D&D 5E How do you hope WotC treats the upcoming classic settings?

[Umbran]

Basically I want them to alter the classic settings in any way that will make a certain subset of fans ragequit.

Mod Note:
How about you, and everyone else in this thread, stop wishing ill things for their fellow gamers, hm?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I liked the setting as a whole. I liked how reading the Black Box inspired me with fascinating images, and how those images only grew as new supplements were written. I liked how, even with as little description they were given, each domain gave me a different feeling, and how each domain was expanded upon and made into a living, breathing place in 3x. I liked how the Van Richten's Guides and Children of the Night inspired me to create interesting monsters with interesting backgrounds and created creatures that weren't just statblocks. I liked how cool and weird and horrific the monsters were (even if many of them were also silly or pointless). I liked the concept of the Mists and Dark Powers as eldritch entities of unknown purpose and intent playing games with everyone's lives and warping the land with such evil it changed even the ways magic worked. I liked the idea of nonhumans being more myth than reality, unlike every other setting.

That help?

Absolutely. I loved those things about the old setting too. I just feel too much of that was lost in the reboot. But, like everyone says, I still have my old stuff. No reason to yuck anyone else's yum.

 

[Umbran]

My question: why bother (remake Greyhawk)? What's the point?

There are always really only a couple of reasons to make any game product - 1) To give some gamers something they might like, and 2) To make some money. And surely by now you've recognized that there's been a huge influx of D&D players who have been given no reason to even look at it, so they are a market to whom it might be sold. And, that new market is... not of older sensibilities. So, remake it to sell it to people who have newer points of view. Let them have fun with it, and earn some money from them. It is that simple.

But, beyond that...

Why bother doing yet another staging of Shakespeare? Surely, it has been done enough, and filmed, so that nobody should ever have to perform the play ever again! Or another Sherlock Holmes retelling. Or another Cyrano de Bergerac - which is going to be coming out on New Years' Eve in the US, as a musical, starring Peter Dinklage, by the way...

Heaven forefend if maybe Greyhawk is inspiring to some of the folks at WotC! It isn't as if the only people in the world who like it are the ones who want to encase it in Lucite like a museum piece!

If you want a classic setting adjusted to the modern era, why not the Realms?

That's already happening. It is the default for D&D at this time, and D&D as a whole is being adjusted, so the Realms goes along for the ride.

Or why not just create a new setting?

Because, like it or not, fully new things are higher risk.

Greyhawk is different than most classic settings in that it didn't really evolve beyond its original form.

You say that as if it were a positive thing. The only constant in human existence is change, you know.

But I don't see any point in re-envisioning it towards modern sensibilities. It seems unnecessary and creatively lazy.

Ah, the old "lazy" chestnut. When in doubt, be insulting!

 

[MGibster]

Absolutely. I loved those things about the old setting too. I just feel too much of that was lost in the reboot. But, like everyone says, I still have my old stuff. No reason to yuck anyone else's yum.

Ravenloft was one of my favorite 2nd edition settings. But it's been a little over 30 years since it came out and there's a lot I've forgotten in the intervening years. In threads about the latest Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, people were mentioning domains I had entirely forgotten about.

Why bother doing yet another staging of Shakespeare? Surely, it has been done enough, and filmed, so that nobody should ever have to perform the play ever again! Or another Sherlock Holmes retelling. Or another Cyrano de Bergerac - which is going to be coming out on New Years' Eve in the US, as a musical, starring Peter Dinklage, by the way...

I'm not generally opposed to reinterpretations of past works. The Arthurian stories have certainly been updated and reinterpreted multiple times over the centuries. And I'm sure some people are still upset they unnecessarily inserted that French knight into what was a perfectly good Welsh tale. But there are some reinterpretations that make such big changes to the source material that I sometimes wonder why they bothered which gives us utter tripe like First Knight (1995) and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017). Given that WotC seems to be hitting it out of the park as of late, I don't see why Greyhawk isn't a viable candidate for being updated.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Wow, we're really butting heads huh? Ahh well... variety is the spice of life and all that, right!

So what? Drizzle is an obnoxiously overused character anyway. Better to do something to fix the sausage party of D&D characters. If not, sure, kill him off and move on. The death of a fictional character is some game book doesn't matter. You can ignore it. You can wait until it's retconned six months later. Why bother getting mad about it? Nothing forces you to accept some new piece of information into your personal head canon.

Ditto, but reverse. Nothing is stopping you from running a Greyhawk game using the old books. You can ignore the stuff you don't like. You can retcon whatever you want to make yourself feel more comfortable. Why bother getting mad about it? Nothing forces you to accept some old piece of writing for your own campaign.

Who cares? "Fans" rage about everything all the time no matter what anyway. Engage with the things you enjoy and ignore the things you don't. It's not hard. You don't like the updates to an older setting WotC is putting out, ignore it. There. Done. No problem.

Again, ditto, but reverse.

