I'm not sure about the original, but I do know that a future adventure takes the adventurers through Apple Lane as it is now....I don't know when it will be out, but I'll pass along this hint: Apple Lane has not escaped the hard times that have hammered Sartar.
I do have one thought about why Apple Lane and many other old supplements were so popular, and why some people don't like the Hero Wars. The Hero Wars.
I know when I first read RQ3, I was really annoyed by the all the hints of an upcoming cataclysm. I wanted a nice stable environment to adventure in, where the world wasn't changing, where life wasn't too bad for most folks and was pretty sweet for succesful adventurers. Why play somewhere where, despite all your success, you could just get swept along in the tidal wave of history? It would be like playing an aristocrat in a game set in pre-revolutionary France, you just know what you've worked for will be swept away.
The old supplements presented very stable, static, places. This is what is, nothing is changing, and in fact most change will come from the characters.
Hero Wars and associated new products present a world in transition, where everything is being swept away. A lot of people don't like having to deal with all the change in real life, so in their fantasy games they'd rather escape overwhelming change for something nice and simple.
Now, personally, I've come to accept the Hero Wars. I do think that it is a shame that we finally have rules to let you really build things, in an environment aking to the beach as the tide is coming in. Personally I'm a builder, I get great satisfaction out of my characters building something (not literally an object, I'm talking systems, communities, etc. for the most part) that will make life better (In fact I regret that my last RQ3 campaign with Jeff ended before my Mastokian could build a shrine to his god at the great three-legged cross-roads on Griffon Island, and then build the infrastructure to support his cult and improve travel on the island).
That "The old world is (almost) over" is rather crushing to my ambitions, everything will be swept away. However I've come to accept that the new world is what the heros make it, at least in part (it helps if you can totally block out all memory of King of Sartar), and that is an even more exciting building project.
So that is how I came to embrace, if a little tepidly, the Hero Wars. Other people will have their own reasons for preferring a simpler and more static environment, and I guess they'll need their own reason to embrace the Hero Wars. For some people, maybe there is really no reason. After all, the world of RQ2 and the world of HW/HQ are almost completely different in tone. Still, even in the HW world, there are parts that aren't so different. So I think people who liked the old style can choose to ignore the Hero Wars, or to adventure in more backwater places that will be less affected. Or maybe that doesn't work for some either, I don't know.
--Bryan
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