NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fenris-77" data-source="post: 7995930" data-attributes="member: 6993955">Like I said, this isn't a critique of the Realms at all. I think it's a great setting and it has many great features. It's just not, I think, easily saleable the way some other settings are. So WotC makes it the default setting for their big adventure paths. It works. If the new AP is indeed Icewind Dale, that would fit a model where the whole Sword Coast gets coverage via first the SCAG and then APs set up and down the coast. There's an interesting idea in Comics theory about impressionist images of the human face and reader identification with the character in question. The idea is that more abstract images require effort from the reader to decode, and this, in many cases results greater identification with that character.  Essentially, the work required to fill in the empty spaces creates a sense of identification. This isn't a controversial idea particularly, but I do think it speaks to the place of the FR in the current 5E environment. Many people have been saying that FR is a kitchen sink setting, and that's quite true. That makes it a wonderful setting to brew you own campaign in, but it also makes the Realms harder to market. By providing focused APs, and leaving significant blank (abstract) spaces on the map around them, I think WotC is framing those blank spaces as a places to play and explore, as places for individual games to put their own stamp on the game world. That seems a great use of what might be the Realms' best feature without the need to try and market another setting book. Anyway, it's a theory.</blockquote>

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