WotC's Chris Perkins Talks Realms & Sundering

Den of Geek has a lengthy interview with Chris Perkins about the Forgotten Realms and The Sundering. He also very briefly touches on other settings, indicating that WotC hopes that other worlds will be covered in the future if the right story comes along. On past controversial changes to settings, he says "Our guiding principle is to embrace the past and not pass judgment or rewrite history. We’d rather let the fans tell us what they like about the Realms and focus on those elements going forward." (thanks to MerricB for the scoop!)

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

Making your own stuff up is what generic worlds are for, not pre-established settings like the Forgotten Realms.

To be fair, that's not a true statement.

It's fine as an opinion (and more power to you: by all means advocate for the Realms you want to see published), it's just that the Realms has never, ever, been a setting designed solely for people who don't want to make things up.

Besides, it's impossible to run a Realms game and not have to make things up.

It's the rich history and loads of detail that make FR what it is.

What makes the Realms "what it is" in the minds of thousands of gamers are the experiences they have playing D&D in the Realms, and that comes in large part from the words and deeds of their DMs and their fellow players, not from what's written in a sourcebook.

Just so we're clear: I'm not presenting and either/or here. For some it's the rich history, for others the loads of detail, for some it's the crunchy rules designed around Realms concepts, for most of the gamers I know it's reading a novel and then wanting to experience elements of that story at the gaming table, for many a DM it's the name and simple description of a place that set them off filling in the details, and for others it's just that the Realms happened to be the setting where their DM set his or her latest awesome game, and for most it's a little of all of these.

There is plenty of room in the 5E Realms for differing styles of play. If WotC wants to avoid the problems of the past, they need to build a Realms that caters to differing interest levels in the Realms, and make sure they present the place as not needing a Master's Degree in Realmslore before you can start a game there.

This is why I like what WotC is doing by setting adventures in the Realms first, sans any world sourcebook, so gamers coming back to D&D and new gamers just starting out can form the viewpoint that all you need to play in the Realms is an adventure and the Core Rulebooks.

Good job WotC. Keep it up.

 

[HobbitFan]

Sanishiver, what you said makes sense.

How does the Sundering fit in then? Ed and Bob actually said that the Sundering would be fixing the Realms and returning it to a state that felt to them like the early days of the setting. And they said it would be done for Realms fans, old, young, novel and RPG-lover alike. The fans haven't seen any of that.

And the fans haven't seen any evidence of how Wizards is dealing with the crisis of confidence over their stewardship of the Realms. They acknowledge they messed up but not how they plan to do things differently.

Because they aren't communicating their plans, intentions, desires, etc. their slow measured approach is looking a whole lot like doing nothing.

I'm not saying rush out a poorly thought out sourcebook or whatever just to get something out. No, they should take their time and get things done to a high quality standard.

But, they should be talking to the fans about what's in the pipeline and they should be utilyzing their website. They are not and it's very puzzling.

 

[Mirtek]

Hopefully Wotc will have heeded their already failed attempts at this kind of thing and go all out with the detail.

Indeed. While it's true that not everyone is into that kind of detail, that's what FR fans love about FR.

WotC drove away the FR fans in bulk once already. With all their talking about how they want to get the realms fans back with the Sundering, if they go the less details route, they fail again completely to grasp what FR fans want from the FR.

Then it's merely another attempt to switch out the FR fanbase with a new fanbase (who likes details light appraoch), but it's not bringing FR fans back in masses

make sure they present the place as not needing a Master's Degree in Realmslore before you can start a game there.

During that time the Realms had their heyday. When they tried to loosen it they bombed.

What they are trying now has all the signs of another Spellplague debacle written all over it. Aka driving away FR fans by not giving them what they want from the Realms in hope that another (bigger) crowd can be won (this time, since it couldn't last time they tried)

For such an approach it would have been better to not use the FR and rather stay with the Greyhawk light of 3e.

If you look at FR fanboards, like Candlekeep, almost all of the goodwill the generated with the Sundering and the first few novels has died out since the novel release schedule has slowed to a crawl (3 novels a year where we in the past had 12) and no FR campaign setting or regional sourcebook (not even an announcement that they are going to be released on xx.xx.xxxx)

 

[Sailor Moon]

To be fair, that's not a true statement.

It's fine as an opinion (and more power to you: by all means advocate for the Realms you want to see published), it's just that the Realms has never, ever, been a setting designed solely for people who don't want to make things up.

Besides, it's impossible to run a Realms game and not have to make things up.

What makes the Realms "what it is" in the minds of thousands of gamers are the experiences they have playing D&D in the Realms, and that comes in large part from the words and deeds of their DMs and their fellow players, not from what's written in a sourcebook.

