D&D 5E Mike Mearls interview - states that they may be getting off of the 2 AP/year train.

[Giltonio_Santos]

Because, in my opinion, that was what made FR interesting, the story and characters, the notion of a detailed, living world, with it's own going-ons outside the sacred home game, because without those it's just one of the thousand generic high fantasy settings.

All of that is still there. Since the launch of 5e, Realms heroes have faced Tiamat, the Elemental Evil, an invasion of demons in the Underdark, and giants in the Sword Coast. All of those adventures had their issues, in my opinion, but I fail to see how they could be improved with more Elminster, more Drizzt or more Azoun XLVIII, and I don't think they could be improved by making them less timeline-agnostic either.

 

[PMárk]

All to its own. That I got a living world and, again, novels to read when not gaming always outweighted the constraints. But again, I am and always was a CWoD guy. NWoD has great ideas, but I kept going back to CWoD because of the feeling and the story.

Erin Evans' books did a great job to get me like the Dragonborn, as a race, because I was completely disinterested in them when first saw them in 4e. Without the story, FR and ultimately D&D is just empty for me. Yes "you ought to make your own story" and all that. Know what? I read a lot more than play and even when playing, I like to read stories, to get interested in a world and get the feeling of it. And honestly? FR was far more detailed and bigger than anything the majority of GMs are brewing up to their home campaigns and that was a bonus for me, that there was a living, breathing world out there, it helped the immersion. I didn't want to play in it all the time, but long-term, it kept my interest.

 

[PMárk]

All of that is still there. Since the launch of 5e, Realms heroes have faced Tiamat, the Elemental Evil, an invasion of demons in the Underdark, and giants in the Sword Coast. All of those adventures had their issues, in my opinion, but I fail to see how they could be improved with more Elminster, more Drizzt or more Azoun XLVIII, and I don't think they could be improved by making them less timeline-agnostic either.

It's not about putting famous npcs into the campaigns. It's about updating the setting and making stories outside the campaigns 8novels, comics, whatever), or campaigns/adventures which are part of a larger story and working the changes into the setting. Again, the notion of a living world outside the immediate environment of the PCs.

 

[Staffan]

I'm not a big fan of metaplot. The main problem is that it promotes a "magazine-like" approach to the setting, where later material makes earlier material obsolete. Maybe there's an adventure that takes place in war-torn Tethyr, but now the True King is back on the throne and all is good and peaceful again, so the adventure no longer works without significant re-working. Or maybe I was doing something with Khelben's relationship to the Harpers, but oops, all of a sudden Khelben has left the Harpers over a disagreement and brought a bunch of folks with him to start his own spy network.

I think metaplot mostly appeals to those who buy game stuff for reading, but don't have an actual game so they get vicarious pleasure from keeping up with the metaplot.

The approach used for Eberron is much superior, IMO. All the sourcebooks present the world as per 998 YK. At this point, the setting is full of possibilities. The Mourning happened 4 years ago, and whatever caused it might happen again. The Lord of Blades is amassing warforged forces in the Mournlands, where fleshy armies fear to tread, but no-one knows if, where, and when he'll go to war. Aundair might be looking to retake the Eldeen Reaches, who took the opportunity to secede during the Last War when Aundair had better things to do with their armies. The same goes for Breland vs Droaam or Karrnath vs the Talenta Plains. The various Lords of Dust are plotting to release their fiendish Overlords, and perhaps one of them have plans that are coming to fruition. The Inspired of Riedra are gaining political influence by helping the remaining Four Nations rebuild from the Last War, but they may be working on ways to bring Khorvaire under their thumb like they did Sarlona. Or maybe the world remains in a tense post-war state while the PCs are having fun plundering ruins in Xendrik. All of these, and more, are possibilities for adventure offered by the setting in 998 YK.

But if the setting were to move forward, the developers would have to decide which thing was happening, and how that would affect the setting. And then when we'd get the sourcebook on the Eldeen Reaches, it's full of stuff about how the war with Aundair is affecting the place, and how the place has been corrupted by the Children of Winter offering their forbidden magics to use against Aundair's invading armies, and so on.

