D&D 5E 5e most conservative edition yet? (In terms of new settings)

[Ruin Explorer]

I don't see it as conservative, I believe it is simply good business. 5e has focused on what will sell in sufficient numbers, and so far it is working.

The end result is still a conservative set of settings being actually delivered to the gaming public. It may well have been "good business", but that end result is still there.

As I said, I have some expectation that this will change. When 5E launched I think WotC and Hasbro feared D&D might be "on the way out", but the exact opposite has happened (thanks in large part to Critical Role and various cultural changes that are causing D&D to kind of "have it's moment", but also thanks to 5E's accessible design). As 5E has been so successful, I think what was previously risky is now pretty low-risk. With a few million D&D players, 100k copies might have been a significant hurdle for a setting-book to clear. With tens of millions and growing? I think it'd be a lot easier to clear that.

We'll see, I guess. I also think there's less parasitism now from settings, because people buy them for different reasons. In 2E, you bought a setting typically for one of two reasons:

1) You intended to run it.

2) You were some kind of completist. And being a completist wasn't that common back then.

Nowadays, tons of people are completists or collectors, and want everything, and lots of people buy stuff just to read and get ideas from (which was definitely less true in the '90s), and further lots of people buy a book just to grab a few subclasses and races and a couple of Feats. So having a whole bunch of settings is less likely to cause other settings to not sell, now. You just need them all to have some appealing material, and to make people aware that they exist.

Again, though, when you talk about 5e being "conservative" for settings, that's only really true if we focus on WotC. Outside of WotC though, 5e is rapidly approaching 2e for number of settings and is quite possibly second only to 3e if we include 3rd party products.

This seems like an unrealistic position to me. It's extremely clear that the percentage of D&D players who use 3PP settings is pretty tiny, and the main issue is a simple lack of awareness of their existence. Just ask about a 3PP setting on the 5E subreddit (which is very very busy and full of younger players - teens to early thirties mostly), and see how many people have even heard of it. Typically it's few to none, unless it's Exandria. People often express interest after hearing about something, but the awareness isn't there.

The awareness of long-ago 2E products is actually way higher. Loads of people know about Planescape, because of the game, and because people like Mercer mention it a lot. Inexplicably huge numbers of people know about Spelljammer, I just don't even know how, but they do (though they typically know very few details beyond that it's D&D in fantasy space). Dark Sun is particularly well-known, and part of that is clearly because it had a release in 4E. And pretty much everyone knows of all the current WotC settings, even if they don't own them.

Awareness is everything. DMs Guild clearly isn't really penetrating that market, not with settings, anyway.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

With the open licence there was a boom and lots of 3PPs published their own books, and someones even to translated into other languanges. Now the things are different with internet thanks grownfundings as Kickstarter and selling pdfs, avoiding to spend money with paper printed editions. And the new generations are used to the lord of the rings and warcraft. For them D&D are like that old comic in grandfather's chest. At least they feel curiosity.

And this D&D has been designed for players who want to can do things in a videogame aren't possible, like social interactions or investigating crimes.

* If Chris Perkins publishes his setting Iomandra, very close to Io's blood islands from "Council of Wyrms"... would be a new or a old setting? And a setting about Ri-Laganth, the evil empire from AD&D 2nd Chronomancer?

 

[Parmandur]

The end result is still a conservative set of settings being actually delivered to the gaming public. It may well have been "good business", but that end result is still there.

As I said, I have some expectation that this will change. When 5E launched I think WotC and Hasbro feared D&D might be "on the way out", but the exact opposite has happened (thanks in large part to Critical Role and various cultural changes that are causing D&D to kind of "have it's moment", but also thanks to 5E's accessible design). As 5E has been so successful, I think what was previously risky is now pretty low-risk. With a few million D&D players, 100k copies might have been a significant hurdle for a setting-book to clear. With tens of millions and growing? I think it'd be a lot easier to clear that.

We'll see, I guess. I also think there's less parasitism now from settings, because people buy them for different reasons. In 2E, you bought a setting typically for one of two reasons:

1) You intended to run it.

2) You were some kind of completist. And being a completist wasn't that common back then.

