What would you like to see happen with FR?

[TheSleepyKing]

Personally, I don't mind setting changing events unless they throw a lot of fluff out of the setting. Time of Troubles pushed the timeline forward ten years. That's a long time, but it still allows you to use most fluff as is. The over 100 years of 3e->4e meant most NPCs are dead, and much of other fluff no longer applies to campaigns.

Not to mention that they blew up everywhere that didn't conform to the Western European cultural default (or D&D's version of it), literally dropped new continents into the world to fit in 4e-isms like Dragonborn and generally released a campaign setting that was nearly unrecognisable to people who had played in Realms before. It wasn't just a time jump, but a complete do-over of the setting, so much that they may as well have created an all new setting. For my part, I would have been on board with the time jump to paper over some of the messier elements (like the zillion Godlike Chosen wandering around), but 4e went way, way too far. Of course, done is done and there's little point relitigating it.

As to the argument that you can still play in the 3e Realms, the problem is that to a lot of people (myself included) canon does matter. Future products - novels and RPG supplements - will assume that the Spellplague happens. While players and GMs can pretend it never happened, that will probably not be supported in released products.

I say "probably" because the upcoming "Elminster's Forgotten Realms" does give me some hope that a non-canonical (or alter-canonical) timeline might be supported. The future of FR might very well depend on how well that product sells.

 

[Hassassin]

It wasn't just a time jump, but a complete do-over of the setting, so much that they may as well have created an all new setting.

Sure, but I don't mind new contents (even continents) and radical changes as long as it 1) is done consistently and not just retconned and 2) doesn't push out more stuff than it adds. 4e FR failed on both counts, IMO.

As to the argument that you can still play in the 3e Realms, the problem is that to a lot of people (myself included) canon does matter. Future products - novels and RPG supplements - will assume that the Spellplague happens. While players and GMs can pretend it never happened, that will probably not be supported in released products.

My point was that it's not the canon that matters per se, but the availability of content. If you have access to older edition stuff from used book stores, online articles or whatever, you will likely have more content to build a pre-SP campaign on than a post-SP one.

If they continue supporting a pre-SP campaign either as canon or through some other means (like reprinting some of their best old products or publishing timeline-neutral new products), I'm interested in buying what they have to offer. Otherwise they would have to do something spectacular for me to get interested in moving my campaigns to a post-SP Faerun, and throwing away decades of accumulated fluff.

 

[Mercutio01]

I want to play FR according to what is really happening in it. I liked what it had, not what it has now.

FR is well known, it allows the players (who read the novels) to really feel like they know things their characters in game would (important people, events, places) completely unlike Eberron, Greyhawk etc.

So, I want my Realms unbroken to feel that character familiarity again.

I've read a great majority of the novels of FR. I must be in the minority in that I liked the Spellplague. I liked Toril before the Spellplague and I like it after. And I have the imaginative ability to play in both, and can read novels set in both. No one came into my house with guns pointed at my head and took my box set or my Elminster or Drizzt or Pools of Radiance novels off my bookshelf.

In fact, if the complaint is about the fluff from novels, then there is even less real complaint because there are far more novels (still in print!) in the time before the Spellplague (hell, there are more in print from before the Time of Troubles) than there are after.

If they continue supporting a pre-SP campaign either as canon or through some other means (like reprinting some of their best old products or publishing timeline-neutral new products), I'm interested in buying what they have to offer.

And on this, we agree. I would love to see this done, and my preference is for it to be done through PDF.

throwing away decades of accumulated fluff.

Those decades of accumulated fluff are a serious barrier to entry. I have played in games where other players spent more time bitching that the DM was breaking some obscure bit of canon than they did playing. That's not the kind of game that interests me. The slavish adherence to a setting as written bugs me, and that's why Keith Baker's advice about Eberron is something I've taken very much to heart, and wish others would as well. He even said it on these boards not a month ago in the "Ed Greenwood Presents" thread.

Of course, one of the key differences is that Eberron has always taken the approach that the DM should be free to overwrite canon. As such, "Keith Baker Presents: Eberron" would be just that - MY Eberron. It might not match the canon Eberron perfectly, but hey, YOUR Eberron might not match either one!

