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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 7706468" data-attributes="member: 19857">This is why what Wizards needs to do the next time the revamp the Forgotten Realms campaign setting is:* Make a single, system neutral "Atlas and Gazeteer to the Realms" (or whatever they want to call it) set in year XXXX.* Stop advancing the timeline in the setting material and leave it up to individual tables to do what they will.It's not the 90s anymore.  "Metaplot" was a way to make books attractive to people who weren't actually playing the games that the metaplot was running through.  RPGs don't sell that way anymore and that model has some severe detriments to it.  Like the fact that people view perfectly good campaign material as "out of date" because it isn't "current with the timeline".  Plus it makes the campaign setting difficult to use.  I only use the Realms with people who haven't read Realms fiction or don't have experience in the Realms.  I refuse to run it for anyone who is a huge Realms fan.  Because my version will diverge from the expectations set by the fiction and I don't want to disappoint them and I certainly am not going to work to make my game "canon" in any way.  On the other hand, my 3rd edition Eberron material remains perfectly good material for starting up a new campaign because they didn't advance the timeline - not in 3rd edition or in 4th edition.  And the novels pretty clearly set up a version of Eberron that is "one path" that the setting "might take" from the initial material.  That's an excellent way to handle the fiction - and the way the Realms should handle it in the future.  I don't begrudge the way they handled it in the 90s - it's how you sold books in the 90s after all.  But that model just doesn't work anymore at the level it needs to to support a company - and arguably given what happened to TSR in the end it didn't really work then either.  They need a better approach to keep things viable in the future and I hope they figure it out before they set about publishing any updated Campaign Settings, but especially before they publish what is arguably the company's Most Important Campaign Setting.</blockquote>

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