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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brian Compton" data-source="post: 3818587" data-attributes="member: 24898">I don't know that they wanted to retire the Realms- Eberron has a lot of things (like the quasi-steampunk elements) that are fringe in the Realms.  I would guess they wanted a setting to go along with the Realms that had a very different feel.  Eberron= modern fiction genres (pulp adventure, noir, etc.) in a fantasy setting; Realms= traditional high fantasy a la Tolkien, Le Guin, Brooks, et al.In terms of popularity, you again have to look at what you're measuring.  I would venture they are equally popular as game settings.  I don't have numbers, but I would guess they sell similar quantities of game supplements, based on how many of each get made every year.  But, as I've said before, FR is popular beyond the gaming set, in a way that Eberron likely will not be based on the team's marketing philosophy.  One of my students, who I'm pretty sure has never played D&D in his life, came in today with a copy of Devil's Due's comics adaptation of Homeland, and has already read the text versions of most of R.A.'s books. They tried doing the same thing with Eberron, and it didn't last very long. I will stipulate it may not be a fair comparison- I'm sure many of the sales of the Drizzt and Dragonlance comics are to those who've read the original novels, while the Eberron book had no prior release as a novel- but it is a piece of evidence as to the greater popularity of the stories of FR as opposed to the game of FR (Devil's Due wouldn't keep doing trilogy adaptations if they didn't think they'd sell). I don't know.  Again, this assumes that the popularity of the game and the popularity of the novels are one and the same.  If FR stopped being a campaign setting, WotC could pump out FR novels, and I would bet it would still be popular as a fictional world and story setting.  There'd also be nothing stopping current players from using their 3E fluff and just putting the 4E rules on it (which is as it should have been, but I digress).  Making a new setting would be difficult, but they do still have all those submissions from before that are still their intellectual property(unless it reverted back to the losers, but I highly doubt WotC would give up potential material to mine for stuff in the future).  Just contact the designer and get cranking.  I don't remember their being a big lag between when Eberron was announced as the winning setting and when the Campaign Setting book came out; most of the others were likely in similar stages of completion in case they were chosen.I don't think WotC fears the reception of a new setting- again, I think Eberron's ongoing success shows otherwise- as they do the generation of ill will that dumping FR would cause.  It would be especially true if there was no game, but they still wanted to write the novels.  Then they'd be showing their hand- FR is primarily for the novels, and the game setting is just along for the ride.  Look at Dragonlance; there was no support of the game for years, yet the novels kept humming along.  I wonder how many Dragonlance fans TSR and WotC lost when there was no game.  Certainly not enough that they thought the novels would be unprofitable.  If it weren't for the novels' profits, this wouldn't be happening.  People would buy the game material without needing massive events to make them happy.  But, as Marvel and DC prove every year or so, Armageddon is good for business.  Don't believe me?  Then ask this- how can Eberron's design team just up and decide not to jump ahead two years while FR's team can't?  Because the FR changes are being brought to us primarily through novels which are written or being written right now (by freelance authors who don't work directly for WotC), while Eberron's changes would have all happend in the CS (which WotC staff are writing and can therefore control directly).</blockquote>

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