Also...why even bother trying to "update" Greyhawk in the first place then? Why not just convert it as is and then start pumping out new stuff for it. If adventures start coming out for it that start to change, say, the whole "white supremacist psycho-monk-assassins" that is the Scarlet Brotherhood (perhaps some sort of secret infiltration by good guys, using it's strict Lawfulness against it to enact changes towards Good...or at least away from Evil), this would be fine. If done well, of course. There is nothing wrong with that. But going to the original source material, saying "This might offend someone" and then re-writing the entirety of the Scarlet Brotherhood to be something completely different...that's not cool.
(That said... I still don't want them to even look in Greyhawks general direction, let alone touch it! ).

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[overgeeked]

That’s funny. The guy screeching about censorship doesn’t want something new published unless he agrees with it.

 

[Mercurius]

Ah, the old "lazy" chestnut. When in doubt, be insulting!

Who am I insulting, Umbran? No actual specific person, and not even WotC as a whole for a hypothetical that might never happen. If I am insulting anything, it is the media culture of endless remakes (and "insulting" is not the right word, really; critiquing or maybe criticizing).

And yes, I realize that everything changes. But I'm not sure that really applies to this. We're not talking about musical tastes or cultural views or a person's preference in ice cream flavors, or even Buddhist impermanence. We're talking about a fantasy world that, by its nature, is outside of time, that is an archetype that can, yes, manifest in different times and places, and embody different flavors. Certainly, many versions of Greyhawk can and do exist - as many as DMs who have run it. I'm not against people making it their own, or even WotC remaking it, or any other setting.

But just because they can, doesn't mean they should. A director could remake Casablanca, but should they? Is there anything wrong with preserving Casablanca as a striking representation of film and culture of the early 1940s? I am not suggesting that Greyhawk is the D&D equivalent of Casablanca, by the way. But I am suggesting that, just as--in my opinion--Casablanca is left alone, as a singular film from 1942, so too might it be for the best if Greyhawk is preserved as a world that represents the look and feel of D&D in 1980 (plus or minus a few years).

I have often argued in past editions--in 4E era, for instance--that I'd prefer WotC to create new settings than rehash old ones. That was mainly because of personal preferences: I love setting books and, if given the choice, I generally prefer something new to an updated version of something old.

Thankfully, with 5E, we don't have to choose. They're going a bit "setting happy," which pleases me greatly. And I like their mixture of classic, Magic, and new. I don't like everything they churn out, nor do I feel entitled to. But with anywhere from 3-6 settings planned for the next two years, there's a lot to choose from (by my count: 3 classics, 0-1 Magic, 0-2 new).

And don't get me wrong, I'm not a Greyhawk fanatic or purist. Don't tell anyone around here, but I almost prefer the Realms (at least the Greenwood and FRCS version). In other words, I'm not speaking from a "from my cold, dead hands" perspective. I'm not saying, "Leave Greyhawk alone or I'll summon Emirikol to zap you!" I'm just considering creative direction, possibilities, and even a touch of ethics.

I've also spoken several times about how I think they should do Greyhawk, a deluxe box set that I first suggested a few years back. I'm not opposed to it at all. But I do think that if they do it, they should hew closer to the original vision than other settings, because of what Greyhawk represents: the feel of early D&D in its first decade. "Gygaxia." I would hate to see WotC Mercerize it or colonize it with more recent tropes that would be incongruous with the original vibe. I mean, maybe the Suel Imperium were dragonborn, and the valley elves are morphed into aevendrow...I mean, if they go that route, fine, that's their prerogative. It would be a shame, though. IMO.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Also...why even bother trying to "update" Greyhawk in the first place then? Why not just convert it as is and then start pumping out new stuff for it. If adventures start coming out for it that start to change, say, the whole "white supremacist psycho-monk-assassins" that is the Scarlet Brotherhood (perhaps some sort of secret infiltration by good guys, using it's strict Lawfulness against it to enact changes towards Good...or at least away from Evil), this would be fine. If done well, of course. There is nothing wrong with that. But going to the original source material, saying "This might offend someone" and then re-writing the entirety of the Scarlet Brotherhood to be something completely different...that's not cool.
(That said... I still don't want them to even look in Greyhawks general direction, let alone touch it! ).

I once again doubt the Brotherhood would be changed. They are villains and punching Nazi's has always been fine.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

I once again doubt the Brotherhood would be changed. They are villains and punching Nazi's has always been fine.

You missed the point. It was that something that has been a (rather big) part of Greyhawk would have gotten changed...not what it was.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Heaven forefend if maybe Greyhawk is inspiring to some of the folks at WotC! It isn't as if the only people in the world who like it are the ones who want to encase it in Lucite like a museum piece!

The thing about Greyhawk is that the only thing that's really interesting today is that it's a perfect representation of early 80's DnD'isms. So how do you update something like that to the modern edition? If you try to keep things as unchanged as possible you end up with a setting that doesn't fit the game it's made for, but if you try to adapt everything to the latest edition then you get a setting that's mostly bland and boring.