Wizards wanted to fire us, so can we fire them for setting laziness

They want to make money and more people play FR than all the other settings put together.

I use home brew, gonna start Midgard soon and have used Golarion as well. Modern FR has no interest to me by itself but I bought SCAG and most of the adventures.

FR at its root is a quite reasonable setting for a DM to start out with, provided she can keep away from and-or ignore all the ongoing canon intricacies. Good map, good cultures, reasonable cosmology and pantheon(s), still some blank space to expand into, and serious name recognition.

But if FR doesn't float yer boat, you can always design your own; and here FR shows you what needs doing to achieve this.

JacktheRabbit said:

Are you suggesting that WOTC cannot create a financially successful product without leaning heavy on nostalgia and tugging at the heart strings of uber fans?

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Not intentionally.

But vanilla ice cream outsells the other flavors. FR has been the best-selling campaign setting from D&D for decades, and it was a safe bet on WotC's part to incorporate it in the new edition. One that obviously paid off.

It makes me a bit sad, since FR was a setting I never got into or cared much about back in the day. But fortunately, enough excellent 3rd party stuff exists for 5e that I don't have to use the official setting if I don't care to.

I fired Wizards years ago, but I'm an old grognard who has played all the editions before and not in the mood for another. But the Forgotten Realms still lives at my table whenever I decide to go back to D&D. Most of my rulebooks may be gone, but I still have the entirety of the 3e FR material, plus a few gems from other editions including all of Volo's original guides. It's so easy to ignore stuff you don't like, presuming you can add whatever stuff you do like. That has been the premise of the game since the beginning, and it doesn't require a new edition, a benevolent company, or the approval of random people on the internet.

As someone who only plays WotC adventure paths...

1. I kind of like that all the APs are in the same setting, because it's cool if you travel through a location and one of your players can tell everyone a cool story about what his previous character experienced here.

2. Other than 1, there doesn't seem much point of settings in the first place. I just want an exciting story for my players with a bit of exploration freedom. Or rather, "setting" for me can be a much smaller area. Like the setting of Curse of Strahd for me is "Small village with vampire castle". Whether the module says that's FR or Ravenloft or PCs drawn from FR into a different dimension or whatever really doesn't matter at all to me, since the setting below is exciting in all cases.

JacktheRabbit said:

Do not want to start a political argument. Just a laughing pass at the "your fired" comment by a game designer that made huge assumptions about a very large portion of his customer base.

Well I want to fire Wizards in return. Not for political reasons or any other stupid social cause junk. My reason is quite simple.


I want to fire specifically the design team for giving us FIVE EDITIONS of DnD and still not being able to get away from the FR which to be honest are the most "lets cover every possible stereotype" bland meaningless default setting of any RPG.

Seriously, out of all the supplements released for 5E only one of them was not FR based. The second one that could have been the Elemental Evil book which was initially from Greyhawk was instead pointlessly shoehorned into FR.

Seriously if 6E comes out in a couple years and FR is still the default setting then I am done, I am moving to PF2 or any number of other options. Very tired of the Misbegotten Realms and campaign books set in them.

(And yes I know we can fire them at any time by not buying their product, this conversation is about why Wizards cannot get away from FR and keeps running back to it)

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Don't you think that people LIKE FR?

They would not write about FR if people do not like it and more importantly BUY FR books.

You should be thank them for not being lazy and writting on more than one front that is their "cash cow".

They know that Dark Sun, Al-Qadim, Oriental Adventures, Dragonlance, Eberron, Planescape and Spelljammer does not have that numerous audience and yet they wrote all those books for previous editions.

If they now publish Forgoten Realms, Dark Sun, Al-Qadim, Oriental Adventures, Dragonlance, Eberron, Planescape and Spelljammer campaign setting.
Out of those 8 books, FR would make more than half of the sales.

Rya.Reisender said:

As someone who only plays WotC adventure paths...

1. I kind of like that all the APs are in the same setting, because it's cool if you travel through a location and one of your players can tell everyone a cool story about what his previous character experienced here.

2. Other than 1, there doesn't seem much point of settings in the first place. I just want an exciting story for my players with a bit of exploration freedom. Or rather, "setting" for me can be a much smaller area. Like the setting of Curse of Strahd for me is "Small village with vampire castle". Whether the module says that's FR or Ravenloft or PCs drawn from FR into a different dimension or whatever really doesn't matter at all to me, since the setting below is exciting in all cases.

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Indeed. Settings are kinda not the focus now -- it's stories. And each story might be in a setting (e.g. Ravenloft), but the focus is that storyline rather than the setting. At least in the broader sense -- Waterdeep is still Waterdeep, but it's a city adventure which doesn't require the surrounding Forgotten Realms to work.

S'mon said:

I do think they stuck too many Save The World Epics into the Sword Coast region early in 5e's life cycle.

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I described this as potentially creating "Twilight 2000: The Sword Coast Front" when PotA came out. Moving ToA to Chult was a cool idea.

JacktheRabbit said:

Do not want to start a political argument. Just a laughing pass at the "your fired" comment by a game designer that made huge assumptions about a very large portion of his customer base.

Well I want to fire Wizards in return. Not for political reasons or any other stupid social cause junk. My reason is quite simple.


I want to fire specifically the design team for giving us FIVE EDITIONS of DnD and still not being able to get away from the FR which to be honest are the most "lets cover every possible stereotype" bland meaningless default setting of any RPG.

Seriously, out of all the supplements released for 5E only one of them was not FR based. The second one that could have been the Elemental Evil book which was initially from Greyhawk was instead pointlessly shoehorned into FR.

Seriously if 6E comes out in a couple years and FR is still the default setting then I am done, I am moving to PF2 or any number of other options. Very tired of the Misbegotten Realms and campaign books set in them.

(And yes I know we can fire them at any time by not buying their product, this conversation is about why Wizards cannot get away from FR and keeps running back to it)

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First off... There's little point in complaining that WotC is pushing FR, when they have stated time and time again that is overwhelmingly popular compared to other settings. The first rule of D&D is keep D&D alive. Remember when TSR oversaturated and rolled out too many settings? While those settings were amazing and unique, you're yearning for a time when D&D went belly up.

Secondly, they are literally bringing two non-FR settings (both Eberron and Ravnica) to print within the next year, and third party 5e campaign settings are plentiful. I think the OGL/SRD marketplace that started w/ 3e shook up the market in terms of setting content. There's a zillion published settings now, so WotC has a narrower focus or core/universal products.

Third, you note voting with your money. I know others IRL that share your take on things. They've been playing Pathfinder as their fantasy setting for almost a decade and don't even pay attention to the D&D brand anymore. I understand the nostalgia factor is amazing with D&D. But beyond that, why do you feel you can't choose another system and walk away from the D&D brand?

Fourth, you headed this "Wizards wanted to fire us". Who is "us"? The people being figuratively fired in that tweet were toxic players. It was about creeps at public games trying to play gatekeeper and say who was and wasn't a "real" D&D player. Why do you identify "us" as a toxic players and equate that with disliking FR as a setting?

neobolts said:

Fourth, you headed this "Wizards wanted to fire us". Who is "us"? The people being figuratively fired in that tweet were toxic players. It was about creeps at public games trying to play gatekeeper and say who was and wasn't a "real" D&D player. Why do you identify "us" as a toxic players and equate that with disliking FR as a setting?

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Well the OP did out himself as a particular kind of person, so, yeah, I think he rightly feels singled out by Mearls's tweet

"Not for political reasons or any other stupid social cause junk."

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