Only the Lonely: Why We Demand Official Product

[hawkeyefan]

which brings me to Hawkeyefan’s comments - there’s a lot of people who are familiar with old material and are hoping for a current update - often because they don’t access to the old material (or it’s dated and could use some modernization). Some people just don’t know how or what they should do to update old campaigns, and an “official” product can do that for them.

Sure, I get that. I don’t know if not having the old material is a significant obstacle given how easily and cheaply all that material can be had. But the question of how to update it is the question.

Honestly, I think that’s more of a challenge for WotC than for any individual fan. I mean, I’ve used many of the settings in my 5E game (there’s a lot of world hopping) and I just present the settings in a way that I consider best.

WotC will have to somehow please a myriad of fans for each setting, each with their own take on what matters most to the setting, and what should or should not be included. That’s gonna be tough to pull off.

Some people might think laziness as a factor. It's a lot of work to port something over. But a lot of people don't have the time, energy, or talent to do it themselves. That's understandable.

More important to consider, however, is gaining an official consensus. D&D is very easily the most open and accessible system to play. You can get a random group of players to sit at the table at a moment's notice, or gather publicly in random groups during events, like AL. In these cases, it can be much less of a hassle to have an officially sanctioned set of rules and options to ensure everyone is on a similar page from the start.

For a home or private game, however, house rules and interpretations are much easier to pass for a small group. But then again, it could go back to a lack of time, talent, and energy.

Yeah, AL play and similar games benefit from having set materials to use. This is one of the stronger reasons for the request for old settings, in my opinion.

And I agree that it’s not about laziness. I’d never say that someone is lazy for asking for a setting guide rather than doing all that work themselves.

But, in the absence of an official setting guide, I think people can manage without needing to do as much work as it seems, if they really want to play in a specific setting.

It doesn’t need to be a 300 page book, when you get down to it.

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

Really what I think WotC should do with settings that they really have no intention of republishing (that is, if they don't), is set up "fan committees" that can be in charge of establishing standard rules, canon, and vetting DMsGuild fan products for the settings. They did something rather like this back in the 3e days, but that seems to have gone away at some point...

 

[generic]

Really what I think WotC should do with settings that they really have no intention of republishing (that is, if they don't), is set up "fan committees" that can be in charge of establishing standard rules, canon, and vetting DMsGuild fan products for the settings. They did something rather like this back in the 3e days, but that seems to have gone away at some point...

That sounds great... can I be on the Forgotten Realms committee?

For... uh... the good of the setting.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Really what I think WotC should do with settings that they really have no intention of republishing (that is, if they don't), is set up "fan committees" that can be in charge of establishing standard rules, canon, and vetting DMsGuild fan products for the settings. They did something rather like this back in the 3e days, but that seems to have gone away at some point...

If there are any settings that they’ve decided for certain they’ll not support, then I could see them opening the setting on DMs Guild and maybe doing something like the Guild Adept program to do the “core” material for that setting.

 

[hawkeyefan]

This sounds like Star Wars fans, too. You just can't recapture the magic, because a big part of it is the newness, and how it hit you at a certain time in your life. I can't really recreate getting my D&D Black Box and Rules Cyclopedia when I was 9, watching the Star Wars trilogy for the first time when I was 12, playing through Final Fantasy VII when I was 17, or reading The Magus when I was 25. All I can do is be open to new possibilities... beginner's mind, as they say in Zen...

Yeah, you see this with Star Wars and Marvel and DC and similar franchises. I think this initial connection...that magic moment....also connects to gatekeeping and fandom, which has come up in a lot of other threads lately.

 

[The Green Hermit]

This is true, and I use milestone rather than traditional XP awards in my games as well.
However, this could be handled by awarding flat XP awards in chunks. For example, after completion of this chapter, characters will receive 1,000 XP* (or whatever number). That amount could be enough for a level for a rogue or fighter, but halfway there for a wizard or cleric.
As long as we move away from tracking XP for each monster, trap, etc., and give it out in chunks, I'm okay.

I prefer to get XP for individual things instead of for chapters or milestones. That way, different characters can level at different paces depending upon what they (or their players) do.

 

[jmucchiello]

I prefer to get XP for individual things instead of for chapters or milestones. That way, different characters can level at different paces depending upon what they (or their players) do.

I'm the opposite. It's a team effort. Milestone leveling.

 

[Salthorae]

I prefer to get XP for individual things instead of for chapters or milestones. That way, different characters can level at different paces depending upon what they (or their players) do.

If my group had any semblance of people showing up regularly, I'd love to track individual XP. Alas...

 

[3catcircus]

I'm the opposite. It's a team effort. Milestone leveling.

I'd just as soon do away with leveling altogether. It never made any sense that you suddenly are going up in power as a step function.

Once 3e established a standardized skill system for D&D, it is easy enough to establish that everything is a skill (Spycraft Shadowforce Archer used this approach to psionics, using feats as the entrance ticket). Also easy enough to establish that your skills improve more quickly the more you use them rather than being given a chunk of skill points at each level where you could add to a skill even if you didn't use it at all at your previous level

 

[3catcircus]

I think more than keeping it alive, since if you have the 1e fluff you can run a Greyhawk game with it just fine, is that people want mechanical support for that fluff. A few feats, magic items and subclasses that have been built and play tested. As well as perhaps 5e stat blocks for some prominent NPCs.

This. Ask 10 people to convert some type of mechanical info from prior editions to 5e and you'll get 10 different results. Even worse ask them to progressively convert from 1e -> 2e -> 3e -> 4e -> 5e and watch the analysis paralysis set in.