So apparently at Gencon WoTC's other big reveal, aside from their back catalog becoming available, was that they're once again "fixing" the realms, though I assume this time in the sense of "fixing the royal fuck up that was 4e FR"; and Ed Greenwood is their main man to do it.  Apparently it'll take place with a series of novels Ed's writing called "The Sundering" (I think Salvatore is involved too?), and that after that there'll be some adventures that will claim to have an interactive-relationship with the people playing it posting feedback to Wizards and this deciding the course of the FR world (you know, unless they decide they really don't want to do that after all).

So does anyone have more info on this? Are they going to push a big "reset" button on the Realms, or what?

RPGPundit

Meh.  I haven't read the Realms since 2e.  Isn't Ed Greenwood under a lot of fire for being a sexist pig nowadays?  I seem to recall a big what to do at TBP over that.

Well, one thing that might get 4ers to buy-in on a new Forgotten Realms after WotC kills their weird Bizarro version, would be if they could influence what happens.  These are the "player empowerment" guys remember.

The Sundering sounds like the splitting of Abeir-Toril so it's actually one world now, and not just some lame excuse for letting you use whatever FotM Race they came up with.

Not so much a reset as a "Time of Troubles 2.0" resulting in a return to sanity.  

Since Greenwood's at the helm, you can expect an awfulpurple Goon Op against WotC and Ed at some point I'm sure.  

I bet dollars to donuts that the books Salvator just wrote for the upcoming Neverwinter game are a preview of what to expect.


Let's just say a major city gets wiped off the map

And you thought the Time of Troubles was bad...

*sigh*

WotC will never learn.

...I hope everyone will forgive me if I wander ever-so-slightly off topic, but it's mentioned in this thread and I am totally lost on it.

What the hell is TBP?  I've seen it ever since I started lurking here, but my GoogleFu avails me of nothing.

TBP = The Big Purple = RPGnet.

Quote from: Benoist;572876TBP = The Big Purple = RPGnet.

OH well no wonder I couldn't find anything on it.  Thanks Benoist, a beer for your trouble.  I deliver you back to the thread in progress.

I'm not too worried about it.  Call me old school, but I'd be playing in my own homebrew campaign setting anyway

Why can't they just come out with a new realms?

Why jump through stupid hoops to make changes "in setting"?

It's as bad as the idiocy that infects comic books.

Quote from: Piestrio;572930Why can't they just come out with a new realms?

Why jump through stupid hoops to make changes "in setting"?

Because they think of the Realms as a fiction brand property.

Quote from: Piestrio;572930It's as bad as the idiocy that infects comic books.

Yes.

If you're going to change everything all over again, you might as well revert back to 1e grey box.

But of course, that would mean no new Drizzt novels, and it seems WotC would rather have people buying Drizzt novels, than people actually playing FR.

You know, if they actually got Ed Greenwood, you'd think they'd let him do HIS realms, finally.

I mean, I hope they do that and not some new bizarre mishmash that creates yet another epic clusterfuck in the realms making it even less playable as a setting.

I'm holding out a desperate hope that the "sundering" of which they speak will be some kind of megaevent that will create two separate parallel worlds: one that looks pretty much like the pre-4e realms, and another that looks something like the 4e setting that claimed to be the realms.

RPGPundit

There's an "edition-neutral" product by Ed Greenwood coming out in October called "Elminster's Forgotten Realms."

It appears to be a collection of personal notes and collected lore Greenwood has made for the setting over time, and put into a single sourcebook.

Seminar Transcript of upcoming 2012 products:

QuoteNext we have Elminster's Forgotten Realms in Quarter 4. We basically went to Ed and said hey, why don't you take all your campaign notes, all the information you've been putting together for your FR campaign and lets compile it into a book. Show us the realms as you've developed it in your campaign setting and lets get that to everybody. It's our celebration of the Forgotten Realms and pulling back the curtain to show you what the designer of the campaign setting has done.