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Erik Scott de Bie
Forgotten Realms Author

USA
4598 Posts

Posted - 29 Mar 2012 :  22:50:20  Show Profile  Visit Erik Scott de Bie's Homepage Send Erik Scott de Bie a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Ayrik

Erik, you've mistakenly attributed Apex's quote to me (while quoting me quoting him).
No worries, dodging sporadic bursts of friendly fire helps sustain alertness and sharp reflexes.
Whoops! Fixed. Sorry about that, old chap.

quote:
Originally posted by Azuth


Also, toss out assassins. That was part of ToT. Did I mention one of the Drow was an assassin? In the books, all assassins just die. ALL of them. He was not pleased.

Well, unless you're a fighter/rogue who happens to kill people in exchange for money. Like Artemis Entreri.

(But that's neither here nor there.)

quote:
Finally, without ToT, you wouldn't have Cyric as a god, you wouldn't have Midnight as Mystra, and you wouldn't have their seething hatred of one another. Bane had no reason to hate Mystra, he just wanted power. So, no Cyric, no Cyric killing Midnight/Mystra, no Spell Plague. I would say that, indeed, the ToT had great impact on the Realms... the SpellPlague, I think, were directly caused by the ToT.
Yep. It's a cascading effect. The Spellplague would not have been possible without the Time of Troubles--it's the next step in that particular story arc. (Though I suppose you could alter events to make it happen anyway.)

quote:
With respect to the time-jump: this has been stated as the crux issue ad infinitum. Erik's whole proposition has been that a setting detailing all eras of time makes the Realms more inclusive: I agree. People write books set in the past all of the time. Since this is Fantasy, there is no "present" year. If WoTC supports the entire setting, and produces lore and books set in all eras, then I fail to see the problem.
That's what would happen. And to address Icelander's question, though he seems to be ignoring me on this point: THERE IS A CANON. The books don't present a listing of NPCs and stories that "can be applied wherever you want." That's what the history section of the book is all about. What you do at your own table is up to you, but the history section STRICTLY FOLLOWS THE CANON TIMELINE.

As regards the 25% figure that Apex seems to want to fixate on: No, it's not "25% is post-SP lore." My math had 10-15% AT MOST being post-SP Realmslore. Depending on the book itself, it might be limited to 2-3 pages out of 120-150. I think that's a small price to pay to get so much else.

Let's level here: this is the GAMING INDUSTRY. Of course they're not going to put out a book that's 100% of what you like. Why? Because no product pleases everyone 100%. That's just reality. The best you can hope for as a designer is to please *as many people, as much as possible.*

quote:
The notion that areas of the "past" cannot be written about has already been disproven. The true question is whether or not Wizards will continue to do so. That is what Erik appears to be advocating (I shall not speak for him) and definitely what I advocate. What "we got" in the past does not have to be a predictor of what we "will get" in the future.
Yes, I am absolutely advocating opening up the timeline to write about multiple characters, multiple stories, multiple eras, whenever and whatever tells a good story and is compelling to read about.

I want more Knights of Myth Drannor, if Ed wants it so.

I want more of Drizzt's early adventures, if Bob wants it so.

I want my gods-damned Reclamation novel, if Elaine wants it so.

All of this will be possible if we allow ourselves to broaden the scope of the Realms to support all eras of play actively.

quote:
Originally posted by Tarlyn

I have to support the argument that ToT was significantly easier to ignore than the 4e changes. It does not take a lot of effort on the part of the DM to reverse the death of three gods and change the alignment of one. Also, the big three dead baddies did continue to receive support. The merge between 2ed and 3ed was even easier to ignore. It was add Shade or don't. The amount of work involved in not having the abeir-toril business occur, adding back in/ unmerging gods and figuring out what countries go where is significantly more time consuming.
Oh, there's no question that the ToT is *easier* to ignore than the 4e shift (which includes both the Spellplague and the timejump). That was my whole metaphor with slaying the dragon.

My envisioned Realms clarifies the area around the Spellplague, helping you use it or ignore it at your leisure, and also gives you all kinds of new pre-Spellplague lore that you can bust out and completely not bother with the Spellplague, because your campaigns don't go anywhere near it.

5e FR does not need to focus on the Spellplague the way 4e did.

It DOES, however, need to fill in kind of a lot of gaps (significantly, a 100 year gap), and I intend to do my part to make that happen.

quote:
On a side note, Pathfinder continues to attract new players, with arguably more success than D&D at this point. So, characterizing it as a haven for disillusioned old guard members is a poor comparison. There is a large and growing audience of young and old players alike to try to win over from Pathfinder.
Wow, I really didn't say that. Did I say that? Did I characterize Pathfinder in that way? Because that isn't how I feel about it. I mean, yes, I think Pathfinder benefitted by opening its arms to attract former D&D players. It's a ridiculous argument to claim that they didn't. There are people on this board who had that very experience. Does that make it a haven for disillusioned old guard members? Absolutely not. Pathfinder does many, many things very, very well, and they've earned their success.

Note: I have nothing but affection for the folks at Paizo. A number of them I count as friends, and all of them I consider colleagues in the industry. Heck, many of them designed stuff I really, really love. I'm hoping to write for them too, one day. We'll see how that goes. But it's completely irrelevant to the task at hand, which is putting together a plan for the Realms going forward.

And you know what? I'm really not interested in "luring back" PFRPG converts to D&D. I mean, that'd be great, but it's irrelevant to me whether they're playing the Realms with the PFRPG system or D&D of whatever edition. I just want to provide them a home in the Realms, and welcome them to it if they choose to come. Why would they choose to come? Because they love the setting as it was, and I want to make it comfortable for them again.

And yes, I think a lot of former old guard who have gone over to Pathfinder are disillusioned with the Realms--and for good reason. Throughout this thread (we're on page thirty-what-now? 32?), I have made no secret of the simple fact that a lot of what happened in the transition to 4e was a mistake. But rather than giving up the cause for lost, I'm saying we should buckle up our boots, pull on our gloves, and start wading in to fix it.

And fortunately, we're in a place where we can start doing that. This is our opportunity to do it! Are we going to sit around grousing about how it's hard or how the 4e pissed us off? We've already covered that territory.

It's time to get out there and do some stlaerning good.

quote:
Originally posted by Apex

@Azuth
You are clearly mixing changes to 2nd edition AD&D with the Forgotten Realms. The assassin was eliminated as a class with the advent of 2nd edition and the destruction of all Realms assassins was the (poor) in setting explanation for such. If you continued to play 1st edition, that likely didn't happen (or if you kept assassins in 2nd). As for wild mages, again you are confusing an optional class in the Tome of magic with the Realms and wild magic and dead magic areas are some of the easiest ignored bits of lore out there as they are invisible and are not even drawn on the maps.
How is what Azuth is talking about different from what you're talking about, Apex? You can't in one breath say "all those ToT changes you cite can be easily ignored" and also "you can't even try to ignore the Spellplague, et al."

I appreciate the maps issue and the geographical changes. I really do. But I'll tell you an easy fix there: Take out the 3.5 FR map. Use that. Done.

The maps change from edition to edition. No doubt there will be a 5e map of some kind, which I hope is drawn by Mike Schley, for the record.

quote:
As for the gods, once again, ignoring the death of gods was extremely easy (again if your group so desired) and had essentially no impact on the game material published later being compatible with your campaign.
I don't see how that's any different from the Spellplague. For instance:

"Helm didn't die. Look, there's one of his clerics right now. Looking for the party rogue that stole the crown jewels. Also, time to run!"

