D&D 5E The case for (and against) a new Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book

[teitan]

I am going to say this before I look like a rabid FR fan... I am actually more wanting a Planescape book or Manual of the Planes that supports a Plancescape campaign than FR. I much prefer less detail in my standard fantasy campaigns like the original OGB or the Greyhawk set from 83 with expanded deity options. I'd love a good Greyhawk book with specific subclasses and setting information reset to the original box, skipping the Wars. I get more mileage out of the Horned Society, Scarlet Brotherhood, & Iuz than I do a lot of the realms stuff. After my Waterdeep I am adopting WIldemount & Taldorei for our default campaign setting. Or a homebrew depending on my time.

 

[Parmandur]

I already addressed this in a previous post. They've done it before with 1e in less than 200 pages, 2e in less than 200 pages and 3e in 320 pages. It's an invalid argument. I find it, and will always find it, odd that people are fine with Eberron being a 320 page book with all of it's past supplements and the lack of adequate space for Xendrik and other continents but insist that it must be included for it to be a real FR book. It's an awful argument. It's never needed a huge tome, it will never need a huge tome to cover the core of the Realms. The other "settings" in the realms outside of the main core of the setting were rigged to the setting, Kara Tur, Al Qadim, Maztica. They've not had active FR development since their very limited runs in 1e or 2e. The core of setting from Moonshae to Thay, Unther and Mulhorrand, to the Dalelands and the Sea of Fallen Stars can be done with appropriate thoroughness as they have always been done in past corebooks or boxed sets for the Realms. They've never had an encyclopedic book or boxed set like people keep insisting in necessary. /end rant

But we already have that with SCAG?

 

[Dormammu]

One of your leveled-up geek buddies says:

OMG!! There a new FR book coming out that will update the time line!

To which you reply, huh, cool, what kind of new stuff is it going to have?

Quivering with excitement, he replies Neat stuff about some countries in the Realms we haven't heard about lately!!

Does that sound interesting? Maybe, maybe not. It probably does to people who love the Realms, people who want to fill in holes on their map. To the gamer in our example it probably sounds boring as dirt.

This scenario doesn't ring true to me. A gamer encountering a setting for the first time will be interested depending on their personal biases. Some gamers love world settings; this has been amply proven over the years and the RPG as a genre probably wouldn't have lasted without such interests. Whether it's a new setting or a returning one doesn't matter to the new player: either way it's new to them.

Some older settings have additional payoffs. A newer player looking through a Forgotten Realms campaign setting book may not know what it is before hand, but there's a high probability of them having moments of "oh, this is where Baldur's Gate comes from..." over and over. Planescape might similarly cause flashes of recognition when they see strange beings they've encountered and learn how they fit into the cosmology.

In general, the question of bringing back old settings is more dependent on veteran players than new ones. Is there enough nostalgia to excite old-timers? Will they rebuy material for an edition update? New players, again, don't see a difference either way. For both groups, the question of whether they buy campaign settings in general matters. I'm sure this latter point is almost all WotC cares about in the end.

Also, in most industries, retreads are considered safer products. Known items repackaged every few years sell reliably. New products are a gamble.

 

[teitan]

But we already have that with SCAG?

We do? Because I see very little about Thay, Amn or Unther. I see a regional guide similar to “Waterdeep and the North” than a comprehensive overview. I generally think you’re an awesome person and we agree on a lot but in this case I am trying to figure out why you don’t see the difference.

 

[Coroc]

This is like my fathers road map in his car. It is from the 80s, never mind that there is maps on your phone- but he will never have one and still uses his map.

The old map works, but there is so much more you can do with new stuff.

Yea like not using your brain to memorize 3 - 4 turns, but instead fumble around on your touchscreen gimmicks while not concentrating on the traffic.

I never did get it, that people where I live did put those add on navigation systems blocking felt 25 % of their windscreen with the thing mounted with suction knobs like those Picachu and Garfield puppets, when they just had to get on the highway drive straight for 10 miles and get of again to go to their work.

They always argued "oh but I tells me when there is a traffic jam and shows my a bypass route" as if those commodity pampered folks would get off the highway to take some curvy overland route instead.

