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

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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.
 

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Yeah. I'm deeply disappointed that WotC didn't update most of their settings until they changed their design philosophy in the last few years.
I agree (and dislike it), but I also totally get it. Minimum effort for maximum profit.

Make one adventure set in beloved classic. Goes along with the 1 book every few months thing.

Open up DMGuild so OTHER people write lore and adventures of which WotC gets a nice size piece of the $ generated from others work.

Minimum effort for maximum profit.

If I was going to play 5E Dragonlance I'd totally buy several books off DMGuild like Tasselhoffs Guide to Everything.
 

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I agree (and dislike it), but I also totally get it. Minimum effort for maximum profit.

Make one adventure set in beloved classic. Goes along with the 1 book every few months thing.

Open up DMGuild so OTHER people write lore and adventures of which WotC gets a nice size piece of the $ generated from others work.

Minimum effort for maximum profit.

If I was going to play 5E Dragonlance I'd totally buy several books off DMGuild like Tasselhoffs Guide to Everything.
I would too, but the fact remains if they had published Dark Sun in, say, 2016 (which they absolutely could have done) then DMsGuild would have it available. But they waited too long, and now the fear keeps them from doing it.
 


It's going to be a world hopping Adventure, so probavly full of Easter eggs and references to 50 years of D&D.
Again, that's not somehow special to the 50th anniversary.

Unless you are posting from a cave, you have seen marketing tie ins that capitalize on anniversaries. The US just had a weirdly pervasive celebration of McDonald's Grimace, of all things. THAT'S what I'm talking about WotC not doing with the 50th anniversary.

Every other company would be slapping gold foil on books and selling them as special 50th anniversary books. (And given that they are going to be selling more than the 2024 core books next year, they absolutely have the capacity to do this.) WotC won't be doing so, despite it being the kind of monetization that everyone would be OK with.
 
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Again, that's somehow special to the 50th anniversary.

Unless you are posting from a cave, you have seen marketing tie ins that capitalize on anniversaries. The US just had a weirdly pervasive celebration of Grimace at McDonald's of all things. THAT'S what I'm talking about WotC not doing with the 50th anniversary.

Every other company would be slapping gold foil on books and selling them as special 50th anniversary books. (And given that they are going to be selling more than the 2024 core books next year, they absolutely have the capacity to do this.) WotC won't be doing so, despite it being the kind of monetization that everyone would be OK with.
You're drawing a lot of conclusions before the 2024 release schedule has been announced. Yeah, you're extrapolating from your expectations, but... until we have something concrete beyond the revised core books and the Vecna adventure, saying things like this is a bit premature. If there indeed is a paucity of products when everything is announced, sure, launch those cannons. But we have no way at the moment to know if they're going to do next to nothing, or if they've been holding back in the last couple of years in order to make a huge splash for the anniversary, or anywhere in between.
 





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