"Mystra didn't die. The Spellplague is the result of an attempt on her life, and she barely contained it before it destroyed the world. Also, I want this this and this to be different from what's printed in the FRCG, because Mystra survived and was able to save them. Good thing I'm the DM!"

Etc.

quote:
I hope that they are able to craft supplements that apply to all eras and i applaud Erik for giving it a go, I am just somewhat skeptical of the success of such an endeavor from a business perspective.
Obviously we need some business people and some marketing people to do their jobs well, but I think this can work. Why?

Because a lore-heavy, era-neutral Realms can be played with ANYTHING. Got the OGB? Done. Want to run it in 2e during the ToT? Solid. Playing Pathfinder in Waterdeep or Dragon Age RPG in Cormyr? Here's a setting book for you.

And a side to this concept of having all eras derive support, is that WotC can then go and release ALL its old backlist as PDFs and print-on-demand for those who want paper. No payouts to designers, and only some editing costs to go back and make sure those books are free of typos. All of it done quickly, cheaply, and efficiently, and pleasing anyone and everyone.

(See? Bet you thought I didn't even consider the business angle.)

Cheers

Erik Scott de Bie

'Tis easier to destroy than to create.

Author of a number of Realms novels (GHOSTWALKER, DEPTHS OF MADNESS, and the SHADOWBANE series), contributor to the NEVERWINTER CAMPAIGN GUIDE and SHADOWFELL: GLOOMWROUGHT AND BEYOND, Twitch DM of the Dungeon Scrawlers, currently playing "The Westgate Irregulars"

Edited by - Erik Scott de Bie on 29 Mar 2012 22:55:23
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Azuth
Senior Scribe

USA
404 Posts

Posted - 29 Mar 2012 :  22:54:39  Show Profile  Visit Azuth's Homepage Send Azuth a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Apex

@Azuth

You are clearly mixing changes to 2nd edition AD&D with the Forgotten Realms. The assassin was eliminated as a class with the advent of 2nd edition and the destruction of all Realms assassins was the (poor) in setting explanation for such. If you continued to play 1st edition, that likely didn't happen (or if you kept assassins in 2nd). As for wild mages, again you are confusing an optional class in the Tome of magic with the Realms and wild magic and dead magic areas are some of the easiest ignored bits of lore out there as they are invisible and are not even drawn on the maps.

As for the gods, once again, ignoring the death of gods was extremely easy (again if your group so desired) and had essentially no impact on the game material published later being compatible with your campaign.

The big problem we have here is that the extreme geographical changes and the time jump make using lore from the 1470s virtually impossible for those who prefer the traditional Forgotten Realms over the Shattered version. I hope that they are able to craft supplements that apply to all eras and i applaud Erik for giving it a go, I am just somewhat skeptical of the success of such an endeavor from a business perspective.




I know many people who still use the 2E maps. That requires no effort on the part of the DM. Wild and Dead Magic occurred because of the death of Mystra. They were further detailed in the Tome of Magic, but that work was not specific to FR.

Azuth, the First Magister
Lord of All Spells

The greatest expression of creativity is through Art.
Offense can never be given, only taken.
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Jeremy Grenemyer
Great Reader

USA
2717 Posts

Posted - 29 Mar 2012 :  22:58:14  Show Profile Send Jeremy Grenemyer a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Apex

The big problem we have here is that the extreme geographical changes and the time jump make using lore from the 1470s virtually impossible for those who prefer the traditional Forgotten Realms over the Shattered version.
I’ll grant you that the changes, on their face, are enough to turn some people off.

However, for those who want to play, the changes are anything but insurmountable.

If you prefer the "traditional" Realms, those parts of 4E lore you will gravitate towards will be the ones least effected by the Spellplague. I.e. Cormyr, Sembia, the Dalelands, the Moonsea region, Waterdeep, the Heartlands, the North and so on.

In those places, "extreme" changes to geography are, by and large, few and far between. Dealing with a drop in sea level (as happened with the Sea of Fallen Stars) is about as much of a problem as dealing with wild and dead magic areas introduced by the ToT.

While it’s true a DM may have an inclination to play in one era or the other, if multi-era lore is presented together in one sourcebook, DMs will start to see that picking and choosing isn’t any more difficult than picking up the Grand History of the Forgotten Realms (or Lost Empires of Faerûn) and applying the historical information therein to their games.

From a practical perspective, the time jump is about as much of a problem for DMs as it is for them to use any historical information about the Forgotten Realms.

This is why the idea that it’s really, really difficult to use post-Spellplague Realmslore doesn’t make any sense.

If I may address another point: for a lot of gamers, the Realms is just boring. The reason it’s boring is that for so long it’s been the same. There comes a point where, from a gaming and business perspective, you have too much Harpers and Chosen, as well as too many products that say the same thing about Waterdeep; there’s overlap and it becomes excessive.

Why expect a customer to purchase a new product, set in the same era and talking about the same place, when the customer 1) probably already has at least three sourcebooks that say the same thing and 2) you can get those older products for a whole lot cheaper?

By advancing the timeline and changing things up (for example, adding features that would have occurred over time and regardless of the Spellplague, like Downshadow and Mistshore to Waterdeep) and noting these changes in future sourcebooks, you give long-time DMs and players the opportunity to stay in the 1300s, but borrow some of the future Realmslore to change things up and make these places interesting again.

You also can say you’re not reprinting, so much as expanding and writing new material. Moving forward keeps the Realms lively. That kind of information needs to be in any new sourcebooks because it will be useful.

Look for me and my content at EN World (user name: sanishiver).
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Ayrik
Great Reader

Canada
7966 Posts

Posted - 29 Mar 2012 :  23:00:27  Show Profile Send Ayrik a Private Message
While we're being optimistic, I'm hoping Shadowbane will be added to that hardcopy backlist. Closed eBook-only format means I'm out.

I suppose reprinting all those old books might disturb the ancient angry legal spirits and unearth questions about IPs and trademarks. Still, WotC already took my money for the reprinted "1E core rulebooks" so nothing is impossible.

[/Ayrik]

Edited by - Ayrik on 29 Mar 2012 23:03:02
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Lord Karsus
Great Reader

USA
3736 Posts

Posted - 29 Mar 2012 :  23:02:44  Show Profile Send Lord Karsus a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Erik Scott de Bie

@LK: It's really not my intention to frustrate you. You know I have nothing but affection and respect for you personally, though of course I don't agree with everything you say (and don't expect you'll agree with everything I say). On this particular point, I'm just not sure I'm understanding. What's your solution here?

-There is no solution, which is the problem. The initial tangent started with the idea that simply moving the focus of the timeline back to a previously less-detailed point of time (1,300 DR, 1,340 DR, whatever) that is not 1,375 DR or 1,479 DR would satisfy everyone. The people who want information about the "old" Forgotten Realms would get what they want and be happy, and the people who liked the "new" Forgotten Realms would have more historical information and not have their timeline erased and jettisoned. This doesn't address the underlying problem, that plot lines and events that turned people off from the setting will still be in effect and will still happen (more or less) as is. The oft-repeated suggestion was that people don't have to let that bother them, since they can create their own divergent timelines. To everybody who doesn't use the Forgotten Realms as a D&D setting to set their games to, but still has an interest in the world in and of itself, this is about as useful as telling the starving person to eat more because they're looking too skinny, which is where my aggravation stemmed from.

-Moving the 'focus of the present' to an earlier date puts off the problem, kicking all of the gnashing of teeth and everything else down the road for when the timeline eventually catches back up to the Spellplague, and/or when plot events integral to the 4e transition begin becoming more and more prominent. The underlying elements that got people getting all pissy about things isn't specifically addressed.

