D&D 5E New survey from WotC about boxed sets

Morrus · Jun 18, 2019

Draegn said:
From a psychological point of view, a box that is not full can cause people to feel they are not getting their money's worth. To this end one local shop will not stock box sets, for, the books out sell the boxes. A box set has to be special ordered.

From the point of view of one's wallet, a larger box weighs more and thus shipping costs are increased.

I rather have my shelves be neat and tidy, unlike my brothers's whose shelving looks like a jenga game.

Well, OK then.

aco175 · Jun 18, 2019

Box sets are like potato chip bags- some settling may occur.

I finally filled up my LMoP box with my home notes and side quests.

oknazevad · Jun 18, 2019

Part of the reason for so much space is that boxes are also often standard sizes regardless of product. It's a way to save production costs.

vecna00 · Jun 18, 2019

Parmandur said:
He goes into that in this episode, where he is going over the design goals for Psionics, the primary goal being "Support Dark Sun":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gznSEmZ5HVY

You are the absolute best! The Google Force was not with me this morning when I was looking for it.

Parmandur · Jun 18, 2019

vecna00 said:
You are the absolute best! The Google Force was not with me this morning when I was looking for it.

Same here: thing is, nobody has transcribed these, and haven't talked a lot about what Mearls said: so there are all sorts of nuggets in there that are hard to find. But right there, he gave a pretty clear outline of how he would do Dark Sun, and more or less admitted that he is working on it (long term).

SkidAce · Jun 18, 2019

Draegn said:
I rather have my shelves be neat and tidy, unlike my brothers's whose shelving looks like a jenga game.

Urriak · Jun 18, 2019

BronzeDragon said:
Then again, if they do something like Dark Sun, I'd hate to see them screw it up by trying to make the setting another "everything goes" place. Tieflings and Dragonborn have no place in DS, and I'm afraid they'd create some idiotic justification to have them walking around...

I'll just say that tieflings and dragonborn were both in 4e. For the former they just said they were fiend-worshippers who got mutated (which doesn't make any sense if you know about Dark Sun). They can be cut.

The dragonborn however were just reskinned Dray, so for them they should just undo that, and make Dray a Dragonborn subrace specific to Dark Sun (Dray originally looked much thinner than Dragonborn).

Same with how Half-Giants were reskinned to be Goliath. They should revert Half-Giants into their own subrace of goliath to make them Dark Sun specific.

Sword of Spirit · Jun 19, 2019

I don't like how the survey seems to be assuming that a boxed set necessarily includes adventures. I prefer boxed sets that cover setting. Sure, it's fine if there are some adventures in it, but I don't want them taking up a lot of the space.

Parmandur · Jun 19, 2019

Sword of Spirit said:
I don't like how the survey seems to be assuming that a boxed set necessarily includes adventures. I prefer boxed sets that cover setting. Sure, it's fine if there are some adventures in it, but I don't want them taking up a lot of the space.

Well, no, it's not assuming that, that was the question: "do you want this?"

Sword of Spirit · Jun 19, 2019

Parmandur said:
Well, no, it's not assuming that, that was the question: "do you want this?"

I just couldn't see the questions like that. I couldn't determine whether the question about adventures with a strong iconic D&D feel (I can't recall the phrasing) were intended to be primarily focused on "Do you want adventures in the box?" or "How important is it that the adventures in the box present a strong iconic D&D feel?" However, the overall impression I got from the survey is that they were going for the second.

I kept looking at the whole of the questions they were asking, and here's what I could see behind it.

-These boxes will be primarily focused around an adventure or set of adventures.
-They may include any or all of the following supplemental aids:
--dice
--maps
--cards with spells and such
--etc

The real questions then are:
Question 1: "Is it important to you that the adventure or adventures present a strongly iconic feel for both the game and the setting? Or would you be cool if we reinvented things for a modern audience?"
Question 2: "Which of those supplemental toys would you most like to see come with the adventure?"

Now, I could be wrong...but I'm probably not. (And if I'm right, the way they presented the questions about adventures is problematic, because I put it neither important nor unimportant on the basis of not needing adventures in the box, but if they meant (as they probably did) whether I cared if the adventures stuck with D&D feel of went outside of the box (heh), then they got entirely the wrong answer from me, because I would have said it was Very Important that they stick with D&D feel. And if they instead just wanted to know how important it is that a Greyhawk adventure feels strongly like it's Greyhawk, rather than just feeling like it's D&D with Greyhawk names (which is another possibility) then I would have been back to a middle range answer.