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<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5402768" data-attributes="member: 2067">Not exactly &quot;design by comittee,&quot; more, &quot;it has to be an improvement, or the market isn't going to want to buy it.&quot; Now, the 20/20 hindsight breakdown![sblock]A book focusing on the &quot;highlights&quot; of the Realms without getting bogged down in muckety-muck is entirely possible without blowing it up. They could've done a &quot;back to basics&quot; approach that a lot of fans seemed eager for, while saying &quot;We're just turning back the clock to 0 hour. This invalidates nothing that comes after.&quot;I don't even think Ed Greenwood has all of the old material, but those fairly well versed in the Realms will still want to pick up the new campaign setting, if for nothing other than the updated races/classes/monsters.Smart, if you're not doing a drastic change. If you're doing a drastic change, though, that's really just telling the DM to do the hard work and making it less-than-complete &quot;out of the box.&quot;I don't think #2 was a major backfire. I'd say it's almost all #1. If the CS would've been a basic overview with some updated stats, it would've done its job nicely, I think. It wouldn't have been very ambitious, I suppose, but ambition can be broadcast in adventures and rules design where it isn't in story, since there's a substantial investment in FR story. [/sblock]That's kind of a great point, actually. Instead of going back to basics, if the 4e FR was set during the Spellplague, giving DMs all sorts of suggestions on what might happen (rather than telling them what did), it might've been epic.Back in 3e, I had a &quot;Cthulu Comes To Town&quot; campaign mashup with FR where the laws of magic suddenly and dramatically shifted, resulting in Elminster being insane and a hopeless atmosphere and cities blowing up dramatically. Not that different from the Spellplague. It was a rousing success, but I think if I would've set the game in the aftermath, rather than during, it would've fallen flatter. I also think if I had people who weren't willing to trust me to go along for the ride, I might've irked some FR purists in my group. They gave me time (about 9 months!) to win them over and deliver an awesome experience. WotC didn't have 9 months, they had about 600 pages. That's a much shorter time to achieve trust, especially when you're vague about details.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 5402768, member: 2067"] Not exactly "design by comittee," more, "it has to be an improvement, or the market isn't going to want to buy it." Now, the 20/20 hindsight breakdown! [sblock] A book focusing on the "highlights" of the Realms without getting bogged down in muckety-muck is entirely possible without blowing it up. They could've done a "back to basics" approach that a lot of fans seemed eager for, while saying "We're just turning back the clock to 0 hour. This invalidates nothing that comes after." I don't even think Ed Greenwood has all of the old material, but those fairly well versed in the Realms will still want to pick up the new campaign setting, if for nothing other than the updated races/classes/monsters. Smart, if you're not doing a drastic change. If you're doing a drastic change, though, that's really just telling the DM to do the hard work and making it less-than-complete "out of the box." I don't think #2 was a major backfire. I'd say it's almost all #1. If the CS would've been a basic overview with some updated stats, it would've done its job nicely, I think. It wouldn't have been very ambitious, I suppose, but ambition can be broadcast in adventures and rules design where it isn't in story, since there's a substantial investment in FR story. [/sblock] That's kind of a great point, actually. Instead of going back to basics, if the 4e FR was set [I]during[/I] the Spellplague, giving DMs all sorts of suggestions on what might happen (rather than telling them what did), it might've been epic. Back in 3e, I had a "Cthulu Comes To Town" campaign mashup with FR where the laws of magic suddenly and dramatically shifted, resulting in Elminster being insane and a hopeless atmosphere and cities blowing up dramatically. Not that different from the Spellplague. It was a rousing success, but I think if I would've set the game in the aftermath, rather than during, it would've fallen flatter. I also think if I had people who weren't willing to trust me to go along for the ride, I might've irked some FR purists in my group. They gave me time (about 9 months!) to win them over and deliver an awesome experience. WotC didn't have 9 months, they had about 600 pages. That's a much shorter time to achieve trust, especially when you're vague about details. [/QUOTE]

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