-And, there is no real way to fix it, getting back to a 'solution'. We all agree that retcons are bad for the continued success and continuity of the IP. The middle ground that was suggested is murky and only on the surface seems to smooth everything out for everyone, but in reality, neither those wanting "old" Forgotten Realms stuff or "new" Forgotten Realms stuff come out feeling satisfied, because nothing is specifically being addressed. The fleshing out and layering in of new lore on topics relevant to "old" and "new", as well as transitory elements themselves, this is independent from shifting the focus of the timeline- as we've been seeing, authors and designers have been writing about the past through the context of the present/future 4e Forgotten Realms.

quote:
Originally posted by Hawkins

@Erik - I really think that WotC needs to get away from the mindset that Realms fans and D&D fans are always (or even the majority of the time) the same thing. It is more of a venn diagram where there is quite a bit of overlap (I don't know if anyone actually knows the numbers, even WotC), but they are not the same all the time. I know that even though I had no intention of switching to D&D 4e, I would have continued to buy 4e Realms supplements if I had thought that they were worth the money. Because I am first a Realms fan, then a RPG fan, and then a D&D fan. And since I did not enjoy the 4e Realms, they not only lost me as a D&D customer, but a Realms customer as well.

-It's not so much WotC as it is just people, in general. While I might not be thrilled with the lore-to-mechanics ratios in books, I'm usually not angry that WotC has however much mechanical things they have in sourcebooks. They are D&D sourcebooks, after all. It peeves me when they include generic mechanics in Forgotten Realms sourcebooks, like prestige classes, or magical items. Make everything Forgotten Realms specific!

quote:
Originally posted by Eilserus

I've seen Ed mention in an interview that what we know about the Realms is from the unreliable narrator of Elminster, who may lie to us, leave things out or slant things to accord with his viewpoints. He also said we should just wait and see what we thought we knew about the Realms and that we might view it a bit differently in the next few years. Maybe that's the view that 5E will take to repair...not sure if that's the right word, maybe clarify what happened or where we are at now in the Realms. This would make perfect sense considering how traumatized El probably was after Mystra's death. By all accounts our narrator at the time was insane, so maybe this will allow them to patch things up.


-This changed in 3e when the narrator went from the 'unreliable second' to the 'omniscient third'.

(A Tri-Partite Arcanist Who Has Forgotten More Than Most Will Ever Know)

Elves of Faerûn
Vol I- The Elves of Faerûn
Vol. III- Spells of the Elves
Vol. VI- Mechanical Compendium

Edited by - Lord Karsus on 29 Mar 2012 23:07:19
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Erik Scott de Bie
Forgotten Realms Author

USA
4598 Posts

Posted - 29 Mar 2012 :  23:04:06  Show Profile  Visit Erik Scott de Bie's Homepage Send Erik Scott de Bie a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Jeremy Grenemyer

[snip]
You also can say you’re not reprinting, so much as expanding and writing new material. Moving forward keeps the Realms lively. That kind of information needs to be in any new sourcebooks because it will be useful.
This is a key point. I am advocating not "forward" or "backward" but an "outward" expansion--detailing those areas that haven't got much detail, offering lore hooks and info to apply to whatever era you want to play.

Cormyr, for instance, needs its own sourcebook. (And preferably, the Obarskyr Lineage document, released as a web enhancement or some such.) This book contains everything you need to know to run a Cormyr campaign. It has rough layouts for cities, notes about governance/politics/intrigue, talks about monstrous threats, major lasting organizations, etc. It lists major NPCs and when they are active in the history of Cormyr. Then there is a small amount of historical information, organized like a timeline.

Cheers

Erik Scott de Bie

'Tis easier to destroy than to create.

Author of a number of Realms novels (GHOSTWALKER, DEPTHS OF MADNESS, and the SHADOWBANE series), contributor to the NEVERWINTER CAMPAIGN GUIDE and SHADOWFELL: GLOOMWROUGHT AND BEYOND, Twitch DM of the Dungeon Scrawlers, currently playing "The Westgate Irregulars"
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sfdragon
Great Reader

2285 Posts

Posted - 29 Mar 2012 :  23:14:37  Show Profile Send sfdragon a Private Message
they remoeved the timeline in 4e though..... all because whiners were saying that players were critiscided about not knowing anything about the realms.

I cant even tell you every little detail about the realms and could not care less about it.

the irony is, the timeline would have been the one thing that told all you really need to know about the realms history.


I like the idea of having areas that need their own sourcebook though.
Corymr, Waterdeep, Myth Drannor, Baldur's gate would need their own books and provide more insites the the maddness of it all..

the timeline and the FR logo were both in the list of things that I missed in the 4e frcg.

why is being a wizard like being a drow? both are likely to find a dagger in the back from a rival or one looking to further his own goals, fame and power


My FR fan fiction
Magister's GAmbit
http://steelfiredragon.deviantart.com/gallery/33539234
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore

1864 Posts

Posted - 29 Mar 2012 :  23:31:07  Show Profile  Visit Icelander's Homepage Send Icelander a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Azuth

I disagree only slightly. It does belong on this scroll only in that it demonstrates the point of the scroll. Adapting lore is something that is incumbent upon the Dungeon Master primarily, and secondarily on the publishing company. Thought goes into creating any lore. To callously argue that "no thought went into making it consistent" is an uninformed guess, at best, unless stated by the lore-creator. I do not like many of the 4E changes, but I definitely think that thought went into their construction.


I wasn't saying that no thought went into creating any 4e lore. My point was that no thought went into making sure that events, economic data, politics, etc. and such for 4e lore was consistent with the situation in the 3e Realms. That's not criticism, that's merely a simple statement of fact.

When an author is creating lore for Cormyr in 1470s, he doesn't have to make sure that it fits the political situation of Sembia in 1350-1370 DR, because it isn't designed for a setting where any such thing exists. His job is to make sure that such lore is consistent with Sembia (and the rest of the Realms) in the 1470s, which are obviously significantly different.

Saying that lore written for the 1470s isn't meant to work for the 1300s isn't a cricisism of that lore any more than saying that Dark Sun supplements aren't written to fit into Mystara. My point was simple that if you wanted to take something written for a different setting and use it in your campaign, the DM would have to do all the actual design work of intergrating it into the setting.

I'm not saying that you can't use Realmslore written for the Moonsea for a campaign set in Durpar or something written for the 1470s in a campaign set in the 1300s. My point is just that you could just as easily use something from a novel set in the real world or another fantasy setting, or real events from the headlines or a history book.

And since I get all that without paying an RPG publisher, I have no use for a game supplement unless it is one where the information is carefully checked against everything else published for a setting and arising naturally from the situation in the fictional world. That means that if I take it out of context by a decade or a century, it's not useful to me any more because it is no longer consistent.

I haven't made any judgment about the quality of the lore for any edition, here. All I'll say is that I have read setting supplements where the information was generic enough so that it was obvious that no work had gone into intergrating it into a consistent whole and it could be used for pretty much any location or era. Regardless of when and where such supplements are set, if I spent money on one, I'd feel cheated, because that sort of thing has zero value to me.

The world is far too full of sources of inspiration for ideas to be worth money. It's their development, turning an idea into a finished product, that's worth paying for.

Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela!

