D&D General The Purple Dragon Knights are tied to an Amethyst Dragon (confirmed)

[Necropolitan]

Sammaster's fine. He's a lich. "Yeah that wasn't his phylactery/he had a backup" is the easiest out for them

In The Year of Rogue Dragons Sammaster's Phylactery is destroyed and he's destroyed along with it 'on-screen' so that would be an obvious retcon.

They tried. Go and see the reaction to 4E's time skip to see how well that went.

Brimstone Angels was incredibly popular and it was 4E.

The backlash to 4E was because of bad storytelling overall.

 

[Scribe]

Brimstone Angels was incredibly popular and it was 4E.

Yeah, there was good stuff going on there, because it was new, and the time skip stuff was pretty much irrelevant from what I remember.

Lesson?

Make new, do not retcon, tell good stories, and stop leaning completely 100% on nostalgia only to then pull the rug and go all 'we subverted your expectations, we are very intelligent!'

 

[Mecheon]

In The Year of Rogue Dragons Sammaster's Phylactery is destroyed and he's destroyed along with it 'on-screen' so that would be an obvious retcon.

That wasn't even the first time his phylactery was destroyed. If he could walk back from the first one and inexplicably come back to show up for Year of Rogue Dragons, he can show up again.

I get D&D has suffered with the "The text villains should exist to support actual adventures rather than be offed during metaplot", but, text villains should exist to serve the actual adventures and player-facing side of the game, not be offed during metaplot. They gave you a bunch of ins with Cult of the Dragon to bring him back and use him as a villain for your campaign

We saw how offing all of your villains with metaplot went for Dark Sun

Brimstone Angels was incredibly popular and it was 4E.

The backlash to 4E was because of bad storytelling overall.

There was a lot of complaints about it being set so long after everything that the usual FR crowd of characters was long dead

 

[Parmandur]

That wasn't even the first time his phylactery was destroyed. If he could walk back from the first one and inexplicably come back to show up for Year of Rogue Dragons, he can show up again.

I get D&D has suffered with the "The text villains should exist to support actual adventures rather than be offed during metaplot", but, text villains should exist to serve the actual adventures and player-facing side of the game, not be offed during metaplot. They gave you a bunch of ins with Cult of the Dragon to bring him back and use him as a villain for your campaign

We saw how offing all of your villains with metaplot went for Dark Sun


There was a lot of complaints about it being set so long after everything that the usual FR crowd of characters was long dead

Metaplot is just simply the worst. I'd just reset the Forgotten Realms back to the 1360s if I were in charge, just put the novels into "one possible campaign path" terrirltory.

 

[Dire Bare]

Metaplot is just simply the worst. I'd just reset the Forgotten Realms back to the 1360s if I were in charge, just put the novels into "one possible campaign path" terrirltory.

There's been a lot of cool developments in the Realms since the 1360s . . . I'd simply reboot, reinvent, or reimagine the Realms and start fresh. Kinda like what they actually did with 5E, although that was all within the timeline. I'd simply say, here is the NEW Forgotten Realms . . .

The Realms has certainly gone through a lot of metaplot and story driven by novels rather than by players over the decades . . . and like many large, shared settings, there are tons of inconsistencies and silliness . . . but, I think the Realms is in a pretty good place right now. I'm happy.

 

[Azzy]

Metaplot is just simply the worst.

Agreed. It's what threw me off the FR back in 2e.

I'd just reset the Forgotten Realms back to the 1360s if I were in charge, just put the novels into "one possible campaign path" terrirltory.

As would I. Heck, they may be doing something like that with a few modifications to the setting (like they did with GH in the DMG).

 

[Necropolitan]

That wasn't even the first time his phylactery was destroyed.

Yes it was.

You might be thinking of Larloch, who has an Epic spell that lets him have more than one.

 

[pukunui]

As would I. Heck, they may be doing something like that with a few modifications to the setting (like they did with GH in the DMG).

They're advancing the timeline to 1501 DR. They may functionally restore various bits to their original portrayals in the old grey box, but they aren't going to pretend like nothing has happened in the intervening centuries. I mean, none of the NPCs they've put on the covers of the new FR books existed back when the grey box was new.

 

[TiQuinn]

I think they should just simply focus on putting the best ideas they have out there and make use of the characters without concern for the past. Their worst mistakes IMO are when they attempt to rationalize rule changes as world shattering events. That’s unlikely to happen this time, so they can focus on telling us more about the rest of Faerun, most of which have has little in the way of updates since 5e began.

 

[Necropolitan]

I think they should just simply focus on putting the best ideas they have out there

A big part of the reason for the negative reactions is WOTC has been putting out a lot of bad ideas.