Nowadays, tons of people are completists or collectors, and want everything, and lots of people buy stuff just to read and get ideas from (which was definitely less true in the '90s), and further lots of people buy a book just to grab a few subclasses and races and a couple of Feats. So having a whole bunch of settings is less likely to cause other settings to not sell, now. You just need them all to have some appealing material, and to make people aware that they exist.



This seems like an unrealistic position to me. It's extremely clear that the percentage of D&D players who use 3PP settings is pretty tiny, and the main issue is a simple lack of awareness of their existence. Just ask about a 3PP setting on the 5E subreddit (which is very very busy and full of younger players - teens to early thirties mostly), and see how many people have even heard of it. Typically it's few to none, unless it's Exandria. People often express interest after hearing about something, but the awareness isn't there.

The awareness of long-ago 2E products is actually way higher. Loads of people know about Planescape, because of the game, and because people like Mercer mention it a lot. Inexplicably huge numbers of people know about Spelljammer, I just don't even know how, but they do (though they typically know very few details beyond that it's D&D in fantasy space). Dark Sun is particularly well-known, and part of that is clearly because it had a release in 4E. And pretty much everyone knows of all the current WotC settings, even if they don't own them.

Awareness is everything. DMs Guild clearly isn't really penetrating that market, not with settings, anyway.

The DMsGuild is for the hardcore, honestly.

One of their big points for 5E product design has been to make the books as objects attractive, half practical play resources, half coffee table read. This helps for the Settings.

 

[eyeheartawk]

New settings, however, arguably require more work and bring more associated risk than adventures and rules supplements. And unless they really catch on, they probably are less likely to bring in a return on investment. It's relatively easy for GMs to adapt published adventures and rules to their homebrew settings.

So, you don't know any of these points to be actually true?

Citation needed.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

And a setting about Ri-Laganth, the evil empire from AD&D 2nd Chronomancer?

Completely off-topic, but what is the source of this "Ri-Laganth"? Sounds uper interesting, and I've never heard of it before.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Ri-Laganth is a "evil kingdom" what appears in AD&D 2nd Ed of "Chronomancers", with the concept of "time sphere", like the crystal spheres of Spelljammer but alternate world or uchrony.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Ri-Laganth is a "evil kingdom" what appears in AD&D 2nd Ed of "Chronomancers", with the concept of "time sphere", like the crystal spheres of Spelljammer but alternate world or uchrony.

Yeah, you've referred to it as evil twice, and I'm not seeing how. Ri-Laganth is a city (not sure why you're calling a kingdom either) which the book describes 500 years ago, present day, 500 year into the future and 1000 year into the future. The far future version has people living in apartments and civilised orcs. Pretty chilling stuff.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The DMsGuild is for the hardcore, honestly.

One of their big points for 5E product design has been to make the books as objects attractive, half practical play resources, half coffee table read. This helps for the Settings.

Yes, and it's something a lot of RPG books have been good for over the years, honestly (albeit sometimes very different kinds of people's coffee tables, so it's a good move. I just feel like point to DM's Guild as the solution for, well, much of anything isn't really right because of how little-known it is.

Even when people do hear about it, a lot of people are rather skeptical of it, or adverse towards the notion, because it's not "official" (always been a problem in RPGs, though least so in 3.XE). It doesn't help that the UI/visual design of DMs Guild is very... 2004-ish, and the find-ability of stuff (despite strong efforts) is not great.

 

[Parmandur]

Yes, and it's something a lot of RPG books have been good for over the years, honestly (albeit sometimes very different kinds of people's coffee tables, so it's a good move. I just feel like point to DM's Guild as the solution for, well, much of anything isn't really right because of how little-known it is.

Even when people do hear about it, a lot of people are rather skeptical of it, or adverse towards the notion, because it's not "official" (always been a problem in RPGs, though least so in 3.XE). It doesn't help that the UI/visual design of DMs Guild is very... 2004-ish, and the find-ability of stuff (despite strong efforts) is not great.

WotC has certainly been working to make the DMsGuild attractive and seemingly semi-official insofar as possible: their "Free Stuff" ongoing campaign is all about promotion of DMsGuild authors and products...

 

[Minigiant]

Official 5e is rather conservative in setting. Unofficially 5e is very outgoing.