Quote from: RPGPundit;666945Ideally, I'd like to see something done with the FR similar to what the latest series of Star Trek movies did to Star Trek; a clean sweep, to shrug off the huge load of fanwank bullshit and horrible concepts that have weighed down and smothered all the awesomeness out of a setting who's biggest problem was becoming too popular with a certain type of geek and certain type of geek-writers.

RPGPundit

That's exactly what they did with the 4e version and people hated it.

Quote from: YourSwordisMine;6665591e Grey Box

Before the novels ruined the setting.

Let the Players BE the heroes... not just existing as minor characters to the Novels.

Unfortunately, I don't think FR can be fixed at this point... the novels have done to much damage... For a playable setting at least.

What if I told you that you are totally free to ignore the novels?  Hell, Drizzt and Elminster both appear in the Baldur's Gate game.  Did you feel marginalized by that?

Quote from: mhensley;666981What if I told you that you are totally free to ignore the novels?  Hell, Drizzt and Elminster both appear in the Baldur's Gate game.  Did you feel marginalized by that?

Quite.

I find the gamut of NPCs and organisations easy to ignore - or indeed use as handy ready-made villains/allies when the PCs are at an applicable level.

I find it rather amusing that some people who go on about 'world in motion' types of games seem to balk at the one setting which seems to have that baked in...

My own 4e FR (see blog link in sig - it's quite good! ) is in the standard continuity, but I minimise all the Spellplague stuff and run it as a post-apocalypse setting slowly pulling itself back together. I have a satire-of-Elminster NPC, Hallomak Stromm, who is there to emphasise that this is not a 'canon' game.
I guess my preference is for gradual evolution, not yet another revolution, with a lot more politics and a lot less of the constant whoopsapocalypse. I never GM'd FR before 4e and I don't intend to follow any WotC-mandated reboots though, so my only interest in 5e material is if it was compatible with my ongoing game.

Quote from: mhensley;666979That's exactly what they did with the 4e version and people hated it.

No, they really didn't.

Quote from: mhensley;666979That's exactly what they did with the 4e version and people hated it.

I heard more complaints about the effect it had on the novels than on the game setting.

Quote from: One Horse Town;666982Quite.

I find the gamut of NPCs and organisations easy to ignore - or indeed use as handy ready-made villains/allies when the PCs are at an applicable level.

I find it rather amusing that some people who go on about 'world in motion' types of games seem to balk at the one setting which seems to have that baked in...

Quite +1

The Sundering most likely will be a splitting of FR into two different places one where 3E and 4E happened and another where it didn't.  Or some derivative of that.

I have a 1e FR Grey Box already. I just won't give a shit about the 5e setting.

Quote from: One Horse Town;666982I find it rather amusing that some people who go on about 'world in motion' types of games seem to balk at the one setting which seems to have that baked in...

Wold in motion compatible with what is happening in my campaign and with my vision of what that motion should/could be is a bit different than a publisher's vision of metaplot.

Quote from: apparition13;667016Wold in motion compatible with what is happening in my campaign and with my vision of what that motion should/could be is a bit different than a publisher's vision of metaplot.

Well yeah, which was the whole point of the first paragraph that you didn't quote.

Quote from: mhensley;666979That's exactly what they did with the 4e version and people hated it.

No, it wasn't at all similar.  The new Trek movies said "fuck all this bloated "continuity" we're starting with a completely clean slate"; the FR change said "we're advancing the timeline and making massive changes that add to an already-overburdened continuity".

4e-FR wasn't at all like Abrams trek.  It was closer, if anything, to "Enterprise", something that muddied the waters, changed the whole tone and content of the setting and losing a bunch of stuff that people liked, while adding nothing of value, in a desperate attempt by certain very arrogant creatives to please the most useless types of fans.

RPGPundit

Bin the whole lot.

Have a section in the PHB that in a single page captures the essence of a number of settings. By all means take these from the Set of default D&D settings but I would select say 5. Greyhawk, FR, Ebberon, Dark Sun, Spelljammer  (personally I would gunk the lot and write up rip offs of Gor, Westeros, Hyboria, Middle Earth and Dumas's 17th centure France but meh...)

In the DMG devote a chapter to world/setting building then 4 pages on each of these settings in broad tones.

The challenge is differentiating between FR and Greyhawk which are both pretty much the same. I guess make GH more political with small rival kingdoms in conflict and FR more post collapse points of light

Then the DM has to actually decide on what their setting will be like and either pull one of the ideas from the book or use the ideas of the world builder to build their own (far better).

