5th Edition Forgotten realms, What do you look forward to?

[CyberThread]

As far as the SETTING Goes for forgotten realms, what are you hoping to see, or done in the transfer?

[hamlet]

A reprinting of the original Grey Box edition.

[Kurald Galain]

Mystra will die! And the weave will be explode! And there will be a big cataclysmic disastrous cataclysm that moves lands around! And turns established locations into a random dungeon instead! And then Mystra will die!

[obryn]

I hope it's not too threadcrappy to say, "Not much actually?" I'm not a big Forgotten Realms fan in general. The grey box was pretty great, as was a lot of the late 1e/early 2e stuff (not everything, but a lot of it) before the setting got incredibly bloated and canon-y.

The post-Spellplague Realms presented in Neverwinter 4e was pretty great, too. It was interesting and innovative. The 4e FRCS didn't do a good job of showcasing this whole Spellplague thing; Neverwinter was the 4e FR supplement it needed to get good.

But other than that... blah.

-O

[Knaight]

While FR is pretty much the most boring setting I have ever so much as heard of, I do think that 5e could at least trim it down to usable by removing some of the bloat - which would be nice, if I somehow end up playing a game set in it.

[CyberThread]

what do you mean by bloat? Most would consider that lore,if that is what I think your talking about.

[valadil]

what do you mean by bloat? Most would consider that lore,if that is what I think your talking about.

In 3.5 I found the amount of lore intimidating. It made me not want to run the setting, because friends of mine had entire bookshelves dedicated to FR. I didn't want to get told I was running it wrong. Because of this I actually liked that 4e rebooted things. It put us on even footing and I didn't feel overwhelmed anymore. They probably could have delivered a bit more campaign material though.

What I would love to see, which isn't really 5e dependent, would be for all that lore to be digitized, annotated, and made part of 5e's equivalent of DDI. I think it'd be fantastic to be able to search for Luskan and get a whole bunch of dated maps, famous residents, history, etc. Google only goes so far for this. People who have entered this sort of data didn't always know to tag its date. Others post campaign stories mixed in with real history and there's no way to know what's canon.

Back to my first paragraph, I'm not about to read a bookshelf's worth of FR lore. But if that were digitized, I'd be more than happy to let the computer skim it for me so I could read the relevant bits. If my players were heading towards a certain city, I'd absolutely read the sections on that city from a dozen different source books. I think this is something I'd pay a monthly subscription for, especially if it kept up with the rest of DDI.

[obryn]

what do you mean by bloat? Most would consider that lore,if that is what I think your talking about.

That's the grand paradox of the Realms. For the faithful, that lore is the point of the setting.

For the rest of us, it's a massive and inflexible canon that actively hinders campaign development.

People who are steeped in the lore can certainly run good campaigns. For people who aren't, or who only know bits and pieces, it's more trouble than it's worth. I'd rather do a reboot back to the grey box and say nothing else in the novels or supplements ever happened ... apart from what's happening in this campaign. I did something similar in my Star Wars Saga Edition game - I started with, "R2 and 3PO were either captured or destroyed after ejecting from the Star Destroyer" - and let that invent a new and unfamiliar canon which belonged to my game alone.

-O

[Knaight]

what do you mean by bloat? Most would consider that lore,if that is what I think your talking about.

I'd consider some of it lore, but most of it is just excessive - and it eats up page space, making it that much harder to find the stuff that isn't needlessly narrow. I'd consider one book enough for the campaign setting, with 300 pages being plenty. Thus, the campaign setting can be trimmed down to the bits that actually matter and the bits that are actually relevant, painted in brushes broad enough that the detail level belongs to the GM.

[Icewraith]

With the 3.5 FR I found it easiest to pick a blank spot on the map, build my own stuff there, and the characters would work their way back into the fluff provided by the setting.

They got used to things not being exactly the way they were in the book, I got to ease into the "official" material and put my own spin on it as the party encountered it.

However since it's become a tradition for a magical catastrophe to upset Ferun whenever a new edition comes out, I'm expecting Spellplague 2: Son of Spellplague 1.

Alternatively every single being on Faerun turns into Mystra and then explodes.

[Scots Dragon]

I don't particularly look forward to anything about the New New New New Realms. Which is distinct from the New New New Realms (4e), the New New Realms (3e), the New Realms (2e) and the Realms (1e). Mostly because, to be honest about it, the 4th edition changes basically ruined the setting for me, introducing a series of very needlessly mean-spirited ideas in their destruction of almost everything and then trying to shoehorn in concepts that were never meant to be there in the first place like the Dragonborn and Eladrin.

