A rather clever guy on twitter named @newbiedm tweeted the following after 5e was announced:
I wonder if Elminster will wake up next to Bob Newhart and realize it was all a dream.
Funny, right? Yeah, he’s pretty clever. But while he was probably trying to be cute, the question about what the heck to do with the post-Spellplague Forgotten Realms as D&D moves into a new era is a valid one. I’ll admit up front that I am not a big Realms lore guy. I’m not up to speed on the history of Faerun, don’t know all the NPC’s, don’t read the novels, and can’t answer too many basic geography questions. However, I can tell you that I am a fan of the Realms in a rather casual way, and have always loved the flavor, maps, and fluffy articles through the years. My favorite D&D product is a Realms boxed set after all…
So what do we know about the Realms regarding the 5th Edition of D&D? Well, we know it’s going to be supported at the game’s launch, and that WOTC’s hired a video game company from China to detail the Realms. Bizarre, right? A video game company from China? Well, I did some digging around and Cryptic Studios, the developer of the Neverwinter MMO was recently purchased by a video game company from China named Perfect Worlds. Coincidence? I’d bet on the answer being no.
Here are the quotes from ENWorld when the question on the Realms came up at the now famous December gathering at Wizards of the Coast:
The Forgotten Realms will be supported from the start, and a video game art studio from China has been hired to fully detail the Realms. We asked if going forward support would be continued for the current time after the Spellplague and the Neverwinter Campaign. A WotC spokesperson answered, “The Forgotten Realms has a rich history and we will support all of it. It is for the gamers to decide which time they would enjoy playing in.” That would allow Wizards to take advantage of a massive back catalog of products.
Okay, so lets look at this bit by bit.
- A video game company is “fully detailing” the Realms. My prediction: Expect a Forgotten Realms MMO to launch along with D&D 5e at launch. Obviously using its ruleset. Art from both the MMO and the pen and paper game would then be used back and forth between the products, and in a way the video game company is indeed detailing the world. Remember WOTC getting the digital rights back from Atari? Bingo.
- “The Forgotten Realms has a rich history and we will support all of it. It is for the gamers to decide which time they would enjoy playing in.” That’s a heavy statement. I’m not getting a sense of an advancement in the timeline, but rather a chance to play anywhere you want within the current timeline. I can see articles in Dungeon and Dragon taking chunks of the timeline and updating the npc’s to the game’s stats, and releasing adventures that fall under “The Time of Troubles” or “Spellplague”. You are given options to play in different eras, and guys like me can use their good old boxed set by pulling out the converted npc stats from the Avatar Crisis and play a game in old Faerun using shiny new rules. That could be cool.
So these are some of my thoughts regarding the Forgotten Realms and the newly announced D&D Edition. An MMO, releases updating NPC’s of different eras to the new system stats, and adventures and fluff detailing different eras of the realms rather than concentrating on a specific campaign year.
This is all going to be so interesting to watch unfold… Oh hey, here’s a thought… What if the Realms were actually 5e’s assumed setting? That would be interesting! I think I like that idea…
If you would like to support NewbieDM.com, perhaps you’d consider visiting Amazon.com for your next rpg related purchase. Check out the following products:
World of Greyhawk AD&D Boxed Set
www. Newbie DM .com 
Ensign Expendable
January 11, 2012
FR as assumed setting? Sure, it’s as good as any with it’s iconic this and traditional that and it’s dinosaurs. I wouldn’t worry too much about that bit though.
The bit that got my interest was the reference to using the back catalogue. Yes, this could and should include stat updates for old NPCs, monsters and modules but there was a whole lot of fluff that could be used as is and published for a new audience for the new edition. I’m not saying that it’s not a lot of work to get this text ready for publication, especially with the WotC production values, but it’s easier than writing it from scratch.
This could save them money while producing a lot more product than they could for 4e. I suspect it would make Hasbro happier and make D&D ideas easier to sell to them as I would think that part of what they were spending their money on when they bought WotC (okay, it was mostly MTG, but still) was the huge WotC/TSR back catalogue and they’ve probably been wanting that stuff monetized for a while now. Now is the chance.
It would be good, as a customer, if they could identify what products are using classic content so people that bought the originals in the 80/90s don’t feel like they need to cry foul but that’s just a courtesy, it doesn’t really matter.
That’s what I would like to see, it would make me giddy. However I know that my naive view of how easy it would be might not match reality. I wouldn’t want the Wizards to have their spell backfire and open a money pit like TSR did.
Steven D. Russell
January 11, 2012
This is why I hated the 4e version of the realms, WotC wants a new setting? That’s fine make a new setting, I liked Eberron (other than awarding money while laying people off), but my thing here is that WotC had a fully detailed setting and WotC complained it was too detailed that people did not want to have to learn all the fully detailed lore, so you gave us the spellplague and yes it was a plague upon both our houses WotC. You made me stop buying realms products for the first time since 1987, and apparently the new edition and your new campaign setting was so bad you had to reboot. Do me a favor you brought back monte, try bringing back Ed Greenwood, Jeff Grubb, Karen Novak, and Stephen Schend and giving the loremasters, nostalgia lovers and remember that it was the campaign setting that stayed in print the longest because people loved it the way it was.
