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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[pukunui]

thanks to Mistwell for the scoop

To give credit where it's due, [MENTION=6776322]HobbitFan[/MENTION] posted a link to the video first:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?436305-Found-this-interview-on-Youtube

 

[JeffD]

Very cool, thanks. =) I really like where this edition is going.

 

[Kramodlog]

Regarding settings...



What isn't a book that provides what would be in the book...hmm...

Maybe a web enhancement for the default setting of a module? That wouldn't be so bad.

Or an official fan-led wiki, like Guild Wars 2 runs.

A board game? I'm not quite sure how that would work, but maybe.

The MMO doesn't make any sense for delivering tabletop rules content. So probably not that.

As long as it isn't some sort of proprietary subscription digital reference guide to the settings. I can't, WotC. I just...you...me...digital...once again...I, just...no. Sorry.

I have to disagree about the MMO part. Maybe we won't get tabletop rules, but you can get lore. We know that a MMO is coming out this year (Sword Coast Legends). We know it is in the Realms and that DMs are going to be able to do stuff in it. It sure would be that "something we never saw before that both DMs and players could use", to paraphrase. Add in a build in quest where you have to defeat say cultists of Orcus, and you got some FR "lore". In a demo of SCL, we saw an Ashen Priest. In Dragon mag #364, the Ashen Covenant was introduced as a group of Orcus worshipers. The Ashen Priest might just be a generic boss, or it could mean something more.

WotC is doing crossbranding releases now, so it isn't hard to imagine that the next AP will be related to the Sword Coast Legend game either.

 

[Kramodlog]

So he says, "DMs and players are going to use, that's going to excite them, that's actually going to surprise them...I'm not going to guarantee that it's going to be anything that you've seen before. But it will be something."

And then we have a bunch of comments assuming he means APs?

In what way is that something you've never seen before? I really don't think that's what he means.

Well he did said this before the whole you never saw it before bit:

One of our creative challenges is to package [setting] material [...]

Seems like he is talking about form (packaging) rather than substance. It could be a new way to present APs. Sword Coast Legends that is coming out could be that new way to do APs. Same content, new format.

 

[DMZ2112]

I'd say Ed Greenwood Presents: Elminster's Forgotten Realms is as close as we'll get for now to a CS.

Fair warning: I expect that book to have far more in common with the AD&D1 FRCS than anything that has come after for D&D, and for that matter not much in common with the AD&D1 FRCS.

Or an official fan-led wiki, like Guild Wars 2 runs.

Good gods, heavens forfend. Don't give Wizards any ideas. As good as the Forgotten Realms Wikia is, it is still terrible, and I'm not talking about the advertising.

 

[Dire Bare]

If my post was taken offensively, I apologize, as that was not my intent.

My point is that what WotC *should* sell is not necessarily what *you* want. To criticize the company for not selling what *people* want, when it is really your own personal preferences, is silly. WotC does a LOT of marketing to help them chart their course, and while they are certainly as prone to error as anyone, they have confidence that producing new (traditional) campaign setting books is not the way to go.

They might lose your business, and that's unfortunate, but it might just be the right call for the business. And even if I purchase an extra copy of "Elemental Evil" to *cover* your lost sale, it won't change anything.

 

[transtemporal]

I like how wotc are finally perfecting the art of saying stuff without saying much, aka the hype train. Thats a step forward, or a step back depending on how you look at it.

 

[Dire Bare]

Interesting that in an 8 hour workday, he spends 2 hours doing the job he's paid to be doing. If they separated the D&D team from WotC as a whole and limited meetings they could double the efficiency of the staff (or swap them to part time).

Unless this is a joke I'm not getting, its ignorant, unfair, and none-yo-bidness. How WotC employees manage their workdays is the farthest from any of our business, not to mention how completely ignorant we all are (as we should be) of how Chris Perkins spends his work time, or how he *should* spend his work time.

 

[Jester David]

Unless this is a joke I'm not getting, its ignorant, unfair, and none-yo-bidness. How WotC employees manage their workdays is the farthest from any of our business, not to mention how completely ignorant we all are (as we should be) of how Chris Perkins spends his work time, or how he *should* spend his work time.

Ummm.... he gives a breakdown of his time in the video. You know, the video this thread is commenting on.

He says he spends 60% of his time in mandatory meetings. And, since he also comments that he's so busy that he hasn't been able to DM his game (either during lunch or the other free times we've heard of: the D&D team has noted they often work a couple extra hours each day and take a half-day Friday to game. Which also serves as valuable playtesting time) that means he's potentially working through lunch or pulling some OT. That implies he's spending more time in meetings than before, or his workload increased, or both.

Knowing that people working on D&D are potentially overworked IS our business. It affects the game and products we buy. And it establishes how the company is being managed and where they value time. If they're spending an unnecessary amount of time in meetings, so much so that it's having a detrimental effect on their jobs, then that suggests serious mismanagement in the company.

 

[Fralex]

I'm not learning anything /new/ about Elemental Evil because the portions of the adventure devoted to the threat spend all their time developing new ties for Elemental Evil to exploit in Faerun. This does not interest me, because these ties were unnecessary to begin with. Faerun has plenty of well-grounded threats of its own; it didn't need another one.

If I'm buying a sourcebook it's because I want to learn more about its setting, but my interest in 10,000-foot-view geopolitical information is limited. It is useful to a point, but I learned a long time ago that campaign setting books are not really smart buys for me, because they don't tell me a whole lot about what's going on on the ground, which is what I really want.

This AP strategy could be a great way for dungeon masters looking for modules and dungeon masters looking for campaign settings to meet in the middle, but in order for that to happen the format has to change and we need to see more granular setting-specific content, not setting content that is so bland it could fit anywhere. The latter option only serves the module-seeking dungeon masters. Sure, it's Toril, and sure, it's detailed, but it doesn't matter.

I hope that my position is clear; my feelings are pretty complex and I think I jumped between streams of consciousness a bit in there.

So you'd be interested in campaign settings getting a treatment similar to the monsters in the new Monster Manual? Taking a bunch of old stuff, a bunch of newer stuff, and finding new ways to look at them/interpret the stories they have? If there were a CS book as inspiring and detailed as the MM monster lore, I'd love to get it. Well, not me personally, but if I later take an interest in a campaign setting beyond stealing any new game mechanics, I'll want something like that.