Points of Light and the Forgotten Realms

[BlackMoria]

What the heck are you talking about. Living campaigns with strong support last for many years, not a few. Living Greyhawk started in 3.0 and continued through 3.5 for a total of 7 and a half years when it ends in mid 2008. Living City went even longer than that. I think you are confused with something else, maybe the D&D Campaigns model like Mark of Heroes or Green Regent or Xendrik Expeditions? Compare Living FR with Living City and Living Greyhawk.

Excuse my sweeping generalization then. My point being, making wide ranging and enduring changes to a campaign setting to accomodate a Living campaign that WILL end at some point for another Living campaign is a bad idea, if that is the intention of the changes to the campaign setting.

And Eberron won't need a cataclysmic change. The extreme dispersement of the population already conforms to that major aspect of "points of light". A simple timeline advance where teritorial control by the major nations has degraded inside their borders allowing bandits or other bad guys to fill the void is all that would be needed.

I can make the same argument for the Realms. About 85% of the Faerun landmass is points of light already and the remaining 15% can be the made the same way without turning the whole campaign setting on its ear.

Simply, the Realms doesn't need to be nuked from orbit to make a 'points of light' campaign. I can do that already without alternating a single thing just by changing the locality of where I start my campaign.

My point is - we are missing the big picture here and there is more to this than simple mashing campaign settings into a 'points of light' paradigm.

 

[ChaosShard]

I can make the same argument for the Realms. About 85% of the Faerun landmass is points of light already and the remaining 15% can be the made the same way without turning the whole campaign setting on its ear.

Simply, the Realms doesn't need to be nuked from orbit to make a 'points of light' campaign. I can do that already without alternating a single thing just by changing the locality of where I start my campaign.

My point is - we are missing the big picture here and there is more to this than simple mashing campaign settings into a 'points of light' paradigm.

Quite true.

My hope is that if (we still don't know what will really happen) they wreck the Sword Coast that other areas will have fared better, maintaining the traditional Realms "feel".

Playing a Baldur's Gate-focused game where the city is in a state of siege from monsters/bandits/whathaveyou could be great fun, but I don't really want to see that everywhere. If my previous post seemed that way, please forgive me, as I meant it to be more of a thought exersize.

 

[delericho]

About 18 months ago, I started to get the feeling that the Forgotten Realms might be on the way to being retired, as much of the setting felt 'played out'. Additionally, I wasn't sure just what WotC were going to do with the setting in 4e - the existing setting books are in some ways too good, such that without some sort of Realms-Shaking Event it would be very difficult for them to sell new books, as that would largely mean reselling the same material again.

So, I'm not particularly surprised by this move.

Since I am by no means a FR fan, I will refrain from commenting on the change itself, save to note that I won't be buying into the 'new' FR... any more than I bought into the 'old' FR in any significant way.

 

[Athenon]

Moria,

I don't think it's a simple thing either, but I don't accept the idea that they're doing just for a "Living" Campaign. There seems to be a good bit of care and thought here (particularly in regard to 4E). If they really did orchestrate all these changes 2 years ago with peripheral (freelance) game designers like Ed Greenwood then they've been very deliberate in what they're doing. I think this goes beyond the importance of the RPGA.

 

[Banshee16]

Wow...

First 4E is going to kill D&D...and now 4E is going to kill the Forgotten Realms with this stupid 100-year leap. Just...wow.

I can't believe it. Everything about D&D is just being drained away. And they expect it to rise like some great pheonix (does that even exist in D&D 4E now? Maybe it will...with like 2 abilities to make it "dee dee dee" simpler for the retard gamers out there that can't handle 1E, 2E, and especially 3E)

WotC finally did it. They finally ing did it. They're going to attract an ENTIRELY new audience...and making it that much harder for all veterans to switch to 4E. They want us gone and the newcomers in.

It's like they want to start D&D itself all over again and everything with it. I am so appalled by this. If I ever meet any of the members that helped make these stupid decisions...I don't think I could control myself from pummeling them to near death.

Razz, I can see where you might be concerned....but I think this is a little too "the sky is falling". All we've got is a kernel of information from a *novel* that doesn't necessarily say anything about what they're doing with the game line.

Even stating that they're not moving the setting to 1385 doesn't mean anything. It could mean the timeline will be at 1384, or 1386. Just not 1385.

Really, we don't know much of anything right now.

I don't think these people are stupid. There is the chance that in their excitement for something new, they accidentally go too far.....but again, it's just a possibility. They have lots of market research behind them, so maybe they know they have to blow FR up to try and save it from going on hiatus, or maybe it's going to be more of the same. The point is, nobody really knows......for now.

Banshee

 

[Kaodi]

I'm not really into FR, other than some of the novels, but I have some thoughts about the timeline jump and the " Spell Plague " .

