WotC Wizard's Future Plans Has 3 Big Problems: Ft. The Professor of Tolarion Community College

[Paul Farquhar]

For this particular subset of the Fandom, the bare bones setting presentation of Spelljammer and Dragonlance just doesn't cut it.

It's just a desire not to reprint old material. All that stuff is available for free on the internet.

Yeah, that's not so good for people too old to automatically go to Google if they want to know something about a setting.

 

[Jadeite]

That's a subjective view, but I haven't noticed any discernible change in quality over the 5e era. It's always hovered around the "average" mark.

As for previous eras, when they DID produce far too much stuff, there was a shotgun effect - some really great hits in amongst the disastrous misses. Due to rose tinted nostalgia specs people remember the hits and forget the disasters.

Of course it's subjective, but outside of obvious spelling errors, layout issues and books falling apart, there isn't really an universal metric to the quality of a RPG supplement.
In my opinion, Eberron and Wildermount are far better Campaign Settings than the Spelljammer Set. It could be worse, of course. It's not like the Bank of America accused Hasbro of devaluing D&D by releasing to many supplements.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Of course it's subjective, but outside of obvious spelling errors, layout issues and books falling apart, there isn't really an universal metric to the quality of a RPG supplement.
In my opinion, Eberron and Wildermount are far better Campaign Settings than the Spelljammer Set. It could be worse, of course. It's not like the Bank of America accused Hasbro of devaluing D&D by releasing to many supplements.

The Spelljammer set is a different format, and therefore not directly comparable. And lets not forget the original Spelljammer boxed set was an unmitigated flop. But there is just a general deviation about a mean, not a trend. The naffest 5e setting book was Theros (2020), by far. It was so bad that it is pretty much forgotten. The best, VGR (2021) was later.

 

[Jadeite]

As someone who owns the complete Arthaus Ravenloft, I was underwhelmed by the 2021 version.

 

[humble minion]

The Spelljammer set is a different format, and therefore not directly comparable. And lets not forget the original Spelljammer boxed set was an unmitigated flop. But there is just a general deviation about a mean, not a trend. The naffest 5e setting book was Theros (2020), by far. It was so bad that it is pretty much forgotten. The best, VGR (2021).

Funny how subjective these things are. For me, Eberron is far and away the best setting book WotC have done, Theros and Wildemount a step behind it. I genuinely LIKED Theros! I intensely disagree with the angle that VRGtR took on the setting, but looked at purely on its own merits and wilfully ignoring all the decades of Ravenloft lore that I much prefer, it's a pretty competent setting book. Only the number of holes it leaves for the DM to stitch together, and its incoherent approach to the Dark Powers striking me as major boo-boos, so it's another half-step behind. SCAG trailing the pack, it's a skimpy inadequate setting book that spends too much space on generic (and mostly underpowered) character options and not enough on setting, but it's usable. Ravnica I haven't read.

Spelljammer is, looked on as setting book, waaaaay down the bottom of the pile. But increasingly I'm wondering whether we really can look at it as a setting book at all. It kinda tries to bridge the gap between adventure and setting, a bit like the equally disappointing Strixhaven did, but because it spent a third of its page count on monsters (that were mostly stolen from Dark Sun and were utterly out of theme with the rest of the product), and most of its shipping weight on useless cardboard, it did neither job adequately.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

But the adventage of Spelljammer is this allow to add all possible elements from the rest of D&D multiverse, and even if you wanted, also the battle-bus of Fortnite: Battle Royal. It returned because Hasbro knows they can sell action figures of giffs and that type of things.

Sorry but I don't like the format of Player's sourcebook, monster book, and a module. I don't want to buy adventures, among other reasons only they can be read by the DMs.

And they are too expensive. I say in the sense if I spend the same money in a book by other publisher there are more pages with more crunch and/or fluff.

 

[SAVeira]

Okay, two points:

1) The idea that WotC are currently producing TOO MUCH stuff is compete nonsense. I have seen what too much stuff looks like.

2) So called "influencers" are a blight on modern existence. Pontificating puffed up popinjays too dumb to realise they have no idea what they are talking about. IGNORE.

So, agree with you. When I hear talk from "influencers" I tune them out as more often than not, they add nothing of value to any discussion. The whole OGL mess has shown me that there is a lot of people out there that think of themselves as D&D influencers, who I have never heard of and who I am shocked anyone listens to.

 

[SkidAce]

The reason 2e split the players was that there were almost no books put out for it. You had the core books and some monster books. Nothing like Tasha's. Nothing like all the 3e crunch books. All that the players could attach themselves to was their favorite setting(s)....

Not sure "almost no books put out for it" is the phrasing you are looking for.

A small sample...

 

[SkidAce]

The reason 2e split the players was that there were almost no books put out for it. You had the core books and some monster books. Nothing like Tasha's. Nothing like all the 3e crunch books. All that the players could attach themselves to was their favorite setting(s).

3e had several highly detailed settings and nothing like 2e happened. Until you can get past that fact, your claim that 5e putting out detailed settings will fracture the player base is overblown.

Sorry, didn't mean to pile on to a point someone had already made.

 

[SkidAce]

[tangent]

BTW, the Complete Necromancer's Book is fantastic, I still mine it for use.

[/tangent]