Now, what I would prefer is that the hypothetical sourcebook on the Eldeen Reaches explores the place as described in the core setting book, provides more detail about the various druidic sects, what House Vadalis is up to with their house HQ and magical breeding techniques, more about the capital town of Greenheart, some stuff about Oalian's history, etcetera. It would also be pretty cool to have that book explore a hypothetical war with Aundair, giving DMs some ideas on how to handle that. But it should not be a default part of the book, just one of many optional ways the story can go.

 

[Mercurius]

I may have missed this as I only read the first few pages, but are there any thoughts--or indications from Mearls--if this means we'll see more product (than the current three books per year), or just that they're changing the composition of the three books?

 

[Oofta]

I may have missed this as I only read the first few pages, but are there any thoughts--or indications from Mearls--if this means we'll see more product (than the current three books per year), or just that they're changing the composition of the three books?

Just changing the composition, no word on publishing schedule.

 

[PMárk]

I'm not a big fan of metaplot. The main problem is that it promotes a "magazine-like" approach to the setting, where later material makes earlier material obsolete. Maybe there's an adventure that takes place in war-torn Tethyr, but now the True King is back on the throne and all is good and peaceful again, so the adventure no longer works without significant re-working. Or maybe I was doing something with Khelben's relationship to the Harpers, but oops, all of a sudden Khelben has left the Harpers over a disagreement and brought a bunch of folks with him to start his own spy network.

I think metaplot mostly appeals to those who buy game stuff for reading, but don't have an actual game so they get vicarious pleasure from keeping up with the metaplot.

The approach used for Eberron is much superior, IMO. All the sourcebooks present the world as per 998 YK. At this point, the setting is full of possibilities. The Mourning happened 4 years ago, and whatever caused it might happen again. The Lord of Blades is amassing warforged forces in the Mournlands, where fleshy armies fear to tread, but no-one knows if, where, and when he'll go to war. Aundair might be looking to retake the Eldeen Reaches, who took the opportunity to secede during the Last War when Aundair had better things to do with their armies. The same goes for Breland vs Droaam or Karrnath vs the Talenta Plains. The various Lords of Dust are plotting to release their fiendish Overlords, and perhaps one of them have plans that are coming to fruition. The Inspired of Riedra are gaining political influence by helping the remaining Four Nations rebuild from the Last War, but they may be working on ways to bring Khorvaire under their thumb like they did Sarlona. Or maybe the world remains in a tense post-war state while the PCs are having fun plundering ruins in Xendrik. All of these, and more, are possibilities for adventure offered by the setting in 998 YK.

But if the setting were to move forward, the developers would have to decide which thing was happening, and how that would affect the setting. And then when we'd get the sourcebook on the Eldeen Reaches, it's full of stuff about how the war with Aundair is affecting the place, and how the place has been corrupted by the Children of Winter offering their forbidden magics to use against Aundair's invading armies, and so on.

Now, what I would prefer is that the hypothetical sourcebook on the Eldeen Reaches explores the place as described in the core setting book, provides more detail about the various druidic sects, what House Vadalis is up to with their house HQ and magical breeding techniques, more about the capital town of Greenheart, some stuff about Oalian's history, etcetera. It would also be pretty cool to have that book explore a hypothetical war with Aundair, giving DMs some ideas on how to handle that. But it should not be a default part of the book, just one of many optional ways the story can go.

I understand it. There are definitely plus sides of a constant zero-year setting. However, an ongoing setting has it's own merits and not least of them is, yes, maintaining long-term interest outside the actual home game.

I don't like every part of FR, or WoD metaplot, but it helped a LOT to keep things changing and interesting and making novels and such possible. Speaking of FR and WoD, guess what games/settings were most tied to the metaplot (ok, Dragonlance might were even more, but that's the other side of the horse, it didn't really had much outside of it) and the well-known characters back in the day and what got to be the most recognized and successful D&D setting and the second biggest rpg for a considerable time? Yup, those ones. People like stories and interesting stories and relateable characters help buy in a lot and also deepen the setting and shows the setting through the eyes of it's inhabitants, thus making it more colorful and again, living and "real". Salvatore did a lot to make drow interesting, Cunninghan wrote a lot about elves, Evans about dragonborn and all of it made the setting more interesting.

In the end, it's always a disagreement between the "metaplot is ruining my home campaign" and "metaplot is good for making the setting interesting and living" people and I know, EnWorld's audience is more catered toward the former.

Paizo does something for good, because they don't really have a big metaplot, but still manage to have a steady stream of novels, comics and such.

