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Jan 1, 2013 -- 8:34AM, Gustaveren wrote:

There is also the Issue

My generation had a larger share of the generation participating in roleplaying games compared to the new generations of young roleplayers
My generation had a tendency to want high complexity high lore settings compared to the young generation there seem to want low complexity low lore settings, that is each roleplayer in my generation seem to have wanted and been willing to buy more books compared to the young generations of roleplayers:

Conclusion: WOTC have a major problem

Seems true, I'm afraid.  However, not all of Gen X and Gen Y/Millenials (I hate that name) ignore heavy lore based games.  The main group I've stuck with for a while love intense lore, granted they were mostly in the English, Philosophy, and Science departments.  At least we have Golarion, right?

Well, I have a candlekeep account and i have not bothered to vote in that poll
why should i?
I am not planning to buy 5e FR

The poll is still open by the way but still I am not going to vote in it

Well, the termination of 4e and investment in 5e is a clear indication that WOTC can not do without the purchasing from the oldtimers if they are to keep producing Forgotten Realms

The poll was made at a time were lots of old time FR fans had given up on the realms and on candlekeep that is they would not have noticed the poll
Additionally, the poll was answered by people there were looking at "what would be possible" and not at "what did they want themselves"
Performing a retcon is very very difficult because the fanbase is never going to agree on what year there should be the startyear
If you retcon will some people say 1e, or 2e or 3e or anything in between in order to include some events they like and exclude some events they hate.
Part of the vote was also: "I do not care"
Many old fans no longer care what happens to the realms in the 5e since it says them nothing

Well, I am 35 and if they had continued making FR without the spellplague and timejump would I still have been buying it decades from now as reading material / material for interesting analysis
Since it has the timejump and spellplague am I not going to buy it.

Candlekeep is hardly "the voice" of the FR Grognardia.  It is, in fact, a small segment of FR enthusiasts.

It lost people with the Time of Troubles.  It has lost people due to the ongoing RSEs over 2E and 3E.  It probably lost the largest number of enthusiasts when 4E Realms came out.  Candlekeep now is populated by a very small group of people who have all embraced the "moving forward" philosophy, and it's rare to see any dissenting opinion there that isn't immediately shot down by this tiny core group.  They avidly support the WotC staffers and freelancers who have (or are) working on the current Realms, and any disagreement is quickly shot down.

The vast majority of "old FR grognadia" are simply no longer represented at Candlekeep.  If some still lurk there, they're silent.

Personally, I weathered the Time of Troubles by ignoring it, or at least trying to.  Gods walking Faerun was an interesting concept, but it was horribly executed and the gods have never been the same since then.  Many susbsequent RSEs were never used or adopted into my personal Realms.

But I am a "collector," and an old-timer FR grognard by most people's definition.  I tracked down and bought everything FR-related that I could find from 1E and almost everything from 2E and 3E.  That is, quite literally, thousands of dollars.  I've not used it all in my games, but that's the nature of using supplements.

Despite having been a completionist collector, I totally rejected 4E Realms and still want nothing to do with it.  The 4E-period FR books and novels will never grace my shelves.  I've read them, and so I know what they involve, so I'm not simply rejecting it on a whim, some kind of principle, or identifying with the "4E hater" crowd.  I actually didn't mind the rules for 4E D&D, but the post-apocalyptic 4E Realms was a total shift in tone and utility - and therefore of zero interest to me.  I think the quality and direction of the 4E and later lore is just plain awful.

I've kept up-to-date on the plans for this new "Sundering" from Candlekeep and GenCon.  Keeping the 4E material firmly entrenched in FR history will make the 5E/Next Realms just as valueless and uninteresting to me.  A reboot to the end of 3.5E, or even better to 1E, is FR's only real hope IMO at this point.  The Sundering changes won't appeal to those who love 4E Realms, so it's very unlikely to keep those people around.  At the same time, the Sundering isn't going to return all the minor "flavorful" NPCs that were detailed in things like the Volo guides of 2E. 

At best, the Sundering will restore the geography to its earlier state.  It will also bring back Mystra (the worst version of her: Midnight-Mystra), and several of her Chosen, along with the near-immortal archmages and entities that many people considered problematic by the end of 3.5E.  It will most likely retain elements from 4E that fans of the 1E-3E period never asked for or wanted (e.g. spellscars, earthmotes, Gruumsh=Talos, the revisionist planar geography), yet "minimize" things like active pockets of Spellplague.  Most importantly, though, the Spellplague and Time Jump will still have happened, they'll be permanently ensconced in Realms history.  And yet we still won't know most of what happened during the Time Jump period of 100 years.  When you know more about a setting's pre-history than what happened in the past 100 years (other than "there were a couple cataclysms, but it's 'better' now than it was"), it's a serious problem.

Is this what I want from a 5E Realms?  No thanks.  If I hated 4E Realms why would I want a watered down version of it?  If the single best thing about the Realms IMO was the proliferation of "lore tidbits" and flavorful minor NPCs as originally described in 1E and the Volo guides of 2E, what really is waiting for me in 5E post-Sundered Realms?  Nothing. 

If I preferred the original gods (meaning: Bane, Bhaal and Myrkul) and disliked the ridiculous overlay of AO, why would I want to buy a post-Sundered 5E Realms where AO's revisionist world creation and Toril-twinning story has taken on major focus?  If I disliked the infusion of the 4E dragonborn (which replaced the better, earlier dragonborn of Bahamut), why would I want anything to do with Abeir and its primordials?

Nope, this new Sundering (yet another massive RSE) is exactly the wrong path to take for repairing the actual problems that the Realms developed over 2E-4E.  You'll have your set of superheroes returned in force (the overpowered Chosen, the plot-armored Harpers, etc.) and absolutely none of the best original features of the Realms (all the low-powered NPCs and their history) will come with them this time around.

I'm not even remotely interested.