If I would have to buy a new car and there would be an option to not order a nav system, I would gladly save the money.

 

[Parmandur]

Yea like not using your brain to memorize 3 - 4 turns, but instead fumble around on your touchscreen gimmicks while not concentrating on the traffic.

I never did get it, that people where I live did put those add on navigation systems blocking felt 25 % of their windscreen with the thing mounted with suction knobs like those Picachu and Garfield puppets, when they just had to get on the highway drive straight for 10 miles and get of again to go to their work.

They always argued "oh but I tells me when there is a traffic jam and shows my a bypass route" as if those commodity pampered folks would get off the highway to take some curvy overland route instead.

If I would have to buy a new car and there would be an option to not order a nav system, I would gladly save the money.

From personal experience, there is massive quality of life improvement having that technology over, say, printing a map, when working a job that requires constant novel navigation (delivery, service shuttle, etc.)...

 

[Parmandur]

We do? Because I see very little about Thay, Amn or Unther. I see a regional guide similar to “Waterdeep and the North” than a comprehensive overview. I generally think you’re an awesome person and we agree on a lot but in this case I am trying to figure out why you don’t see the difference.

I would say I see a difference, but of degree rather than kind. SCAG does focus primarily on the Sword Coast (truth in advertising), and in significantly greater relative detail than the FRCS for the same area. But it does give a systematic rundown of the current status quo of the rest of the Realms, most especially Faerûn outside of the Sword Coast. Yeah, they could definitely give more details on each area outside the Sword Coast, but they do go into each. Chult gets two paragraphs, which isn't much, bit is the seed for the fuller treatment in the Chult specific book.

Based on the text of Chapter 1, just reviewing it again, it feels that they may have had a half-formed plan to do follow-up books such as a "Cold Lands Adventurers Guide" or "The Heartlands Adventurer's Guide," and something like that might still happen, though it doesn't seem to be the way things went down...

Not that I wouldn't mind a 5E FRCS: I just don't see that they need to do one, when they have SCAG for a base, and are doing Adventure boosters to the Setting.

 

[Coroc]

This scenario doesn't ring true to me. A gamer encountering a setting for the first time will be interested depending on their personal biases. Some gamers love world settings; this has been amply proven over the years and the RPG as a genre probably wouldn't have lasted without such interests. Whether it's a new setting or a returning one doesn't matter to the new player: either way it's new to them.

Some older settings have additional payoffs. A newer player looking through a Forgotten Realms campaign setting book may not know what it is before hand, but there's a high probability of them having moments of "oh, this is where Baldur's Gate comes from..." over and over. Planescape might similarly cause flashes of recognition when they see strange beings they've encountered and learn how they fit into the cosmology.

In general, the question of bringing back old settings is more dependent on veteran players than new ones. Is there enough nostalgia to excite old-timers? Will they rebuy material for an edition update? New players, again, don't see a difference either way. For both groups, the question of whether they buy campaign settings in general matters. I'm sure this latter point is almost all WotC cares about in the end.

Also, in most industries, retreads are considered safer products. Known items repackaged every few years sell reliably. New products are a gamble.

Tbh I love all of those old settings.

Of the stuff new (at least to me as non MtG player) Ravnica did have some interesting themes, although I prefer Eberron.

But Wildemount Theros and what you have not? They sound a bit generic to me, one is a greek style setting, you can do such a things backstory with just reading some of the classic Troja stories and Odysse and there are many more sagas of the Antique e.g. Jason and the Argonautes.
So this one just looks to me like a historic campaign modded with some custom stuff.
The Wildemount thing does not let me recognize something that lets it stand out. see:

- Dragonlance had dragonlances and a lot of dragons and a very epic story like LotR

- Ravenloft had all of the nice grim mods to the game back then and real good RP stuff

- Planescape was crazy and so fresh with philosophies like believing in something strong enough makes it real or the totally different layout of sigil and supercreative use of teleport portals and keys.

- Darksun had all that you would expect from a savage setting plus many stone to bronze age cultures and Psionics which could turn your super tough Halfgiant tank into the enemies pawn in a second.
I take this one ten times over Theros.

