D&D 5E (2014) What of the already done settings do you think WotC is revisiting for a Setting Book?

[Yora]

I was wondering if there's any information on what makes that setting special. But is there? Or is it deliberately generic?

 

[Ibrandul]

In my experience, timeline advances make settings unplayable.

Something interesting is happening in the world that involves important people and factions. I would love using those ideas in my game, but I know there will be another timeline update in a few months, and whatever I do to the NPCs and places in my campaign will be different than what the new official timeline update says happens. So I have to wait for the next update before I can plan my campaign. But then I know there will be another timeline update some more months down the line, and I first have to wait for that to come out before I can actually start planning my campaign.
There never will be a good point to start a campaign that deals with major developments in the world until we have the full story complete. That's not producing game content, that's producing fiction dressed up as game content.

The only good way to still actually run a campaign and not running into the next timeline update making everything invalid is to prepare campaigns that won't touch on the ongoing big events in any way. At which point it again is not game content but tangentially related spinoff fiction.

That's why I actually sort of like where the Forgotten Realms has ended up (at least for now): there's a ton of canon, but it's almost all in the past, and it's mostly up to you whether it might have changed in the interim; and the timeline does still advance, but glacially, nonlinearly, and often (though not always) vaguely enough, indeterminately enough, and modularly enough so as to give DMs a lot of latitude to tweak things without ever contradicting anything that's released later. (Both the movie and any potential 5e FRCS would nullify this virtue.)

At the same time, I've always thought the complaint you register, while a valid concern and one that I share, is still a problem with non-metaplot, frozen-timeline settings. Take Eberron, for example: the timeline hasn't advanced, but new products have been released that provide additional, canonical information about areas, organizations, characters, and even past events that were less fleshed out before (including Rising from the Last War). If you've run an Eberron game for any length of time, presumably at some point you've had to fill in details about some area of the lore, and then at some later point a new book got released that filled in the same area with different details from the ones you invented.

The only settings completely free from this problem are your own homebrew settings, or "complete" published settings for which no new lore details will ever be published. Freezing the official timeline mitigates the problem, but it doesn't eliminate it.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Something like that is probably what the setting needs to give it a bit of a kick in the pants. I mean, what it didn't need was the 4E idiocy, but more of a metaplot to give it some shape/form and to actually change some places - which might anger purists, but like, any change does that, and the big problem the FR has sort of walked into is that it has gradually seemed sleepier and sleepier.

I think that is the purpose of Ellywick and new characters in AFR, to create a kind of Gatewatch for FR/D&D with expected metaplot.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think that is the purpose of Ellywick and new characters in AFR, to create a kind of Gatewatch for FR/D&D with expected metaplot.

Yeah that's an interesting development and does potentially indicate something in that direction.

 

[Quickleaf]

According to WotC homebrew is the most popular setting, not FR.

Source?

I believe he's referring to a late 2015 talk Chris Perkins gave at GameHole Con: WotC's Chris Perkins Talks About... Everything! Upcoming Storylines, Products, Staffing, Other World

It's an audio recording, and I don't have the exact time stamp, but more or less what he says is:

A great bulk of those who play D&D run homebrew settings. But of those home-brew campaigns, over half of those homebrewers do pillage from other settings ... 15% or 50% of the world they've created has hawked stuff from other worlds. They're comfortable pillaging our products for ideas. That homebrew number, I can't remember the exact percentage, but I think it's like 55% homebrew. And then it's like 35% Forgotten Realms, and then everything else ... Very few people right now, turns out, running Dark Sun campaigns. A sliver of a sliver. Very few people running Hollow World campaigns. Very few people are running Mystara campaigns. It pretty much goes Homebrew, Forgotten Realms, I think Greyhawk's at 5% ands then everybody else is at 2% or 1%.

I recall listening to that exact blurb distinctly. That was almost 6 years ago, so I don't know if it's still accurate, but that's the best data I know of.

 

[qstor]

I hope they'd do a Greyhawk and Dragonlance book before revising any other settings.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I hope they'd do a Greyhawk and Dragonlance book before revising any other settings.

They're doing two classic setting books, that's a separate post.

They're also doing two "new" settings, which aren't MtG IPs.

And this post is about the one "returning" setting - i.e. one they've done before.

It's extremely unlikely that Greyhawk and Dragonlance are the two classic settings, given the age of their audience and the fact that both are generic fantasy with little in the way of twists.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I believe he's referring to a late 2015 talk Chris Perkins gave at GameHole Con: WotC's Chris Perkins Talks About... Everything! Upcoming Storylines, Products, Staffing, Other World

It's an audio recording, and I don't have the exact time stamp, but more or less what he says is:

A great bulk of those who play D&D run homebrew settings. But of those home-brew campaigns, over half of those homebrewers do pillage from other settings ... 15% or 50% of the world they've created has hawked stuff from other worlds. They're comfortable pillaging our products for ideas. That homebrew number, I can't remember the exact percentage, but I think it's like 55% homebrew. And then it's like 35% Forgotten Realms, and then everything else ... Very few people right now, turns out, running Dark Sun campaigns. A sliver of a sliver. Very few people running Hollow World campaigns. Very few people are running Mystara campaigns. It pretty much goes Homebrew, Forgotten Realms, I think Greyhawk's at 5% ands then everybody else is at 2% or 1%.

I recall listening to that exact blurb distinctly. That was almost 6 years ago, so I don't know if it's still accurate, but that's the best data I know of.

FR out does all other individual settings combined by a large amount.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

FR out does all other individual settings combined by a large amount.

Considering every annual adventure published is for FR, this isn't exactly a surprise.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

They're doing two classic setting books, that's a separate post.

They're also doing two "new" settings, which aren't MtG IPs.

And this post is about the one "returning" setting - i.e. one they've done before.

It's extremely unlikely that Greyhawk and Dragonlance are the two classic settings, given the age of their audience and the fact that both are generic fantasy with little in the way of twists.

Yep. And from the way Ray worded his tweets, the classic books are definitely happening, while there is a chance not all of the two new settings and revisited one will make it to print, though he thought they were coming along really well. So I would expect one of the three to get axed. I just have not decided yet to be pessimistic or not about it being the revisited one.