New “trivia & anecdotes” post about working on the 3E Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting! There was SO much going on behind the scenes that I had to split this into multiple articles, which I’ll be posting over the next few days. You’re right that I wasn’t at the Toronto summit. My work on the book was pretty much confined to the monsters, as I was working on Monsters of Faerûn at the same time.
— James Wyatt (@aquelajames) October 5, 2022
the 100-year timeline jump between 3E FR and 4E FR was something pushed by the novels department onto the games department, because apparently telling new stories in the current timeline was getting harder and harder for the novelists. I had never heard this before. I always assumed the game team was behind this. @TheEdVerse https://t.co/3Mu8xpE7LF pic.twitter.com/FR1wMpE9mU
— Alphastream (@Alphastream) October 5, 2022
Yeah I had always heard it was they would have the elbow room to bring in the retcons they wanted to do in order to bring the Realms in line with 4E’s worldbuilding design goals. Indeed. Ben is correct.
I was at the secret summit (Bill and Rich told us about the time jump, and Bob and I reacted with incredulity and fury). Peter Archer of books later spoke of it in glum dismay; it certainly wasn't made at the creative level (Peter and lower) in Books.— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 5, 2022
Sean may well have been told that it was Books, though.
But the logic (that it was getting hard for novelists to tell tales) just doesn’t make sense. Look at most of my Realms novels: they cover a month of in-world time at most, usually less. It's like saying you can't write a novel about Nero in the Roman Empire because someday something called World War II will happen.— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 5, 2022