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!'