D&D 5E Mearls on other settings

Mouseferatu said:

I would counter, though, that if you go that route, you will lose some of the audience who aren't interested in a thematically "watered down" version of their setting.

The trick is to walk that narrow pathway that displeases the fewest of each chunk of audience. Now you're probably (and, IMO, unfortunately) correct that if you must piss off one or the other, you'll probably lose fewer of the die-hard fans if you make the settings more generic than you will the casual fans if you make them too restrictive. But I still feel that there's a middle ground that includes some level of omission/restriction, even if not as much as some die-hards would prefer.

Click to expand...

The problem with this argument is whether adding new things to the setting (in terms of the PHB options) is "watering it down".

Settings grow and evolve, and sometimes they have to adjust to new material. Mystara in 2e had to find homes for multi-classing, rangers, bards, and half-elves. The 3e FRCS brought over all the planetouched races (previously from PS) to Faerun, as well as ret-conned the story. Arthaus Ravenloft had to contend with sorcerers, barbarians, monks, and half-orcs (the latter re-fluffed as Caliban). 3e Dragonlance did the same with Krynn as far as finding homes for sorcerers, monks, and such. 4e Eberron had to accommodate eladrin and dragonborn, 3e Dark Sun the psionic Handbook races, 4e Dark Sun a huge swath of PHB options like warlocks, bards, shaman, and sorcerers. Each of those settings were not ruined. They grew.

A few compromises can be reached (half-orcs were a poor fit for Ravenloft, so they replaced them with a mechanically similar yet thematically different race). But I think you'll see most, if not all, of the classes in PHB as well as a majority of the races have homes on Krynn, Athas, Cerelia, Mystara, Oerth, and Eberron. It makes sense to sell settings that can accommodate expansion. A DM who runs traditional Athas has little need for Volo's Guide to Monsters, so that is a sale lost. I can't see a scenario where having settings using half-or-less of the printed material out there makes them more money.

MechaPilot said:

I can't say I agree with that. If all they are trying to do is update a setting to the new edition, then they just need to deal with the crunchy bits that were altered as a result of rules that changed when the edition changed.

Click to expand...

But, they can't do just that. The product isn't simply an update supplement for some gamer who has been playing for thirty years. It has to appeal to new gamers as well. There appear to be a rather large number of new gamers around. Someone's buying those PHB's anyway.

So, not only do they have to juggle making "appropriate" mechanical changes (trying to get an Artificer class that doesn't make people's head explode shows how easy that is), they also have to introduce the setting to people who have virtually no experience with that setting.

Which means, considering you have page counts, something is going to get cut. They have to. And no matter where they draw that line, someone is going to be pissed off.

I really don't envy them their job. Actually, surprising as this is to say, I find myself agreeing with [MENTION=518]JeffB[/MENTION] that they should simply abandon those old settings. It's a no win situation AFAIC. They might as well start fresh.

Hussar said:

I really don't envy them their job. Actually, surprising as this is to say, I find myself agreeing with [MENTION=518]JeffB[/MENTION] that they should simply abandon those old settings. It's a no win situation AFAIC. They might as well start fresh.

Click to expand...

I wish they would just license out their settings to other companies.

Zardnaar said:

The setting could be done as one off campaign books with no follow up support/adventures/novels.

Best way to do this would be outsource it to 3pp using original authors where possible (Heard, Baker are keen?) and adventures can be put on the DMGuild.

Click to expand...

I agree with this.

I just realized, by choosing a cosmology without polytheism, thus needing to homebrew the campaign setting, and thus being legally restricted by WotC to the 5e SRD only, means no legal access to the Variant Human.

It looks like it is necessary to design a Variant Variant Human.

Yaarel said:

I just realized, by choosing a cosmology without polytheism, thus needing to homebrew the campaign setting, and thus being legally restricted by WotC to the 5e SRD only, means no legal access to the Variant Human.

It looks like it is necessary to design a Variant Variant Human.

Click to expand...

Why would you need to reference variant humans in you setting guide though?

You could simply say that humans in your setting get the same mechanics as a variant human. After all, mechanics aren't subject to copyright.

Hussar said:

I really don't envy them their job. Actually, surprising as this is to say, I find myself agreeing with [MENTION=518]JeffB[/MENTION] that they should simply abandon those old settings. It's a no win situation AFAIC. They might as well start fresh.

Click to expand...

The problem with that though is that even abandoning a system will upset some fans to the point of desertion. They really are darned if they do and darned if they don't.

Hussar said:

Why would you need to reference variant humans in you setting guide though?

Click to expand...

Why? Because the Variant Human is the only version of the Human that appeals to me. The racial abilities improvements are modest, being +1 in contrast to the ‘superhuman’ +2. But the extra feat puts the finger on Human versatility. And if the player decides to get a feat that grants +1 with a minor feature, to boost an ability to +2, well, that is excellent too, because every once in a while, there is a Human that really is super-smart, super-strong, super-charismatic, or so on, who even the ‘superhuman’ races admire.

Hussar said:

You could simply say that humans in your setting get the same mechanics as a variant human. After all, mechanics aren't subject to copyright.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I will probably go that route. Plus +1 improvements and choice of feat, but tweak some other stuff, and make sure the verbiage is different.

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]

Also, the whole point of my effort to homebrew is to have a version of the rules that do not refer to polytheism in any way, shape, or form. So, I will rewrite all the rules from scratch, reflavoring the mechanics in ways that are more useful to a diversity of campaign settings.

So, there will only be one version of the Human that will be available in this setting-neutral rule book, the one that gets a feat.

Die hard Planescape before the Faction War. Diehard Mystara before they ruined Alphatia. Also hated renaming Specularum as Mirros.