Forgotten Realms fans, please sign a petition to re-release the FR Interactive Atlas
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Apex
Learned Scribe

USA
229 Posts

Posted - 29 Mar 2012 :  23:38:45  Show Profile  Visit Apex's Homepage Send Apex a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Erik Scott de Bie

Cormyr, for instance, needs its own sourcebook. (And preferably, the Obarskyr Lineage document, released as a web enhancement or some such.) This book contains everything you need to know to run a Cormyr campaign. It has rough layouts for cities, notes about governance/politics/intrigue, talks about monstrous threats, major lasting organizations, etc. It lists major NPCs and when they are active in the history of Cormyr. Then there is a small amount of historical information, organized like a timeline.

Cheers



Well, Cormyr did have its own sourcebook in 1994 (and the lineage is in the OGB).

Here's my suggestion for a compromise:

I really am not convinced that the "all era's" sourcebook idea is going to sell well. Getting me to pay 30-40 bucks for something that I may only need/use 10% of simply isn't a good use of funds (remember, that much of the geography/politics/history fluff has already been published). What i would like to see is online pdf articles/mini-books (say 12-32 pages) that detail specific events/people/organizations/stories of the Realms that were glossed over the first time through the timeline (or things that occurred immediately before the OGB began). However, these MUST be able to be purchased as separate downloadable pdf's and not part of a DDi subscription (again, not interested in paying for something I would use 5% of). Heck, I would pay a pretty penny for a lengthy article on Scardale's war against the dales or Gondegal's attempted coup in Cormyr or an in depth flashing out of some of the rumors from the OGB or an look back to Maztica 10 years after Cordell, etc. To me, that is probably the best way to get people like me back as customers.

Those are my two cents.
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore

1864 Posts

Posted - 29 Mar 2012 :  23:55:54  Show Profile  Visit Icelander's Homepage Send Icelander a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Erik Scott de Bie

And to address Icelander's question, though he seems to be ignoring me on this point: THERE IS A CANON. The books don't present a listing of NPCs and stories that "can be applied wherever you want." That's what the history section of the book is all about. What you do at your own table is up to you, but the history section STRICTLY FOLLOWS THE CANON TIMELINE.

What question?

The only recent posts I remember making in this scroll had to do with whether one could use Realmslore published for the 1470s setting in a game set in 1350-1370s. I maintained that while one could, the DM would have to do all the work of fitting it into the setting one was using, because it was written for a different setting, in a different era. It would therefore be only as useful as any other fiction or non-fiction one read or viewed, i.e. it could serve to spark ideas, but it was not immediately and directly useful for gameplay.

I am aware that your idea does not involve moving away from a canon sequence of events. I do think, however, that you exaggerate how much Realmslore would truly be useful to people in all eras.

I can't imagine how detail about the culture of Chessenta in the 1300s would help someone running a game in Airspur of 1470s or how information about NPCs for Unther in 1350s would be relevant to a game set in Imaskar in 1470s. Even in places where the geography stayed the same, a century is enough to change the culture, art, architecture and a lot of other things. As for economy, politics, people, current events and opportunities and threats, these would have few points of intersection.

The political issues of today have little to do with those of 1912. Those of 1912 aren't all that relevant to those of 1812. A century also sees some economic mainstays falling by the wayside and new industries that no one foresaw becoming dominant. Families that no one had heard of become prominent and old and established ones fall into obscurity. I just don't see a 'general overview' of any place applying equally over a whole century.

I live in a place that was a tiny backwater a century ago. In a country that may have been the poorest country on Earth a century ago. An overview of the politics, business, culture or anything else here for a whole century would be useless.

And Earth doesn't change any faster than Faerun does. That's a myth. Any place with people there changes fast. Only to those who know nothing at all about them does any period in history seem stagnant. In actual fact, the 14th century would be unrecognisable to the people of the 13th and the 15th unrecognisable to both. And these are periods of human history that are frequently cited as the most stagnant of all. During periods like the 400s to the 1000s, peoples, nations, kingdomns and suchlike rarely lasted a century and never did so without profound change.

Faerun is actually worse, in this regard, that a lot of Earth. Earth, at least, didn't have quite so many monsters tearing down civilisation. Most historical kingdoms there haven't lasted more than a century and a lot of them last the lifetime of one leader. How is anything written to apply for a whole century going to be useful to everyone?

I think that 'era-neutral' information will be, at most, some maps, some names of large and stable polities and text about language, culture and technology so broad as to be wrong in all particulars for any specific place and period. No more than 10% of the total.

The rest has to be written from the point of view of some era. If it is stated to be era-neutral, it will still be much more useful for a given era than others and flat-out wrong for others. There may be organisations that last centuries, but the leaders, goals, allegiances and methods of one decade to the next will not be the same. The Democratic Party of today and the Democratic Party of a century ago aren't similar in many ways. Neither are the Harpers of the 1300s and the Harpers of the 1400s.

If WotC chooses to deal with this by trying to keep everything they can unchanged over a century of change, it will strike directly at my suspension of disbelief. If they do acknowledge that change is the one constant of any world with people in it, it will mean that either they have to publish books focusing on specific eras or they will have to split sourcebook chapters according to eras, giving overviews of areas at different time periods, with only a tiny fraction of the page count being truly edition neutral.

I'd accept either and if anything were published that focused on a time period that held interest to me and looked well written and edited, I'd buy it. I'd sooner see that than an official ret-con. But speaking personally, I'd just as soon see WotC publish books set in specific time periods of the past, allowing the Spellplague and their time jump to remain in the future of the setting as far as I was concerned. They can publish sourcebooks for that future, too, and those who like that setting better can buy those.

But in all conscience, I cannot logically agree that two periods seperated by an apocalypse and more than a century of time are the same setting. Just as a Cold War game and a Civil War game aren't set in the same game setting, nor are two games set in a fictional world during different periods. They may happen in the same world at different points in history, but they are very different and appeal to different people.

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Jeremy Grenemyer
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Posted - 29 Mar 2012 :  23:57:14  Show Profile Send Jeremy Grenemyer a Private Message
I think we all get that the Realms of the 1400s are different than those of the 1300s, but to suggest that these two eras are so completely different as to be two different campaign settings—and therefore unusable on the level of borrowing from one for the other—is to elevate the argument far too high.

Infinitely detailed cohesiveness presented through the medium of a published Realms product is not, as you seem to suggest, the minimum level of design work that must be done before one can suggest two different eras of the Realms are similar enough to be considered part of the same campaign setting.

As much as we all might like that level of detail, it’s both impractical and impossible.

Cohesiveness comes from consistency. Consistency comes from noting prior lore and, when developing it (whether that be so little as one event or so much as one century passing), keeping the new material in line with the old, while allowing for the very unavoidable fact that with time comes change.

The recent Cormyr articles show explicitly how post-Spellplague Cormyr is linked with pre-Spellplague Cormyr. The one is consistent with the other, while each is clearly their own place, in their own time, populated by their own NPCs and therefore different.

A designer need not concern him or herself overmuch with what’s going on in Sembia (though recent Cormyr source material does this; they are, after all, neighbors who have fought from time to time) so much as he or she needs to work on keeping Cormyr consistent with Cormyr.

If we carry your logic to its full extent, then we can say that because everything is linked together, but no thought has gone into considering the extreme level of detail between eras, this means each era of the Realms is in fact a different setting.

However, by doing so we overlook a very simple, but entirely salient truth about the Realms: it has always changed over time (and significantly so), yet we call anything prior to the 1300s era "the Realms" or “part of the Realms.”

Let’s not confuse the content of our perspective just because we now have the ability (through the post-Spellplague Realms) to look forward as well as backward.

Look for me and my content at EN World (user name: sanishiver).