The DMG overviews might include ideas on what options might apply to each one what races and classes you can't use and all that, the sorts of adventures you might expect. They also server as an into/sales pitch for new players. If you liek the idea of a high magic, magicky science world well you can go on to find out more about Ebberon, if you like the gritty S&S feel of Dark Sun well .. etc .

Tey won' do it of course because it assumes a level of sophistiation in the usage of the rule books that they neither expect nor encourage.


So expect a FR reboot with some sort of dubious explanation for fanbois that real that sort of stuff.

Other than reading my buddy's grey box set back when it was first released, I hadn't paid any attention to the Forgotten Realms. Hadn't bought any FR D&D material, hadn't read any of the schlock books.

Then I bought the 4E Neverwinter Campaign Setting book because it looked cool. And it is. One of the best RPG setting/campaign books I've read. Great factions and locales. All kinds of hooks and goals. But the big problem is the backstory. Coming to the book without any knowledge of FR, it just looks like a huge clusterfuck. You have all these layers of apocalyptic change, weird spell plagues, shadow realms, new deities and old deities, fey realms, disasters. It's just way, way too much to take in for a group new to the setting.

If WotC are serious about 5E being a more accessible edition of D&D, they have to come up with their own generic setting (I've heard good things about Nentir Vale for 4E). Because FG is no longer newbie friendly in any way.

Sadly, at this point the Greenwood/Salvatore Extruded Novel Tail is wagging the D&D Setting dog.

Quote from: Haffrung;667190Other than reading my buddy's grey box set back when it was first released, I hadn't paid any attention to the Forgotten Realms. Hadn't bought any FR D&D material, hadn't read any of the schlock books.

Then I bought the 4E Neverwinter Campaign Setting book because it looked cool. And it is. One of the best RPG setting/campaign books I've read. Great factions and locales. All kinds of hooks and goals. But the big problem is the backstory. Coming to the book without any knowledge of FR, it just looks like a huge clusterfuck. You have all these layers of apocalyptic change, weird spell plagues, shadow realms, new deities and old deities, fey realms, disasters. It's just way, way too much to take in for a group new to the setting.

I found that the factions were ok spread over the entire continent, as per the 4e FR Campaign Setting book, but Neverwinter shoehorns in most of them to one city and it's far, far too much. In practice I use the Neverwinter book as a resource for my Loudwater/Gray Vale campaign, I can use a far smaller number of factions across a wider area. Significant bad-guy factions that have appeared IMC:

1. Church of Bane & goblins/hobgoblins
2. Zhentarim
3. Serpent Kingdom of Najara
4. Orcs & associated Primordial/Giant stuff

With a pop-up for some devil worshippers (Mephistopheles) and demons (Orcus). The Asmodeus-worshipping Ashmadai have been mentioned.

Off-stage significant factions that should appear later:
1. Undead - Orcus & Thay/Szass Tam
2. Netheril - Shadovar

That seems plenty to me. I've taken the Thay vs Netheril conflict from the Neverwinter book, and it is likely to be a big theme of the Epic Tier IMC. I see it as a "Blacks" vs "Reds",  Nazi Germany (Netheril) vs USSR (Thay) superpower conflict, which should be brilliant for all kinds of political and military shenanigans as the weaker good-guy kingdoms (Waterdeep, Cormyr, Elturgard, Baldurs' Gate, Luruar - maybe the Gray Vale if the PCs can pull it together as a political entity) try to maneuver for advantage, or just survive in the shadow of the great powers.
 
But trying to use all the Neverwinter factions crammed into just Heroic Tier as per the book - maybe 100 hours of play, in a system where one fight averages at least an hour - looks crazy to me.

Thinking about it: is there any compelling reason why the game products should give any time of day at all to the timeline of the novels? Are the novels really such a major point of entry for D&D that it'd be alienating to new players for the game products to not reflect the novels? Wouldn't people who are especially keen on the novels be perfectly capable of recreating them in a suitable game environment by themselves?

If I were King of WotC for the day, I'd divorce the game timeline and novel timeline. The novels would be specifically presented as one way the setting might develop from the baseline game products (which would, Harn-style, all depict the setting as it exists at a specific point in time and make no bones about not advancing the timeline), just as whatever Living FR campaign I have the RPGA run represents one possibility, but it would be explicit that there is no one single canon which rules over the novels, RPGA events, and products developed for use in people's home campaigns. Instead, those three strands would be allowed to evolve independently from each other.