A new Tome episode is out and this time it's Ed Greenwood talking 4e, The Realms, Castlemourn, and more. Check it out...
http://thetome.podbean.com/2008/04/06/the-tome-ep-54-greenwood-ddxp/
I hope you enjoy.
Still one more DDXP Interview to be released, the last one will be with Gamer Zero and Blue...look for that next week.
Seriously, though, while this was a part of the broadcast, it was completely in jest.
Ed Greenwood spends the first portion of the show talking about the origin of the Realms, listing some authors that inspired him (I don't remember most of them, but he did mention that Lovecraft's "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" was a major inspiration).
For the second part of the program, Ed Greenwood responds to some criticism about the Realms. For example, he explains that Elminster isn't necessarily there just to get the PCs out of a jam, and he isn't necessarily the person who tells them, as he put it, "Oh, you need the Red Key to open that." Elminster, he explains, should be used more as a DM tool to provide hints if the PCs are stuck, or maybe to help them out if they bungle something through no fault of their own. Nevertheless, he doesn't just open the door an let them out. He might wander in, dispense some advice, disrupt a situation allowing the PCs to escape, ignore them completely, etc. It's really up to the DM. He also responds to criticism that the Realms has too much history and that it doesn't leave enough room for players to create their own stuff. Ed Greenwood explains that the history of the Realms is about a thousand miles wide and an inch deep, because it covers the whole world. He doesn't really explain what that means in too much depth, but I imagine he's probably referring to the fact that if your focus is on Unther, you don't need to necessarily know what's happening in Waterdeep. Also, while there's a lot of Realmslore, it mostly offers broad concepts, with very little detail, allowing players plenty of room to flesh it out with their own stuff. Finally, he points out that there's no reason players need to feel obligated to use the published material. If you say a character's shirt is red, and a player says that he read somewhere that it's green, Greenwood points out that you can always say "What are you going to trust? What you read in a book, or what you see right in front of your eyes?" I'm paraphrasing, of course, but that's basically what he said.
Next, he talked a little about the Spellplague. He didn't go into too much detail, because as he pointed out, he's not allowed to. However, he came up with a rather interesting analogy using guns, pointing out that you usually trust people- like military officers, policemen, and hunters- who own guns, because you have some reasonable assurance that they are trained to use them. However, imagine if the guns started all going off by themselves. Then suddenly, everyone who owns a gun is a threat that you want to stay as far away from as possible. That, he says, is basically what happens during the Spellplague. Suddenly, instead of wizards being viewed as helpers and friends, they are viewed with suspicion and fear, because of the cultural memory of what happened during the Spellplague. As he puts it, and again I paraphrase, "You don't trust a wizard anymore after the Spellplague, because he could do almost anything." He also eludes to the idea that while people may have survived the Spellplague, they may be changed in some way. For example, he points out that while he doesn't want to give too much away, it's possible that Elminster is still there, but he might be changed somehow. That's when the interviewer suggested that Elminster might be blue, and Greenwood, said "Yes, something like that," to which the interviewer responded, "You heard it here first, folks. Elminster might be blue in 4E!"
As part of the 4E discussion, Greenwood went into a little discussion about gnomes in Fourth Edition, stating that they still exist in the Realms, but that they prefer to be almost invisible to society, quietly working in the background. At one point he mentioned that they basically serve other races. What that means by that exactly, is a little unclear.
In closing, Ed Greenwood was asked who would win in a fight: Cthulhu or Elminster? Greenwood said that he thought Cthulhu would win, but that Elminster would probably pop back up unexpectedly. For example, Elminster would return and say something like "Where the devil is my tea? Oh it's probably somewhere underneath all this slime. Nevertheless I'm going to have my tea and then... do something."
I may have missed some stuff, but that's basically the gist of it. If I screwed anything up, or missed anything, please feel free to correct me. Just don't call me names while you're doing it.
He also responds to criticism that the Realms has too much history and that it doesn't leave enough room for players to create their own stuff.
This is patently ridiculous. Take a look at this Forgotten Realms campaign and tell me that the players aren't creating their own stuff there.
Which he said the history is very broad, but not much specific details.
Well the world does change, and obviously if the Earth wasn't the same after WW2, there is no way that the Realms will be the same after 100 years.
True, but does it have to take a hundred years to see the result of the Spellplague aftermath? We immediately saw what happens within 10 years post-WW2.
Yeah I do not agree with the huge time skip. It sounds mostly like WotC decided to get lazy and hit the reset button on Forgotten Realms instead of going through converting all of the Iconic characters that populate the realms.
And from what I heard, the 4e rules will apply to the new time period and on, not before. Kind of ironic since the 4e-based Star Wars Saga rules can be played in ANY time period of the Star Wars Universe, including the upcoming KOTOR Campaign Guide.
Yeah I do not agree with the huge time skip. It sounds mostly like WotC decided to get lazy and hit the reset button on Forgotten Realms instead of going through converting all of the Iconic characters that populate the realms.
Realisticaly, how much reprints of the old material that fans would want (and even dedicated fans have limits)? Which things are needing covering, now?
It's kind of inevitable, I guess...
Realisticaly, how much reprints of the old material that fans would want (and even dedicated fans have limits)? Which things are needing covering, now?
Just the crunch and many 2e books that have not yet converted to 3e rules, like the Elves of Evermeet (that includes the Elven Knight character kit).
Besides, what's an established setting without history? You know they say about ignoring history and doomed to repeat it.