In the latter case making it a big sweeping retcon that all of the high elves, those being moon elves and sun elves, were originally eladrin to begin with. Which meant that almost all of the elven characters we'd seen up until that point, due to the focus solidly being on those subraces, were now suddenly something known as 'eladrin' despite the mentions of eladrin prior to that being a reference to the type of celestial in 2e and 3e and which form one of the cornerstones of the Planescape campaign setting.

Which I had adored, by the way. Until the 4th edition ruined that as well.

[tasw]

In 3.5 I found the amount of lore intimidating. It made me not want to run the setting, because friends of mine had entire bookshelves dedicated to FR. I didn't want to get told I was running it wrong. Because of this I actually liked that 4e rebooted things. It put us on even footing and I didn't feel overwhelmed anymore. They probably could have delivered a bit more campaign material though.

What I would love to see, which isn't really 5e dependent, would be for all that lore to be digitized, annotated, and made part of 5e's equivalent of DDI. I think it'd be fantastic to be able to search for Luskan and get a whole bunch of dated maps, famous residents, history, etc. Google only goes so far for this. People who have entered this sort of data didn't always know to tag its date. Others post campaign stories mixed in with real history and there's no way to know what's canon.

Back to my first paragraph, I'm not about to read a bookshelf's worth of FR lore. But if that were digitized, I'd be more than happy to let the computer skim it for me so I could read the relevant bits. If my players were heading towards a certain city, I'd absolutely read the sections on that city from a dozen different source books. I think this is something I'd pay a monthly subscription for, especially if it kept up with the rest of DDI.

I would definitely go for this and if it was only a couple books a month would have no problem paying for it. I blow 5-10$ a month on credits for whatever facebook game I'm into so a realms DDI, or more ideally a DDI for ALL the established campaign settings is something I would definitely go for.

Barring that return to the tan book that came out when 3e first came out. It didnt completely destroy the old lore, had plenty of blank spots left on the map and just enough, and interesting enough detail to be able to play a campaign virtually anywhere in the world you wanted.

[navar100]

Asmodeous blows up into obliviion of non-existance as the Azuth essence he absorbed bursts forth, reborn into the god of magic.

Torm finally kills Bane for good (pun intended) and is able to use his divine essence to resurrect Tyr.

Ao finally obliterates Cyric once and for all for his deicide. Selune pleads for her sister, saving Shar from the same fate. Ao takes the Shadow Weave away from Shar and uses that to create the new Weave for a new Mystra.

Lathander comes back. He just does. For keeps.

Really, I'm sick and tired of Evil gods always getting away with everything while the Good gods fall. They'll still be Evil gods, but now Evil doesn't win all the time.

[Sebastrd]

You can find out for sure what's going to happen in a little over a week. They're supposed to unveil/discuss "The Sundering" at Gen Con.

Personally, I gave up on FR in 3.X when I couldn't find a blank spot on the map. I picked the Great Dale because it seemed to be the least inhabited, and even there some great and world-changing event had recently taken place. It didn't help that most of the NPC's they statted out in the sourcebooks, especially Elminster and the Seven Sisters, would have required 45-55 attribute points to get their inflated stats. In contrast PCs were supposed to get 28, 32 in "tough" campaign settings. If I'm gonna have a bunch of Mary Sues and Gary Stus running around the campaign world, they better be my wet dream avatars, not some (other) dirty old man's.

To be fair, although I think Ed is a terrible writer and includes way too much casual promiscuity in his material, the man is a storytelling, word-building, plot scheming machine. I could never hope to match the level of detail and encyclopedic knowledge about just random renaissance/medieval stuff that guy has. Unfortunately, i think there have been too many TSR/WotC sanctioned fanboys running roughshod over the Realms for so many years, it's been ruined for the rest of us.

My ideal FR sourcebook(s) would just be a "Realms as they exist at Ed's table without everyone else's ideas and creations crapping up the place" series.

[obryn]

My ideal FR sourcebook(s) would just be a "Realms as they exist at Ed's table without everyone else's ideas and creations crapping up the place" series.

So... the grey box?

-O

[Yora]

Might be interesting to see what they would be doing with the setting if they would go back to before spellplague and start over again from there. But I don't really expect that to happen.

[Morty]

Is it even going to be Forgotten Realms at this point? After the Spellplague and now some sort of 'Sundering', it honestly feels like all that's left of the setting is the name and the brand.