Steve Russell
IronWolf
January 11, 2012
Great post @Steve! Would love to see those guys come back for work on the Realms.
In regards to the timeline thing, I’ve always chosen my spot in time for Realms based campaigns. I didn’t really need WotC to tell me that was okay. I’d just put that in my game meta thread that we would be starting in year 13xx and that meant it predated X event or came after Y event. That always seemed to work for me. It probably helped that my players were not huge Realsmlore libraries themselves so they didn’t object to me diverting time streams a bit.
In either case – it will be interesting to see what the Realms has in store for it in this new edition.
Clay Fleischer (@Bruxistential)
January 11, 2012
Steve, I am not a huge FR fan, but I agree with you wholeheartedly. Nice post.
ChaosShard
January 11, 2012
Well, a Neverwinter MMO is in the works -from Cryptic, no less- so that might be the product they’re talking about. I’d be intrigued if they managed to use it as a living world and tie the MMO lore to the LFR and Dragon Mag. articles, with continuous updates. A system of periodic world events ala Rift might work well for that and keep people playing at both ends.
Heck, you could even tie single player Baldur’s Gate-style games to that for specific events in areas untouched by the MMO. Now *that* could be truly immersive!
Inkhorn
January 11, 2012
Interesting deduction. That would allow for a “something for every gamer” (or edition) scenario. If they design in npc conversion of older stuff either by conversion section in the core rules of by an catalog of updated stats, that would make entire shelves that are mostly for nostalgia relevant again for those of us who have conversion paralysis.
One thing is for sure, whether they like it or not, everybody remembers the Forgotten Realms.
dmfumbl
January 11, 2012
I can see them adopting the same thing Margaret Weis did when her company had the Dragonlance license. They supported multiple eras of play with campaign setting books like War of the Lance and Age of Mortals as just two timeframes (and rumor is they would have done more if they maintained the license longer than they had)
Steven D. Russell
January 11, 2012
@Chaos Shard
Cyrptic was bought by Perfect Worlds Entertainment (the china based company WotC was talking about). Also Neverwinter is not the Forgotten Realms its a since city in the Realms and its WotC making a good marketing move by creating a transmedia of novels and video game launch by taking advantage of Drizzt’s popularity in novels (R. A. Salvatore) and the video game worlds familiarity with Neverwinter Nights (From the AOL, Bioware, and Obsidian Entertainment). Forgotten Realms is a bit bigger than just a single city. Plus this is not the Neverwinter of those days either since it was whipped out by the Spellplauge so the MMO and the novels are starting with a blank slate, which IMHO ruins the whole idea of using an existing IP.
ChaosShard
January 11, 2012
@Steven D. Russell
Actually, the announcement from WotC said that they’d a Chinese company was hired to fully detail the Realms *and* that they were supporting FR with video games at launch. I was referring to the latter.
I’m also quite well aware of the geography of the Realms and Neverwinter’s (relative) importance. I only said that I had hoped that the lore updates from Dragon articles and LFR campaigns could be melded into the MMO to further tie it to the product. I love the idea of a well and roundly supported FR, and my post was little more than daydreaming about possible avenues they could explore to enhance it.
As an aside, I’m hoping this “fully detailed FR” will be available like the old 2e Atlas. That thing was *awesome*!
Chris C.
January 14, 2012
I am currently going to school for game design and game programming so that I can make a FR MMO come to life. I have followed FR up through 3.5 but when 4th ed showed up, I was not impressed. I am designing FR game storyboards and visualizing how to make the first rpg that includes actual role playing. Anyways, the FR game I am designing should have a release date for 2020. I hope FR does make a MMO in the next couple of years so that FR keeps in production. The ideas I am planning include aspects of time travel, player controlled construction and siege warfare. I am planning for the release on 2020 because the ideas I have require the ability for a zone to handle at least 70 players fighting each other assisted by over 300 npc obeying player based commands. I will not revile too much right now, but I can say this, my ideas are unique and promote role playing between characters in fun ways that have never been done before and the game world will be huge and very immersive. Last thing about my design, I have designed a brilliant and new way to approach quests and adventures so that quests will not be repetitive at all due to having multiple player inputs that change the adventure structure based on who is involved with the quest. I am learning game programming so that I can right the code to implement these complex ideas that will change how we interact with a RPG MMO.
Chris C.
PS – I hope China can make a lot of game assets for me to use in my 2020 release because what I am designing is going to be HUGE and I can not undertake this game without a lot of prior FR assets to draw from.
free microsoft points no survey
September 4, 2014
Everƴ weekend i սsed to go to ѕee tҺіs web paɡе, aѕ і
wish foor enjoyment, fߋr the reason thɑt this this site conations іn fact
pleasant funny dqta tοo.
Joe
December 7, 2014
Im really enjoying your takling this topic. Im a big fan of the Realms and for me (because it was my first D&D campaign world) it is the quintessential D&D world. I still have some 3e books and I want to use them in my 5e campaign, but I really did not like what was done with 4e, in fact after reading this blog I am firmly going to ignore all of the catastrophic (and IMO silly) events that were injected into the setting. Thanks for ispiring me to dust off my books and really make the Realms MY campaign world again.