Howdy folks
Anyone know what the status of a Forgotten Realms campaign guide for 5E is? Not a specific release date or anything, just more general murmurings, even if it's just Mearls on twitter saying they're gonna start work on it after the DMG drops.
I'm asking mostly because I want to know what WOTC is doing fluff-wise to the setting; 4E boned up a lot of FR lore for me (though I had fun playing it) and I know 5E is backtracking to a degree, but I have a feeling that certain things aren't going away--particularly the tiefling and dragonborn material (and I'd presume genasi).
The Sundering is the intro into the 5E Forgotten Realms. As far as campaign books, they have nothing to announce. They have said that Forgotten Realms is their default setting, so it is a given they will produce setting books.
For more information on The Sundering hit this link.
I wish they'd say something about what they have planned.
They could at least tell is if they have a sourcebook planned and when it might come out.
Having big changes in the novel and then follow htat up with adventures without getting people caught up just seems...strange.
If I'm a new player to the Realms and I want to DM a new campaign..where do I go for information?
If I'm a lapsed fan coming back from an earlier editon, where do I go for information?
If I'm a 4e player or DM and I'm curious about the post-Sundering realms where do I go?
It's weird that they can communicate well about what's coming out now in terms of the core books but they can't be bothered to talk abou the Realms even though they are setting adventures there?
What setting info are they giving the freelancers to use as campaign background?
Why aren't they using the website to do more than pimp the novels and adventures?
Mike Mearls said they would not be turning out books as fast as they did before. He also said the RPG team was about half of the total 15 people working on the Dungeons and Dragons property. One of them said that they would use campaign books to push out additional optional rules. From here you can extrapolate.
Thanks for the feedback Torg_Smith.
The lack of knowledge is frustrating, but I actually like that they're not going to be pumping out a tons of stuff like a firehose, which is what I feel they did with 3E and 4E (and what I feel Pathfinder does); it sounds like WOTC is actually going for quality over quantity now.
I forgot to mention that Ed Greenwood has been doing Forgotten Realms articles here.
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Archive.aspx?category=all&subcategory=forgingtherealms
any word if there will be a return to Greyhawk?
or start a fresh setting?
Excuse my ignorance, but is this how it went...
3rd edition - further fleshes out the Forgotten Realms and greatly expands upon the 2nd edition setting.
4th edition - uses the Spellplague storyline where Abeir and Faerun (two separate planets) collide in some magical fashion and create an amalgamation of the two, in order to reboot the Realms and explain why we are just now introduced to races like the Dragonborn, even though they've supposedly been around as long as any of the other races. (just on a sister planet)
In between 4e and 5e - gamers have a fit over how different their beloved Realms has become and protest against how the geography of Faerun has changed in such a drastic and dramatic fashion.
5e - the creation of the Sundering storyline is used as an in-game, in-universe way to give a believable explanation as to how Wizards is returning the Forgotten Realms to it's 3rd edition, pre-Spellplague state in order to win back the 1e, 2e, and 3e players that didn't like the changes that the Spellplague and 4e made to the Forgotten Realms setting
This is just what I've tried to piece together, so excuse me if I'm mistaken. The last FR book I read was for 3.0. If I'm correct in my assumptions then Wizards was brilliant in not just simply bringing the setting back to the era most loved by it's fans (the pre-Spellplague Realms), but in making a huge event out of it (eg: novels , adventures, etc.) and in the end and by the start of 5e, the Realms are returned to their 3e glory. Am I correct about this? And if so, does this mean that the 5e Realms will be exactly the same as the 3e Realms, with just the Spellplague and it's undoing (the Sundering)as giant storylines in-between. Any information/education on this is much appreciated.
5e Realms will be further down the road in history, and the Spellplague days and the time when Returned Abeir was returned and not gone again, these are are a part of the history books that people will know post-Sundering. As we're later in time, anyone who isn't immortal or long-lived or such will probably be dead, making room for new figures to take the stage. In addition, not all the Genasi and Dragonborn from Abeir left with Abeir during the Sundering: you can imagine a sizeable portion of Dragonborn remain on Toril, to inhabit Faerûn. Tieflings are also a race that seemed to come more into the spotlight during the Spellplague days, and these are clearly around still since the Sundering – we even see one on the cover of a Sundering novel.
