The New D&D Adventure Storyline Will Be Announced On June 2nd-3rd

chibi graz'zt said:

You want official 5e material for Eberron, or Greyhawk or Dragonlance, or Spelljammer; we get it. Forgotten Realms is the default official campaign so far and its not your preferred; I get it. I hope to see Dark Sun too, but I am a big fan of FR and see no reason why WotC should start churning setting material at this point in the infancy of 5e; maybe in a couple of years. Until then dust off your immense shelf of Greyhawk or Eberron setting material and don't let anyone stop you from having fun.

Its what Im doing

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I think you might be talking to someone else? Because *I* don't have an opinion either way on all those settings. I spent 25+ years playing D&D exclusively in a world I made up. I only play FR now because I'm running a ton of AL. I don't have a single problem with FR. You sure you got the right guy?

All *I* said was that someone else had a point regarding it being unimaginative to only have one world.
A point. Personally, I don't think that's what they're doing. I believe we will see other worlds within the next year.

I have no idea where you get all those ideas about me. No one's stopping me from having fun, and I don't have a shelf of Greyhawk or Eberron. In fact, as far as I remember, I've never played in either.

chibi graz'zt said:

Your opinion is the minority
FR is a qualified and certified success for D&D, the brand has garnered Wizards millions; its smart of them to use it and its obviously working. Alas for you this setting will not go away...

Sorry they couldn't make YOU happy.

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I know exactly the value of my opinion and have no illusions about the Realms going away or actually being relegated to second place (among published settings).

I don't think it's at all unreasonable to ask that not every single product be about the Realms or come with default hooks for the Realms. I think the inclusion of the Five Factions in CoS was probably the facepalm moment, for me. As an appendix our web supplement, fine, but not in the main intro for an adventure set in a different setting.

doctorbadwolf said:

Definately standing by my previous statements. Those stories are all natural fits for Eberron.

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They are far from natural fits. They are "can be made to work with a lot of effort" fits. Like me putting on a t-shirt from ten years ago - yeah, I can get into it, but it's uncomfortable and doesn't look good.

But that's a good thing, in my opinion. If you can easily run the same campaign-length adventure in the Realms as in Eberron, then what's the point of having them be different settings? Just different names on the cities? That's no fun. If I'm going to play in Eberron, I want warforged. I want the Mournlands. I want the Emerald Claw. I want changeling hookers. I want Dragonmarked Houses. I want the recent memory of the Last War. I want halflings riding dinosaurs. If I don't get that in my Eberron adventure, what's the point?

Mmmm

it seem's that the people at the Adventurer's League have posted a couple references to Chult in their media folder

http://dndadventurersleague.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Chult_1479_DR.jpg

Some kind of reference to the next Adventure Path????

Staffan said:

They are far from natural fits. They are "can be made to work with a lot of effort" fits. Like me putting on a t-shirt from ten years ago - yeah, I can get into it, but it's uncomfortable and doesn't look good.

But that's a good thing, in my opinion. If you can easily run the same campaign-length adventure in the Realms as in Eberron, then what's the point of having them be different settings? Just different names on the cities? That's no fun. If I'm going to play in Eberron, I want warforged. I want the Mournlands. I want the Emerald Claw. I want changeling hookers. I want Dragonmarked Houses. I want the recent memory of the Last War. I want halflings riding dinosaurs. If I don't get that in my Eberron adventure, what's the point?

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I couldn't disagree more, but I also think you've misunderstood me.

In case that is my fault, I will try to restate and clarify my position.

1. I said that no *type* of story that fits in FR wouldn't fit Eberron. The discussion of existing APs is a matter of example, not the actual point.
1a. Conversion of a specific story isn't the same thing as putting a type of story in a setting.

2. I literally never suggested that you could just plop an AP down in Eberron with no changes. I did explicitly state that adjustment would have to be made, mostly in the details, and even gave examples of what changes would be required for Drow, dragons, Giants, and demons.


So, on the subject of he APs that were built for FR, I disagree that conversion would be difficult. Adding a warforged body guard here, a changling barkeep (hooker, really? In an AP? Not likely), a ride on the Lightning Rail or an elemental Galleon or airship, adding the Houses as factions, etc is trivial work, and does not at all require changing the nature of the story.

Even Curse of Strahd is easy. I'd run it as a Thelanis Manifest zone in Karrnath, tied to the story of an old Karrnathi Noble/warlord during the time right before Galifaran was united. From there...it requires almost 0 conversion work, except to change some names!

But by making those stories Eberron stories, by changing NPCs to Shifters and Warforged and Zil Alchemists, and replacing Harpers and Zhents with the Silver Flame and the Chamber, or two Houses, or whatever, you take the *story* and translate it to a different world.

