I think you underestimated the effect of the spellplague. It ended every plotline, killed off almost all of the major characters, all of the minor characters, and for many it invalidated previous material.
I think you overestimate the effect of the Spellplague.
While the event itself was deleterious -(snip)
Please don't be pedantic. Many people use "the spellplague" as a catch-all for everything that happened in 4E Realms that collectively and dramatically changed the entire tone and feel of the setting. If this isn't obvious by now, especially given the context of the rest of his post, then I'm not sure what to tell you.
And you're right, to a degree: it is kind of pedantic to nitpick someone who's offering up a reason for why he or she thinks there's a low response level on this thread.
I think you underestimated the effect of the spellplague. It ended every plotline, killed off almost all of the major characters, all of the minor characters, and for many it invalidated previous material.
I think you overestimate the effect of the Spellplague.
While the event itself was deleterious to magic users and magic in general, it didn't "kill off" scores of major and minor characters.
The advancement of the timeline saw many NPCs pass away--as is quite natural for the passing of time--but there was no one deathstroke that slew all in an instant. Nor was their an edict proclaiming "in the 4E Realms, thou shalt not use prior material."
No, but I think there was something of a proclamation "thou shalt not write prior novels". I've been hoping for more of the Knights of Myth Drannor books, mostly to no avail. I really hope Mr Greenwood can pick those up again some time and has an interest to do so.
I don't mind playing D&D in the realms. It's still a fairly comfy home for gaming, because my mind imagines really, what I'd mostly expect it to.
The novels though, well I can't say. I've bought a few on recommendations from others. I just havent been able to make myself start them. I read the short desriptions on the back, and the stories don't call out to me. I don't know why that is. Once upon a time, I was hard pressed to read fantasy that /wasn't/ from the Realms or Dragonlance. Now that's mostly reversed for some reason. Maybe it's that I tend to prefer stories about warriors and rogues than I do stories about magic users, and most of the new 4e stuff seems to be stories about magic users.
I definitely dislike all the "special races" hogging the limelight. At heart, I'm a Tolkein guy. Anything more then Elves, Dwarves, humans halflings, etc...core races...is just distracting.
"Everything that happened" does not include, "It ended every plotline, killed off almost all of the major characters, all of the minor characters." You want less pedantry. I want less hyperbole.
For something to count as hyperbole, it has to be a dramatic overestimation. The time advancement (aka "100-year empty hole of non-events") did actually get rid of almost every NPC detailed up to that point. Whether you say "killed off" or "made everyone die of natural causes with no follow-through" that's just semantics. Functionally, all those NPCs are dead and buried. Functionally, it's the same as killing everyone off.
Except for Drizzt, some of Mystra's Chosen, and a few long-lived/immortal types, they're all dead.
You have to remember, the designers at the time told everyone they should wrap up their campaigns and advance those 100 years. I was on the forums at the time. I saw the 4E transition articles. I can't even begin to imagine the number of home campaigns that this affected, but based on the angry response it was a lot. If you wanted to advance your game along with the "living story" of the Realms, you had to close up campaigns and wave goodbye to the massive amount of home-generated detail that every DM had created.
So the spellplague/timejump didn't just kill off (sorry, I meant dead-ify) all of the lower level NPCs that we had collected and used from 1E-3E (volo guides, splatbooks, guides, online references, even some novels), it also managed to dead-ify almost all the NPCs you'd created as a DM unless you'd made special arrangements for their immortality, sucked them into a time portal, etc.
It's not hyperbole.
Yes, you can take NPCs from old books that you haven't used and plop them into 4E. If you're starting a whole fresh game and maybe didn't play in the 2E or 3E era, you can certainly take NPCs you never used before and plop them down into your 4E Realms. But how many DMs and players have that option? Most people who used the Realms aren't new to it. They've used the 1E-3E NPCs in their campaigns, so those NPCs are dead if their player groups have transitioned to the 4E Realms. That's a LOT of dead NPCs in a whole LOT of campaigns around the world. This was not a small thing that happened, so you can't say that it's some kind of overestimation when someone says something true.
To start (and to make a desperate stab at keeping this wall of text I’m about to unleash at least mildly on topic -- sorry Caolin) I probably should have considered how people who only read novels felt before I made my first post in this thread.
A few years back Iluvrien (from these forums) helped me to appreciate the point of view that novel readers don’t have the same luxury of flexibility that DMs have in their campaigns when it comes to handling characters depicted in Realms fiction, but I forgot that lesson.
