting.

The novels don't have to be that. The early books didn't shake the Realms to their core, and it added to the verisimilitude of the setting to have this big pool of NPCs who would cross paths with the party.

 

[JoeGKushner]

The novels don't have to be that. The early books didn't shake the Realms to their core, and it added to the verisimilitude of the setting to have this big pool of NPCs who would cross paths with the party.

Crystal Shard.... wizard with world altering power. barbarian invasions. death of an ancient dragon.

Moonshae Isles trilogy. death of the goddess. lots of big changes on the setting.

I believe that you're mistaken.

 

[Daztur]

The novels don't have to be that. The early books didn't shake the Realms to their core, and it added to the verisimilitude of the setting to have this big pool of NPCs who would cross paths with the party.

Right but the novels are what they are. If anything instead of going forward in time I'd like the FR setting to go back into the past before all the novels.

And having more NPCs is good but having more of the particular kind of NPCs that make good fantasy novel protagonists is bad since what makes them good novel protagonists is precisely what makes them bad NPCs.