D&D 5E Listened to latest "Lore you should know" and......

[Parmandur]

It's not hard to understand. You want the Forgotten Realms to be REAL again, like it was in 2001 when the 3e FRCS was released and everything was codified and defined and made sense. I get it.

It's just important to understand that ship has sailed. And not only sailed, it's hit an iceberg, and it sank, and they already filmed a movie about it, and the director moved on to make movies about blue aliens who have tail sex.

To be fair, WotC has also enabled Ed Greenwood to hog wild on the DMs Guild...

 

[Mirtek]

I am, frankly, as croggled by this characterization as I am by why you feel insulted and saddened by WotC handing the keys of their major RPG setting over to you.

And I am baffled by why anyone would feel insulted and saddened that the fanfiction he and his group spun and their table is not considered for the official canon timeline of events. I'd never dream of being sad that my fanfic for series X didn't become the official season finale or glad that the series ended so that none of my fanfics ever again get invalidated by future episodes. It's just a pity that I'll never get to see a new episode again.

...but isn't all RPG activity in the Realms, by definition a sort of fan-fiction?

Yes. And it still is even without an official canon version. Your game is no more empowered than before, still a drop in the ocean of countless other fan-fiction-versions going on.

There is no canonical version of Tyranny of Dragons or Princes of the Apocalypse: in terms of canon, they will likely remain in limbo as potential timelines only hazily referenced: they exist in actuality only in the versions of the Realms at peoples individual tables.

That'S not quite true. We know that in canon ToT played out between some of Salvatores last books and that the dragons failed to summon Tiamat. We know that RoD is taking place after ToD. We're unfortunately hazy on details on PotA and SKT and since the novel line ended (and probably won't revive with the movie) have to wait for snippets from future releases to pieve it together

At this point, I no longer have much idea what people are so upset about, to the point that this has ruined their day. But if you think this is about "fanfic," I have to wonder if the gulf of our communication is bridgeable.

That's the issue here. Personally I don't care about my game. I am fully aware that any game I might play (and most of the time I don't even play) is me taking a certain point in time from canon, tell my little fan-fic spin-off which most of the time is not even finished and then mostly forget about it. I'd never think of becoming miffed that future supplements and novels assume a different outcome and chain of events than what we had at our table. Why would I ever care? I can't understand that mindset at all?

Whats getting me miffed is that after 18 years (heck, the majority of my live) there is no longer that new FR novel available (or being available soon) for me to read. That sucks.

 

[Manchu2]

Not sure it will matter if there aren't any new FR novels... I hope they are just waiting for the movie plan to come along, but I think Hero is the last one for a while.

 

[Shasarak]

So now I have caught up with the whole Podcast it seems that what [MENTION=6689493]Eubani[/MENTION] said in his OP is pretty accurate.

If anything what I gathered from Chris was that he is tired of going back to reread old books and wants to start to make some new stories.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Irennan]

2. It is my understanding that they will release new books after the movie. Hey, a movie! So you have not one, but two things, to look forward to!

It depends. Ed Greenwood thinks that it's unlikely that the novel line will be restarted, unless 1)the movie does really well 2)an eventual novelization of the movie also does well.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Irennan]

Maybe. I'm a big believer in money. And FR, as a brand in the fantasy novel world does well enough that at some point, they'll license it out. Whether or not that is good enough for "canon," or "lore," or "FR readers," is beyond my powers of prognostication.

The novel line being licensed out to The Ed Greenwood's Group is actually the best outcome in my mind, so I really hope that it'll happen.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Wepwawet]

I just want to say that I'm also glad that there's no more FR cannon by default in D&D, and that they're publishing frequent AP for us to play, with the necessary lore for each story. (except I can't write it as nicely as many other posters).

In fact, when I started CoS I told my players that they were travelling from Neverwinter to... another famous city in the realms (can't remember) it annoyed me that the two older players started deducting all kinds of stuff from their previous knowledge about those cities.

Each Forgotten Realms in a new game is a new Forgotten Realms. I'm happy with that.