Jorunhast, I’ll be re-ordering some of your comments. I trust you can follow along.
Whether you say "killed off" or "made everyone die of natural causes with no follow-through" that's just semantics.
No. One is correct, the other is a bad word choice or, more often then not, equal parts hyperbole and an accusation that assumes bad intentions (this would be something of a corollary to your comment earlier, about how the term “Spellplague” is properly used and understood nowadays).
Functionally, all those NPCs are dead and buried. Functionally, it's the same as killing everyone off.
Based on your oft-repeated anti-4E Realms commentary, I’m pretty sure you don’t play in the 4E Realms. It follows you play in earlier eras (if you still play at all). How do you get along without any NPCs since, functionally, they’re all dead and buried?
Facetiousness aside, your statement simply isn’t true (despite your detailed effort to prove it below).
For something to count as hyperbole, it has to be a dramatic overestimation. The time advancement (aka "100-year empty hole of non-events") did actually get rid of almost every NPC detailed up to that point. (…snip and reattach&hellip Except for Drizzt, some of Mystra's Chosen, and a few long-lived/immortal types, they're all dead.
Yes, a timeline advancement means lots of beings will die and others will take their place. This provides a net increase of available NPCs for DMs to use, but we’ll ignore that for now.
Of more importance is the fact that the list of “every NPC detailed” is huge, which means it includes a large number of long-lived races and monsters. Off the top of my head: dwarves, elves, half-elves, many varieties of monsters (dragons, undead, aberrations), wizards, priests, those under the effect of magic or already trapped in stasis (an idea hardly new to the Realms).
In the modern era of the Realms, these NPCs are older, not dead.
So the spellplague/timejump didn't just kill off (sorry, I meant dead-ify) all of the lower level NPCs that we had collected and used from 1E-3E (volo guides, splatbooks, guides, online references, even some novels), it also managed to dead-ify almost all the NPCs you'd created as a DM unless you'd made special arrangements for their immortality, sucked them into a time portal, etc.
I remember seeing comments like this when 4E was announced. With respect, it’s just as wrong now as it was then.
You seem to be arguing that DMs—who have made a large number of NPCs for their campaign over time—all of a sudden are going to start complaining because they have to make more NPCs?
Also, your argument seems to imply that a DM has used every Realms NPC already in print (in all the sources you provided, of which there are easily several thousand) by the time the Spellplague hits.
In reality, most long-running campaigns will use no more than a fraction of them.
Those resources you named are far from being useless in the 4E era.
Yes, you can take NPCs from old books that you haven't used and plop them into 4E. If you're starting a whole fresh game and maybe didn't play in the 2E or 3E era, you can certainly take NPCs you never used before and plop them down into your 4E Realms. But how many DMs and players have that option?
All of them.
This includes re-using NPCs if you’re starting a game with all new players or if you’re running a game for a new group with one (or at most two) players from a previous game.
My current campaign (on pause for the holidays and because of work issues) uses the 3E rules and is set in Cormyr just after the war that saw Azoun IV fall.
I feel no obligation to play in 4E just because it’s the current era, I’ve made a ton of new NPCs to use and have borrowed heavily from the 4E era of the Realms (novels by Ed Greenwood mostly, plus Brian Cortijo’s recent Cormyr articles in Dragon and Dungeon) for NPC names and Cormyr info—about courtiers in the Royal Palace, Purple Dragon ranks and despicable nobles to pit against my players, amongst other things—and mixed it together with Volo’s Guide to Cormyr (2E) and (3E) adventures and gaming material I purchased, wrote and ran as part of a ten-years-running Realms campaign.
I really hope that in response you’re not going to tell me I’m not playing “in the Realms”.
Most people who used the Realms aren't new to it. They've used the 1E-3E NPCs in their campaigns, so those NPCs are dead if their player groups have transitioned to the 4E Realms. That's a LOT of dead NPCs in a whole LOT of campaigns around the world. This was not a small thing that happened, so you can't say that it's some kind of overestimation when someone says something true.
Wait, who are we supposed to be mad at for this carnage? WotC? Or DMs and their players?
You have to remember, the designers at the time told everyone they should wrap up their campaigns and advance those 100 years.
You’re right. They encouraged people—for the sake of playing the new D&D game, not just for keeping up with the Realms—to do this. However, that’s not the only options they gave. Far from it.