The geography is back to 3e, but that doesn't mean that a clock was turned back and we rewound to the era before the Spellplague. The Spellplague has left its mark. One thing I'm not clear on is how the Planes are going to be aligned, post-Sundering. Pre-Spellplague, Abeir-Toril's Planes were aligned in a Great Tree formation. After the death of a god, which set off the Spellplague, the planes reorganized themselves into the World-Axis formation that was used across all 4e Worlds. However, it's likely that they want to push Planescape's Great Wheel for 5e, and since Forgotten Realms is the core setting of 5e, I wouldn't be surprised if the Sundering somehow reshaped the World Axis planes into the Great Wheel cosmology. This is actually a pretty reasonable direction, since the Great Tree cosmology of 3e and earlier was actually more similar to the World Axis than to the Great Wheel, and yet, there are clearly Great Wheel elements in the World Axis (I believe during the previews of 4e, they talked about how the World Axis cosmology was basically, take the Great Wheel, smash it up into little pieces, and filter them through FR's Great Tree). It would be a natural step to go through the World Axis if you were transforming the Great Tree into the Great Wheel, so I wouldn't be surprised if we see the Great Wheel as the new cosmology used for Toril (only with two separate material planes, as per usual of Abeir-Toril).
Hope that helps.
Excellent synopsis. Thanks for getting me up to speed. 
Mike mentioned a ways back that they'd like to release the settings this time around with a timeline agnostic approach so there'd be enough information for folks to jump in at whatever point in the campaign world's previously published history they prefer and either play forward from there, or take off in totally new and different directions. He also hinted that he had a soft spot for Greyhawk in that same interview, so that sounds hopeful at least. I think it was one of the PAX presentations about D&D Next on youtube where he mentioned it? Too long ago now, sorry.
Well it's (still) Greyhawk for me after all these years, would be great if they could re-release even the old products just so i can get my hands on one that isn't about to turn to dust from age and use.
They do have pdf's of From The Ashes, Greyhawk Adventures and some of the 2e stuff as well on D&D classics now. Great scans too! I was especially psyched to finally have a good Darlene Map for reprint.
I'm very curious as to how the geography of Faerun will look for 5e, compared to 3e.
Having not read anything in regards to the Spellplague pre 4e or the Sundering post 4e, I have just a basic knowlege of events. Two worlds combine and later return to their individual states.
I realize we will be farther along in the timeline and that national borders, factions, and power structures will be somewhat different, but won't the basic land masses be returned to how they looked in 3e pre-Spellplague?
TheZigZagist wrote:
There have also been hints that Eberron and Dark Sun will get 5E support.
Angel7 wrote:
OMG... what happened!! lol
Just had my 3.5 Forgotten Realms map enlarged to 26 by 36 and had it dry mounted for a nice 5e wall display in the game room and to the tune of around 80 dollars. Abeir was supposed to leave quietly, not take 3.5 real estate !!! Should have done some research or read a bit of the Spellplague/Sundering first.
That'll teach me to jump.. 
Hi!
I'm curious too about what FR will look like... I actually started playin' (and likin') FR with 4th edition, then I started discovering what was hidin' before the spellplague..:
Anyway, even Hoard of the Dragon Queen can (theorically) take place during 3e FR... There's no need to be in the timeline "at all costs", especially since Mike stated that the new approach will be less focused on "timeline". Even the Gods are the "good old gods" of previous settings...
I guess even 2e FR will be playable. I find the adaptation from 3e FR a lot more convenient and easy than 4e... You can really take a look at a monster/npc sheet/prestige class and make your own class variant/npc version without the need of writing anything than a bunch of numbers.
So, I'll make an experiment: I have two campaigns running.
Campaign 1: 3e FR, treating the sundering as a "step back" in space-time;
Campaign 2: FR after Spellplague and then Sundering, with almost devastated parts of the world (as described I-don't-remember-where), the Thay Tzass Tamm massacre and so forth, 100 years after the death of Mystra.
I don't think that'll change that much (since none of us are really "FR experts"), but I'll let you know how it goes).
KK
King_Kaius wrote:
Yeah! And I feel like 3.x stuff is fully compatible and easy-to-adapt! For some reasons, I weren't able to translate 3rd edition stuff into 4th edition (which I like a lot, to be honest)... But there was a huge conceptual-pracrical gap...
Here I feel like 3rd edition material is more "familiar", both from a storytelling and actual-playing pov.