Just so we're clear: I'm not presenting and either/or here. For some it's the rich history, for others the loads of detail, for some it's the crunchy rules designed around Realms concepts, for most of the gamers I know it's reading a novel and then wanting to experience elements of that story at the gaming table, for many a DM it's the name and simple description of a place that set them off filling in the details, and for others it's just that the Realms happened to be the setting where their DM set his or her latest awesome game, and for most it's a little of all of these.

There is plenty of room in the 5E Realms for differing styles of play. If WotC wants to avoid the problems of the past, they need to build a Realms that caters to differing interest levels in the Realms, and make sure they present the place as not needing a Master's Degree in Realmslore before you can start a game there.

This is why I like what WotC is doing by setting adventures in the Realms first, sans any world sourcebook, so gamers coming back to D&D and new gamers just starting out can form the viewpoint that all you need to play in the Realms is an adventure and the Core Rulebooks.

Good job WotC. Keep it up.

The Forgotten Realms is not a detail light, let individual DM's create the world so we won't include much, kind of setting.

It would be like removing dragons from Krynn, or sand from Athas. Rich history and extreme bouts of detail are what differentiate the setting from others and hopefully Wizards will get it right this time or they will have fans turning away again only to never return. They will just use their old material and carry on from there.

Wizards have been told repeatedly by the massive fanbase of FR what they want and what it's going to take in order to bring them back.

Hopefully they will listen.

 

[nightspaladin]

Prepping a 5e game in Fr right now, and I have spent hours trying to find a synposis of the Sundering to at least know what major events changes. Don't plan on making it the focus of the campaign at all, but i'd like to be able to reference it. Alas after days of searching, all i can find is double speak and announcement texts about what it's going to do, not what is actually happening to FR. Does anyone know more than that? Thanks

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I also want a detail rich, definitive Forgotten Realms product or set of products. Give me a thousand pages of detail spread across multiple volumes.

Let Greyhawk be low-detail, with one book or boxed set covering the setting.

 

[CM]

I am in the same boat as a lot of the folks here. I'm in the process of wrapping up the Icewind Dale sundering adventure and will be starting up Dragon Queen soon. I don't have time to read all the novels, but it would be nice to have a synopsis of what's actually happening in the world to help flesh out in-game current events for the players.

 

[aramis erak]

Hopefully Wotc will have heeded their already failed attempts at this kind of thing and go all out with the detail.

Why you ask? Well in the end it gives everyone what they want. The fans of rich history get their juicy setting while the fans who want a not so juicy one can simply ignore whats written and make your own stuff up. Making your own stuff up is what generic worlds are for, not pre-established settings like the Forgotten Realms. It's the rich history and loads of detail that make FR what it is.

Overwriting isn't always a GM-driven decision; it's often more of a group by group decision. I normally avoid the realms not because I mind overwriting, but because my player who knows it gets quite upset when I do.

If the DM winds up with 3 fans of FR's setting detail, and overwrites it, he's now got 3 unhappy players, and if he changes too much, may wind up down 3 players. (I've seen this more often than I care to think about, hence why I only use published settings when either my players don't know them, know them only through me, or when the setting is the whole reason for the game (eg: Trek, Firefly, One Ring, Pendragon).

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

Indeed. While it's true that not everyone is into that kind of detail, that's what FR fans love about FR.

What FR fans love about the Realms is the story, not necessarily the details.

When they purchase sourcebooks (or rather, when FR fans purchased sourcebooks in the 2E and early 3E era) they were after story as much as anything else (including crunchy rules, for which 2E and 3E never failed to include).

What they are trying now has all the signs of another Spellplague debacle written all over it. Aka driving away FR fans by not giving them what they want from the Realms in hope that another (bigger) crowd can be won (this time, since it couldn't last time they tried)

I think WotC should disregard en masse older fans that have left the Realms and vocally declared they're never coming back.

Fans that left, but are still interested if the Realms gets back to some level of detail in its sourcebooks (hell, just printing sourcebooks) will return. They don't need an uber-dense book before they'll come back.

I see what you mean about another Spellplague debacle, but I don't think it's fair to say what WotC is doing now is focusing only on grabbing up new fans with the intent of forever excluding everyone else.

For Christ's sake, they're just getting started with the new edition! These things take time.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

Prepping a 5e game in Fr right now, and I have spent hours trying to find a synposis of the Sundering to at least know what major events changes. Don't plan on making it the focus of the campaign at all, but i'd like to be able to reference it. Alas after days of searching, all i can find is double speak and announcement texts about what it's going to do, not what is actually happening to FR. Does anyone know more than that? Thanks

No, nobody really knows more than that.

Remember, when the Kobolds asked similar questions as they were preparing to design Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat they were told that no such thing existed. I don't think anything has changed yet.