Like you, I was on the forums at the time. Unlike you (going out on a limb here) I sat through the 4E Gen Con presentations, where it was made pretty clear (just as it was online in the coming months after Gen Con) that DMs had the 100 year gap to play with. It was theirs to use to continue their older edition campaigns.
The designers weren’t just throwing people a bone here. They really did intend to give people as much time as possible to play in and didn’t discourage people from ignoring the Spellplague as step one in that process.
Additionally, you were presented with the option of advancing your own characters to the current time (though the lack of any workable rules conversion from 3E to 4E rules hampered this option) or simply playing the descendents of your PCs.
This last was the option my group chose, since we wanted to both continue our 3E game but also give the 4E rules a spin.
If you wanted to advance your game along with the "living story" of the Realms, you had to close up campaigns and wave goodbye to the massive amount of home-generated detail that every DM had created.
I think the idea of keeping up with the Living Story of the Realms is very important. You’ve hit on something that I think WotC either underestimated, overlooked or just plain forgot when the rolled out the 4E Realms.
I think WotC didn’t appreciate how connected lots of gamers were in one way or another to the Realms. I think this is why the time jump—however well intentioned—was so damaging, because it created a disconnect in terms of the story.
Though each DM’s Realms campaign is (and should be) different, lots of gamers like to feel at least some connection to the Realms and feeling like they’re part of the wider world they’ve read about in novels and sourcebooks, and I don’t think the FRCG and FRPG bridged that gap.
Since my group voted to continue our 3E game, but also start a 4E game 100 years in the future with some PCs descended from older PCs and the rest all new PCs, the questionI faced was the same one a lot of other DMs who were making a full transition to the 4E Realms did: how do I keep that feeling of “being in the Realms” if I move my game forward/play in the 4E Realms?
For me the answer certainly wasn’t to throw all my previous campaign work into the trashcan. I doubt it was for other DMs too.
In fact, absent any detailed support for the 100 year jump, the only thing I had to ground my players in the new Realms was our previous campaign. Granted, not all of my players cared about or wanted that Realms connection, but ultimately it made things easier for me because I had a base to work from.
And you know something, I enjoyed it.
For me it was something of a relief to start fresh, but still have a connection to what we did previously. I enjoyed playing the “what will my campaign in the Realms look like 100 years down the road?” mental exercise and envisioning NPCs as children in one era and adults in another, that both sets of PCs got to interact with.
I don’t think I’m alone in that sentiment.
By now it should be clear that DMs and players who voted to move their campaigns forward made that choice themselves. Nobody forced them to. Not all (or even most, I’ll wager) that did felt compelled to do so to keep up with the Realms. Some did because they had an interest in trying the new rules system and/or they were ready to take a break from their old campaigns. Some even played in both eras.
These campaign primarily lost access to NPCs that were human and previously used, while retaining access to thousands more NPCs spread across a wide array of Realms media, plus gaining access to hundreds more as new Realms products (sourcebooks, Dragon and Dungeon articles, and novels) became available, plus the opportunity to envision their campaign world with 100 years more history tacked onto it, meaning lots of surprises and developments and continuing storylines—especially if their campaign was already developed.
There were (and still are) a larger number of gamers who handled the transition or otherwise just didn’t care enough to let it bother them, because they understood that playing with the Realms doesn’t mean staying in lockstep with it.
Yes, the Spellplague sucked on many levels. However from a gaming standpoint this OMG THE SPELLPLAGUE=ALL DEAD! stuff is just so much defeatist hullaballoo.
Off to bed now. I reserve the right to edit this post when I wake up. Hopefully it gets the point across without driving anyone nuts.
The Forgotten Realms: It's an ugly baby, but damnit it's our ugly baby.
WotC, please don't wreck the Forgotten Realms a third time in order to introduce the latest version of the D&D rules.
Give us back 3rd Edition's Magic Television concept instead.
I would indeed like to see more novels. For me, however, they need to be by the correct authors. I have given up on them being set in my preferred time period. I have little hope, and no expectation whatsoever, of that.
Those authors who have sold me on novels set in the post-timejump period are Ed, Erik, Erin... and Rich. The Elminster series has been good, Erik is always superb, Erin is a new experience for me (but the ongoing book club is proving it to be a good new experience) and Rich's Blades of the Moonsea was also very enjoyable (although I still haven't really come to terms with The Last Mythal).
I have found it difficult to connect with other novels and stories that I have come into contact with set in this era. I do wonder if that isn't at least a small part of why this thread has been comparatively quiet. Others may have a similar difficulty.
