You know that WotC does not actually have to waste their own precious resources to get it done, right?
Right?
D&D 5E Mike Mearls interview - states that they may be getting off of the 2 AP/year train.
You know that WotC does not actually have to waste their own precious resources to get it done, right?
Right?
I think that they deeply regret the century jump, and would have undone it if they could. Having a world as close to 2e as possible is apparently the next best thing, even if it means no new shops have opened in a century
And the even more ironic thing is that you get posters like [MENTION=16728]schnee[/MENTION] for example that sincerely believe the century jump means Ed Greenwoods characters are gone.
Oh, I don't mind stories and interesting characters. Novels are fine. But they don't all need to be about changing the world.
For example, take Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's an amazing film. The stakes are high - if the Nazis get the Ark of the Covenant things will get real bad (well, except that the Ark doesn't seem to like being used by anti-semites, but they don't know that until the finale).
But Indy doesn't stop the Third Reich or win WWII. He fights against these particular Nazis. He might have saved the world, but he didn't change it.
In the same way, RPG tie-in novels don't have to change the setting, at least not on a large scale - and the changes they do make don't have to be acknowledged outside direct sequels. Finding who's kidnapping Cyran refugees and experimenting on them is a perfectly worthwhile plot for a novel, and doesn't alter the setting. Stopping a plot by the Lords of Dust to incite a new war between Aundair and Karrnath would make for a cool novel. Racing for an artifact to get to it before the Emerald Claw does would be awesome.
I'm not sure about what they're doing with novels and comics, but they do have some meta-plot going on with the Adventure Paths, albeit at a slower pace than TSR used to have. It's mostly countered by all the APs taking place in different parts of the world. The Varisian ones (Runelords, Crimson Throne, Jade Regent, Shattered Star) do build on one another to some extent, but mostly along the edges. For example, in Runelords a particular NPC loses her family due to circumstances, which leaves her available to go traveling in Jade Regent. But that NPC is a minor character at best in Runelords - she doesn't do much after part 1 or 2. Shattered Star, I am told, also references some things from the previous APs.
I believe that the official view point is that, like Schrodingers Cat, they may or may not have had any of those things happen because now Forgotten Realms from a nonlinear, non-subjective viewpoint is more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.
They're doing exactly what you wrote about the Lost Ark. The stories, be they as epic as they are sometimes, don't really change the overall setting in big ways.
I know about the AP connections, but they are very minor, more just connections, really, than a metaplot. Despite nearly a decade passed, the setting didn't really change much.
You usually do in the software business, which is a pretty good analogy for the game publishing business in that most of the cost to make a product is in the design of that product, not in the production of any particular copy. For example, you don't see Microsoft making another word processor - they're happy with Word. You don't see Blizzard making another fantasy-themed MMORPG, they're happy with World of Warcraft.
I guess that sums up my problem with the arguement against having a "living" setting. Here you are calling out Raiders of the Lost Ark as being such an amazing film and yet it is based in the middle of an intrinsically "living" world (by definition).
Using this example if Eberron did make a call on what plot hooks happened and jumped forward in time until after the next war with the Lord of Blades, you could still have an adventure set in the middle of the war just as Steven Spielberg was able to set his movie 50 years earlier then his current day.
Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad (he/him)
Yes, they do. Limited shelf space with their retailers, limited cash flow and budgeting to pay a third party, limited time to spend reviewing third party products and checking them for conformity with the rest of their products, limited playtesting resources, limited time and resources to check printing and shipping and distribution and returns and sales reporting and accounting, limited focus time for PR and marketing, limited customer service resources, etc.. These are all resources they have to manage. And I don't want the spending those resources on that product.
Even using a third party contractor involves all those things I just mentioned. Those are all expenditures of limited resources, even on the ones third parties wrote.
That doesn't make it my way or the highway. But it does mean that's not a product I personally want them focusing on and therefore nobody should be speaking for me concerning making "everyone" happy.
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Giltonio_Santos
Hero
I'm no marketing expert, but I still hold my personal belief that the real fanbase splitting happened when TSR decided to publish Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Mystara, and Birthright (maybe there's something else, I honestly can't remember). Also dropping the settings that allowed you to go in different directions and tested the limits of the system was just WotC throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Obviously, this is just the opinion of someone whose whole investment in RPGs can be put in a bookshelf, so I'm probably wrong and Dancey is probably right.
They seem to have plenty of resources to get Goodman Games to reprint old adventures and in the DMs Guild era do they even pay contractors in advance now a days?
Besides I have seen that book shelf - if they clear out old edition stock there is plenty of room for more stuff.
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