The stance that story advancements in a campaign setting, any campaign setting, ruins it is odd to me to some degree. If you don't advance things story-wise then you have a static world and may as well never publish anything again.
It's not that story advancement is bad in general. Most people who have been with the Realms actually prefer an ongoing, developing, and "living" world. When people complain about metaplot "ruining" the Realms (or any other setting), they are more often referring to:
- Extremely bad plotting/story that warps the entire tone and feeling of the world. With respect to the Realms, it's the gigantic world-altering events that don't fix any prior problems but are done solely to "fit" a new edition (e.g. the massive change from 3E to 4E Realms). They nuked the setting to radically transform it from a generic high fantasy setting into a post-apocalyptic "points of light" setting.
- Poor plotting decisions that get repeated. Regular "Realms Shattering Events" such as killing off the goddess of magic have been done to death in the Realms. Almost every time they've had an "epic" trilogy, they've had one of these "Realms Shattering Events" for the setting, and it's just not good.
- Emphasizing metaplot elements that people generally disliked. Many disliked the "Time of Troubles" in late 1E to early 2E because it turned the gods into PCs and novel characters, and they've stuck around as active protagonists in later novels. This wouldn't necessarily be bad, except that the Realms gods are consistently portrayed as incredibly myopic and short-sighted.
If you are DM'ing that setting, using a previous edition, have all the books, even if a change in rule set appears, there is nothing stopping the DM from completely ignoring the story updates while still using the newer gameplay mechanics. True some work must be done, but if you really like the older version of the setting over the newer, why not?
Of course this is possible to some degree. Many people ignored the changes made in the 1E-2E transition, and it was relatively easy to do so because the world/tone had not changed dramatically. But when you several major cataclysms and a 100-year advancement that kills off most NPCs (due to old age), it's almost impossible to stay current and up-to-date with the Realms while simultaneously trying to match up with a "living" setting.
Put another way, let's say you're playing Star Trek. You can play in the Kirk-Spock era and totally ignore everything afterwards, or you can advance up to the Picard/Janeway/Sisko era. But you can't do both, and there are radical differences between the two eras. Now imagine playing in the Kirk-Spock era but you're going with the new JJ Abrams 2009 movie version... there's no more planet Vulcan, and so on. Metaplot advancement can dramatically, radically change a setting.
On the player side, one who prefers an older setting version to the newer one, that is more problematic, and decisions will have to be made by the player on what they want to do if a DM is using a different version of events versus their preferred choice.
I realize that some would like a setting to simply be fleshed out to greater detail, but not all DM's and very few players may ever buy a region specific locale book.
Tons of region-specific locale books were published in the 2E Realms era, and most were fantastic. They sold well enough that most of these were redone as hardback books in the 3E period. I don't think this was a problem.
I stopped playing FR 3.5 when Eberron arrived, as it's my preferred setting, but I believe there were a rather large number of region books produced for 3.5 FR.
And heck while I picked up pretty much all the Eberron books, I'm pretty sure there were many out there that didn't as it wasn't their setting of choice.
Maybe I'll never understand that point of view for a hobby that is primarily made of up creative/imaginative thinkers.
Eberron's novels were divorced from canon. Eberron was, in many ways, almost a totally static setting. It didn't really have much advancing metaplot, and it was absolutely possible to ignore anything you wanted without players feeling disconnected from the "current" Eberron.
With the Realms, every single novel is instantly part of canon. Every single "Realms Shaking Event" becomes canon. To discard an "RSE" in the Realms immediately turns your game into a homebrew, because you're no longer following the "living" Realms. Further, the moment you do so, you've got a divergent world and you have to spend time explaining what's different between your world and the "real" Realms. Now for many players and DMs this would not be a big deal, but many players want that ongoing continuity and story, and want to plunk their PCs down into the "real" Realms.
In regards to the Sundering, I'm looking forward to it, I may not play much in FR, or read too many if any of the novels anymore, but I still like to follow it.
I'll be curious to see if a major reset button is hit, or perhaps, they will completely bring back Abeir-Toril into the limelight of the FR setting, splitting them
apart again, but permanently tying the two together via portals and so forth...
There's already been a great deal of discussion about their plans (mostly revealed at the last GenCon). They will "nuke" the setting again, and so it will mean another major divergence.
As for mechanics, I'm betting on it being done in the style of the upcoming Encounters, 4e, with 5e updates if they do actual Encounters/ Lair Assault events.
If there is a hardback book, I'd have to believe it'll be fairly neutral, edition wise, so that any generation of player can enjoy it, perhaps with full online support.
At least that's my wish spell for the year...
They've said it will start with a series of novels. This adventure "Storm over Baldur's Gate" is a tie-in adventure that will start to explore the massive changes they'll be making. Basically, the overgod AO is going to get involved and hit a re-set of some kind, and there will be a setting-wide cataclysm of some kind to make this happen.
