The Old Dwarf

This information is intended for use with the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.


At a Glance

The Old Dwarf is a tavern in Suzail.


Sources

Maps
Other Resources

Disclaimer

Wizards of the Coast, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Forgotten Realms, and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the United States and other countries. This blog is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC.

Shrine to Oghma (Suzail)

This information is intended for use with the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.


At a Glance

This is a shrine to Oghma in Suzail.


Sources

Maps
Other Resources

Disclaimer

Wizards of the Coast, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Forgotten Realms, and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the United States and other countries. This blog is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC.

House of Obarskyr

This information is intended for use with the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.


At a Glance

The House of Obarskyr is the royal family of Cormyr.


Notable Individuals


Sources

Passing Mention
Other Resources

Disclaimer

Wizards of the Coast, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Forgotten Realms, and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the United States and other countries. This blog is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC.

Oak

This information is intended for use with the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.


At a Glance

Oak is a type of tree.


Sources

Passing Mention
Other Resources

Disclaimer

Wizards of the Coast, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Forgotten Realms, and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the United States and other countries. This blog is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC.

Nzal Tursa

This information is intended for use with the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.


At a Glance

Nzal Tursa


Sources

Passing Mention
  • Cormyr [9410] page 29; inside cover
Other Resources

Disclaimer

Wizards of the Coast, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Forgotten Realms, and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the United States and other countries. This blog is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC.

House of Nyaril Warehouse

This information is intended for use with the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.


At a Glance

The House of Nyaril Warehouse is part of the House of Nyaril base in Arabel.


Sources

Maps
Other Resources

Disclaimer

Wizards of the Coast, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Forgotten Realms, and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the United States and other countries. This blog is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC.

House of Nyaril

This information is intended for use with the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.


At a Glance

The House of Nyaril is the headquarters for the House of Nyaril merchant house in Arabel.


Sources

Maps
Other Resources

Disclaimer

Wizards of the Coast, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Forgotten Realms, and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the United States and other countries. This blog is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC.

Nulahh’s

This information is intended for use with the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.


At a Glance

Nulahh’s is a boarding house in Immersea.


Sources

Maps
Other Resources

Disclaimer

Wizards of the Coast, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Forgotten Realms, and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the United States and other countries. This blog is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC.

A Metaphor and a Blueprint

Realms fans?

Sucks to be Wizards of the Coast

I wonder if this might depict the position Wizards of the Coast has found itself in, when planning 3e, 4e, and 5e. I think they did reasonably well on 3e, mind-bogglingly badly on 4e, and somewhere in-between on 5e. But some/many fans reach exactly the opposite judgments. I think those fans’ judgment is deeply flawed and ridiculous, and they feel the same way about mine.

Therein lies an unsolvable problem. D&D and the Forgotten Realms are each large, and full of many details. Since a new edition of the rules inevitably involves a new edition of the setting, these individually complex things are lumped together into a “product” which is even bigger and more complex. Not in the sense of being difficult to learn… I mean complex in terms of having a lot of details. Many moving parts. When they publish a new edition of D&D + FR, each customer evaluates it, and makes purchase decisions based on whether the new product is sufficiently better than the old one, based on the criteria that are important to that individual customer. Each fan has a basically unique scorecard, because our priorities differ. For me, it’s important to have some congruence with the first edition of the setting… I like new shiny books, but I want to feel like it’s still “Ed’s Realms, with great additions and expansions from others.” Formatting is also important to me; I want narrow margins, smallish text, and sparse illustrations… maximum lore, minimum crunch. Other fans want shiny pages and big margins, and they think the book totally sucks if it doesn’t have tons of illustrations.

So it’s not just a matter of not being able to please all the fans all the time, but rather not being able to please any of the fans any the time. They might be on the right track if they’re aiming to please a different group of fans with each edition, but in that case they need to adopt an “every edition is valid” approach. I was happy when 3e was the official Realms, and it was utterly unacceptable to move into a time when 4e was the official Realms. I stayed in 3e, and bought zero 4e Realms products.

