D&D 5E D&D's Classic Settings Are Not 'One Shots'

In an interview with ComicBook.com, WotC's Jeremy Crawford talked about the visits to Ravenloft, Eberron, Spelljammer, Dragonlance, and (the upcoming) Planescape we've seen over the last couple of years, and their intentions for the future.

He indicated that they plan to revisit some of these settings again in the future, noting that the setting books are among their most popular books.

We love [the campaign setting books], because they help highlight just how wonderfully rich D&D is. They highlight that D&D can be gothic horror. D&D can be fantasy in space. D&D can be trippy adventures in the afterlife, in terms of Planescape. D&D can be classic high fantasy, in the form of the Forgotten Realms. It can be sort of a steampunk-like fantasy, like in Eberron. We feel it's vital to visit these settings, to tell stories in them. And we look forward to returning to them. So we do not view these as one-shots.

- Jeremy Crawford​

The whole 'multiverse' concept that D&D is currently exploring plays into this, giving them opportunities to resist worlds.

When asked about the release schedule of these books, Crawford noted that the company plans its release schedule so that players get chance to play the material, not just read it, and they don't want to swamp people with too much content to use.

Our approach to how we design for the game and how we plan out the books for it is a play-first approach. At certain times in D&D's history, it's really been a read-first approach. Because we've had points in our history where we were producing so many books each year, there was no way anyone could play all of it. In some years it would be hard to play even a small percentage of the number of things that come out. Because we have a play-first approach, we want to make sure we're coming out with things at a pace where if you really wanted to, and even that would require a lot of weekends and evenings dedicated to D&D play, you could play a lot of it.

- Jeremy Crawford​

You can read more in the interview at ComicBook.com.

 

[Queer Venger]

This is why we have a giant-focused book literally no-one asked for, when one focused on aberrations (who are very hard to make less than PG13 if you go into any detail on them) which would probably have been vastly more popular and usable. Because giants are easy to make completely PG and safe.

So Dark Sun is gone, and it's not even the slavery thing, which could have been dealt with, it's because the basic issues the setting deals with - man-made climate change, societal oppression by elites, people rising up to challenge those things, and the general brutality of such a world is just not compatible with the conceptual PG rating WotC wants nowadays.

This. I was hoping that with BG3 being such a global phenomenon that we'd finally get a big book of Aberrations, Mind flayers, etc. Missed opportunity.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Given that the production timeline for a official D&D book is well over a year, I suspect it’s entirely possible that by the time they realized that Spelljammer was poorly received, Planescape was too far along to make major changes to - I recall a YouTube video where Perkins was tripping over himself to explain that the Planescape set was going to be much, much larger than the Spelljammer one.

They have a lot more flexibility than folks on this board give them credit for. If they decided that a slipcase was a terrible decision, they could have certainly pulled the plug on it in, say, December, five months after Spelljammer's release.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This. I was hoping that with BG3 being such a global phenomenon that we'd finally get a big book of Aberrations, Mind flayers, etc. Missed opportunity.

Missed opportunities seems to be their thing now.

BG3 should have been the moment they dropped a Baldur's Gate-centered adventure (if Waterdeep can get two adventures back to back, they can go back to the well on Baldur's Gate) and they should have had a sourcebook or something focused on aberrations.

(Obligatory rant about the lack of a Neverwinter sourcebook, appearance of the DADHAT characters in the Golden Vault art or even a DADHAT starter set timed for the movie's release.)

I think it's entirely possible they'll do zero 50th anniversary tie-ins next year, other than releasing the 2024 core books, as insane as that is from a marketing standpoint.

 

[Azzy]

Man! I am not attacking your position, I just find it unusual that one would have old material and need an official conversion. I have ran adventures written for basic D&D in 5e and I mostly just swapped in the monsters from the original with their 5e counterparts. I kept an eye on the encounter difficulty via looking at the encounter experience and it worked fine. Most of the encounter ran ok without adjustment, some of the boss fights I had to tweak.

Sorry about that.

There a a ton of monsters, several races, spells, etc. that I'd like to see (and I haven't been enthused with much of the stuff I've seen on DM's Guild—with the exception of Zakhara: Adventures in the Land of Fate, which is boss).

 

[bedir than]

Much shorter than the game development did, the release should not catch them off-guard.

The viral popularity did. It caught everyone off guard. Little of the build up suggested that BG3 would be the most popular game of the year

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The viral popularity did. It caught everyone off guard. Little of the build up suggested that BG3 would be the most popular game of the year

Per their CEO, though, videogames are a big part of the company's plan for the brand. Anyone who's sat through a few freshman business courses understands brand synergy. Having something ready should not have been a big ask.

 

[Divine2021]

What I’ve taken away from all these posts is that what you all like stinks and what I like is awesome.

But seriously, I hope the Planescape books don’t suck.

 

[overgeeked]

Per their CEO, though, videogames are a big part of the company's plan for the brand. Anyone who's sat through a few freshman business courses understands brand synergy. Having something ready should not have been a big ask.

What's the lead time on the books? They were likely not wanting to invest money into a 18+ month long project just in case the video game did well. Kind of like when 5E unexpectedly took off. WotC was not prepared and were taken off guard by their success.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What's the lead time on the books? They were likely not wanting to invest money into a 18+ month long project just in case the video game did well. Kind of like when 5E unexpectedly took off. WotC was not prepared and were taken off guard by their success.

BG3 had been in early access since October 2020 and it was almost immediately getting rave reviews. They had time.

Also, I'm not sure what the downside would have been if they had chosen this moment to release Bigby's Glory of the Aberrations instead of a giant-focused book. If BG3 was a flop, the book would have likely still been well received.

 

[Reynard]

Not really.

I don't know how to respond to that in a way that continues the discussion in a useful manner. When we just assert things without context, we shut down discussion.