Quote from: RPGPundit;1121748They so absolutely did. The FR was mainly ruined by the novels.

The Realms was fine up until 4e.  The Novels had nothing to do with "ruining" it.

Quote from: Shasarak;1121841The Realms was fine up until 4e.  The Novels had nothing to do with "ruining" it.

There's plenty of blame to go around, starting about 1 minute into the first planning session after the 1E FR hardback was done.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1121845There's plenty of blame to go around, starting about 1 minute into the first planning session after the 1E FR hardback was done.

Plenty of blame for creating the most popular and authentic DnD setting ever produced.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1121845There's plenty of blame to go around, starting about 1 minute into the first planning session after the 1E FR hardback was done.

There was no 1E FR hardback.

Quote from: Scrivener of Doom;1121770For my current campaign, FWIW, I blew up Elminster's house yet again as part of the background to the game. (It's set in Shadowdale and Daggerdale so I needed him permanently removed, not just simply spellplagued into insanity.)

I don't know why you'd need to. Every writeup I've seen about Elminister says something to the effect of 'He dislikes moving openly because he doesn't want the other Major Players in the setting to start doing the same'. Plus, he's often busy dealing with extraplanar threats (which is why Doctor Strange doesn't interfere much in the Marvel Universe).

There's also, of course, Greenwood's own implication that Elminister is not sane in the traditional sense.

Quote from: Ghostmaker;1121935I don't know why you'd need to. Every writeup I've seen about Elminister says something to the effect of 'He dislikes moving openly because he doesn't want the other Major Players in the setting to start doing the same'. Plus, he's often busy dealing with extraplanar threats (which is why Doctor Strange doesn't interfere much in the Marvel Universe).

There's also, of course, Greenwood's own implication that Elminister is not sane in the traditional sense.

True, but this was a much better way to set the scene for the campaign. Also, the ruins of his tower became something of a funhouse dungeon that made sense.

Quote from: Scrivener of Doom;1121963True, but this was a much better way to set the scene for the campaign. Also, the ruins of his tower became something of a funhouse dungeon that made sense.

Heh, I like that last bit much better. If they thought Undermountain was a mess...

It was not 4E FR that hurt the realms. It was the very vocal fanbase that really don't know what they want or worse claim they want changes to a setting yet not really so they can just keep complaining about the flaws. Before Wotc nuked their forums and other rpg sites a few of the may complaints about FR were:

- Too many high level NPCs

-Too much magic everywhere

-Too many cities with too much population.

-Too many gods

Along comes 4E and they tried to actually fix some of the above flaws and then the fanbase lost their minds. See many never really wanted any changes to the above. They wanted the status quo to remain in place. They simply wanted and still want the luxury of complaining about FR flaws without nothing changing. I am not a fan of 4E FR or 4E in general yet I can respect and appreciate what they tried to do.

Quote from: sureshot;1122167It was not 4E FR that hurt the realms. It was the very vocal fanbase that really don't know what they want or worse claim they want changes to a setting yet not really so they can just keep complaining about the flaws. Before Wotc nuked their forums and other rpg sites a few of the may complaints about FR were:

- Too many high level NPCs

-Too much magic everywhere

-Too many cities with too much population.

-Too many gods

Along comes 4E and they tried to actually fix some of the above flaws and then the fanbase lost their minds. See many never really wanted any changes to the above. They wanted the status quo to remain in place. They simply wanted and still want the luxury of complaining about FR flaws without nothing changing. I am not a fan of 4E FR or 4E in general yet I can respect and appreciate what they tried to do.

Those fucking fans--without the power to make or publish actual changes in entertainment media--always fucking things up by having the audacity to express their opinions in the ass end of the internet. :mad:

Quote from: VisionStorm;1122171Those fucking fans--without the power to make or publish actual changes in entertainment media--always fucking things up by having the audacity to express their opinions in the ass end of the internet. :mad:

I can't tell if you're actually being serious or facetious here. The fact of the matter is "fans don't actually know what they REALLY want" is a legit thing in marketing.

The key part of that statementis the "really" part. Fans know they're dissatisfied and it's good to try and address those problems, but a lot of times what they complain about is just a symptom and so even when it's changed they remain dissatisfied because the underlying cause is still causing issues.

The people in marketing who make huge bucks are those who know how to tease out those underlying issues and make recommendations based on those to fix the real problem. Those who fail will end up with even more backlash and often go all reactionary retrogressive in undoing those changes (see 4E's marketing as a whole... I love the system, but DAMN did they repeatedly put their worst foot forward in presenting it).

Let's take a look at those listed top complaints;
-Too many high level NPCs
-Too much magic everywhere
-Too many cities with too much population.
-Too many gods

The 4E writers took those complaints literally and made those exact changes. But look at them a little closer and you see a pattern; that too many elements of the world are beyond the PCs ability to influence it.

NPCs from the novels were made bigger than the PCs could ever hope to be with big magic to match. There's NO reason Elminster ever needed to be 36th level in 3e instead of just an 18th level wizard... except for some control freak notion by the setting writer that some random home game table would decide it'd be fun to murder them; so they made all those NPCs so impossibly overleveled that even trying to attack them would be folly.

