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!)

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

Yes, I understood your point. I disagreed with it. Dragonlance did that already.

I'm not sure if it was ever done right. I don't own and have never played the original adventures, but what I hear about them is that they're somewhere between "nice, but railroady" and "plainly awful". I believe the War of the Lance deserves an adventure path benefiting from modern sensibilities regarding adventure design.

That said, the fact that Dragonlance already did it is not a reason to do it in the Realms. Forgotten Realms is a cool setting full of adventure hooks, it doesn't need to rehash the main stories of other settings. Up till now, what I see is a team of competent people that apparently know that the fans don't trust their take on the setting anymore, and they're not doing anything to change that.

I really like 5E, but when it comes to setting development, I have the impression that it's just like 4E, but with a bunch of "WTF!" moments moved around.

 

[Derren]

Also while Tiamat was not involved the FR also had its dragon centric events (Rage of Dragons).

 

[jrowland]

While ToD could have been done in DL, it was done in FR. Which means it will be some time before we revisit an AP highlighting Evil Dragons. And while [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] is right, it has been done in DL, any DL AP that did not highlight Evil Dragons (and getting their butts kicked by dragonlances) would probably be poorly received by fans of DL. It would be a truly remarkable adventure to be placed in DL and not to highlight evil dragons,

 

[TerraDave]

On ToD...they could have done a 5E revisions of the original DL adventures that could have addressed some of their other outstanding issues.

But of course no one would have been interested in that.

 

[Irennan]

Yeah this interview didn't say anything new. I'm so tired of hearing "We can't talk about anything we are working on or planning right now"

Yeah. ''The stuff you FR fans like and that we removed is coming back!'' basically is what they told people 2 years ago, and now we still don't concretely know what changes happened to the Realms (besides the handful listed in the novels, and they are supposedly far from covering all that happened/returned/went away with the Sundering), and what plans they have for the setting beyond those adventures.

 

[Shemeska]

Yeah. ''The stuff you FR fans like and that we removed is coming back!'' basically is what they told people 2 years ago

To be fair, they never really said that, though that's what many people wanted to see with 5e. However what little we've seen of the setting in 5e, it doesn't seem like anything remotely like that is actually happening. It's unfortunate to see.

 

[Irennan]

They have hinted that, tho (the Sundering bringing back all the gods, Abeir and Toril splitting again -which would supposedly bring back Maztica/Unther/Mulhorand-, the Weave being restored, the feeling shifting to a more hopeful and positive vibe, and so on) and have repeated it in this interview.

And I wouldn't say that it isn't happening, because we have seen basically nothing of the bigger picture, and -according to what I get from this interview- they will ''gradually'' add more info on the Post Sundering Realms and changes.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Brand brand brand brand brand.

Why was WotDQ set in FR? Why did they bring back the companions? Why DIDN'T the spellplague kill off Drizz't?

Brand.

D&D as a brand > D&D as a game (in the minds of WotC and Hasbro and their investors...and in the dollars in the marketplace). They could've retold the War of the Lance when the released 5e, but that wouldn't be a smart choice because the FR brand is stronger than the DL brand.

I wouldn't be surprised if the convo about the core elements of WotDQ went something like, "Okay. Our game is called Dungeons & Dragons, so we're going to have those as our first 5e launch. Also, our most popular world is FR, so that's where it is going to be set. So stick some dungeons and some dragons in FR and give us a plot."

The biggest, baddest dragon is Tiamat, so she gets put in FR because D&D. Temple of Elemental Evil is probably a well-branded dungeon, so that gets put in FR, too.

This isn't a bad business decision, and it isn't even an awful game decision (WotDQ is a solid adventure, and it doesn't wreck FR to have it there, it doesn't wreck the story of WotDQ to set it there). There's trade-offs, but they're kind of minor (like, they're not going to publish the War of the Lance adventure hardback next year...but they might the year after that!)

It's weird for those of us who know "A war against dragons? Dragonlance! Temple of Elemental Evil? Greyhawk!", but for most people they're just like "Cool, there's dragons and there's dungeons in the world of that book series I liked when I was 13. Neat!"

 

[Dragonhelm]

Weis and Hickman have another Dragonlance story to tell. WotC just needs to give it the go-ahead.

 

[Raistrox]

Yeaaaaa......what I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall during those coversations and be able to see THOSE emails!!