How is FR changing with 4E?

[Hawke]

Forked from: Eberron Campaign Guide June 09

I'm hoping and praying that the job they will do on Eberron is not in any way similar to the hack job they have done to FR. I'm actually looking forward to see 4E Eberron, and I want to keep that positive anticipation going for as long as I can.

I'm completely unfamiliar with FR... my only experience is with various computer games, but we've never run it on 2/3E and I never picked up any of the books. Speaking to someone who doesn't know anything about the original FR, how is the new one being gutted and why is that good or bad?

Honestly, I'm just looking to understand it a bit more as phrases like above come up and I just feel clueless

 

[Mr. Wilson]

The main issues revolve around the 100 year time jump between 3.X and 4E. By products of this jump include yet another Realms Shattering Event, the Spellplague, a whole slew of changes regarding the pantheon, and the merging of Abeir and Toril (two seperate worlds) in some places.

Many, many fans of the setting take this as a horrible mistake.

I'm willing to wait and see what happens, but I only have about 8 years vested in the setting as oppossed to two decades.

 

[CountPopeula]

... yet another Realms Shattering Event...

Does not seem like a good place to buy real estate, those things happen every tuesday. "No Flesh-Eating Ogres."

 

[Khairn]

In addition to the changes themselves, there is also the storyline that WotC created to justify them. Some people have no problem with it, while others, me included, found it to be poorly written and generally forced.

Like every setting (or system for that matter) its ultimately up to the GM to make a call as to what he includes or excludes. Despite being a long time FR fan, the overall changes left enough of a sour taste that this will be the first edition of the setting that I have no interest in buying.

 

[rounser]

A whole nation of those dragonpeople are being gated in, apparently. Yeah, I know.

I think the dragonborn are lame already, so it's a double loss for me in that they're infecting the D&D core and my favourite published setting for it. 5E and one huge retcon to get rid of this stuff can't come soon enough IMO.

 

[Runestar]

It is like transformers: the movie. Seems like they are purging the realms of just about every iconic character in an attempt to streamline it and pave the way for new npcs of their own. We have already seen this in the tearing of the weave line of adventure modules. The spellplague just takes this to an extreme extent.

 

[questing gm]

I wonder what would happen if this gets asked over at Candlekeep...

 

[Shemeska]

While I really liked 3e FR, they've lost me for 4th. There's one somewhat ironic thing I have to point out about the 4e gutting of the setting however, and that's 4e FR's cosmology.

In 3e, FR retconned their cosmology from the Great Wheel to the "Great Tree" that never really got developed in further books, and was something of a hot button issue among FR fans for who used the new cosmology and its retroactive existance within the setting, or didn't. If you've been around here long enough you'll have seen me go off on a rant about the whole thing, and speculate that any potential 4e would change things and retcon the retcon.

Well... *chuckle*... 4e is here and it is indeed retconning the retcon, but it's not going back to the Great Wheel cosmology either. 4e FR is changing its cosmology for the second time in two editions and now it's apparently using the same Points of Light cosmology as the core PoL setting in the same way that Dragonborn and other PoL concepts are being shoehorned in. It's like they read my mind but then decided they hated me and they'd indeed go for a change, but one completely opposite to what I wanted.

*sigh* I'm going to miss the setting, but it's getting completely unrecognizable the more preview material I see. Maybe some speculative 5e will junk the 4e PoL'ization and pick up in the Realms circa 1373 again. We'll see in 6-8 years if the irony continues.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

The main issues revolve around the 100 year time jump between 3.X and 4E. By products of this jump include yet another Realms Shattering Event, the Spellplague, a whole slew of changes regarding the pantheon, and the merging of Abeir and Toril (two seperate worlds) in some places.

Many, many fans of the setting take this as a horrible mistake.

I'm willing to wait and see what happens, but I only have about 8 years vested in the setting as oppossed to two decades.

Another big issue is WotC's attempts to "fix the Realms". They wanted to nerf the high-level NPCs and reduce the massive backlog of lore. I'm glad they're fixing the first bit (and killed off Mystra... cheers!) but I think they might have been better off finding an "easier" way to present the old lore.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

As far as I can tell, not much. The most boring and overwrought parts of the setting are pretty much being left untouched while they steamroll the areas that didn't get much development in the first place.