 

[scruffygrognard]

I'd like the Realms to be stripped back and rebuilt from Ed Greenwood's notes... which will be published this fall.

It would be a total reboot; which is probably what it needs at this point.

 

[Lwaxy]

Neither me nor most of my players have ever read any FR novels. We still love the setting and, except from some very known iconic figures which we acknowledge in general, we ignore everything that not fitting for us.

I'm probably going to start one of the new campaigns in Faerun, and this might be the first time we would play in a truly alternate universe setting, as in none of the historical events need to have happened. I'm not sure yet though

I would love for 5e to include support for all the eras though. Very much so. Or ignore the spellplague

 

[Hassassin]

Those decades of accumulated fluff are a serious barrier to entry. I have played in games where other players spent more time bitching that the DM was breaking some obscure bit of canon than they did playing. That's not the kind of game that interests me. The slavish adherence to a setting as written bugs me, and that's why Keith Baker's advice about Eberron is something I've taken very much to heart, and wish others would as well. He even said it on these boards not a month ago in the "Ed Greenwood Presents" thread.

I agree: that there are tens of products with loads of fluff available does nothing to limit DMs, unless they let it.

I'm not a stickler to canon, quite the opposite. Instead, the problem I have is that their changes were in many cases incompatible with the fluff I've learned and read about as a DM, making my accumulated knowledge useless. That makes it more difficult for me to DM my campaign in that timeline, incorporating all the other potentially great new things.

 

[Mercutio01]

their changes were in many cases incompatible with the fluff I've learned and read about as a DM, making my accumulated knowledge useless. That makes it more difficult for me to DM my campaign in that timeline, incorporating all the other potentially great new things.

How does it make your accumulated knowledge useless? That's the part I don't get. I'm honestly asking here how anything in the 4E FR nullifies your experience/knowledge with the pre-Spellplague FR.

 

[Hassassin]

How does it make your accumulated knowledge useless? That's the part I don't get. I'm honestly asking here how anything in the 4E FR nullifies your experience/knowledge with the pre-Spellplague FR.

Because things have changed. If I want to use things I remember from past editions but conflict with the current fluff, I will have to work them into the current timeline and deal with any repercussions. For example, any gods that don't exist in the 4e Realms would bring with them a large number of connected deities and worshipers. Some of those are likely to conflict with others in the 4e fluff.

*Most* of the fluff I remember or can read from older books would probably be consistent after a simple copy-paste into the current timeline, but I'd have to work through it to determine which. That's too much work for minor gains, compared to just using the old version.

 

[keterys]

Because things have changed. If I want to use things I remember from past editions but conflict with the current fluff, I will have to work them into the current timeline and deal with any repercussions. For example, any gods that don't exist in the 4e Realms would bring with them a large number of connected deities and worshipers. Some of those are likely to conflict with others in the 4e fluff.

Very few gods actually died during the spellplague so it's not _that_ difficult.

For example, in a recent bit I wrote for Living Forgotten Realms, I had Labelas Enoreth show up. He's not defined in 4e, but he wasn't "un"defined, either.

The problem really is the novels. From an RPG perspective, I think the best route for D&D Next would be showing how to play in all the ages of Forgotten Realms.

Novel-wise, though? Meh. It's all a mess. I'd be tempted to go multiple timelines at that point. Treat it like they do comic books. Heck, since Mystra died (Spellplague) that removed the prohibition against time travel, so clearly they could _even_ put the timeline in flux in canon.

 

[Hassassin]

Very few gods actually died during the spellplague so it's not _that_ difficult.

Sure, but gods that are simply unlisted will still bring with them a number of connections, if you want to actually use all the fluff there is about them.

Novel-wise, though? Meh. It's all a mess. I'd be tempted to go multiple timelines at that point. Treat it like they do comic books. Heck, since Mystra died (Spellplague) that removed the prohibition against time travel, so clearly they could _even_ put the timeline in flux in canon.

Ugh, please no. A canonical timeline in flux would just make it even more difficult to use multiple sources if you want consistency instead.

Edit: Except if it's restricted to the novel timeline. I suppose I'd be OK with that.