- Forgotten realms, the eye of the beholder series CRPG which really brought me into pen and paper D&D, the wild magic and dead magic zones, the mythals, the underdark (yes guys these were the prominent features of FR back then, believe it or not)

- Eberron has me as a supporter the instance I started playing DDO ( from 2006 to 2008 and from 2013 till now, best Hardcore D&D MMorpg) Warforged the magetech/steampunk atmosphere


So all of these have some vibe something that draws you in, every new setting has to compete heavy to get a comparable swag. It is not enough to simply have a setting with some new races or without humans or races fulfilling different stereotypes. Also architecture, techlevel, pantheons, it all has been there and better, it simply is not enough to get me excited just to refluff a bit and call it a new setting.

With this in mind I rather want them to continue FR, they cannot really do it wrong because of the diversity of FR. It is better they do work on a recognized setting instead on new stuff imho.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

I have no problem with this, as I personally prefer new settings to rehashing the same old settings again and again -- if it is an either/or choice. Couple that with the fact that I'm not faithful or dedicated to any single setting, plus limited exposure to Magic the Gathering, and I'm quite happy with the idea that the future of WotC setting books is probably going to be focused on new/old Magic worlds.

But I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. Unless WotC really believes that a new and updated FRCS wouldn't be financially lucrative, or that it would stall the backlog of planned projects, given all of the factors, it just makes more sense to publish than not to publish. IMO.

In other words, if I have to choose either new settings (including Magic) or old settings (FR, Greyhawk), I'll choose the former. But I'm not sure that it has to be one or the other. If they're going to publish three setting books every two years, my preference would be two new and one old -- a pattern we've seen over the last couple years that may continue in the near future. Of the old settings, personal preferences aside, I think FR, Planescape, and Dark Sun make the most sense, folllowed by a group that includes Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Ravenloft, then a third group of Mystara, Spelljammer, and others.

And then it comes down to the fact that you can't do everything in limited amounts of time. Given that Planescape is more of a cap-setting and can be tied to a Manual of the Planes, I wouldn't include that in my hypothetical one old setting every two years, so maybe we see something like so:

2021: Forgotten Realms (or Dark Sun)
2022: Planescape/Manual of the Planes
2023: Dark Sun (or FR)
2025: One of Greyhawk/Ravenloft/Dragonlance

Etc. I don't think we'll ever see any of the "third tier" settings, but who knows.

I mean, I kind of agree with everything you've written here... except FR already has one setting book, the SCAG. Not sure why it deserves to have 2 released before GH, Ravenloft or DL have one.

I mean, here is all the setting material published for FR so far;

• The SCAG (covering the entirety of the Sword Coast)
• Tyranny of Dragons (covering the SC, but also Thay)
• Out of the Abyss (the Underdark beneath the SC)
• Tomb of Annihilation (Chult)
• Waterdeep Dragon Heist (Waterdeep)
• Baldur's Gate Descent into Avernus (Baldur's Gate)

That's a lot of material. And I don't think it is going to stop either; every annual adventure contains something relevant to FR. So I don't think WotC is interested in revisiting another setting book for them, when their adventures keep providing new material instead.

 

[Parmandur]

I mean, I kind of agree with everything you've written here... except FR already has one setting book, the SCAG. Not sure why it deserves to have 2 released before GH, Ravenloft or DL have one.

I mean, here is all the setting material published for FR so far;

• The SCAG (covering the entirety of the Sword Coast)
• Tyranny of Dragons (covering the SC, but also Thay)
• Out of the Abyss (the Underdark beneath the SC)
• Tomb of Annihilation (Chult)
• Waterdeep Dragon Heist (Waterdeep)
• Baldur's Gate Descent into Avernus (Baldur's Gate)

That's a lot of material. And I don't think it is going to stop either; every annual adventure contains something relevant to FR. So I don't think WotC is interested in revisiting another setting book for them, when their adventures keep providing new material instead.

Precisely this: Princes of the Apocalypse also covers the Desserin River Valley in detail, and the AL material detailed the Moonsea, among other things.