In the Realms, the Time of Troubles was widely panned. They should’ve found a bit of spine and just developed a new one if they hated working with the Realms so much.Īdditionally… has any one of these setting reboots ever resulted in anything good? Greyhawk and From the Ashes is probably the most successful of these, in that it managed to garner enough popularity to create a rift in the fanbase that persists to this day. It bears so little resemblance to the old Forgotten Realms (except for Drizzt, who just keeps on going) that it’s really a different setting altogether. NPCs have died, organisations have changed, the pantheons have been extensively shuffled around and even the maps no longer apply. What they would do, if I were to accept and use their version of the setting, is render obsolete most of my former Forgotten Realms collection. They have failed to convince me that they are a good idea, that they make the setting somehow better. The problem with the changes of 4E is that they’ve failed to sell them. It’s easily among the best works of the 3E era. However, I can forgive this, because it’s a small thing to change back and the 3E FRCS is an awesome book in most other ways, and a textbook example of how to write a campaign setting. I don’t really mind slapping sorcerer levels on the Simbul, since that’s rules and a different issue entirely, but what really annoyed me was changing Eldenser, the Wyrm Who Hides in Blades from a gem dragon to a brass dragon. Now, in the 3E Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, there was some retconning going on as well. The dwarf pantheon was renamed from Morndinsamman to Moradinsamman. There’s a lot of retconning going on with the pantheon, too, with Talos suddenly being an aspect of Gruumsh, Sehanine being an aspect of Selûne, and suddenly it being the eladrin instead of the elves who were born of Corellon’s blood when he fought Gruumsh. After a great war between the primordials and the gods, the gods claimed Toril and the primordials took Abeir. In the 4E version, Abeir and Toril were originally different worlds. The name of the planet, Abeir-Toril, meant “The Cradle of Life”, according to the 2E campaign setting. Wikipedia actually has a handy article on the topic. The invention of the world of Abeir is a retcon. To contrast, the Spellplague that hit the Realms after the death of Mystra and brought about all this crap is storyline development. It is different from changing things by advancing the story. It comes from the words “retroactive continuity”, and means the changing of previously established facts in a work of fiction, saying “that’s how it always was”. “Retcon” is a term that’s been bandied about and misunderstood a lot in this particular conversation, so I’ll just go ahead and make sure that everyone’s on the same page here as to what it means. That could be termed false advertising, or just plain old bullshit. The only reason I know I didn’t dream it up is that I’ve seen other people reference it.), and a promise they were not going to retcon anything. Somewhere in there, we got a line about how the design team didn’t really like Forgotten Realms (I’d love to be able to source this, but have been unable to find the link again. The marketing screed was much like with 4E, except even more ridiculous, directly portraying the strengths of the setting as a problem they were going to solve – apparently, having depth and detail is a bad thing. When WotC announced the new edition of the Forgotten Realms was going to be moved a century into the future, I just knew it wasn’t going to end well. It oozes atmosphere, and it is a delight to weave the plot of a campaign into the setting, bringing elements of the background together to support it. I think the setting’s strength is in the depth of lore and the intricate details that bring it alive. I even thought some of them were good (Paul S. I own probably in excess of a hundred Forgotten Realms novels, and have read most of them. Now, let it be stated upfront that, unlike many other angry white males prowling the forums and chats of the internet, I like the Forgotten Realms. It’s also riddled with errors there are the ones he mentioned, and a cursory glance also reveals Candlekeep, Ankhapur and Veltalar, all described as cities by the sea, all drawn inland. Indeed, the quality of the poster map is one of the few things I agree with Martin Ralya on – it’s an ugly mess. You want objective, read Gnome Stew’s review. However, due to popular demand, a review copy being offered to me and me having nothing better to do with my time, I give to you… my unabashedly biased and uncensored opinion. Indeed, it was not originally my intention to ever touch this book. It was originally not my intention to review this book.
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