Edited by - Jeremy Grenemyer on 30 Mar 2012 00:00:02
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore

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Posted - 30 Mar 2012 :  00:11:42  Show Profile  Visit Icelander's Homepage Send Icelander a Private Message
Of course every era is a seperate setting, just like a campaign in Ancien Regime France is set somewhere very different from one in Napoleonic France, even though only a generation may have passed.

If I told my players to make character for a game set in 'the US', don't you think that they would have cause to be annoyed with me if I failed to specify whether that ought to be in the modern US, a post-apocapyptic future US, a 50s US with square-jawed heroes, atomic monsters and crazy scientists, a historical Civil War US, a Hollywood history Wild West US or something else?

All of the above are different settings, for all that they are all set in the same geographic area. Even if all the campaigns were strictly historical and without strange science or magic of any sort, they'd still all be set in different settings, because the people, culture, current events, etc. are all different. They aren't suitable for the same kind of characters or stories.

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Azuth
Senior Scribe

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Posted - 30 Mar 2012 :  00:16:06  Show Profile  Visit Azuth's Homepage Send Azuth a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Apex

@Azuth

You are clearly mixing changes to 2nd edition AD&D with the Forgotten Realms. The assassin was eliminated as a class with the advent of 2nd edition and the destruction of all Realms assassins was the (poor) in setting explanation for such. If you continued to play 1st edition, that likely didn't happen (or if you kept assassins in 2nd). As for wild mages, again you are confusing an optional class in the Tome of magic with the Realms and wild magic and dead magic areas are some of the easiest ignored bits of lore out there as they are invisible and are not even drawn on the maps.

As for the gods, once again, ignoring the death of gods was extremely easy (again if your group so desired) and had essentially no impact on the game material published later being compatible with your campaign.

The big problem we have here is that the extreme geographical changes and the time jump make using lore from the 1470s virtually impossible for those who prefer the traditional Forgotten Realms over the Shattered version. I hope that they are able to craft supplements that apply to all eras and i applaud Erik for giving it a go, I am just somewhat skeptical of the success of such an endeavor from a business perspective.




I know many people who still use the 2E maps. That requires no effort on the part of the DM. Wild and Dead Magic occurred because of the death of Mystra. They were further detailed in the Tome of Magic, but that work was not specific to FR.

Azuth, the First Magister
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Markustay
Realms Explorer extraordinaire

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Posted - 30 Mar 2012 :  01:20:21  Show Profile Send Markustay a Private Message
After a few more pages of back-and-forth, the only thing I know for sure is that I am just going to have to "wait and see".

We can discuss this until we are all blue in the face, but until we see some actual 5e products, all we are doing is taking educated guesses based on some interviews and articles. You can't make an informed opinion until you have something viable in your hands (or on the net, as the case may be these days).

Until then, I just can't seem to wrap my head around the 'support for all eras' thing, so I will stop trying to and simply wait... and see.

"I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me" --- Dudley Field Malone

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Erik Scott de Bie
Forgotten Realms Author

USA
4598 Posts

Posted - 30 Mar 2012 :  01:45:08  Show Profile  Visit Erik Scott de Bie's Homepage Send Erik Scott de Bie a Private Message
@MT: Well, you could just trust me. :D

Cheers

Erik Scott de Bie

'Tis easier to destroy than to create.

Author of a number of Realms novels (GHOSTWALKER, DEPTHS OF MADNESS, and the SHADOWBANE series), contributor to the NEVERWINTER CAMPAIGN GUIDE and SHADOWFELL: GLOOMWROUGHT AND BEYOND, Twitch DM of the Dungeon Scrawlers, currently playing "The Westgate Irregulars"
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Eilserus
Master of Realmslore

USA
1446 Posts

Posted - 30 Mar 2012 :  02:26:59  Show Profile Send Eilserus a Private Message
A sourcebook set in the past, say 712 DR like that old map in the grey box set has would be cool. I'd love to see a new "wilderness" setting where Cormyr and Sembia are just getting started and Cormanthor. Allokair and Hlontar, Netherese survivor states etc. I'd dig an Arcane Age era dwarf book too. :)
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Old Man Harpell
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Posted - 30 Mar 2012 :  02:33:24  Show Profile Send Old Man Harpell a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Erik Scott de Bie

@MT: Well, you could just trust me. :D

Cheers


Trusting you isn't the issue. That's something that presents no problem for people here, even those who don't always agree with what you're saying.

The problem is trusting WotC. If they stuck you in charge, hey, that'd be ducky. Problem solved, trust issue resolved. Will they do that? Unlikely (at best).

- OMH
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Ayrik
Great Reader

Canada
7966 Posts

Posted - 30 Mar 2012 :  03:01:49  Show Profile Send Ayrik a Private Message
I am reminded of one of Collin's articles about setting-building I read in Dragon #93. One of his core ideas was to produce several time-separated maps of the same region. Showing how names, borders, invasions/migrations, wars, and such things change the land sort of writes half the history for you. I'm hoping the Realms design team at WotC reads old Dragon issues.

Coincidentally, this would require multiple sets of maps useful for each period in Realmslore history. Fresh colourful new maps sharing unified scales and units, with all the familiar old features exactly where they're expected to be located, "untainted" by offensive material ... that alone would make it completely worth purchasing new Realms products, even if someone chose to ignore and burn one quarter of the pages.

[/Ayrik]
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Eilserus
Master of Realmslore

USA
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Posted - 30 Mar 2012 :  04:01:07  Show Profile Send Eilserus a Private Message
World maps set during the height of Delzoun or the Shoon Imperium or any other number of other great times in history...yeah i'd be all over that like a hobo on a ham sammich too!
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Azuth
Senior Scribe

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Posted - 30 Mar 2012 :  05:37:47  Show Profile  Visit Azuth's Homepage Send Azuth a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Eilserus

World maps set during the height of Delzoun or the Shoon Imperium or any other number of other great times in history...yeah i'd be all over that like a hobo on a ham sammich too!



I'd like to say that aside from supporting this idea whole-heartedly, we're now expressing ideas not only on which we can agree, but that aid in the purpose of this thread. This type of discussion engenders more such discussion. What about a basic "cardboard" foldable Realms-map a-la things like a Monopoly board, albeit more expandable? Perhaps several of them, even including some miniatures?

Cheers,

Azuth


Azuth, the First Magister
Lord of All Spells

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Offense can never be given, only taken.
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Erik Scott de Bie
Forgotten Realms Author

USA
4598 Posts

Posted - 30 Mar 2012 :  08:17:51  Show Profile  Visit Erik Scott de Bie's Homepage Send Erik Scott de Bie a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Old Man Harpell

quote:
Originally posted by Erik Scott de Bie

@MT: Well, you could just trust me. :D
Trusting you isn't the issue. That's something that presents no problem for people here, even those who don't always agree with what you're saying.
The problem is trusting WotC. If they stuck you in charge, hey, that'd be ducky. Problem solved, trust issue resolved. Will they do that? Unlikely (at best).
- OMH
I meant trust me that my technique *is* possible. But I appreciate the vote of confidence.

Cheers

Erik Scott de Bie

'Tis easier to destroy than to create.

Author of a number of Realms novels (GHOSTWALKER, DEPTHS OF MADNESS, and the SHADOWBANE series), contributor to the NEVERWINTER CAMPAIGN GUIDE and SHADOWFELL: GLOOMWROUGHT AND BEYOND, Twitch DM of the Dungeon Scrawlers, currently playing "The Westgate Irregulars"
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Jorkens
Great Reader

Norway
2950 Posts

Posted - 30 Mar 2012 :  10:45:47  Show Profile Send Jorkens a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Tarlyn
The merge between 2ed and 3ed was even easier to ignore. It was add Shade or don't.



