WotC: Stop sitting on Rich Burlew's setting (you own the rights!) - publish it for 5E too!

Umbran said:

We are talking about a niche product that isn't likley to be attractive to everyone in the niche.

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Anything anyone doesn't personally like, can be labeled "niche". It's a loaded word. Many consider everything but FR to be "niche".

In contrast, only a few days ago, a WotC rep posted: "People want settings!" Plural. SettingS. The desire to see the 5E Multiverse fleshed out beyond Toril and Barovia is (apparently) not a "niche" desire.

Especially when advocates probably don't just want a setting book. They want setting support going forward, right? Adventures and things like the Sword Coast Adventurer's guide, no?

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Nope. I'm calling for nothing more than Burlew's setting (and the 3rd place setting) to be officially incorporated into WotC's D&D Multiverse, perhaps in a small way. Both of those D&D settings are already WotC-owned IP. They're just unpublished. So let's add 'em in alongside Aebrynis, Mystara, Eberron, and all the rest. This could be done in any number of small-ish ways that involve a lot less work than a hardcover Adventurer's Guide:

A) Easiest: Just release PDF scans of the two setting proposals and "setting bibles" as-is (without even 5E stats) for a few bucks on D&D Classics. OR...
B) Release a proper 5E overview of each of the two settings as a short PDF like the D&D Magic: The Gathering setting PDFs. OR...
C) If WotC is planning to publish a full-blown hardcover with multiple settings in it - as a sort of "multi-setting sampler", then include a short overview of both settings.

In all of these cases, whenever the various D&D worlds are listed in future products, continue to mention both of those worlds by name. Voila! They're a part of WotC's D&D Multiverse. That's all I'm asking for.

If a buzz develops around either of both of the settings, then of course they could be more fully developed further down the road.

Is a setting that wasn't top notch last time around really going to be that compelling?

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That's a rather flat way of putting it. It beat out how many 1000s of other setting proposals, many of them submitted by professional game designers.

Polyhedral Columbia said:

I'm calling for nothing more than Burlew's setting (and the 3rd place setting) to be officially incorporated into WotC's D&D Multiverse, perhaps in a small way.

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You know, I get the curiosity. I'm curious, too. But when Rich himself has said that he doesn't think there's enough left of the setting remaining untapped to make it interesting, I'm inclined to think he knows what he's talking about.

Remember that only the first place setting was ever developed into anything close to a full-sized rulebook. The others had, at most, a 100-page overview. (And that's word processor pages, which are substantially shorter in word count that RPG book pages.) It's very likely that the "dozen or so" idea Rich talks about having appeared elsewhere really do constitute the majority of what he thought was interesting or unique about the setting.

But even if that weren't the case, the fact that he thinks it's the case is sufficient. If the creator of the setting doesn't want to see it out there anymore, I'm inclined to respect that.

pukunui said:

I personally would like to see Chris Perkins revive his Valoreign campaign. The whole Feywild-destroying Night of Wild Magic, with its table of random power-ups, was a cool concept. I briefly toyed with my own adaptation of it, but neither it nor the actual campaign ever got off the ground.

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Yeah, along those lines, I'd be up for James Wyatt's various house campaigns (Aquela, Mahasarpa, Shield of Faith, Petroyeska) to be officially incorporated into the D&D Multiverse. They've already been glimpsed in several DRAGON magazine articles or web articles. Same for any other WotC designer. Not instead of the classic settings, but in addition to. The more settings the better - I'm picturing a "setting sampler" book containing a dozen or more worlds.

Polyhedral Columbia said:

Anything anyone doesn't personally like, can be labeled "niche". It's a loaded word. Many consider everything but FR to be "niche".

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Polyhedral Columbia said:

Anything anyone doesn't personally like, can be labeled "niche". It's a loaded word. Many consider everything but FR to be "niche".

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This has nothing to do with liking or not liking. I like RPGs, in general. They are my favorite hobby. But they are a niche activity. Go look at Morrus' thread on The size of the RPG market. The RPG market overall is about $35 million/year. The Hobby game market overall is like $1.2 billion. The Black Panther movie grossed $1.3 billion.

RPGs are small frye. I love 'em, but I recognize that they are not mainstream. The sales numbers of anything other than a stellar core rulebook won't be large, so you have to be wary of the opportunity cost associated with producing them.

I like D&D history and if a significant number of ideas were taken from RB's setting, then it would be very interesting to read the source material that may have influenced the published works.