One obvious solution is to have not shut the door on 3e. Skip ahead to 4e and open up the 1479 Realms, but make that jump completely optional by continuing to publish novels, sourcebooks, Dragon articles, and Dungeon adventures set around 1375 as well. (Remember that WotC didn’t drop down to a skeleton crew and shut down the “magazines” until 4e had already failed. Taking the approach I’m suggesting could have prevented that from being necessary.)

Of course, it should have been a philosophy ever since 1e. Some of us hated the Time of Troubles; the decision to take the official Realms through that event rather than making it an optional event was a mistake for the simple reason that WotC could have retained all of its customers and attracted new ones, by keeping the old storylines open while adding the new ones. The TOT should have been optional. The Spellplague and the time jump… well, the less said about that the better, I guess; it should be obvious that making it an option wouldn’t have alienated so many players.

Moving Forward

When the time comes to roll out 6th edition, here’s how it should go. The 6e rules are published as an alternative to 5e, rather than the replacements that have alienated fans for several decades. Whatever RSE you use to “transition” into the 6e Realms is published as an option. DMs and players who like the transition can play through it; those who don’t like it don’t have to use it. Those who like the 6e Realms can play it, and those who don’t won’t. Those decisions will be independent, but the RSE (assuming you do it well) can provide an in-game reason for the switch, for those who like it, while not requiring that those who hate it to choose between “do it anyway” and “stop buying WotC products.” Neither WotC nor the longtime fans of the Realms like that choice. The logical move is to stop requiring us to make that choice.

Either way, fans can move forward in the setting. If we move into 6e, cool. If we stay in 5e, cool. The setting continues to evolve. You don’t necessarily need to have 2 completely separate product lines after that, but you can if you want to and there might be some advantages. Your (or Hasbro’s) marketing people can figure that out. Here’s how I think it can work well.

First possibility: one product line, serving both 5e and 6e fans. The secret to making this work is to write an explanatory paragraph at the beginning of the book, which serves to make it useful to both groups of fans. That RSE you’re going to use to introduce 6e… if there are two parallel universes, where that event happened in one and didn’t happen in the other… which of the differences between those two universes is relevant to this particular product? Hint: if it takes more than a paragraph, or if the product relies heavily on the RSE having taken place, then you’re doin’ it wrong. No RSE should fundamentally alter the Realms to the point where someone who decides to skip that RSE can’t use your subsequent products. If the products are written with all fans in mind, then facilitating use by everyone doesn’t need to be more than a paragraph or two and the payoff is that you sell more books by making them useful to a wider range of fans.

Second possibility: separate 5e and 6e lines, with completely different products in each. The “necessary historical events” blurb is still the key. Include a blurb in each product, in both lines, aimed at making it useful for fans of the other product line. The payoff from having two separate product lines is that you have a built-in market for each line, where the fans who love the 6e line will purchase the 6e products fairly automatically — again assuming that the writing is good but we’re talking about fans of that line so that shouldn’t be an issue. Fans of 5e will still buy a lot of 6e books because the facilitating blurbs you’re including will make the 6e books useful to them. So it’s not like you lose 5e fans by having a dedicated 6e product line, or vice versa.

It’s possible (and desirable) for the blurbs to be pretty similar between several products. I don’t mean to say that I like standardized paragraphs being pasted into products; I hate that. I mean that it’s good if that paragraph doesn’t need to be heavily customized for each product. If it works out well, you might get away with putting the explanatory paragraphs on the Wizards website instead of inside the text of the product. This is tricky, because a lot of DMs will whine about having to read something on the website in order to DM a pen & paper adventure, but the upside for we the customers is that we have another paragraph or two of adventure rather than background info. Something for your polls and playtesters to figure out.

Touching on the time jump of 4e for a second… one of the huge objections to it, if not the huge objection, is that it killed off a bunch of NPCs (and PCs) and we’re left wondering what the hell happened in that 100 years because you didn’t fill it in. This approach of maintaining the old after introducing the new will remove that problem by filling in the intervening years with further development in the previous edition.