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

bedir than · Jun 15, 2019

Paul Farquhar said:
Meh. It's just asked me how likely I was to buy a boxed set, I said "unlikely" and it told me to get lost. It would have been nice to be asked why (boxed sets are massively expensive in the UK compared to books).

I was in the furthest to the buy side. It was done asking me questions after that.

Parmandur · Jun 15, 2019

Paul Farquhar said:
Meh. It's just asked me how likely I was to buy a boxed set, I said "unlikely" and it told me to get lost. It would have been nice to be asked why (boxed sets are massively expensive in the UK compared to books).

They asked detailed questions, with room for detailed responses, in their big product survey last year. There were highly specific product questions for those who were interested in buying a boxed set, but no room for writing in an anything. If you said unlikely, you were not the target audience they were canvassing, simple as that. They already know the higher level stuff from that big survey, this was nitty gritty for the target audience.

Myrhdraak · Jun 15, 2019

Planescape box please!!!

Azzy · Jun 15, 2019

Thunder Rift boxed set!!!!!

Blue · Jun 15, 2019

What type of product are they asking about? I've bought a number of boxed sets, especially back in the AD&D & 2ed days when TSR made a good number of them. It's a wide category.

This didn't seem to be able to make up it's mind if it's asking questions about a campaign setting or about an intro to D&D set.

And really, I wouldn't buy them if combined together.

As a side note, if you change your answer to "Not Likely" half way through when you understand they are not asking about the concept of buying a D&D Boxed Set on something, but about a specific boxed set that they neglected to describe, all the questions go away. If you go back to 50/50 or more it appears but you've lost all your answers.

Really, this was a poorly done survey because they are making assumptions that "D&D Box Set" has a clear and unambiguous meaning to everyone, and I tell you that even with consideration of their questions and potential contents I can't tell you exactly what they were offering. So my answers will not be made in the same context as others.

Blue · Jun 15, 2019

Paul Farquhar said:
Meh. It's just asked me how likely I was to buy a boxed set, I said "unlikely" and it told me to get lost. It would have been nice to be asked why (boxed sets are massively expensive in the UK compared to books).

Yeah, I originally thought it was about the concept of buying a Box Set and it gave me a bunch of questions. When I realized that they had particular meaning to box set that didn't match the varied history of boxed sets I changed my answer to "not likely" and it wiped all the questions it had previously asked. Get lost indeed.

Mercurius · Jun 15, 2019

I highly doubt this is for an Eberron box set. Isn't the new Eberron producting coming out this year, in a few months? They wouldn't be polling like this just five months in advance.

My money would be on Forgotten Realms. It just makes all kinds of sense.

Greyhawk is possible, but let's face it: the setting is a bit anachronistic for contemporary sensibilities. Duchy of Geoff? Nyr Dyv? Maybe a bit later as a legacy/collector's product, but for some reason it just seems more dated than the FR, perhaps because the creator was a pre-Boomer, actually "Silent Generation" (born 1938), while Ed Greenwood was late Boomer/fringe Gen X (born 1959). I just don't see them doing their first new setting box as Greyhawk (if that's what they're doing).

Planescape would be wonderful too.

Of course the best case scenario is "all of the above," but that seems unrealistic, or rather a bit optimistic. But I could see a smattering of box sets over the next two to three years: FR, Planescape, Greyhawk, maybe Dark Sun or even Mystara.

Parmandur · Jun 16, 2019

Mercurius said:
I highly doubt this is for an Eberron box set. Isn't the new Eberron producting coming out this year, in a few months? They wouldn't be polling like this just five months in advance.

My money would be on Forgotten Realms. It just makes all kinds of sense.

Greyhawk is possible, but let's face it: the setting is a bit anachronistic for contemporary sensibilities. Duchy of Geoff? Nyr Dyv? Maybe a bit later as a legacy/collector's product, but for some reason it just seems more dated than the FR, perhaps because the creator was a pre-Boomer, actually "Silent Generation" (born 1938), while Ed Greenwood was late Boomer/fringe Gen X (born 1959). I just don't see them doing their first new setting box as Greyhawk (if that's what they're doing).

Planescape would be wonderful too.

Of course the best case scenario is "all of the above," but that seems unrealistic, or rather a bit optimistic. But I could see a smattering of box sets over the next two to three years: FR, Planescape, Greyhawk, maybe Dark Sun or even Mystara.

In terms of planning a product, they asked what people would want in a box set last year in the big product survey. This seemed more like fine-tuning something they already have lined up, based on the weird specificity of the questions. Seems like an Eberron companion set, for my money.

Urriak · Jun 16, 2019

gyor said:
I wasn't taking about another starter set, but a full on campaign box set, which is a very different beast from a starter set. Might not have an adventure for example, it'd have updated lore, a big map of Faerun (maybe Toril as a whole), info on various regions, the target audience would be not be newbies (although perhaps it would be presented in a newbie friendly fashion), but rather major fans of FR.

Also remember WotC is hiring consultants on various none European inspired FR cultures.

Sorry I didn't phrase my post very well. What I meant is that even if this boxed set was a campaign setting, I'm not sure how much more incremental value it would add compared to the products currently released.

So let's say you're correct and it's a FR campaign box. The lore would have to be spread out over the entire world, otherwise it's just rehashing the stuff already released in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. And if it's the entire world, they need to spread it thin to cover everything in Toril. Plus some of this info is already covered in Out of the Abyss and Tomb of Annihilation that cover areas beyond the Sword Coast.

Now they could still do a campaign box, there's enough remaining content (and they can repackage already released content), I just don't think it's very smart on their part to do this. More likely IMO, they're going to keep releasing new Adventure books with each one covering a different area of the world of Toril (like Al-Qadim or Kara-Tur).

If it's a new starter box, the choice to me is Greyhawk because it doesn't require new rules and can function as a baseline default setting, much like FR does. And at the same time they can release content for that world that is completely new for FR.

If it is truly a campaign box, I think it's Dark Sun or Eberron. Both require new rules for their worlds to actually work, plus the obligatory world lore would be completely new.

gyor · Jun 16, 2019

Matthia05718273 said:
Sorry I didn't phrase my post very well. What I meant is that even if this boxed set was a campaign setting, I'm not sure how much more incremental value it would add compared to the products currently released.

So let's say you're correct and it's a FR campaign box. The lore would have to be spread out over the entire world, otherwise it's just rehashing the stuff already released in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. And if it's the entire world, they need to spread it thin to cover everything in Toril. Plus some of this info is already covered in Out of the Abyss and Tomb of Annihilation that cover areas beyond the Sword Coast.

Now they could still do a campaign box, there's enough remaining content (and they can repackage already released content), I just don't think it's very smart on their part to do this. More likely IMO, they're going to keep releasing new Adventure books with each one covering a different area of the world of Toril (like Al-Qadim or Kara-Tur).

If it's a new starter box, the choice to me is Greyhawk because it doesn't require new rules and can function as a baseline default setting, much like FR does. And at the same time they can release content for that world that is completely new for FR.

If it is truly a campaign box, I think it's Dark Sun or Eberron. Both require new rules for their worlds to actually work, plus the obligatory world lore would be completely new.

Depends on how big the box is.