[obryn]

Is it even going to be Forgotten Realms at this point? After the Spellplague and now some sort of 'Sundering', it honestly feels like all that's left of the setting is the name and the brand.

I can only hope that it will not, in fact, recognizably be the Forgotten Realms at all.

However, I think it's infinitely more likely there will be a whole bunch of fan service with all kinds of stuff rolled back or an alternate timeline or parallel universe or whatever. Returned Abeir is certainly getting "sundered". And maybe a lot of wink-wink symbolism and all the dragonborn and warlords and tieflings and swordmages will get killed off.

-O

[Flickerdart]

I'd like to see how they manage to make all of our favourite overpowered Mary Sues in a system where even a level 20 still dies to a bunch of goblins with crossbows.

[CyberThread]

I feel like an outcast for having heavily enjoyed this..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE58PnuF1nU

[Yora]

You don't prefer [the Campaign Setting version I like]! You're not a real fan.

[CyberThread]

that somehow matches your avatar ....

[Alleran]

My ideal FR sourcebook(s) would just be a "Realms as they exist at Ed's table without everyone else's ideas and creations crapping up the place" series.

There was actually a book about that not too long ago. It was basically pure fluff with no crunch at all. Called "Elminster's Forgotten Realms" or something to that effect, I think.

Anyway, I suspect a certain degree of rollback but with other things sticking around, mostly because it'd be too difficult to remove them now. Mystra has already been resurrected (Elminster Enraged novel), the Harpers are back in gear after mysteriously vanishing for a hundred years, and Ao's reforging the Tablets of Fate (why I'm not sure, after he declared them worthless, but retcon!) to make sure that Abeir goes back to being Abeir and separate from Toril - they're not going to eliminate that entire aspect, unfortunately. Thay is probably sticking around as a land of the (un)dead, and so are the Shades (blech).

The real problem, I think, is that they nuked it in the first place. While lore bloat may or may not have been the case, the way they nuked it wound up doing more harm than good. They seemed to be just trying to clear off the staggering chain of catastrophes and world-changing events that were starting to crop up in every single novel they published. If they could do something more along the lines of the Pathfinder Tales line (i.e. tell stories that don't wreck the status quo established by the main sourcebooks), I think a good chunk of the problem would fix itself.

[Craft (Cheese)]

If they could do something more along the lines of the Pathfinder Tales line (i.e. tell stories that don't wreck the status quo established by the main sourcebooks), I think a good chunk of the problem would fix itself.

Or they could just say two little words: Not. Canon.

[tasw]

You can find out for sure what's going to happen in a little over a week. They're supposed to unveil/discuss "The Sundering" at Gen Con.

Personally, I gave up on FR in 3.X when I couldn't find a blank spot on the map. I picked the Great Dale because it seemed to be the least inhabited, and even there some great and world-changing event had recently taken place. It didn't help that most of the NPC's they statted out in the sourcebooks, especially Elminster and the Seven Sisters, would have required 45-55 attribute points to get their inflated stats. In contrast PCs were supposed to get 28, 32 in "tough" campaign settings. If I'm gonna have a bunch of Mary Sues and Gary Stus running around the campaign world, they better be my wet dream avatars, not some (other) dirty old man's.

To be fair, although I think Ed is a terrible writer and includes way too much casual promiscuity in his material, the man is a storytelling, word-building, plot scheming machine. I could never hope to match the level of detail and encyclopedic knowledge about just random renaissance/medieval stuff that guy has. Unfortunately, i think there have been too many TSR/WotC sanctioned fanboys running roughshod over the Realms for so many years, it's been ruined for the rest of us.

My ideal FR sourcebook(s) would just be a "Realms as they exist at Ed's table without everyone else's ideas and creations crapping up the place" series.

I liked R.A. Salvatores books. I would include them. But otherwise yes.

I can only hope that it will not, in fact, recognizably be the Forgotten Realms at all.

However, I think it's infinitely more likely there will be a whole bunch of fan service with all kinds of stuff rolled back or an alternate timeline or parallel universe or whatever. Returned Abeir is certainly getting "sundered". And maybe a lot of wink-wink symbolism and all the dragonborn and warlords and tieflings and swordmages will get killed off.

-O

If they DONT kick all of the stupid changes that late 3e and all of 4e did to the realms it wont be worth paying 5$ for, nvm the 30$ or more they are likely to charge.

[Alleran]

Or they could just say two little words: Not. Canon.

They could, but I think that might interfere with the original contract with Greenwood under which they own and publish FR material, which supposedly states (among other things) that they publish at least one new novel (canonical) per year or the equivalent from him.

