D&D 5E The case for (and against) a new Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book

[DEFCON 1]

Except it kinda is?

With the exception of mostly externally developed stuff (Wildemount) there are a finite number of projects that WOTC can/are willing to publish a year. For every Ravnica, you're delaying Planescape by 3-6 months, for example. And that's a best case scenario. Worst case, the legacy stuff gets pushed back so far they never get to it this edition because we need a Transformers book or whatever instead.

That's valid grumbling, imho.

You are absolutely, right... your grumbling is valid. Those that really want old stuff printed in the 5E style, you are right to grumble that it isn't happening.

The only downside is... I don't think WotC cares.

I suspect (in my opinion only) that WotC is of the opinion that those people who have played in the old settings KNOW what they love about those old settings, and will work really, really hard to run games "the right way" in those settings. And thus WotC feels like those DMs who do that? They don't NEED a new book to accomplish it. They are all experienced DMs who know what they like, know what they want, and if they wanted to run a game in Athas, they could do so right now using the Dark Sun materials they've gather from 2E, 3E, and 4E. Yes, the DMs would need to create certain rules to emulate older edition rules for metal weapon breakage, Defiling/Preserving etc... but really, for experienced DMs who know what they want, how hard is that to do? Either by themselves or to go googling to find other people who have already done that work?

Any DM who wants to run Dark Sun right now probably has several version of 5E psionics they could easily use or adapt for to run a game at this very moment. Now is it "official"? No. But who cares if it is? If you know what your Dark Sun game should be like... you can run one using 5E. You don't need WotC to hold your hand.

And this is why I think they have done all these other setting first (not including Eberron)... because there AREN'T previous versions of those settings in the game to use already. They are NEW settings for NEW players to find and enjoy. Us old folks who ran Greyhawk and Dragonlance and still own all that stuff printed in decades past? We know what they are. We already have what we need. So WotC doesn't need to cater to us anymore. They and TSR have done so for the past 40 years... they're now trying to help out the new folks coming in.

Yeah, it can be annoying, and yeah, we can grumble about it. Unfortunately, I don't think its going to change anything. WotC will continue to work on their own schedule and do it when they are ready.

(What I think really needs to happen is that there has to be a strong proponent of an old setting outside of the D&D design team who is willing to spearhead the project and keep pushing it. Like Keith Baker for Eberron, James Wyatt for the MtG settings, Matt Mercer for Exandria. Once they have someone who is over the moon for Dark Sun that they can trust to take the ball and run with it... maybe then it can move to the head of the pack rather than just be another "we'll get to it when we get to it" situation.)

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Once they have someone who is over the moon for Dark Sun that they can trust to take the ball and run with it...

HEATHEN!

Over the moons for Dark Dun.

Did you just forget about Gulthay? This is the type of amnesia that Hasbro is causing. Pretty soon, you'll be saying that Dark Sun is the home of My Little Ponies.

 

[DEFCON 1]

So yeah, really, ideal world, a bunch of stuff like Silver Marches would be great. I think you could make it sell really well just by putting in good mechanical stuff (subclasses, races/subraces, backgrounds, feats, etc. etc.). Maybe we don't need another FRCS. But I'd love some more stuff like you describe, or like a lot of 2E and even 1E products, which do provide more detail. Or just someone giving poor Ed a bloody budget. I genuinely love what's going on with Border Kingdoms but the lack of maps, illustrations and proper layout just make me feel really "FR on a budget", which is sad when I look behind me and see tons and tons of 2E and 3E FR stuff that wasn't on a budget. And yes "go use that!" one can say, it's fair. But I don't really want to be hauling old-fashioned books and paging through them trying to find salvageable stuff and so on, trying to work out what changed, what didn't, wishing I had 5E stats for stuff, taking photographs of maps and all that.

Completely fair. And I think that's the stumbling block-- players of older setting know what they want, and it would take a heck of a lot of work to get it there. So if WotC could do half the work for them, they could take things the rest of the way.

But I think that's what WotC is trying to do with all the Sword Coast adventure paths-- detail different parts of the Sword Coast in a closer view, plus also putting in a full adventure in there to boot. Which of course will annoy different people in different ways-- some would want the adventure without the Realms detailing, some would want the Realms detailing without the adventure. But I suspect their hope was that there would be enough interesting stuff for both sides to inspire them to pick the books up. Has it worked? Well, they've done a bunch of them and haven't done a full Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book yet, so I'm guessing they've been pleased with the results.

 

[Parmandur]

You are absolutely, right... your grumbling is valid. Those that really want old stuff printed in the 5E style, you are right to grumble that it isn't happening.

The only downside is... I don't think WotC cares.

I suspect (in my opinion only) that WotC is of the opinion that those people who have played in the old settings KNOW what they love about those old settings, and will work really, really hard to run games "the right way" in those settings. And thus WotC feels like those DMs who do that? They don't NEED a new book to accomplish it. They are all experienced DMs who know what they like, know what they want, and if they wanted to run a game in Athas, they could do so right now using the Dark Sun materials they've gather from 2E, 3E, and 4E. Yes, the DMs would need to create certain rules to emulate older edition rules for metal weapon breakage, Defiling/Preserving etc... but really, for experienced DMs who know what they want, how is that to do? Either by themselves or to go googling to find other people who have already done that work?

Any DM who wants to run Dark Sun right now probably has several version of 5E psionics they could easily use or adapt for to run a game at this very moment. Now is it "official"? No. But who cares if it is? If you know what your Dark Sun game should be like... you can run one using 5E. You don't need WotC to hold your hand.

