Forgotten Realms 4e: Winds of Change

In a previous post, I compared the Forgotten Realms to a metaphorical psycho ex-girlfriend I had reconciled with. Having read the changes WOTC has planned for Forgotten Realms 4e, I would now say that the Realms more closely resembles a psycho ex I made up with, only to watch as she dyes her hair, has her incredibly cool House of Elendil tattoo lasered off her lower back, and joins the Church of Scientology.   

A college friend of mine, sadly no longer a gamer, once came up with a neat campaign concept. He called it Ifan: the Ever-Changing World. He envisioned a world wracked by “changewinds”, roiling vespers of concentrated chaos that would literally rewrite reality. The PCs would have to struggle against the changewinds and their effects, knowing full well that all their efforts might be overturned in an instant.

Well if the value of an idea is tied to the prominence of other people who come up with it, this one was clearly golden.

Some time ago, when I was perusing the new Races and Classes preview for D&D 4e, I wondered what Wizards planned to do with the Forgotten Realms setting given the massive changes that were about to ensue. The answer appears to be: bring on the changewinds! In this case, the changewinds are a “Spellplague” brought about by the death of Mystra, Goddess of Magic:

Despite its name, the Spellplague was much more than a disease. For one, it did not restrict itself to mere flesh. All things were meat to the Spellplague’s insatiable hunger—flesh, stone, magic, space, and perhaps even the flow of time was suborned. The world of Toril, its lost sibling Abeir, and even the planes themselves were infected with a plague of change. -Countdown to the Realms: Magic in the Forgotten Realms (Dragon #362)

Pretty slick, no? The Spellplague lets them rewrite the entire setting to suit 4e, even letting them stick in races like the Dragonborn which didn’t exist at all under the old rules:
Along the shore of the Alamber Sea, old Unther was swept away by a catastrophic outbreak of the Spellplague. Where once ancient Unther stood now stands an arid mesa-land inhabited by draconic humanoids calling themselves dragonborn. This is the realm of Tymanther. The dragonborn have proven to be a proud, martial race, and in the decades since the Year of Blue Fire they have slowly tamed the ruined changeland from the Riders to the Sky all the way to the Black Ash Plain. -Countdown to the Forgotten Realms: The Realms of 1479 DR (Dragon #361)

Yeah…those of you with campaigns in Unther and Mulhorand are going to need some new source material in 4e. You’re probably not going to get much use out of Shining South either: among other things there’s now a massive crater where Halruaa used to be after every spell and magical effect there fired off simultaneously.

It would be pointless to parrot too much more of the Dragon articles here. Suffice it to say that the 4e Realms has a heavy post-apocalypse feel with a little Cold War action thrown in as Cormyr and the restored Netherese Empire battle it out via proxies over what’s left.

A recent review of the Worlds and Monsters preview book on RPGNet describes it as “a brief walkthrough of how a small design team took 30 years of a game’s sacred cows and gleefully shoved them into a blender.” I’d say what I’ve read about 4e Forgotten Realms amply supports that. I’m a big fan of postapocalyptic grit: David Brin’s The Postman is one of my favorite books of all time. I’m just not sure there’s a real reason to apply it to the Realms other than to conform it to the 4e rules. I was hoping for something more along the lines of the Time of Troubles-some Gods die…some borders change…some classes get nerfed (remember when your assassin became a thief after Bhaal died? Wasn’t that fun?), but the essential cheery renaissance faire atmosphere remains the same. Eberron’s already essentially a “magical post-apocalyptic” setting, as is the new default 4e setting - did they need to apply the template to the Realms as well?  

Then again I could just be bitter because Maztica got magically scrubbed from the face of Toril by the Spellplague and replaced by an entirely new continent. They better not touch Shou Lung, or Rich Baker and I will have to have words.