Sunday, August 19, 2012

I Don't Really Care About the Forgotten Realms BUT...


What's I'm hoping is that the Sundering is akin to how Britannia was shattered into multiple "shards" for Ultima Online. An official campaign world where there's this explicit caveat along the lines of:

"There are countless parallel worlds of the Realms after the Sundering; no two are exactly the same. The Realms that you adventure in will not necessarily confirm to what official published material and novels state, and due to the Sundering that is exactly what the official status of the Realms are now. Your DMs version of the Realms is what they make of it and it is "official"."

So a DM can run their game in the Realms without worrying about knowing all of the Realms minutiae and needing access to every Realms resource or having to deal with Canon Lawyer players going "Actually in the Realms..."

The same way how in the Wilderlands community you have the Original JG Wilderlands, Necromancer Wilderlands, Majestic Wilderlands, Gabor/Melan's Wilderlands, James Mishler's Wilderlands, Scott Z'a Wilderlands of Darkling Sorcery, etc. and there's not a "Right" or "Wrong" Wilderlands, just a setting for DMs to run fantasy adventures as they see fit.

7 comments:

  1. I really hope you're right. That's the only way it could be done if they want to make it accessible and usable again. I wonder if the creative team was clever enough to realize it though. We shall see!

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  2. That would indeed be awesome, but it won't happens.

    It's worth noting BTW that Tékumel very explicitly does include a cosmology like this, which is one of many reasons why it's an awesome game setting.

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  3. You don't need canon advice to tell you that going against canon is fine, really.

    Don't suffer the Canon Lawyer, I say.

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  4. I agree with Mysterion. I actually heard this first from Ed Greenwood, creator of the Forgotten Realms when he said in an interview that his home Realms campaign had diverged quite a bit from what was published. Of course, considering his was the original campaign, perhaps it was the published stuff that diverged.
    Nonetheless, having it explicitly stated by WOTC would give DMs the right sort of encouragement.

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  5. "Nonetheless, having it explicitly stated by WOTC would give DMs the right sort of encouragement."

    Hm. That reflects on the mindset of that the DM shouldn't innovate more than a gaming company's (in)ability to state that idea.

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