Rich Baker on the Spellplague and other stuff.

[Merlin the Tuna]

There's one thing about it, after seeing all this FR stuff of late, I've come to a conclusion. I never really got into the Realms all that much, and now I know why. It's not the huge amount of material. It's not the novels. It's the rabid FR fans that make Trekkies look like models of sanity.

This. FR 4e looks fairly interesting to me. The lengthy tirades and lists of questions ranging from "Why are you so dumb?" to "Why are you so stupid?" by the nutso contingent of FR fans, on the other hand, are an immediate deterrent.

 

[Minicol]

No, you're not.
RPG/MMORPG/band/whatever is keeping it "alive and popular". In a word, it's nonsense, unless you're talking about something super-undergound. .

I object to this : it's not nonsense as long as you shell out the cash.

In FR case, that means buying every crappy supplement and barely-written novel that comes along.

 

[JohnSnow]

Can anyone explain to me how the Spellplague helps solve any important issues? I can see how a 100yr time jump clears up an overweighty canon, but the spellplague seems... gratuitous.

So, spellplague proponents, what benefit does the spellplague have, that is not already covered by the time line advance?

I'll take a shot. For one, it's because almost all the major "problem" NPCs were high-level spellcasters who were basically immune to natural aging.

It's fine for a few characters, but in the Realms, it had become like a rite of passage for high-level wizards and sorcerers to become effectively immortal. And with the way resurrection works in D&D, any death other than one that was pretty blatantly supernatural is usually easily reversed. So, the Spell Plague allows you to off a large number of "super-wizards" and not have them come back. Alternatively, you can depower a number of those super-wizards, but keep the characters around. That's a way of having the most interesting characters from earlier times remain in the Realms, but as plot-driving characters rather than plot-ruining ones.

Secondly, with the edition change, magic has to work totally differently in the "new" Realms. The Spell Plague helps to explain away "why things are different." It also fills the role mentioned above - as a metaplot to rid the Realms of a truckload of plot-ruining high-level NPCs in one fell swoop.

As I mentioned in my last post, they might have chosen to keep some of those characters around, but have them become radically depowered, so that now they actually "NEED" to enlist the aid of other characters (like the PCs) again.

That's my two cents on "Why the Spell Plague?"

 

[The Ubbergeek]

Originally Posted by Hussar There's one thing about it, after seeing all this FR stuff of late, I've come to a conclusion. I never really got into the Realms all that much, and now I know why. It's not the huge amount of material. It's not the novels. It's the rabid FR fans that make Trekkies look like models of sanity.

And now you can see why many of us have never dabbled into greyhawk. The VERY same thing.

The fandom scare me at times. Less novels, but still much canon fighting.

 

[Voss]

What old fluff are they contradicting?


glass.

I referring to these statements of Rich's.

Because total planetary death wouldn't be very useful to us? As far as I know, nothing about Realms says that the Weave *has* to be present for life to exist. If we ever said something like that before, I think we were wrong to do so, or else we've been portraying antimagic zones and dead magic zones all wrong for years.

That's an unfortunate coincidence; when naming the new PC race developed for 4e, our developers settled on the best available name from 3e. The dragonborn from Races of the Dragon introduced in Dragons of Faerun aren't necessarily the dragonborn of 4e.

Previous contradictions of new stuff were wrong, even without knowing the details.
and
Old dragonborn are different from new dragonborn! We aren't even responsible for the bad choice of names! Its just a coincidence!


@John- of course, we're also being told that the super-wizards are the least likely to be permanently effected by the Spellplague. Kinda contradictory, isn't it?

 

[Minicol]

From my standpoint, you would also get the second question "Why ruin the Forgotten Realms, instead?"

.

Ah, ah, you're wrong. They wanted to keep the initials FR. Except now, this is the Forgotten Ruins.

Now : a message to the would be target audience of the new 4e Rea ... err ... Ruins : they are forgotten for a reason.

 

[Minicol]

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.
.

Sorry to disappoint you, but I think the Greyhawk fans are at least twice as rabid as the FR ones.

Now, me ? I am a fan of both, so ...

 

[I'm A Banana]

Y'know, I kind of went this route in 3e when I did my Cthulu Comes To Town campaign.

I can't tell you how AMAZING it was. It started off as a bit of a lark. I read the FRCS for the first time in 3e, and it already stuck me as too thick with people who have already accomplished greatness to let my players truly shine where they should. Without me somehow tricking my way out of having the Big Brothers of the setting show up and save the day, it was pretty much un-usable.

So I hit it with Cthulu. One of the central tenets of magic in the Mythos setting is that it is dangerous and it will drive you mad. So, suddenly, everything magical was dangerous. FR is a realm of high magic, and once that magic becomes pernicious, predatory, and harmful, a lot of FR starts to come apart at the seams.

I reveled in it. Everyone who knew magic became insane, weak, or dead. I had a VERY good explanation for why the Big Brothers didn't show up.

And the PC's were left to clean up the mess and restore some semblance of order.

What FR has been lacking for all of 3e has been a great, devouring danger, one that can be avoided but never confronted directly, one that magic fails to make safe.

I gave it this with Cthulu.

The 4e team, following my model (I can only assume, with my massive ego, that I gave them the idea. ), went with the Spellplague.

A bit more authentic, a bit less tongue-in-cheek, but the same end result:

NOTHING is safe anymore.

Elminster, the Biggest of the Big Brothers, isn't capable of defending the universe.

Mystra (and the Weave) is dead and broken into a million pieces. Her help is not reliable.

The rest of the Chosen are all varying degrees of insane zombie monsters.

This is fun, this is inspiring, this is a setting in need of heroes.

3e FR doesn't need heroes. If any villain gets TOO troublesome, Elminster will handle it.

4e restores, but hook, crook, and Spellplague, the need for heroes in the setting.

This is the shot in the arm that the setting needs to be playable.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

 

[FourthBear]

Previous contradictions of new stuff were wrong, even without knowing the details.

What I still haven't seen answered is: where is this claim (that the Weave is necessary for life in the Realms to exist) made in Realms canon? Was it made at all? Is it from a completely reliable source? If true, wasn't it contradicted almost immediately by dead magic zones and antimagic fields in which life had no problems existing? In the quoted section, even the questioner seems uncertain about this. All I'm getting from Rich's reply was that he wasn't aware of such a claim and that, if it indeed existed, it was wrong. The reply seems appropriate for the uncertain claim. I've been following the Realms RPG materials for years and can't recall where it is made (although I only follow the RPG stuff, almost no novels).

 

[mudbunny]

Old dragonborn are different from new dragonborn! We aren't even responsible for the bad choice of names! Its just a coincidence!

[sarcasm]Yes, it is so the fault of the FR dev team that the 4E dev team picked a name that happened to overlap with a previous FR name.[/sarcasm]

Seriously, blaming the 4E FR team for stuff that they had no control over is just plain silly.