Old maps made redundant, gods returning, shade, new races hopping around, drow all over the place, Red Wizard enclaves, new rulers in Sembia and Cormyr, new classes etc. I could go on. there were plenty of changes to like/dislike.

As for the dislike of ToT being revisionist Apex, a quick look at a more conservative site like Dragonsfoot will show you that that's wrong. A lot of people were disillusioned with FR, but the sales might not have suffer as new players were added through 2nd ed.

And as for 4ed. being useful. The only rule is whether you like it or not. No matter what the source. WotC would just have to make something I like and would use for me to buy it, but I don't hold my breath, as I gave up in the middle of the last edition. But the Elminster book is a nice surprise so anything can happen.

That reminds me what I would really like to see in a parallel dreamworld.

A new series of source books. The Realms of Ed Greenwood, the Realms of Steven Schend, the Realms of Erik Scott de Bie etc. a series of books that gave us the Realms as each writer imagines it, without there being thoughts of crossing lore or threading in each others territory. I would buy each of them and am perfectly able to see that that will never happen.

No Canon, more stories, more Realms.
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore

1864 Posts

Posted - 30 Mar 2012 :  13:23:36  Show Profile  Visit Icelander's Homepage Send Icelander a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Erik Scott de Bie

I meant trust me that my technique *is* possible. But I appreciate the vote of confidence.

Cheers


"Trust, but verify."

More broadly, doubting the feasibility of a proposed method needs not imply lack of trust in the proponent, only less sanguinity than him.

As a mental exercise and proof of concept, can you write a short segment that serves as an example for era-neutral lore* that is useful to people playing at any time between 1350 DR to 1470+ DR in a given area of the Realms? If you'd rather not put anything here that you might later want to use in a writer's submission to WotC, you could use a real-world location that you know well as an example.

Can you write about the political situation of any town, village, city or region in a way that it remains useful and relevant for a century? Or about their economy in the same way?

I'm certain that I could not do it. That is, anything I wrote that aimed to reflect a whole century at once would either be wrong for most of the time or so broad as to be useless. As I said earlier, I doubt very much that anyone can do it without falling into the same trap, because the only constant in any field of human endeavour is change. But I acknowledge the possibility that I am wrong and it is possible, using some method of which I had not thought.

*Preferably something other than the broadest of broad outlines that inevitably will be truly era-neutral, i.e. the names and descriptions of certain geographic features and a history blurb summarising the past of the region until the 1300s.

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Erik Scott de Bie
Forgotten Realms Author

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Posted - 30 Mar 2012 :  16:05:13  Show Profile  Visit Erik Scott de Bie's Homepage Send Erik Scott de Bie a Private Message
@Icelander: Not to be obtuse, but fantasy works differently from the real world. We have seen that the Realms tends to change less over time than our world does (and our world changes less than we think it does anyway), at least in certain ways. The key is to find what is recognizable/iconic about a region and describe that--show DMs how to run a campaign in that setting. And also provide Realmslore for those who are using it for that purpose.

And I would love to come up with a specific example, if I had the free time to do it. I'm WAY pushing the bounds of my forums time as it is. It's tough to balance a full time day job, a full time night job, AND advocate for this kind of thing. We'll see what I can do.

Also there is of course the consideration that WotC likes to hold its cards close to the vest, and if I post too much stuff now, the chances of it getting actually published diminish.

I'm hoping, in fact, to write a DDI article along these lines, whose concept is currently under consideration by the powers that be. One can look at Cormyr Royale combined with the Backdrop: Suzail article (though admittedly that's focused on a particular era) as an example. Going that extra step toward era-neutral is not too great a leap.

If you look at the Neverwinter Campaign Guide, and took out some of the PCs mentioned in the locations (i.e. bartenders, etc.) then you can get a sense of what the product might look like. Remember, it's a guide to running a campaign in that region, you pick the era.

Cheers

Erik Scott de Bie

'Tis easier to destroy than to create.

Author of a number of Realms novels (GHOSTWALKER, DEPTHS OF MADNESS, and the SHADOWBANE series), contributor to the NEVERWINTER CAMPAIGN GUIDE and SHADOWFELL: GLOOMWROUGHT AND BEYOND, Twitch DM of the Dungeon Scrawlers, currently playing "The Westgate Irregulars"

Edited by - Erik Scott de Bie on 30 Mar 2012 16:23:53
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Jeremy Grenemyer
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Posted - 30 Mar 2012 :  16:52:22  Show Profile Send Jeremy Grenemyer a Private Message
Ayrik's point earlier reminds me of some ideas I had for a Cormyr sourcebook: one that discusses Cormyr from a historical point of view, showing all the smaller kingdoms and castles of petty, independent lords Cormyr had to fight and absorb, along with maps showing Cormyr's slow expansion, the reduction and clearing of the forest and so on.

Look for me and my content at EN World (user name: sanishiver).
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore

1864 Posts

Posted - 30 Mar 2012 :  17:51:27  Show Profile  Visit Icelander's Homepage Send Icelander a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Erik Scott de Bie

@Icelander: Not to be obtuse, but fantasy works differently from the real world. We have seen that the Realms tends to change less over time than our world does (and our world changes less than we think it does anyway). The key is to find what is recognizable/iconic about a region and describe that.

I disagree with the idea that the Realms change less than our world*.

Places I've used a lot in my campaign include Ravens Bluff, Tantras, Calaunt, Saerloon, Westgate, Urmlarspyr, Reth and Unther. At the beginning of the 1300s, less than half of these places had their present form of government.

Calaunt had newly been conquered by an adventuring band in 1350s who ruled as the new nobility. What was here before is simply unknown and pretty much everything known about the city and everything that made it Calaunt is less than a decade old then.

Westgate has gone from a city of merchants, if corrupt, to a city ruled by a thieves guild. That thieves guild, a huge part of the western Inner Sea by the 1360s, didn't exist before 1353 DR. For that matter, Westgate was a monarchy until a century before that. The Night Masks, in turn, went from a nascent thieves guild to behind-the-scenes rulers in about ten years. Then it was almost destroyed and then a new organisation, with the same name but zero continuity of leadership, long-term goals or much else, replaced it within another five years. The same time also saw the nobles in the city change immensely, with Cormyrean exiles becoming dominant among them.

Even the places where there was no on-screen change in form of government haven't remained much the same. In the ca 20 years that have passed from 1e to the end of 3.5e, Sembia has gone through civil war that devastated most of it and led to it becoming a protectorade of Shade. Reth would come to fall under the Zhentarim and Bane, at least judging from hints in Cloak and Dagger, though it was not followed up much in 3e. It did come to be ruled behind the scened by an evil wizard (in a land distinguished chiefly by hatred and distrust of wizards), suffer a zombie apocalypse and political upheaveal which rendered most issues of the 1350s moot and irrelevant. Aside, of course, from changing countries from Chessenta to Chondath.

In 1330, not even a lifetime before the start of play in my campaign, Ravens Bluff was still ruled by feuding traditonal aristocrats, had no special tradition of welcoming independent adventurers and resembled the modern city in few ways. In place of the centralised bureaucracy, appointed by elected officials, there were a few nepotic appointees of aristocratic families who lacked all power to overrule any noble.

The military and watch had no resemblance to their modern form and did not really exist, as each noble had their own forces. There was a tradition of hiring foreign mages to fight rival families. The temples were not part of the government in any way and neither beholden to it nor supportive of it, instead lending their strength to individual nobles or remaining aloof.

