WotC WotC needs an Elon Musk

[Micah Sweet]

The problem is that what you find to be interesting is not what I might find to be interesting. Let's take the Forgotten Realms. The 1e version was fun. Then along came 2e and the Avatar Crisis and it became a lot more interesting. Then 3e didn't change much, so it was still interesting. 4e brought the whole sundering, though, which even had I played 4e would have hated, so I wouldn't have used it. That said, I bet I can find a good number of people who didn't really care about the Avatar Crisis, but did find the Sundering to be very interesting.

I liked the Avatar Crisis, personally. Those were the only FR novels I read.

 

[Scribe]

There are a few problematic areas with planescape. One is that it not only relies on alignment, but relies alignment as a metaphysical concept, though not without individual choice. This sort of doubles down on concepts of inherent good or inherent evil they've been trying to get away from. Second, the original setting was intent on placing gods from real world religions into the great wheel in sometimes cavalier ways (growing up hindu, this is something that I noticed and that bothered me).

I'm hoping they drop the Real World stuff and just keep Alignment and go into the creation myths, and what the planes are like.

Or maybe, since they have now removed it (MToF) they do a big thing on the Blood War, I dont know.

 

[wicked cool]

Shocked this thread didn’t get locked post 2 but I would say the product needs a shakeup

Modules adventures-I think it’s a mixed bag and mostly bad. Strahd/Ravenloft plus the starter adventures are excellent. The rest are clunky messes. There’s good content but not dm friendly. Icewind dale has a lot of good stuff but it reads like war and peace . I would love a shakeup in the editing area so the formulas going forward are phandelver and Ravenloft

A clear direction for where we are headed. They are remaking hoard of dragon queen and rumors/speculation it’s good for 5e and going forward?

It’s early but 1 d&d seems to be 5.1 lite. Changes are mostly rules that weren’t enforced are now enforced (feats and inspiration) , humans still seem to be the race that gets the extra stuff, the Ardlings feel like they want to tap into a different market and I would rather just had something like the harengon as opposed to furry angelic beings. - my point is it feels like the Xbox 1-Xbox 1s etc. it’s confusing and almost annoying and borderline money grab/lazy .

I want some outside voices in there. Consult with Brennan lee mulligan and Matt Mercer

Combine Tasha’s etc into the 1 players handbook. Start streamlining

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

@Snarf Zagyg has spent reems of e-paper arguing that Greyhawk needs a new book to promote visibility.

In fairness, no trees were harmed in my continuing multi-thread screed, Greyhawk: Let Me Snarfsplain to You Why Greyhawk is Awesome with So Many Words You Eventually Agree Just in the Hope that I Might Stop (I Won't).

I truly believe that things must be constantly renewed or they will eventually die. The trick is to try and make things that are good, relevant to people today, yet still contain some essence of the past that made people love it back then. If this was easy, everyone would do it, right?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Think you're taking him to literally.

I would prefer wonky and authentic than reinagined which usually means watered down, bland,inferior.

This applies to anything old. Eberron yes, Kobra Kai yes, latest Bond movies yes.

New Spelljammer, various reboots and hack jobs no.

You can have quality plus faithful adaption.

If they change what attracted you to the property in the first place it's understandable.

Badly done you don't appeal to the new crowd or the old one.

You've imho misidentified the problem by talking about "wonky and authentic". There's no way you can describe Eberron or modern James Bond movies that way. Cobra Kai sort of is, but more to the point, it's winking and meta, but it comes from a place of real understanding, but also of growing up with something, rather than seeing yourself as the author of something.

Spelljammer is a total mess not because it's not "wonky and authentic". It actually kind of is those things. Spelljammer is a mess because it wasn't understood enough, and the adaption is superficial and lacking in skill. It's not really updated in the way Cobra Kai (the most relevant comparator from your list) is. It doesn't do the clever winking at the audience that CK does. It gets that stuff is ludicrous, but it doesn't know how to acknowledge that and move on, and just has messy stuff that doesn't really work like the Clown Pirates, which something like Cobra Kai would have recognised is almost breaking kayfabe, and too far.

Planescape will probably be a trashfire for similar but worse reasons. I've never seen any evidence at all that anyone at WotC really understood or even loved Planescape, and truly "got it". I'm not saying that idly, but because it's relevant here. You can't modernise Planescape in a way that makes it work like Cobra Kai works, without loving Planescape and getting Planescape. Everything we've seen from WotC over 20+ years now suggests they don't even like Planescape, let alone get it. They've consistently minimized it, or cut it out, and the one time they went into detail, it was absolute worst possible version of Planescape. That version of Planescape was like Cobra Kai with all the karate removed. Just Daniel-san selling cars, and Johnny Lawrence getting involved in petty crimes and losing low-end jobs.

