Chris Perkins: Reintroducing Settings in Ways that Surprise People

WotC's D&D Story Manager, Chris Perkins, was the subject of an interview by a chap called Chris "Wacksteven" Iannitti. One of the topics covered is campaign setting books; Perkins says that they want to reintroduce settings in "surprising" ways, and that they're not guaranteed to be books. (thanks to Mistwell for the scoop)

The video is below, but if you can't watch it right now, here are the highlights as listed by pukunui on WotC's website:

• He can't talk about products that haven't been announced yet
• They value all of their worlds, as each one has "tons of fans"
• They are focusing on specific areas within settings to detail and "codify" via their story bibles
• Their goal is to "challenge people's expectations" re: sourcebooks
• They're "not interested in releasing books for the sake of releasing books anymore"
• They want book releases to be events that will "surprise and delight people"; they also want to put out books that people will actually use rather than books that will just get put on a shelf to "stay there and slowly rot"
• "One of our creative challenges is to package [setting] material - reintroduce facts and important details about our worlds - in a way that we know that DMs and players are going to use, that's going to excite them, that's actually going to surprise them. We may get that content out, but I'm not going to guarantee it's going to be a book. I'm not going to guarantee that it's going to be anything that you've seen before. But it will be something."

[video=youtube;alnwC34qUFs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alnwC34qUFs&feature=youtu.be[/video]
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[Fergurg]

I just want to comment that if they were going to drop the TTRPG entirely and it was to come to an end, spending all that time on designing and playtesting and editing and layout and art commissions and so on and so forth to produce three new, full-color hard bound books each weighing in at 200+ pages would lean towards a particularly absurd type of silliness. If you were going to bring the game to a close, why give it a "last hurrah" at all? And particularly why one so grand as a brand new edition in hard back?

To save the brand. 4th edition damaged the brand; such was acknowledged, interestingly enough, in an interview about why there wasn't a Magic: the Gathering setting in D&D even though it was planned. Remember that they are trying to extend the brand into other areas, but that would mean having the brand itself be of value.

As another part, this was a BIG project, with all the art commissioned, all of the writing, lots of playtesting, etc. So why would they only have the 3 core books and a few adventure paths prepared if the TTRPG was the priority for the brand?

 

[CapnZapp]

That's what I'm wondering as well. At this point, they have tried just about every strategy out there, so it's hard to tell what their backup plan is, or if they just plan on scrapping all product for it if this fails. I hope we don't have to find out the hard way.

The only strategy I have ever seen working is to not be in the TTRPG business for money.

The only successful kind of TTRPG company is one small enough to not set its sights on more lucrative markets (which is all of them)

 

[graves3141]

Crawford said he's working on a new D&D book (of course, he can't say what it is). He did say "book" though. I guess that could be nothing more than the next AP but maybe not.