It seems rather odd that the Spell Plague would happen 10 years after the current canon, and then have the new version of the campaign setting start 90 years after that. If they were going to do that, why not have the Spell Plague set 1 to 2 years after the current canon date, so that people who still want to use their 3e FR fluff can play through the Spell Plague era by extrapolating the effects on the setting now, instead of adding in 10 years of extra fluff before it happens? I think it would make more sense if the new base time is more like 10-20 years after the Spell Plague, instead of 100.

 

[DarthDiablo]

I'm an old Realms fan from the old "Grey Box" days. I didn't like the shift in direction with 2nd Edition (way more political) & by the time 3rd came out the Realms lost it's sense of mystery to me. I really like the "Points of Light" theme. That's how I felt about the Realms the first time I read it. Characters like Elminster & the Knights of Myth Drannor were few & far between. Because of all the Novels written for the Realms, it became oversaturated and lost its dark & mystical appeal.

While I'm not a big fan of "Realm-Shaking" changes like the Time of Troubles, an overhaul may be just what the setting needs. Change is good in the overall scheme of things. I'm not very upto date on Realms-lore, so please bear with me if my comments are out-to-lunch.

If Netheril returns i am assuming it will be ruled by the Shades/ArchWizards. Just for once in the Realms lore the bad guys are actually winning! As someone else posted earlier, it would be a great palce for Epic Level campaigns. Lower level stuff could be in the Dalelands/Western Heartlands as they traditionally were in 1st Edition. As for Myth Drannor, I remember it as being a great setting for mid to high level characters to go looting. Now it's reclaimed?!? Someone please enlighten me.

Decimating the entire Sword Coast? Sounds like a bad idea to me. The Savage Frontier used to be about Points of Light-the City States-surrounded by all sorts of darkness. Monsters, barbarians, evil organizations & fell magic haunted every corner of the North once you left the city gates. Has 3rd Edition really bloated FR to the point it needs a reboot? I suppose if they kill off many of the Mid to High level NPCs it will make the realms more Player friendly. I guess we'll just have to wait & see what WOTC have in store. I just hope they bring back Kara-Tur.

 

[ChaosShard]

I'm not really into FR, other than some of the novels, but I have some thoughts about the timeline jump and the " Spell Plague " .

It seems rather odd that the Spell Plague would happen 10 years after the current canon, and then have the new version of the campaign setting start 90 years after that. If they were going to do that, why not have the Spell Plague set 1 to 2 years after the current canon date, so that people who still want to use their 3e FR fluff can play through the Spell Plague era by extrapolating the effects on the setting now, instead of adding in 10 years of extra fluff before it happens? I think it would make more sense if the new base time is more like 10-20 years after the Spell Plague, instead of 100.

I see what you're saying, but the SpellPlague may be a more insidious, long term problem than a nuke.

What if the plague persists for 80 or 90 years, wiping out powerful casters over time, to the point where the magical infrastructure (I'm looking at you Halruaa!) can no longer be maintained and areas reliant on it slip into a dark age, almost akin to western Europe around 500 CE? Certainly, if places like Candlekeep survived you wouldn't have lost all of that knowledge (wow... Lorehunters working for Candlekeep in this setting? Sounds like a nice campaign ), but many regions would be hard-hit, and people would hesitate to take up the Art for fear of the plague (commoners and other superstitious folk may blame "mundane" plagues on the Spellplague, perhaps even hunting Arcanists, and blaming them for the infections), even if it hadn't been seen in 10 or 20 years.

That would explain a 100 year jump and the ceding of ground to monsters, etc.

Or, of course, we may see a Realmslore article a month from now talking about how the Spellplague came and went in 5 years and it's now 1385 (remember, they never said that the campaign didn't go forward 10 years, only that they didn't confirm that point ).

 

[Agamon]

Rich Baker just killed this thread.

 

[DarthDiablo]

Quote:Originally Posted by Rich Baker's Blog

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Wow, I'm sort of surprised -- more people were reading than I thought. It looks like I stirred up a real hornet's nest with my comments on the work I'd recently done on devils.

For those of you worried about mashing succubus and erinyes together... I do think there's room in the game for both a fury and a succubus. The problem is, erinyes have rarely been depicted as furies (ironic, given the name of the monster). Even in 3.5--about the most fury-like depiction of the monster in a long time--erinyes have charm monster at will. It's their iconic shtick, really. That's the sort of thing we would like to improve on.

One quick point of clarification I'd like to make... Don't assume that we're going to apply the 'Points of Light' conceit to existing campaign worlds. I think Realms and Eberron would prosper if they got just a little more points-of-lightish, but we're not going to overthrow worlds with that much breadth and history.


Sounds like the Realms are safe................for now.