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!)

 

[Bluenose]

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
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)

I have this god awful feeling that what we are going to get is a continuation of the campaign guide format from 4th edition and all lore related subject will be in online articles that might come out every few months.

I've noticed how we keep getting referred back to all the old material. That's great and all but I want continuous and currently supported material.

As long as the people who don't have any interest in the Forgotten Realms don't end up subsidising the FR products that do come out. If your continuous support comes at their expense, then expect a lot of people to be thoroughly unhappy that the FR tail is wagging the D&D dog.

 

[Sailor Moon]

As long as the people who don't have any interest in the Forgotten Realms don't end up subsidising the FR products that do come out. If your continuous support comes at their expense, then expect a lot of people to be thoroughly unhappy that the FR tail is wagging the D&D dog.

At the end of the day, the previous model did not work. There are tons of fans out there who are willing to fork over the money for a great Realms book that delivers on what makes the Realms special. I seriously doubt we are going to get campaign guides for any or setting so they might as well give the people their burgers instead of telling them they need to eat the hotdogs.

 

[GameOgre]

I don't particularly like the FR but will be buying it anyway when it comes out. Sure once Greyhawk or Planescape come out my game will switch but till then it's FR.

I like to create adventures but HATE world creation.

If it was the 3.5 FR setting or the altered 4E FR setting ...it wouldn't matter to me. Just give me something I can bolt my adventures onto and away I go.



Now a Greyhawk or Planescape would excite me in ways FR doesn't but that is just personal taste. I really have zero clue why people even care THAT much about a official setting and the changes.

After about a year of play my home setting always WILDLY differs from the official ones anyway.

A year from now Waterdeep might be destroyed, Neverwinter might be the occupied by Evermeet and Cyric might have killed off a couple more gods. The spellplague might be discovered to be a sentient creature and Ancient Undead Hordes might be raising everything in the north as a Ancient Lichking rises.

Shrug,just gimmie a basic framework and Voom Voom!

 

[Selvarin]

I don't particularly like the FR but will be buying it anyway when it comes out. Sure once Greyhawk or Planescape come out my game will switch but till then it's FR.

I like to create adventures but HATE world creation.

If it was the 3.5 FR setting or the altered 4E FR setting ...it wouldn't matter to me. Just give me something I can bolt my adventures onto and away I go.



Now a Greyhawk or Planescape would excite me in ways FR doesn't but that is just personal taste. I really have zero clue why people even care THAT much about a official setting and the changes.

After about a year of play my home setting always WILDLY differs from the official ones anyway.

A year from now Waterdeep might be destroyed, Neverwinter might be the occupied by Evermeet and Cyric might have killed off a couple more gods. The spellplague might be discovered to be a sentient creature and Ancient Undead Hordes might be raising everything in the north as a Ancient Lichking rises.

Shrug,just gimmie a basic framework and Voom Voom!

1) When it first came out, the Forgotten Realms had a certain depth that I hadn't seen before. Very organic, not (too) haphazard. It had been worked on polished smooth before getting picked up by TSR. Sometimes the information provided was in overload mode (seriously how many paragraphs on 'nutty/salty' cheeses and pickled eels do we need?), and it's been around long enough to where some subpar supplements or ideas were thrown in, but for the most part FR earned its fans. That's why people care.

2) You make a good point about the utility of published campaigns--just good enough to bolt an adventure off and there you go. OK, fair enough. It's fie being of that frame of mind. Some of us want more, although it's not for the campaign world you really like.

3) The game play (or 'campaign play', whatever) of each setting is different. The World of Greyhawk is smaller, has various developed nations butting right up against each other. More magical medieval plots afoot, etc. etc.The Realms is a bit larger, spread out. Some areas where that style of play can happen but more city-states and wilderness. Planescape, of course, is a flavor all its own. A gateway to every plane imaginable, and the artwork really evoked the differences...

