Where did the term splatbook come from? I only use it because I think others have heard it and will know what I’m referring to. I’m thinking that it means “splat, here’s this place” and I don’t think that’s how the Realms should be built. Given splatbooks, though, there are right-headed approaches and wrong-headed ones, and I believe WotC is doing them wrong.
What’s Wrong
An example: the Rotting Man.
I’m fairly positive that there was once an elven realm in the larger forest which we now know as the Rawlinswood and the Forest of Lethyr. Before that, it might have been a home of the fey creator race. Point is that these forests didn’t spring from the earth fully formed in 1357 DR for the first edition of the campaign setting. They’ve been here for a while… let’s say 30,000 years.
The Rotting Man appears in 1362 DR, and by 1373 DR he’s gone. By my count, he’s referenced 28 times in Unapproachable East; an average of more than once per 7 pages. Yet he’s only present for 11 years, out of 30 thousand years. Before 1362 he doesn’t matter. After 1373 the druids will be repairing and regrowing the forest, peasants and merchants will be building new towns, and certainly by 1479 the Rotting Man is irrelevant again.
I understand that he’s very relevant circa 1372, at least in the immediate vicinity of the Rawlinswood. The issue is that weaving him into the 1372 source material makes that material less useful for the other 30,000 years of the region’s history. This is a major flaw in WotC’s approach to regional sourcebooks.
Each WotC splatbook is a “snapshot” of a particular day in the timeline, but since 1-3 years often pass between books —even within an edition— the campaign setting product is the only snapshot of Faerun as a “whole” and every book that comes after that is increasingly inconsistent with the campaign setting. When the discrepancies reach some arbitrary threshold, WotC deems it acceptable to publish a new edition of the setting. That in turn justifies a new edition of the rules, leading to a disruptive RSE to “explain” the changes in rules, but that gets into other essays. The point here is that the wrong-headed cycle of circling Faerun begins again.
The second edition of the setting probably revisited everything, or nearly everything, that had been described in the first edition but later editions have not maintained this pattern. Even these “best case scenarios” where the lore is revisited, this approach is just repeating an error and as we (should) all know two wrongs don’t make a right. There are other times when a new edition doesn’t bring us a new regional splatbook. Like this one, for instance.
Going into fifth edition, more than 100 years have passed in Faerun, but the 3e Unapproachable East book is still the most recent source of relatively focused lore on this region. It needs to have a lot of stuff filtered out, though, in order to be helpful for campaigns set in the late 15th century… or in any time other than 1362-1373.
Useful knowledge regarding the Rawlinswood would include climate, specific types of flora and fauna that are common/rare here, and the range in characteristics (how the western edge is different than the eastern, or north versus south) — things that will be true throughout the life of the forest. There’s very little of that. Instead we learn about how the Rotting Man has changed things, for the piddly 11 years that he’s here.
Most of the wordcount alloted to the Rawlinswood is taken up by descriptions of Dun-Tharos, Clymph Tower, Tower Threespires, and Nighthawk Tower. I’m not upset about that, as each is an interesting location and deserves space. However, two of these also focus on details which are mostly/only relevant circa 1372 DR.
A Better Way
Let’s get away from the splat concept. Let’s build a region organically, rather than dumping a pile of restrictively specific details on the world.
A snapshot of the region is good, but only to the extent that it’s representative of the region’s entire history. There are other venues to wax eloquent about the changes introduced by the rise of the Rotting Man… namely novels, and (to a much lesser extent) adventures.
Adventures are awesome; I’m not saying “lesser extent” hoping for fewer adventures. I’d actually like to see more of them. However, the best adventures are the ones that aren’t limited to a particular year… they’re as flexible as possible and can be placed pretty much anywhere and anywhen the DM likes.
Don’t talk about a villain who only lasts X years in a sourcebook which should be outlining a region or feature for gameplay which might take place anywhere in a 30,000 year long tapestry. Or at least don’t mention them outside of a history chapter. Such characters belong in novels.
Plot hooks are cool, and should be included when possible, but if you’re going to write plot hooks then write them so that they can be used anywhere in the timeline with slight modification. Sourcebooks are basically encyclopedias; they don’t need or want a plot. Plots go in adventures and novels.
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