Of course, another part might be the fact that these boards seem so quiet now. It certainly seems to be a different atmosphere this time around in comparison to the flurry of discussion (and argument) present for the 4E transition. Of course some of the more... vocal members of the community, as it existed then, have ceased to visit these boards in the intervening period.
Yes, the Spellplague sucked on many levels. However from a gaming standpoint this OMG THE SPELLPLAGUE=ALL DEAD! stuff is just so much defeatist hullaballoo.
And from the narrative/novel only (or even novel primary) point of view? This is, after all, a thread about WotC and the FR novels it produces. Of course, we have discussed this before. Interested parties could look up the previous conversations on the subject, I am sure.
My approach to the NPCs of previous editions. Spoiler:Show
I always saw the High Level NPCs as shepherds of the Realms not its defenders. Making sure that not too many sheep were lost as they milled around (as they are wont to do) and bringing on the young'uns into the job. In that way a shepherd never has time to go and hunt down all of the wolves but is pretty dashed effective at keeping them away from the sheep when they rear their heads.
"It was a puzzle why things were always dragged kicking and screaming. No one ever seemed to want to, for example, lead them gently by the hand." - Terry Pratchett
Well I guess the way to sum this up is that everyone has demands on what THEY want the Realms to be. Otherwise they just won't make the purchase. I think a lot of you get confused into thinking that this is your setting some how. It's not. When it comes to the novels, we are merely passengers. If you want things to be different, then create your own world and tell your own stories. Or even better, save up a couple of tens of millions of dollars and try buying the IP from WoTC. Then you can put the setting back into 1987 mode.
But the reality is that none of that will happen. But what is going to happen is that Realms fiction is going to die a slow death because people are throwing fits that things changed too much or that they can't get their literature in dead tree form. You all sound like a bunch of old men screaming for us to get off of your lawns.
When the ship is sinking, everyone needs to focus on saving that ship. if we all sit in our corners hoping each of our demands are met then we all go down with that ship. So stop being stubborn about the timeline, stop being resistant to authors who aren't your favorites, and give up this silly notion that paper novels will ever be dominant again.
But whatever. I'm starting to recognize that I'm fighting a losing battle here. Maybe I'm in the minority here in feeling that I want the Realms fiction to continue at whatever cost. No one seems to care, and if they do they have demandes that most likely won't or can't be met. I guess I'll just enjoy it while it lasts.
I think you underestimated the effect of the spellplague. It ended every plotline, killed off almost all of the major characters, all of the minor characters, and for many it invalidated previous material.
I think you overestimate the effect of the Spellplague.
While the event itself was deleterious to magic users and magic in general, it didn't "kill off" scores of major and minor characters.
The advancement of the timeline saw many NPCs pass away--as is quite natural for the passing of time--but there was no one deathstroke that slew all in an instant. Nor was their an edict proclaiming "in the 4E Realms, thou shalt not use prior material."
Likewise, the Spellplague did not "end every plotline". Many plots were not continued (that is, left off for DMs to do with as they please), but several continued.
Some (on the novels side) may yet be picked up anew.
I can relate to the "meh" feeling re: the Spellplague. I wouldn't want to watch the first movie in a trilogy, then skip the second movie because the third is "so much better" or some such.
But we're at where we're at. Let's just try to keep it real, OK?
Yes it killed just about every major character and plot in the novels with the timeline advancement. Even the majority of the elves that may have survived are changed individuals by nature. Just off the top of my head I can think of all the non-elf characters from the two comic books, Jack Ravenwild Anders, Ruha Alusair, Azoun the 5th, Alias, Malik, the Sembia family, the characters from Temple Hill, and Yellow Silk.
Had to look up the word. Im not being pedantic. Im just being honest. I made a video about why I disliked the spellplague and didnt even cover it as well as I could have. I'm not even talking about why it was stupid. Im giving reason to why the novels might not be selling which has more to do with the timeline jump that killed the plots and characters.
I was asking Mr_Miscellany to stop being pedantic towards you. I felt that your post was clear and honest. I also agree with your perspective on the Spellplague/timejump. I'm sorry, I should have responded to him by name.
Why is it that i never hear trekkies whining about the "time jump" between the original and the Next Gen or between the original tv show and the movies? That effectively killed off alot of character as well, but some, like Bones and Elminster are still around.
I survived Section 4 and all I got was this lousy sig
Except for Drizzt, some of Mystra's Chosen, and a few long-lived/immortal types, they're all dead.
