WotC WotC needs an Elon Musk

[Gradine]

Also I think new Ravenloft is better than the old one.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I shall inform you this is not true. It’s very much Spelljammer, and is an ok product. It’s main flaw is that it’s short and does not go quite as into detail as it should. Basically it could have used another 30 pages or so.

It's like a pretty good issue of Dragon Magazine themed around Spelljammer.

 

[RealAlHazred]

I get why you might want Eberron and Athas to be remote, but that shouldn't mean they are never accessible.

I feel like part of Eberron's appeal is how integrated everything is. In other settings, guidance frequently was along the lines of "cross-planar adventures should be higher tier than starting adventures" (obviously, except things like Planescape) but when they showed up it felt like an afterthought. On Eberron, manifest zones ensure players will be aware of planar shenanigans early on, and keep being aware of them. Adding other planes into the mix kind of messes that up.

For instance, in Eberron, researchers have tracked some of the souls of departed, and they went to Dolurrh; it's not exactly clear to them why or how and it's difficult to research. The foremost researchers on the phenomenology of death were in House Vol, and there aren't any left anymore. In Planescape, souls go to an afterlife for the most part based on the god they worshipped. There's a lot of in-universe lore about how and why it works that way. It fits in pretty well with Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms, but it drastically reduces a part of Eberron's unknowability. It changes its cosmology if both Eberron and Planescape coexist.

Really, deep down, I don't want Wizards of the Coast to cross the streams because of a particularly obnoxious FR fan who sat at my Eberron table at a convention and really, really, really wanted to bring Elminster into Sharn.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Really, deep down, I don't want Wizards of the Coast to cross the streams because of a particularly obnoxious FR fan who sat at my Eberron table at a convention and really, really, really wanted to bring Elminster into Sharn.

To donate his corpse to the Karns?

 

[MonsterEnvy]

You cannot "inform" someone that something is or is not a bad product. It is bad, to them.

They explicitly have never read it.

 

[RealAlHazred]

To donate his corpse to the Karns?

To play. He'd basically recreated Elminster by ignoring all sorts of character generation guidelines designed to level the playing field for newbies.

 

[Lanefan]

I must admit, I appreciate your consistency in the notion that you'd rather see a setting dead and buried than have one note of it changed.

I can easily see how this sentiment would arise.

A DM takes a published setting and uses it, maybe changing things about it and almost certainly advancing/updating its lore to suit the story and results of that campaign. During or after this, WotC also updates the setting; only those updates don't agree with the homebrew updates and lore changes. So, when the DM goes to re-use that setting there's a conflict between what lore-wise players think they know and what the DM expects them to know (the original version) plus what he wants them to know (the in-game updates from previous campaigns).

And, homebrew updates aside, there's also a case to be made that a DM should only have to buy a setting once; and not be expected to re-purchase it each time it's to be used solely in order to stay abreast of the lore updates.

Lay the setting down, sort it out, get it right, release it, and then leave it alone and go on to making the next one. Put another way: release the setting as a single snapshot in time, with at least enough history given to explain how things got to the point of that snapshot, and stop there. Do NOT be tempted to "officially" update or revise it later.

Instead leave it to each individual DM/table/campaign to bring that snapshot to life and determine through play where things go from there.

 

[Scribe]

Lay the setting down, sort it out, get it right, release it, and then leave it alone and go on to making the next one. Put another way: release the setting as a single snapshot in time, with at least enough history given to explain how things got to the point of that snapshot, and stop there. Do NOT be tempted to "officially" update or revise it later.

Absolutely.

 

[Malmuria]

Do NOT be tempted to "officially" update or revise it later.

The “temptation” comes in the form of (“hardcore”) fans of particular settings calling for them to be updated (with consistent lore) only to then be upset when they do release it but it’s not as they imagined. For example, many people seem to want a comprehensive forgotten realms setting book for 5e, a setting that is not exactly wanting for available lore! Meanwhile, If wotc releases a new setting like radiant citadel or an mtg setting, people complain about it not being a classic setting.

 

[Incenjucar]

As a Planescape fan who has just... not dared to look directly at Faction War, I see good reason to leave settings as-is and to just update the rules and flesh out new details. Advancing the timeline is fine to do in novels, and to have as timeline supplements (going into the past or alternate timelines, as well!), but the core setting should be frozen as its base at the most interesting time to be in that setting.