From what best I can tell, the economic pillars of the city at that time were land ownership and acriculture. All foreign trade and industry larger than singleton craftsmen appears to have been under firm noble control, which probably meant that real wages in the city were less than half what they are in the modern era, which alone is enough to account for massive social change.

Any attempt to make a statement about culture, politics, 'feel', adventure hooks, who is who, allegiances among powers in the city, government, laws, economy or pretty much anything else would apply only to the city as it was or the city as it became after the Championship Games. Pretty much anything that makes Ravens Bluff unique and gives it any kind of iconic feel, whether that's the complex political struggle between landed nobles, mercantile nobles and common-born merchants, with adventurers on all sides willy nilly, the demographic oligarchy where elections consists of pledges of money for the supported candidates, the large concentration of adventurers that make the city their home base or nearly anything else, will date from some time after 1330 DR.

Tantras, while not quite so transformed in one generation, has gone from a place where Torm was popular to the center of the Tormtar faith in Faerun. Not enough canon has been published on the city in the aftermath of the Time of Troubles, but odds are that this has had a profound effect in all areas there. While the Tormtar had a representative on the ruling council before, only after the ToT is that council dominated by him, instead of by the noble families.

Just the addition of a dead-magic zone covering a third of the city means that in addition to whatever it was before, it has now become a sort of refuge for anyone with magical foes. Not to mention that anything of a fantastic nature that previously took place in that part of Tantras either no longer exists or has moved, whether to another city or a different part of Tantras. This means wizards, temples other than Torm, minor alchemists and hedge magicians, etc.

Unther, uh, Unther. Pretty much nothing is the same there. The Unther of the early 1300s was caught in a terrible plague that lasted for years. It was also a repressive theocratic dictatorship defined by the contrasts between decadent luxury enjoyed by a tiny ruling elite (and a non-ruling traditional noble class mostly politically irrelevant unless connected with the clergy) and the squalor of the common folk and the terrible fate of the slaves. Xenophobia was widespread and strict laws limited opportunities for foreigners. Despite this, merchants for a foreign background made up much of the small middle-class.

Compare that to the Unther of the 1350s, where the dictatorship was gradually losing control over outlying regions. Messemprar went from a city ruled by the theocracy to a chaotic city without rulers to city besieged by mercenaries under the theocracy while riven by internal factionalism to city besieged by Chessentan forces led by a formerly Untheri deity bitterly opposed to the theocracy to free city in a theocracy-in-name-only after the death of Gilgeam. That took a grand total of some 20 months.

In the decade and half after that, Unther has gone from having a bunch of competing local governments with little to unify them except a former allegiance to a dead god to having Mulhorandi dominion, religious, military and cultural imposed on most of it. The free areas are ruled by factions that are as different as they are many.

Anything written to apply in the 1350s has no relevance any more except as historical data. The instead of the gods mentioned there, not one but two new pantheons have aggressively crusaded into there and attempted by force or persuasion to change pretty much everything about Unther. Politics gone through no less than three complete paradigm shifts, ranging from revolutions to the end of everything connected to the old regime to conquest to foreign 'assistance and advice'.

Few, if any, issues that once loomed large even matter any more, having been replaced by a whole new set of concerns. The important people of the past are mostly not important any more or at least not in the same ways. From rebel leaders they could be statesmen, dead, or servants of foreign powers. Where there was once isolation, now there is a stream of foreign influences.

Just to drive home how different modern Messemprar is from the old one is that the man mentioned in the FRCS as ruling it is not from Messemprar and had no connection to it in the 1350s (I think WotC made a mistake with the name, because him being there makes no sense as written, but it's canon nonetheless). In fact, more than two thirds of the people now there are refugees from somewhere else and bring with them issues that formed no part of the 1350s stuff about the city.

Over the 20 years of so of history covered by Realmslore before the 4e, pretty much all the areas I played in changed so much that an attempt to use the same text for politics, economics, current events, who is who or 'feel' would have been futile. Many of them changed many times over that period.

It doesn't specifically say for all of the above that changes in economic factors that lead to huge segments of the population changing jobs and old class barriers becoming outdated lead to social changes to match. Nor does it say that among results of fundamental changes in government such as revolutions or conquest is social change, new elites forming, old ones falling out of favour etc. Huge changes in attitudes, cultures, fashion and so forth are implied, but not often stated outright. In general, this is due to space constraints.

Detailed supplements like City of Ravens Bluff make it perfectly clear that there are deep generational divides between people and that very little of what the majority of modern citizens there take for granted is something that would have been accepted a generation or two ago. Ravens Bluff today feels very different from what it once was and there are characters in the sourcebook who are noted as deploring that, opposing it, favouring it, etc. It is very much not assumed to be a static place in any way.

On that basis and the basis that unless otherwise specified, one should assume that people in fantasy stories and settings remain people that one could theoretically understand and relate to in some way, I prefer to imagine that major upheavals regarding who owns wealth and who has authority over the population will tend to produce changes in thinking and culture as well.

And if 20 years has produced such a lot of changes in the published Realms, what reason do we have for thinking that five times as long would produce fewer changes? That massive catastrophes that alter the economic factors that led to a lot of cities being situated where they are wouldn't change things? That the collapse of the international trade that supported the high level of civilisation seen in the 1300s hasn't led to changes everywhere?

My personal impression, gained from all Realmslore I've read and every answer I'd read Ed give, is that the Realms change at least as fast and as unpredictably as the real world because they are meant to feel real. WotC is morally free to change it, and to some extent, appear to want people to apply it as an unspoken premise of their 4e Realmslore.

Speaking as a consumer and from what I know about the setting, however, establishing as a fact some mechanism whereby the Realms did not have realistic people or societies or at least that a major facet of them from our world was absent would be regarded by me as an interpretation emphathically not supported by Ed's lore or sourcebooks published during the TSR era. It would thus amount to retroactive continuity on the part of WotC.

Even were I prepared to accept ret-cons (which I'll do if all other alternatives are worse), this one would be, in my opinion, a very bad one. It would adversely affect my aesthetic appreciation for the setting and the utility I have from publications set in it. To me, genres are relatively unimportant, in that I'll read stories and see movies where there is magic or future technology without worrying about whether I like science-fiction or fantasy. These are superficial things and often closer to each other than purists of one form will admit.

The thing I care about in all kinds of fiction is that it should be about people and that the people, regardless of what kind of rubber-masks they wear in the setting and what kind of wonders surround them, should be relatable and interesting. A blanket admission that people in a given setting, singularily or collectively in societies, are so different from people in our world that methods for studying them and even an intuitive sense of empathy is not applicable strikes me as a way of making stories about people very difficult to tell or enjoy.

Different cultures I'll buy, but cultures which aren't subject to some form of the stresses and factors which we know cause massive social changes would seem to be very difficult to care about. There is a reason for the tendency of fiction writers to have the characters and their societies be somewhat human-like, even if the antagonists and some secondary characters are not. It's because a story about hive-mind with no individual sense of identity or some other equally alien character concept and resulting society would make it very difficult to have relatable characters.

Human societies are complicit emergent systems with a sensitive dependence on initial conditions. In layman's terms, a small change to just one thing may end up having enormous effects on a wide variety of other things and there is no viable method of predicting these changes over a long period of time other than having them occur or running a perfect simulation. Every factor can in some way influence every other factor and feedback loops are frequent and may come into existence and stop being a factor in a manner equally unpredictable and mutable.