However, the *actual point* was that any type of story they might want to tell *next* could be told in Eberron, and there are some types of stories that work there but not in FR.

Jester David said:

I'm not sure why the burden of providing alternative settings rests on the shoulders of WotC.

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Because the settings I want to see provided are owned by WotC. Seems pretty straight forward to me.

Mercurius said:

Actually, and ironically enough considering you are from France, the word "grognard" is French in origin. It refers back to the "Old Guard" of Napoleon's imperial guard. It became a term for "old school" D&D players because of D&D's roots in wargaming, of which Napoleonic wars was a popular genre. Meaning, "grognards" are RPG players who have been around since the wargaming days of the 60s and early 70s - the original generation of Gygax, his friends, and others who started playing in the halcyon days of the 70s, before the Boom of the early 80s. More generally it has become a term for folks who tend to be older, prefer "old school" style D&D...but even this becomes a sliding scale, as some think of AD&D players as grognards, but some grognards think of only OD&D purists are true grognards.

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I always imagined that you needed a big beard to grumble into to be a "real" grognard.

Shasarak said:

Because the settings I want to see provided are owned by WotC. Seems pretty straight forward to me.

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The context of my statement was a response to the claim that WotC needed to produce new settings otherwise new players would only be familiar with the Realms, potentially not realising they have options in settings.

You are not a new player. You already know of settings other than the Realms. Therefore the context of my quoted statement doesn't apply to you.


Okay, that aside, should the burden of reprinting classic settings fall on WotC? Are they obligated to update and reprint?

That's tricky. And I say that as a Ravenloft fanboy who has every printed Ravenloft book by TSR, WotC, and White Wolf (and a handful that were never printed).
And as a fan of Dragonlance who believes it needs a comprehensive setting updated since events happened in the novels following the final setting product.

The thing is, there's a fan for every campaign setting, no matter how obscure. Red Steel. Ghostwalk. Council of Wyrms. Pelinore. Taladus. Savage Coast. Masque of the Red Death.
Even going with the "big" names and assuming Kara-Tur and Al-Qadim count as the Realms, there are almost a dozen worlds. Even if WotC dumped APs and just focused on campaign settings for every product it would take four years to detail every single world. That's ignoring the fact releasing three campaign settings each year wouldn't actually be possible with current staffing levels, as a decent campaign setting product takes up more pages than an adventure and involve far more work, so getting three out in a year would involve some truly ridiculous levels of overtime.

Plus it would be throwing money away. All the money.
The thing is, you don't run games in more than one campaign setting at a time. And you can run multiple campaigns in the same setting. So you only need one or two campaign settings ever. Almost no one is going to end up buying a campaign setting they'll never, every run, and absolutely no one is going to buy all ten books. Sales will be lost. After the first couple campaign settings are released, people will quickly stop buying. Instead, the books will only sell a small number to the truly ardent fans of the setting, which are likely pretty small in number. Especially since, being fans, they already own the settings! The target audience is people who already own the material and you just have to hope they want to pay $60 for a repackaged book.


Looking at the results of Mike "Sly Flourish" Shea's DM survey for a second:
http://slyflourish.com/2016_dm_survey_results.html
From that data of over 6000 people, 5% play in a non-FR D&D world, 38% play in the Realms, and 55% play in a homebrew world.
(With only 38% of people playing in FR, it's hard to even justify a Realms campaign setting product... )

Assuming an even split, releasing any of the 9 non-FR settings as a book will only appeal to 0.5% of DMs.
Every if we assume that half the people playing in the Realms are fans of other settings only playing in the Realms because of the published adventures, that's still only 24% of DMs, of which only 2.4% will be interested in any given setting.

Even if you really stretch credulity, and assume that half the people playing FR will buy another setting and half the people playing a homebrew world will buy another setting for ideas and people who non-FR are equally interested in two different settings that's *still* only 32% of DMs. For the first one. Numbers will drop for the second, and again for the third. Let alone the tenth.

If WotC could justify a FR book they could maybe, maybe justify releasing one other campaign setting. But which one? Whatever they choose will infuriate fans of other 8 settings. Or they won't buy that setting. Or they'll assume it's the first of regular setting updates and instead wait until theirs was released.
It's a losing strategy.

Chris Perkins on the Sword Coast:
"We won't be staying there forever."

Source: https://twitter.com/ChrisPerkinsDnD/status/865090281732882432

Jester David said:

The thing is, you don't run games in more than one campaign setting at a time.

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Someone has never had to run a party that has had a serious portal/gate mishap where half of the party ends up in one setting and the other half in another I see...


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