I don't really see the problem with small stories that don't bludgeon the status quo with a baseball bat. Individual GMs are absolutely free to rule that they didn't happen in "their" Realms if they don't feel like reading them, and their small scale would make them easy to discount as well. It's the world-shaking catastrophes that I have issue with, and what I attribute the main problem to. You don't deal with a problematic tree stealing the sunlight in your garden by covering the entire backyard in petrol and lighting a match, you simply chop down that particular tree.

[DeltaEmil]

They should do with it what they did with Dark Sun in D&D 4th edition.

Use the original published setting, and say that this is the starting point.

Give all the stuff that did happen as stuff that could happen, as plot hooks and adventure idea, just like they said in Champion of Valor how instead of being NPC this and that who did this and that or who caused this and that or prevented this and that, let it be the player characters who instead might do this and that, or cause this and that, or prevent this and that.

This and that might lead to the Times of Troubles. This and that might lead to the Spellplague. This and that might lead to the Sundering. This and that might lead to the Horde war. This and that might lead to the kingdom of Many-Arrows. This and that might lead to the complete genocide of all elves. This and that might lead to the Thunder Blessing.

Do not ever make the novels canon for the game setting. Every splatbook that advances the timeline is to be declared as alternate possibility, which can never be canon. Make splatbooks that advance the timeline and that have completely different outcomes. Make it that in this splatbook which tells about this and that region with this and that new classes, magic items, new monsters, and new rules for specific mechanics has the collapse of the orc kingdom as the basis. In another splatbook about new stuff, have the orc kingdom conquer the rest of the continent, and be the ultimate superpower. In one story, Chult was conquered by all goblins, and now a dinosaur-riding goblin army is waging war against the rest of the continent. In another one, Mezro has become a dinosaur-exporting trade city. Calimport has been destroyed by a meteorite. Calimport is all well. Calimport has been quarantined because of a great disease. Calimport has been conquered by dinosaur-riding goblins. Calimport is the new capital of genasi warlords from the parallel prime material plane called Abeir. Calimport is a colony of the zakharan caliph. Calimport is being ravaged by Amn and Tethyr. There are firearms in the Forgotten Realms. There are no firearms in the Forgotten Realms. There are magitech guns in the Forgotten Realms. There is primitive and worthless smokepowder firearms in the Forgotten Realms. Every knight is a Tome of Battle Warblade. Nothing of Tome of Battle exists in the Forgotten Realms. Every knight is a soulborn. Nothing of Magic of Incarnum exists in the Forgotten Realms. Every knight is a level 10 warrior. There are no NPC classes in the Forgotten Realms. All assassins died, because Baal died. All assassins died, because they waged a terrible shadow war against each another. All assassins died, because they were wiped out by wizards. All assassins died, because Abeir returned. All assassins died, because they were hunted down by dwarves. All assassins died, because Ao willed it so.
Ao exists. Ao does not exist. Ao exists, but is only one of three overdeities. Ao exists, but serves a more powerful being. Ao exists, and there is nothing above Ao. Ao has never shown itself. Ao has long left Toril. Ao has returned to Toril. Ao is an overdeity. Ao is not an overdeity. Ao is Gruumsh. Ao is Elminster. Ao is Pun Pun. Ao is an Athasian sorcerer king. Ao is the lady of pain.

Make every timeline advancement incompatible to each another, and declare officially that the canon timeline is the one which the gaming group likes the most, if they even use it at all.

The Grey Box is canon. Everything after that is official fanfiction that is to inspire more fanfiction, and to help gaming groups make their own stories.

But they will never do that.

[CyberThread]

<-< if they made everything not cannon ... I would be ..mad haha, like when they did the star trek reboot, but not that mad.

Forgotten realms does not suffer*tolerate* the same way eberron books are.

[TuggyNE]

what do you mean by bloat? Most would consider that lore,if that is what I think your talking about.

Most FR fans would, yes; most anybody else, whether or not they play D&D, would likely consider it chiefly or wholly bloat.

However since it's become a tradition for a magical catastrophe to upset Ferun whenever a new edition comes out, I'm expecting Spellplague 2: Son of Spellplague 1.

Alternatively every single being on Faerun turns into Mystra and then explodes.

I was gonna say Spellplague 2: Electric Boogaloo, but I think I like yours better. Especially the last sentence.

[Alleran]

I was gonna say Spellplague 2: Electric Boogaloo, but I think I like yours better. Especially the last sentence.

Not Sellplague 2: The Quickening?

Or does that do a disservice to the original Highlander?