This is the nature of human societies and it is a direct consequence of the individuality of humans, their ability to make what seem to be decisions with and without input and their potential awareness of all the factors involved and ability to change their decisions based on their imperfect predictions. As long as humans are self-aware, apparently free-willed and intelligent, the above will be true about human societies.

I don't think I'd particularly want to read fiction where it wasn't, except possibly to explore a neat philosophical idea. I certainly don't want to play in an RPG setting where it isn't true, because that would remove such a lot of great potential for conflict, goals and stories. Societies in transition or upheaval tend to make for very good places to set stories and they allow for both great danger and great opporunities, with PCs being able to have the social mobility that is so often a goal for players (because it's a classic story and a very good one).

The Realms I know and love are always changing, with not only families, but kingdoms rising and falling. I thought I had noticed a tendency on the part of WotC to simultaneously increase the pace of external changes to the Realms (resulting from some great magical catastrophe outside the affected societies) and decrease or try to freeze the constant internal societal change that Ed always conveyed in his material. I was hoping this was accidental and caused by a few designers being less competent than they ought, not a deliberate design choice. I still hope and my impressions in this area will influence whether I decide to buy anything published by WotC.

*For that matter, I also disagree with the idea that our world is less mutable than we think. The more I learn about the past, the better I can see that whenever something seems to have stayed the same for a long time, it's because I previously had a very superficial understanding of it. To someone with more information, things are constantly changing. Generation gaps aren't just a modern phenomenon.

Cicero and Caesar were product of their times as much as we are and their fathers and grandfathers had a way of looking at the world that was very much at odds with their own and the same applied to the next generation and the one after that. Any statement about the culture, views, fashion, habits, laws or politics of the Roman Republic is likely to be either so broad as to be useless or apply only to a short period of time.

Behaviour that was actually a capital crime in the time of the great Caesar's grandfather was a la mode for the young in his time and commmonplace among most everyone by the time his son was executed by his legal heir and the Republic came to an end.


quote:
Originally posted by Erik Scott de Bie

And I would love to come up with a specific example, if I had the free time to do it. I'm WAY pushing the bounds of my forums time as it is. It's tough to balance a full time day job, a full time night job, AND advocate for this kind of thing. We'll see what I can do.


Understood. I can definitely symphathise with that. I likewise tend to waste far too much time on chattering posts and do far too little of the more sustained tasks I'd like to to, as regards Realmslore.

And I'm only looking for a job and getting my accredidation now, which isn't nearly as much work as what I have to do when I become that harassed and overworked animal, the new associate.

Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela!

Forgotten Realms fans, please sign a petition to re-release the FR Interactive Atlas

Edited by - Icelander on 30 Mar 2012 17:52:35
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Erik Scott de Bie
Forgotten Realms Author

USA
4598 Posts

Posted - 30 Mar 2012 :  18:08:30  Show Profile  Visit Erik Scott de Bie's Homepage Send Erik Scott de Bie a Private Message
Sigh. There are certain iconic things that remain the same. There is more than enough structure that a designer can apply over various periods, and provide information about how things change as time goes on.

The Realms has reached a point where there are three choices:

1) Evolve into something different: This was attempted with the 4e FR, but that appears to have failed.

2) Stagnate and die: If we get stuck in the attitude that everything we design has already been done in the Realms, then there's nothing to do. The setting is at an end.

3) Turn what has gone before into strengths and move forward. Open up the setting to all different eras of play, and expand outward from all of them.

#3 is VERY VERY possible. I really wish I could show you an example, but I just can't, for the reasons I've listed. Realms sourcebooks going forward need to capture evolving cities, and get away from a snap-shot about what goes down at any particular time.

Cheers

Erik Scott de Bie

'Tis easier to destroy than to create.

Author of a number of Realms novels (GHOSTWALKER, DEPTHS OF MADNESS, and the SHADOWBANE series), contributor to the NEVERWINTER CAMPAIGN GUIDE and SHADOWFELL: GLOOMWROUGHT AND BEYOND, Twitch DM of the Dungeon Scrawlers, currently playing "The Westgate Irregulars"
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
Moderator

USA
36779 Posts

Posted - 30 Mar 2012 :  18:31:30  Show Profile Send Wooly Rupert a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Erik Scott de Bie

#3 is VERY VERY possible. I really wish I could show you an example, but I just can't, for the reasons I've listed. Realms sourcebooks going forward need to capture evolving cities, and get away from a snap-shot about what goes down at any particular time.

Cheers



Why? Keeping a flow of source material, whether sourcebooks or magazine/online articles, and novels gives you an evolving setting. Sure, each sourcebook is going to be a snapshot, but other material building on that snapshot gives the evolution.

Even a movie is just a whole bunch of snapshot. It's seeing all of those snapshots that makes it something more than a static image.

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Jorkens
Great Reader

Norway
2950 Posts

Posted - 30 Mar 2012 :  19:07:20  Show Profile Send Jorkens a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Erik Scott de Bie

Sigh. There are certain iconic things that remain the same. There is more than enough structure that a designer can apply over various periods, and provide information about how things change as time goes on.

The Realms has reached a point where there are three choices:

1) Evolve into something different: This was attempted with the 4e FR, but that appears to have failed.

2) Stagnate and die: If we get stuck in the attitude that everything we design has already been done in the Realms, then there's nothing to do. The setting is at an end.

3) Turn what has gone before into strengths and move forward. Open up the setting to all different eras of play, and expand outward from all of them.

#3 is VERY VERY possible. I really wish I could show you an example, but I just can't, for the reasons I've listed. Realms sourcebooks going forward need to capture evolving cities, and get away from a snap-shot about what goes down at any particular time.

Cheers



Grumbling a bit over nr 2 here Erik. Unless you agree that there is a 4th alternative it seems like you would suggest that Greyhawk, Mystara, Dragonlance various Chaosium settings etc have stagnated and died? Was Glorantha stagnant and dead after Avalon Hill, is every world based on a literary work dead and stagnant after the book is published? A setting might stop being published and still have a form of life. Nr2 makes it sound like that's impossible. Many people will of course prefer new material and a developing setting, but its been shown time and time that a setting survives as long as it has fans.

No Canon, more stories, more Realms.
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore

1864 Posts

Posted - 30 Mar 2012 :  19:26:01  Show Profile  Visit Icelander's Homepage Send Icelander a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Jorkens

Grumbling a bit over nr 2 here Erik. Unless you agree that there is a 4th alternative it seems like you would suggest that Greyhawk, Mystara, Dragonlance various Chaosium settings etc have stagnated and died? Was Glorantha stagnant and dead after Avalon Hill, is every world based on a literary work dead and stagnant after the book is published? A setting might stop being published and still have a form of life. Nr2 makes it sound like that's impossible. Many people will of course prefer new material and a developing setting, but its been shown time and time that a setting survives as long as it has fans.


From a business point of view, however, Erik is right. It doesn't matter to a publisher that people are still enjoying his old work. If they aren't buying new books from him, he's liable to go out of business.

I personally believe that there was plenty and more left to explore in the Realms of the 1370s, with not even half of the sourcebooks I would have wanted to see having been published. But if Erik thinks that there was nothing new left to publish without advancing the timeline or even if he just thinks that WotC saw things that way, he's right that WotC had to take some action to fix that.

I would have loved a constant stream of Volo's Guides that advanced the timeline extremely slowly for each lovingly detailed area, with years and years passing in our world for months in the Realms. But if most customers would not have been interested in such books, WotC had to publish books they could sell.

Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela!

Forgotten Realms fans, please sign a petition to re-release the FR Interactive Atlas
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