Rich Baker on the Spellplague and other stuff.

[Badkarmaboy]

I heard he basically just attends lemon-parties in Calimport these days.

You are full of win Dan. That gets my Funniest Remark of the Day Award.

I feel better.

 

[Steely Dan]

You are full of win Dan. That gets my Funniest Remark of the Day Award.

I feel better.

Thanks, and right on, I always like to bring a little joy into people's lives.

And I was beginning to think I was the only one who knew what a lemon-party was, I myself just found out this weekend, so kudos.

 

[Scribble]

My main problem is that the Gods in the realms suck. First they can’t stay alive and viable for any period of time. Hell elves outlive some of them, that and what of all the souls that followed these gods died and went to join them. Well sorry you chose the wrong one and your god was too dumb to not get killed so sorry. Why would anyone follow these tools? Plots of gods should take 1000s of years and a god falling should be a matter of legend and myth, not something that a mortal sees 3-10 times in a lifetime. It makes the gods and the setting seem petty.

Thats a pretty common idea about gods all throughout human history though... Gods have notoriously been portrayed almost as petty children given too much power and freedom.

Check out the Greek Gods or the Egyptian gods stories sometime. All of them are filled with silly bickering and childish grudges.

I've always wondered if it had something to do with he common people making little slights at the ruling classes.

 

[Badkarmaboy]

Thanks, and right on, I always like to bring a little joy into people's lives.

And I was beginning to think I was the only one who knew what a lemon-party was, I myself just found out this weekend, so kudos.

The Jay Z / Alan Thicke remark was quite pithy as well.

Back on topic- As a someone who just started learning in-depth about the Realms last year (aside from Salvatore's books) I find these changes refreshing. The amount of whining, screaming, and general bad conduct over these changes on the wotc boards has me shaking my head. Whatever happend to civil discourse?

If I was doing a home game and I didn't like all of what I saw, I'm SURE there will be plenty of interesting story ideas there to keep my campaign running.

 

[Echohawk]

If I was doing a home game and I didn't like all of what I saw, I'm SURE there will be plenty of interesting story ideas there to keep my campaign running.

I suspect that we will eventually get a Forgotten Realms sourcebook which deals specifically with running 4E adventures during the "classic" Realms time-frame (i.e. before 1385 DR).

If I was planning FR releases for the next few years, that would stand out as a no-brainer product to put on the release schedule.

 

[Voss]

Why is leaving some things open to interpretation for the DMs considered inept? In some cases he is offering ideas about what may or may not have happened.

If he has contradicted some past fluff, so what? How many times in our own history, have "known facts" been refuted by new discoveries? (earth is flat, sun revolves around earth, man will never fly, etc)

Well, to item #1, it doesn't appear that he's intentionally leaving things open to interpretation. You can give him a lot of benefit of the doubt and say thats a positive consequence of what they're doing, but it honestly strikes me as unintended consequences of lazy design.

#2... because we're people, with limited knowledge that we have to find out. For a DM, running a game world, knowing whats true is very useful. So is knowing that what is true isn't going to randomly change because the designers are lazy. Additionally, with magic and gods and what not, characters can also find out big truths of the world.

 

[IconoclastX]

Yeah. Yeah. We've heard it all before. Those of us who have been FR fans from the very first Dragon articles, but happen to like what is happening in the Realms can't possibly be real FR fans - because we disagree with certain other fans.

Not at all - but you obviously don't consider yourself a "rabid fan" which was the term used in the post to which I was replying.

I try to avoid saying things like "real fans" or "real D&D" - it never works out well when someone starts talking like that.

 

[IconoclastX]

No, you're not.

This is the classic "Fan's delusion". Serious fans worthy of the term (i.e. fanatics) always believe that it's due to a core a "hardcore fans" that a setting/film/P&P RPG/MMORPG/band/whatever is keeping it "alive and popular". In a word, it's nonsense, unless you're talking about something super-undergound. The casual "fans", the people who buy the books but don't know the setting backwards, the people who drift in and out of the FR represents that VAST MAJORITY of the sales, not the Candlekeep-reading FR psychos who can tell you what Elminster had for breakfast last tuesday.

Most hilariously I saw this claim recently from hardcore raiding WoW players, that they were keeping the game "alive and popular". Yeah, right, 9.5 million players and it's the less than 5% who are keeing it "alive and popular". I imagine the percentage figure is similar here. You buying every FR product available is less important and the ten or so people who buy a handful of products every year.

PS - IconoclastX, what a name, any relation to Demonius X? Hehehehehe.

I think that the WoW claim is also ridiculous, but I think that gaming settings are a little different. The problem that everyone who has a problem seems to have is that there is "too much history" for the Realms that they can't get involved. That seems to indicate to me that it's unlikely for anyone except a fairly strong fan (ie. not someone who just has a passing interest in the setting) to be the heaviest consumer of material and product for the setting. It is also these "rabid fans" (a term which I only use because it was in the thread to which I replied originally) that a lot of discussion does occur. A casual fan (who, no doubt, exists, and may also buy a lot of FR material) will likely pick up a FR book (whether because of interest or just for the sake of completeness) and flip through it, maybe use it in a game, then shelf it because they have other settings of interest or are simply a collector.