The same goes for certain cities and locations; how dare a home campaign involve one of their iconic locations be destroyed? Let's just make it so impossibly powerful that no force the PCs could assemble could ever oppose it.

And it was not so much the number of gods, but the way their intervention was used to basically railroad PCs, that was annoying.

So, those might have been the surface complaints, but the underlying issue was that bad design choices to reinforce the "canon" Realms left a lot of players feeling disempowered because, even at the pinnacle of power in the core rules, they're still dwarfed by the abilities of the novel protagonists set up as NPCs in the world.

* * * *

The ACTUAL changes the 4E Realms needed was NOT the destruction visited upon it, but a refocus.

Instead of saying a Spellplague wiped out big name NPCs just say make all the NPCs who aren't demigods in Paragon-tier (level 11-20) for 4E because actual 4E demigods are level 21-30 PCs who ascend to lesser god status at the close of level 30.

Elminster at peak power should be a level 20 wizard in 4E, able to deal with all mortal and low cosmic level threats with ease, but still outclassed by true demigods. PCs then are allowed to grow past Elminster about 2/3 of the way up through the levels as they ultimately ascend to the celestial ranks because, if they make it that far, THEY are the protagonists of their version of the Realms.

Similarly, focusing of "Your Campaign is Yours" and it doesn't need to stay in line with the canon of novels that haven't even been published yet would go a long way towards needing to give various NPCs and cities de facto plot armor in the form of impossibly high levels/populations. Its okay if Waterdeep gets wiped out by an orc horde in your game because it's just your game (Seriously, no one loses their shit when a Star Wars campaign ends with the Empire victorious because the PCs screwed up and the Rebel Alliance is destroyed, but the writers for the Realms game line couldn't seem to handle that Elminster could actually die in someone's home game somewhere so made him level 36 in a 20 level game just to be sure).

Likewise, instead of killing off a bunch of gods (that were always going to be someone's favorite), just have Ao lay down a new decree requiring the gods to be more hands off and rely on their clerics and worshippers to advance their goals.

And for God's sake, they didn't need to advance the timeline by more than a century so all the non-nigh immortal spellcasters are dead. The King of Cormyr being level 10 in 4E (i.e. heroes of the kingdom level power) takes care of virtually all the "too many high level NPCs" problem without needing to kill off a single one.

* * * *

A LOT of the problem with 4E could be laid at the feet of marketing pushing how DIFFERENT 4E was from what came before and, further, saying that a lot of the things you liked before weren't actually that fun (i.e. you didn't really like what you like).

If they'd instead put more focus on what was the SAME (and it's still fundamentally a streamlined d20 System with more similarities than differences in the mechanics) both in the Realms and the system as a whole, it might not have had such a negative reception.

Another instructive example of this last part is New Coke (and the similarities to 4Es marketing are why I sometimes have called 4E the New Coke of D&D). Every bind test Coke ran said people preferred New Coke to original Coke, but they neglected the nostalgia and familiarity preferences that people have.

I suspect if they'd marketed New Coke as "Have you noticed that fresher taste? we've been making small improvements based on your feedback to make what you love even better" it would have gone over a lot better.

Instead they went out of their way to talk about how different the new formula was and how "old Coke" wasn't what you actually wanted... with predictable results.

Quote from: Chris24601;1122191I can't tell if you're actually being serious or facetious here. The fact of the matter is "fans don't actually know what they REALLY want" is a legit thing in marketing....

Instead they went out of their way to talk about how different the new formula was and how "old Coke" wasn't what you actually wanted... with predictable results.

As a gamer mostly outside of the D&D sphere I have noticed the fine line WOTC have to walk.

Because D&D fans want their D&D the way they want it:

They want the new edition to be just like the old one, only better.

And don't you dare change anything!

The problem has been exacerbated by WOTC as they have chosen to dive in head first with D&D as a brand, and with FR as the default setting.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1122171Those fucking fans--without the power to make or publish actual changes in entertainment media--always fucking things up by having the audacity to express their opinions in the ass end of the internet. :mad:

They can express any opinion they want. Yet don't complain about a setting having too many gods then when the rpg publisher listens to the feedback reduces the amount of gods. Then complain again that too many were removed. Too many FR fans want it both ways complain about the flaws of FR while not wanting anything to change. Other rpg companies fanbase have the same problem yet the D&D fandom are extra special in that regard. I'm a not a fan everything Wotc did with 4E FR I hated the sheer number of gods in FR many redundant imo. We have the god of War, The goddess of tactical war, the god of chaos of war. We don't need three different gods for the same thing imo.

Quote from: Shasarak;1121841The Realms was fine up until 4e.  The Novels had nothing to do with "ruining" it.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1121845There's plenty of blame to go around, starting about 1 minute into the first planning session after the 1E FR hardback was done.

Amongst gamers I knew in the 90s, the Forgotten Realms was already considered something of a joke.

Quote from: TJS;1122259Amongst gamers I knew in the 90s, the Forgotten Realms was already considered something of a joke.

Gamers in the 90s thought that Vampire was a good RPG.

Turns out that people believed a lot of stupid shit in the 90s.

Quote from: Shasarak;1121841The Realms was fine up until 4e.  The Novels had nothing to do with "ruining" it.

No. The Realms were seriously fucked up by 2e already.