Article: How to Make 5e FR the Best of all Possible Worlds

[Dalor Darden]

I'm entirely hoping against hope that instead of ONLY focusing on moving the campaign world forward; they will be able to easily work in the years before as well...it would allow me to again enjoy the Forgotten Realms on many levels...and over years of play.

The one thing I hope most is that they work to exclude the rules from actually shaping the Realms; but instead work on regions/people as more abstract and capable of being used with any rules. While they could still of course work things in the 5e stats, they would ensure that it was not a concrete absolute that it be used that way.

[Scrivener of Doom]

If the next version of FR is going to truly rock then the very first thing that needs to be done is:

PUBLISH A DECENT MAP!!!

I actually like the 4E version of the Realms (and the Grey Box, and 2E and 3E) but the map is so appallingly bad it can easily be a turn-off for DMs. I mean, besides the inaccuracies, it lacks --any-- meaningful detail (yeah, yeah, I know that was called a feature but it's a flaw, IMO) and actually looks like the content of my baby son's diaper (seriously... he's producing some green and black gunk that seems to be drawn from the same colour palette that was used in the design of the FR map).

I would really like to see WotC do to FR what they did to Eberron: treat the game world as separate from the novel world and leave it to individual DMs to advance the timeline in their own games. This deals with the oft-heard/oft-read complaint that it is impossible to stay on top of the ever-growing body of FR canon. (But, as with any suggestion, there will be many vocal fans who vehemently disagree.)

As for the "official" version of FR that is released in conjunction with 5E, that is a really tough question. Without sales data to draw on, my gut feeling is that it would be better to reset the Realms to around 1375DR and ignore the events of the Spellplague. That way the really hardcore FR fans would have "their" world back and, with a non-advancing timeline, perhaps new fans would not be intimidated by the potential for Realmslore to grow beyond their ability to assimilate into their own campaigns.

As for my own games, right now I am planning to stick with 4E and also the post-Spellplague Realms. I will continue to buy all the FR products that are released but I have enough 4E FR campaigns that I want to run that my gaming life will be quite busy for the next few years.