Ultimately, I think sandbox/zero-year settings could provide a more felxible (not necessarily better) gaming environment, that's true, but settings with ongoing stories could provide a more interesting IP overall.

 

[Shasarak]

Except they didn't survive for 10 years. 2e was published in 1989, and TSR became insolvent in late 1996/early 1997.

And printers usually don't require payment in cash. Most business-to-business, well, business is handled via invoices. TSR orders the printer to print a book, the printer does so and then sends TSR an invoice. What happened in early 1997 was that the printer told TSR "Hey, we haven't gotten paid for the last few invoices. If you want us to print more books for you, you'd better pay up." And TSR couldn't, which they at the time reported to their customers as "a problem at the printer."

You'll note that one of the first things Wizards did once they took over was to slow things down. Dark Sun got cancelled entirely, Birthright and Planescape had some stuff in the pipeline that got published but then that was over too (with planar adventuring moving into the core product line and other settings, e.g. For Duty & Deity for FR and A Paladin in Hell for core).

There were three things that combined to bring TSR down. I guess you could chalk all three up as different flavors of "bad management", but that's a fairly useless designation.

1. Splitting up the customer base too many ways with different settings and too much stuff for those settings. In 1995, TSR published about 75 RPG products across its different product lines, including multiple boxed sets. That's 6 per month. It's much better, business-wise, to publish one book that sells 50,000 copies than six books that sell 10,000 each, even if the latter leads to more sales overall.

2. Too much crap, like Dragon Dice or Spellfire.

3. Over-reliance on novels. Back in the 80s, the Dragonlance novels had saved TSR, so now they were pumping out novels like there was no tomorrow. But it turned out that novels sold through the book trade were less of a sure bet than RPGs sold through hobby stores - book stores buy things with a right to return unsold goods - not only that, but they don't have to return the whole books either (in which case you could try to hawk them elsewhere). No, they only need to return the cover pages, and then send the rest for destruction/recycling. For a while, Random House (TSR's book distributor) let them slide and allowed them to cover their debt for unsold books with credit (that is, instead of TSR paying Random House back in cash, they could pay them back in new books). But in 1996 Random House told TSR they wouldn't take credit any longer, and wanted actual money in return for their, well, returns. And that's what pushed TSR into insolvency.

Well, to be fair, my personal definition of 2e started in 86 with the ousting of Gary so really the company lasted for 11 more years under the new management.

In my experience with buying on credit is that you pay monthly, so missing 3 payments only gives you a 3 month buffer. Any staff you have that are not called Edmond Halley need to be paid cash as well so really you can not be insolvent for long before your company collapses.

I believe the line of "splitting the fan base" is really so much bs when you consider that you rarely, if ever, see any other company selling a one size fits all product. I mean I guess it could work in the Soviet Union where you have one state run company making one product but where else is it going to work? Now I realise that it may be more profitable for the company if everyone buys one product every six months; the old "You can have any colour you want as long as it is black". But in that case all we get is the bog standard generic "black" fantasy and never ever get to see the Ebberons or Dark Suns or Spelljammers because they do not make the same profit as Forgotten Realms. Which would have been a horrible shame in my opinion. I mean speaking personally the last product produced by WotC that was interesting enough for me to buy was back in Sep 15 which means that it maybe 2 years between purchases depending on what the Sep 17 release is going to be. And I guess that is the six month release schedule working as intended.

So if we look at the real problem of your number 1 it comes down to a) print runs being too big and b) selling costs being too low. You really have no excuse of selling a product for less then the cost it takes for you to make it and I really dont see how the 2e system is responsible for those types of business mistakes.

 

[Shasarak]

I guess it comes from the heavy metaplot that used to exist, and which they are apparently not doing anymore. The fans were used to a constantly updating story of the setting; to that mindset, a century jump demands a whole lot of metaplot to explain!

Personally I struggle to understand the mindset that a century time jump does not require any updates.

"Hey dont worry, the Duran who runs the Yawning Tavern is the same Duran that used to run the Yawning Tavern"
"So why did we have a century time jump again?"

 

[Charles Rampant]

Personally I struggle to understand the mindset that a century time jump does not require any updates.

"Hey dont worry, the Duran who used to run the Yawning Tavern is the same Duran that used to run the Yawning Tavern"
"So why did we have a century time jump again?"

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