3) Waterdeep destroyed, Neverwinter, more god-killing, etc....ummm WotC is going to shy away from anything like that. If it approaches Realms Shattering size it will be squashed. The readership already made it known how sick of it they were. (Loss of business = "QUIT breaking stuff and telling us it's an improvement! It is not. A mistake is NOT a feature!") In all seriousness, FR designers and writers have 'broken' just about everything, especially demihuman nations and strongholds. It's annoying. The Realms will keep spinning, things will still happen, but the designers are going to refrain from hammering a spike into the fans' hearts every time it turns.

 

[HobbitFan]

I think WOTC has gotten the message that fans are sick of the RSE treadmill.

The question still remains what are they doing in 5E?
If they realize that they messed up with 4E and need to reach out to fans...what are they doing?
Right now, the Realms are only being used as a setting for a very small number of novels/year and some generic adventure path stuff.
And half of that was in place before 5E launched.
So what are they doing? What's the plan?

 

[Selvarin]

December's not the month that information gets doled out. As with most businesses it's vacation time, people are gone, etc. You'll hear something more along the lines of late January/early February. The first and last months of the year are slowest for stuff like this.

In the meantime, stay busy. Just for kicks, I'm updating some of the characters found in the back of the 1st Edition Rogues Gallery. The interesting ones, at least. It's times like these I really wish there was a 5e character builder/database with a decent UI. Instead it's in Word and the stat block is so-so. (If only I was a MS Office guru...but I have other things to study.)

 

[DEFCON 1]

So what are they doing? What's the plan?

Seems to me, the plan is "We'll do a bit of FR site updates for areas that show up in our adventures... but other than that, we'll let DMs use the thirty-odd books that are already out there for the Realms from all the previous editions (making them available for purchase on dndclassics as needed) to create their own Realms that they want to play in. As opposed to just re-writing the 4E campaign setting book with a bit of new stuff of what happened with the Sundering in the intervening 10 years. Especially considering we aren't going to be able to wash away ALL of the stuff that changed via the Spellplague in the 100 year jump, and thus the 5E Realms will still irritate all the non-4E players who hated any and all of the 1479 Realms."

They basically are in a no-win situation. There's no point in going backwards and retconning, because players could just use all of their 3E books to accomplish the same thing, so who's going to buy any new book? And if they produce a campaign setting 10 years ahead of 4E's, it's not going to satisfy the large number of 3E players who hated everything there was to do about the 100 year jump.

Thus, they appear to be taking the tack of highlighting isolated pockets of the Realms via their big path books and Adventurer's League modules... but for everything else letting the DMs create their own Realms via the thousands of pages of material they already have at their disposal (from whatever edition they have and enjoy.)

 

[Queer Venger]

December's not the month that information gets doled out. As with most businesses it's vacation time, people are gone, etc. You'll hear something more along the lines of late January/early February. The first and last months of the year are slowest for stuff like this.

In the meantime, stay busy. Just for kicks, I'm updating some of the characters found in the back of the 1st Edition Rogues Gallery. The interesting ones, at least. It's times like these I really wish there was a 5e character builder/database with a decent UI. Instead it's in Word and the stat block is so-so. (If only I was a MS Office guru...but I have other things to study.)

I am staying busy! Im going through my FR campaign books and updating some key stats to 5e, namely the NPCs I plan on interacting with the players.

 

[HobbitFan]

If "hands off" is the 5E approach, why did Ed and Bob say they were excited for the 5E FR and that fans had good stuff coming.
Why did they do the Sundering?
Because with no follow up it looks a whole lot like the "Fix the Realms" talk was just hype to sell the Sundering books.
Which is, well I don't have words for that.....
Why use FR as the 5E baseline setting if they aren't going to talk about it? Is it just an easy way out so they don't have to make it up fresh. Because it sure looks that way.....
Again, I don't have words....

 

[Queer Venger]

Maybe not Hands Off, but a "we're not going to trash the continents and bring down the gods to launch a new novel series" approach. Maybe a setting box (or book) that lets DM's tell their stories with less metaplot, particularly in keeping with 5e's DM empowering approach.