Faithfulness isn't the key issue, as your examples actually show (modern Bond isn't very "faithful" to older Bond beyond some broad tropes, and some of its attempts to be "faithful" have been dire - SPECTRE for example). The real issues:

A) Skill in adapting/updating something. I honestly don't think WotC has the talent. I don't think WotC has particularly good people in charge. If they bring in some new people, especially from outside of D&D, maybe, but right now? People like Chris Perkins? Nice guy, but not up to the job. Sorry he obviously isn't. You can't have someone like that in charge if you want Cobra Kai.

B) Genuine understanding of the original. I really don't think WotC's leadership particularly understands older D&D settings except maybe Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms and just possibly Dark Sun (but I'm very unsure about that). I certainly don't think anyone in WotC's D&D management team really understood Spelljammer. I think they quite liked it in a fannish way, but they didn't really get it beyond the superficial. Maybe this is kind of the same as A. You don't really need to love something, here, I'd say, you just need to profoundly "get" it, and I don't think WotC do (loving something can help, but being too much of a fan can also blind you to issues).

C) Enough separation that you don't think of yourself as one of the owners/creators of a thing. Cobra Kai's entire leadership is my age (44-45). They grew up with Karate Kid, but they know they didn't create Karate Kid. WotC has an issue where a lot of the people involved with D&D have been involved with D&D since the '80s or '90s. Perkins since '88 for example - I wasn't even playing D&D then, and that's well over 30 years ago! That's a problem. That's a real problem. It's not his age, to be clear - it's that he's been there the whole time so has a very different understanding of settings to someone who met them as a player/DM.

I think if WotC want to do a truly great updating, they need new people working on it, people who grew up with that setting, and really profoundly get that setting. More likely we'll either get WotC veterans with a proprietorial attitude that blinds them to what actually made the setting great, and what could update well, or some innocent kids in their 20s who just got set on the task, and don't really "get" the setting. Or god help us we'll get Monte Cook.

 

[glass]

They explicitly have never read it.

It is the 21st century. You can know an awful lot about a product without actually reading it. You can, for example, get a very good sense of whether it is worth your time and money to buy and read the book!

I know this sounds insane to many of you, but I value setting consistency over raw playability.

While I would possibly not go as far as Micah Sweet, I do think that if WotC are publishing a new version of an old setting they should only change anything if they have a damn good reason (and I do not think that "the new designers think their ideas are cooler then the original designers' ideas" constitutes a good reason - not even if I agree that the new ideas are cooler, but especially if I disagree). The bigger the change they want to make, the stronger the needed justification.

For example in old school Spelljammer, spending as little as one round at the helm stripped all spellcasting ability for the day from any Mage, be they first level or 40th. That is anti-fun for the party's spellcasters, while being a relatively minor detail in terms of its lore impact. Therefore I would support changing it - I think I read that they did indeed change that (although I may have just assumed they did), but anyway that is a change I can support.

For another example, the Vistani in the 1e and 2e materials were racist as naughty word and absolutely needed to be changed in any update. While there are people who would say the setting consistency trumps concerns about harm to real-world marginalised groups, I think they can and should be ignored (and anyone around here who would say that has probably been banned already).

OTOH, I do not see anything problematic or unplayable about the core in Ravenloft or the Pholgiston in SJ that warranted their wholesale eradication.

Given the current trajectory, I am not sure Twitter is still around in two years... which would allow us to judge much sooner than 5+ years

The way things seem to be going it might not make 5+ weeks.

I'm not saying that anything currently is unplayable. I'm saying that taken to it's logical extreme, @Micah Sweet's statement of "setting continuity is more important than playability", he would prefer that the game be literally impossible to play than a single setting he likes get retconned/rebooted.

That is not the "logical extreme" of Micah Sweet's argument, since the only way not changing something can make it literally unplayable is if it already was. And a setting that was unplayable in its original form, then by definition nobody played it so nobody is likely to care if they change it. In the specific cases of the settings mentioned in this thread, I can personally vouch for Ravenloft and Spelljammer being playable because I played in them.

4e brought the whole sundering, though, which even had I played 4e would have hated, so I wouldn't have used it.

4e had the Spellplague. The (Second) Sundering was 5e. [/nitpick]

 

[Gradine]

Or god help us we'll get Monte Cook.

One of my partner's favorite gifts I got her was a four disc album full of Bob Dylan covers. For her it was the best of both worlds; songs written by Bob Dylan and sung by literally anybody except Bob Dylan.

I've been thinking about that a lot in relation to Monte Cook...

 

[FrozenNorth]

It is the 21st century. You can know an awful lot about a product without actually reading it. You can, for example, get a very good sense of whether it is worth your time and money to buy and read the book!

Precisely because it is the 21st century, you can get a lot of incorrect information if you don’t actually read it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Precisely because it is the 21st century, you can get a lot of incorrect information if you don’t actually read it.

What incorrect information do you think they have?

 

[MonsterEnvy]

What incorrect information do you think they have?

The fact that they thought it was Spelljammer in name only. Which is not the case.