The "rabid fan" will get the book, read it carefully and pick out everything that may be of use (fluff or crunch, depending on the preference of the reader) then review it online, then talk about it on mail lists and on sites like this, discuss with other rabid fans the ins and outs, what effects some fluff might have on the campaigns they're running, etc.

I think that a gameworld setting is a little different from WoW (small bingo troll: although the new version of D&D might suggest otherwise ). Without the centre of hardcore fans, you end up with what might be a marketable product, but not one that generates a lot of interest or excitement. I think that we can agree there has been a lot of both for the Realms over the years - and that doesn't come from casual fans, collectors, or non-fans.

I in no way mean to say that the "rabid fan" is any better than a casual fan or a collector. In fact it's often a great thing to see casual fans showing an interest in learning more about the setting. But, like the Trekkies comment indicates, rabid fans can sometimes be a little scary (and, in fact, know what Elminster ate for breakfast on Tuesday as you say ) The longevity of rabid fans is what provides that continuity and, IMO, keeps the franchise alive and vibrant (and important in the eyes of those who stand to make money from it). Your average casual fan will not be bothered to care and may just drift away. There are obviously exceptions, but that's still how I tend to see it.

As for the name... no relation. Neither to Malcolm X.

 

[IconoclastX]

Get over yourself, dogg. Greenwood, Salvatore, Cunningham, etc. are the ones who have kept the setting alive and popular for 20 years. You're just another consumer of their products, and whether your rabidly loyal or not, you're no better or more deserving than any other consumer willing to pony up for the books.

I have no delusions of my importance, trust me. And if anything 4e has done, it's to reinforce that the company has assigned me no importance either.

I guess the difference is that there is this level that exists with the Forgotten Realms that doesn't seem to exist for any other game setting (at least not to the same degree) - a dedicated core who feel they have invested in the setting (not just monetarily, and perhaps specifically *not* monetarily) over the many years it has been around who find it repulsive to make such changes all in the pursuit of a buck (and, IMO, just so some people can get their names on an important book in the industry). I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but I think that's where it's coming from.

Obviously WotC needs to make money, but I suspect there is a feeling out there that they didn't need to, from the point of view of one of the people I describe above, ruin the FR to do it. Especially when even Rich Baker makes these major changes sound so totally arbitrary.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The longevity of rabid fans is what provides that continuity and, IMO, keeps the franchise alive and vibrant (and important in the eyes of those who stand to make money from it). Your average casual fan will not be bothered to care and may just drift away. There are obviously exceptions, but that's still how I tend to see it.

Perhaps I can make this clearer:

Rabid fans, as in genuinely "rabid" ones, tend to fixate on a particular iteration of a setting. In the case of the Forgotten Realms, virtually everyone who describes themselves as a "rabid" fan fixates on the 1E Grey Box (which was a beautiful thing, I admit) version of the FR. Most of these "rabid fans" denounce a hell of a lot of the 2E stuff, and often the 3E stuff as well.

So I really can't see them keeping the franchise "alive and vibrant". Instead it seems like they want it "preserved in aspic". Many older aspects of the FR might seem dated, or dull or unappealling to a more contemporary audience, many of whom were born after the Grey Box went out-of-print! So if the rabid fans are listened to/catered to, and the setting is indeed "preserved in aspic", whilst those rabid fans will be happy, the casual fans (who are the VAST MAJORITY of the buyers of FR products) will gradually drift away. No amount of "PHWOAR, the Grey Box 3.0 is great!" from rabid fans will drag them back, for they are bored and annoyed with certain aspects of the FR.

Now, perhaps with the FR you have a more complex situation. You have the rabid fans, who love the Grey Box and the 1E stuff and some of the 2E/3E stuff, and love it regardless of any faults. Then you have the "ex-FR-fans", like myself, who loved 1E and the beginning of 2E FR, but gradually got turned off by the uber-NPCs, the constant RSEs (none of which changed things in interesting ways, just annoying ways, imo), and the decline of the general tone of the FR from "high fantasy" to "ren-faire fantasy". Then you have the casual fans who just like "FR stuff".

WotC do a lot of market research. They aren't stupid, and they're very interested in making money. They know that the current rabid fans alone will not keep FR viable in the long-term. Hence the changes - they want to do two things:

1) To win back the ex-FR-fans, who are numerous. Killing off various NPCs, PoL'ing the setting and so on seems appealling to me, as someone who was once a big FR fan, but now hasn't bought any FR books for a while.

2) To get the "new generation" interested, who were perhaps previously play 3E Greyhawk or homebrew or Eberron or what have you. A "return to the FR's old style" would be extremely unlikely to be appeal to this group, so a new style was needed.

Anyway, "No fan is forever", even rabid fans get bored/distracted anyway, and nowdays are frequently clique-y and fail to communicate with non-rabid fans, so tend to think their positive effect on sales is small, at best. To keep the FR going, they need new fans, and simply pushing along the old handcart wasn't going to do that.