And this is why I think they have done all these other setting first (not including Eberron)... because there AREN'T previous versions of the game to use already. They are NEW settings for NEW players to find and enjoy. Us old folks who ran Greyhawk and Dragonlance and still own all that stuff printed in decades past? We know what they are. We already have what we need. So WotC doesn't need to cater to us anymore. They and TSR have done so for the past 40 years... they're now trying to help out the new folks coming in.

Yeah, it can be annoying, and yeah, we can grumble about it. Unfortunately, I don't think its going to change anything. WotC will continue to work on their own schedule and do it when they are ready.

(What I think really needs to happen is that there has to be a strong proponent of an old setting outside of the D&D design team who is willing to spearhead the project and keep pushing it. Like Keith Baker for Eberron, James Wyatt for the MtG settings, Matt Mercer for Exandria. Once they have someone who is over the moon for Dark Sun that they can trust to take the ball and run with it... maybe then it can move to the head of the pack rather than just be another "we'll get to it when we get to it" situation.)

Forgotten Realms still has Greenwood, Greyhawk has Like Gygax (Melf was just added to Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms).

Dark Sun has a lot of momentum, though, and WotC has said repeatedly that they want to do it.

 

[DEFCON 1]

HEATHEN!

Over the moons for Dark Dun.

Did you just forget about Gulthay? This is the type of amnesia that Hasbro is causing. Pretty soon, you'll be saying that Dark Sun is the home of My Little Ponies.

Sorcerer King is my favorite My Little Pony. His cutie mark of a dragon's head in front of a black sun is so dope!

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Sorcerer King is my favorite My Little Pony. His cutie mark of a dragon's head in front of a black sun is so dope!

I agree! Say what you will about the tenets of Bronies, dude, at least they have the Sorcerer King.

 

[Ibrandul]

I'd be shocked if we haven't moved away from the Sword Coast at least twice in the next, say, seven years. (That might feel like far too long for some people, and I agree. But I'm also being realistic.)

Destinations: Cormyr and Raurin.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Dark Sun has a lot of momentum, though, and WotC has said repeatedly that they want to do it.

Yeah it's kind of interesting that it does, and they're so keen, given virtually everything about 2E DS conflicts with existing 5E strategies or facts. I.e. needs Psionics which 5E doesn't have, is very exclusionary in terms of races and subclasses which 5E isn't, is arguably sorta "political" which 5E hasn't been, can't really share adventures with other settings unlike the vast majority of settings release for 5E, has a history of starting with different stats/levels to other settings, and so on and so forth.

The glass-half-full take (from a DS aficionado perspective) is that they're keen because they want to try something different and see how it resonates with the whole new audience of D&D players they've added. My personal feeling is that, at least as a one-off, if they went "all in" on making it as different from "standard" 5E as 2E DS was from "standard" 2E, it'd be a huge hit. Though if they kept trying to repeat the trick I suspect it would have diminishing returns every time.

The glass-half-empty take is that they saw it sold decently in 4E even though they changed the setting a fair bit and did frankly silly and cheesy stuff (Goliaths as Half-Giants, for example), so they feel like they can get away with even more, given much/most of the 5E audience has few or no strong opinions about Dark Sun, and just think it "sounds cool", so they can get away with basically butchering (or to put it more kindly "massively rebooting") the setting, because about 70-90% of the people buying the book will be new to DS or not really care all that much about what makes DS, DS. So they could throw overboard everything except the core high concept ("magic basically turned this world into Mad Max without cars") and just change everything else (psionics could be sidelined, standard clerics brought in with a flimsy excuse, Half-Giants could be a Goliath subrace, etc. etc., hell, they could get rid of defiling as an option for PCs, and the hatred of arcane magic, even, and people who were new to DS would probably be defending it and saying they thought the other way "sounded dumb").

Lets hope the glass is half-full!

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah it's kind of interesting that it does, and they're so keen, given virtually everything about 2E DS conflicts with existing 5E strategies or facts. I.e. needs Psionics which 5E doesn't have, is very exclusionary in terms of races and subclasses which 5E isn't, is arguably sorta "political" which 5E hasn't been, can't really share adventures with other settings unlike the vast majority of settings release for 5E, has a history of starting with different stats/levels to other settings, and so on and so forth.

The glass-half-full take (from a DS aficionado perspective) is that they're keen because they want to try something different and see how it resonates with the whole new audience of D&D players they've added. My personal feeling is that, at least as a one-off, if they went "all in" on making it as different from "standard" 5E as 2E DS was from "standard" 2E, it'd be a huge hit. Though if they kept trying to repeat the trick I suspect it would have diminishing returns every time.

The glass-half-empty take is that they saw it sold decently in 4E even though they changed the setting a fair bit and did frankly silly and cheesy stuff (Goliaths as Half-Giants, for example), so they feel like they can get away with even more, given much/most of the 5E audience has few or no strong opinions about Dark Sun, and just think it "sounds cool", so they can get away with basically butchering (or to put it more kindly "massively rebooting") the setting, because about 70-90% of the people buying the book will be new to DS or not really care all that much about what makes DS, DS. So they could throw overboard everything except the core high concept ("magic basically turned this world into Mad Max without cars") and just change everything else (psionics could be sidelined, standard clerics brought in with a flimsy excuse, Half-Giants could be a Goliath subrace, etc. etc., hell, they could get rid of defiling as an option for PCs, and the hatred of arcane magic, even, and people who were new to DS would probably be defending it and saying they thought the other way "sounded dumb").

Lets hope the glass is half-full!

Probably something in between. Apparently, the greater part of D&D fans now weren't born yet when the original came out. Heck, a sizeable percentage weren't born yet when the 4E version came out.

 

[Bravesteel25]

Would I buy a 5E FRCS? Yes!

Do I think that would be a good choice for WotC to make rather than publishing, say, a completely new setting book that people can point to and say, "Now THAT is 5th Edition D&D."? No.