The Sundering has launched...

[mach1.9pants]

Probably is in the OGB like that I guess, but it never stuck with me

 

[YRUSirius]

It was written as Faerûn too.

-YRUSirius

 

[mach1.9pants]

Yeah it was too! But teenage me probably never knew what the ^ meant, just decoration to look cool You can figure that out in seconds on the internet but not in the 80s!

 

[Hussar]

And what exactly will you disagree with?
That WotC is using Baldurs Gate to promote the Sundering?
That they ignored the video games so far with only devoting maybe a few sentences in a single book to it if at all?
That WotC did not actively participate in making the Baldurs Gate video games?
That it is bad style to use a product someone else made and you ignored for 15 years to promote your product does look a bit desperate?

Your entire point to me seems to be that just because Baldurs Gate used the D&D license WotC deserves a big part of the credit for the game and using it to promote the Sundering does in no way bad style and does not mean that WotC does not believe in the power of the FR brand any more or have run out of ideas how to promote the Sundering to attract customers any better.

If that is your point, I simply think differently. And that the Sundering seems to be one giant retcon reinforces me in that believe.

Umm, didn't WOTC publish THREE Baldur's gate's novelizations? Yup, doing a bit of fact checking, that's true. And, IIRC, the events of the video games are considered canon for LFR throughout 3e. Yup, that's true too. So, basically, WOTC has had ongoing support and promotion for the video games up to 2008 when 4e and the Spellplague came along.

How is that "devoting a few sentences in a single book"?

 

[dd.stevenson]

Yes, but you still haven't explained why that's a bad thing. Other than you feel it is like "rummaging through a closet" (which is what closets are for, no?)

I don't know if this was [MENTION=2518]Derren[/MENTION] 's point or not, but I found their over-reliance on Baldur's Gate a little tasteless. Like, if I had just stumbled across this video in the wild I would have assumed it was a trailer for a new video game titled "Baldur's Gate III: the Sundering".

I say this as a HUGE fan of the video game series, if that helps.

 

[ShaneB]

What I find surprising is the surprise that WotC are retconning the Realms. From the moment that they started D&DNext they have been pretty clear that they were bringing Ed back in to "revert" the Forgotten Realms to Ed's vision (if not version) of the Realms. As for the whole BG and IP and stuff I am fairly sure that I read somewhere years back that Ed had a fairly large impact on the story for the BG games (not so much the IWD ones) so WotC going back to tie these things back together seems like just an extension of their already specified want to return to Ed's vision of the Realms.

 

[Morrus]

I don't know if this was @Derren 's point or not, but I found their over-reliance on Baldur's Gate a little tasteless.

That's what I'm not connecting with. I don't know how you act tastelessly towards a video game.

 

[Hussar]

It's threads like this that make me very glad that D&D is in the hands of businesspeople, and not hobbyists.

I mean, you've got a hugely successful video game, that was just released a year ago to pretty good reception (despite some current issues). Something that is broadly known far outside the niche of D&D gamers who play in Forgotten Realms. But, apparently, despite the fact that WOTC owns virtually 100% of the IP of that video game, playing on its popularity to drive marketing is a bad thing somehow.

Of course, no one has even begun to suggest what other FR IP we should be using instead of probably the best known FR IP outside of maybe Drizz't.

So, Derren, put your money where your mouth is. If you were going to relaunch Forgotten Realms with the Sundering, what FR IP would you be leaning on?

 

[dd.stevenson]

That's what I'm not connecting with. I don't know how you act tastelessly towards a video game.

Tasteless as in lacking aesthetic judgement.

I can agree that no video games were victimized by this clip.

 

[Squire James]

All this tends to remind me of Dragonlance, where cataclysms and ret-cons were all over the place. Since I already have enough Realms material to choke a Terrasque, and I'm not particularly interested in spending several hundred more dollars on yet another edition of D&D, I'll pass. That's not saying the material is bad or good - in my case it doesn't matter.