Not to derail the topic, but does anyone know of any 5e fan-created conversion of the mechanical aspects of that book? I have a soft spot for Neverwinter.
What part? I don’t imagine a lot of it being difficult to replicate.
Example: there is a werewolf shaman with some lightning-themed powers. I’d make her a Loup Garou and give her some druid spells that tie to that.
Well that's a bummer. Retconning a previous edition's setting changes... I'm sure I've read about the Spellplague on the Forgotten REalms Wiki, and I'm sure that it was cited in books and comics.
I think I WILL look for that 4e sourcebook, because wow it was a neat idea.
The Spelllplague was indeed put to good use in multiple tie-in projects, including Erin Evans’ very good book series,
Brimstone Angels.
4e’s FR products were largely excellent. I recommend the Campaign Setting book and the Menzoberranzan guide as well. All written with a sharp eye towards creating material that can be gameable. For example, the setting guide comes with a starting location and a sandbox around it, ready to go.
I’m sympathetic to those who were upset at the havoc 4e’s lore created: WotC supported a whole line of books in 2e and 3e meant for those who liked to immerse themselves in this fictional world, and then they just destroy it and advance the timeline 100 years (effectively killing many characters!).
That being said, I think 4e’s vast lore changes were, in some respect, well-meaning. They wanted to create more adventure hooks, and some ideas were pretty solid. Here are some:
- Creating a “core” pantheon of ~20 deities in total, and arranging other deities in relation to them. Pathfinder and Critical Role later demonstrated how successful this approach can be. They needn’t have killed so many (Mystra? Really?), just arrange them in a way that gives more prominence to them. They also introduced the concept of some deities being known by different names across different races, which I thought was a neat solution to having some duplicate deities (Selûne is Sehanine, Talos is Gruumsh, Chauntea is Yondalla, Sune is Hanali, etc.). FR could use a “core” 20 that players got familiar with first.
- The lore development and integration of tieflings and dragonborn is mostly excellent. I’m not sure how much to attribute to Erin Evans and how much to attribute to the design team, but they were very distinct cultures. The tieflings came with this mystery of what Asmodeus gained via this ritual that tied them to him. The new Adventures of Faerûn book simply erases that by stating it failed, which is just uninspired. Why not a d6-d8 table of suggestions, to inspire DMs? Some of this culture material is alluded to in the SCAG, and is part of why I like that book’s treatment of races better.
- Many adventure hooks were very evocative. The return of the Netherese as shades, imbued with the essence of the Shadowfell, is so eery. The idea of this plague of magic that affects those who use it too much is also evocative and used to great effect in other D&D-inspired media, like Dragon Age. They really had so many new ideas at once. Some of it survives, but we lost many cool hooks just on the knee-jerk reaction to the whole thing.
