D&D 5E (2024) WotC Should Make 5.5E Specific Setting

[Reynard]

The question isn't if WOTC is at production capacity. It's if the market is at purchase capacity. Every setting splits sales further, unless you are positing that most people will buy multiple settings they won't use.

Isn't that one of the reasons TSR went down? Each setting book sold to a smaller audience, who would then not buy any books aimed at any of the other settings.

Again, there are ostensibly an order of magnitude more customers than there were 10 years ago. That has not translated into a broader range of products.

 

[Maxperson]

Excuse my hyperbole. But the point remains: in AD&D, the GM determines what is needed. In 3E, the system was codified in a player facing manner.

None of which changes what I've been saying even the slightest bit. 1e is every bit as likely to result in an Eberron as 3e was. Magic items creation being entirely player facing doesn't make magic items more common in that edition than any other.

 

[Yaarel]

Well then again there would be a magic item economy as nobles would searching for and buying items.

There would be a magic item economy.

For the sake of items feeling magical, my settings prevent such commodification.

Flavorwise, the attunement process exists because all magic items continue the intention of their creators. In a sense a magic item chooses who it will attune with. Thus a noncooperative magic item is useless, worthless to many prospective purchasers. Gaining a magic item is more like gaining an ally. It is a personal relationship. Magical.

 

[Flying Toaster]

Older settings never worked that way. PC races, classes etc where added to the game in Dragon Magazine, Unearthed Arcana etc, and they became part of the setting.

Yes, it is strange to see so many people taking a purist approach that tries to freeze these old kitchen sink settings in amber.

In the very early years of D&D it was assumed that any DM worth their salt would homebrew everything. Even after TSR started to publish official settings and modules, it was still understood that DMs would customize things so that no two Greyhawks would ever be exactly alike. I had both the gold GH box set and the grey FR box set, and I never got the impression that anything in them was set in stone. They were clearly sandboxes or tool kits that the DM could use as a starting point for their own campaign, and eventually high level PCs might change things even more. There were also huge blank areas on the map marked “here be dragons”. The DM could always introduce new elements as something that just arrived from the other side of the world, or emerged from an obscure dungeon.

Real old school campaigns often included all kinds of wild gonzo stuff drawn from everywhere, so I don’t see why new classes or races from later editions present such a problem. As early as 1976, EGG himself crashed a spaceship full of robots and laser guns into Greyhawk! Tieflings in particular seem like they already belong there anyway. Gygax clearly loved infernal intrigues (a taste I never shared), as can be seen in all those entries for archdevils and demon lords in the monster books, in the modules he wrote, and in those terrible Gord novels. There is even a whole country named after the half-demon who tries to rule it. Just rename them “alu-demons” or “cambions” and there you go.

I think things began to go awry as FR introduced ever more convoluted lore in an avalanche of products that fans were expected to keep up with, and got much worse when they decided to use metaplot to introduce rule changes for new editions. I did not play during the 3E and 4E eras, but I would occasionally flip through D&D books in stores or browse the wikis, and stuff like the Spellplague or the Blood War did not impress me at all or make me want to start playing or buying again.

So many fandoms and franchises these days seem to be consumed by an obsession with canon consistency: superhero comics & movies, Dr. Who, Trek, Wars, etc. It can become suffocating and prevent anyone from doing anything new. D&D in particular does not need this as DM and player creativity is supposed to be the whole point of the game.

 

[Scribe]

I might be out of the loop, but I don't think any of them made as big a splash as Eberron did in 2003.

How much support did they get? I dont believe the problem is people dont want new settings. I believe the issue is Wizards support for even these 'new' settings for 5.0, had a combination of very little support, very little push.

 

[Yaarel]

None of which changes what I've been saying even the slightest bit. 1e is every bit as likely to result in an Eberron as 3e was. Magic items creation being entirely player facing doesn't make magic items more common in that edition than any other.

One of the things that I like about 1e is actively encouraging players to invent their own spells. Flavorwise, after DM approval, the new spell is implemented via "spell research".

Likewise players should be encouraged to invent their own magic items - then have their characters "craft" them.

 

[Maxperson]

I think things began to go awry as FR introduced ever more convoluted lore in an avalanche of products that fans were expected to keep up with, and got much worse when they decided to use metaplot to introduce rule changes for new editions. I did not play during the 3E and 4E eras, but I would occasionally flip through D&D books in stores or browse the wikis, and stuff like the Spellplague or the Blood War did not impress me at all or make me want to start playing or buying again.

Even those events didn't really change anything. I've been running FR since 1e. When 2e brought the Time of Troubles, I adopted that because I liked it. When the Spell Plague and Sundering arrived, I didn't adopt those because I didn't like them.

When you take all the FR lore from every edition of the game and put it together, it doesn't even add up to even1% of what is in the Realms. I could create a different secret society, assassin guild and rogues guild for every major city in the FR without contradicting anything.

The FR with all of its lore, by far the most lore intensive setting TSR/WotC has ever released, still isn't set in stone and hampering DM creativity.

 

[Remathilis]

How much support did they get? I dont believe the problem is people dont want new settings. I believe the issue is Wizards support for even these 'new' settings for 5.0, had a combination of very little support, very little push.

Well, Wildemont got an AP (Netherdeep) and Darrington Press released a large amount of 3pp support. If any setting had a chance, it was that one. But you kinda supported my point; so far only Faerun, Eberron and Ravenloft got any sort of ongoing support. SJ, PS, DL, and GH all have token support so far (and we don't know what format DS will take).

 

[UngainlyTitan]

It seems odd to me that they say they have increased their player base by something like an order of magnitude since 5E launched, and yet we are not really seeing any increase in output despite all those new customers.

That said, it looks like they are ramping up Beyond only content, and we don't know what the 2026 slate looks like. Maybe there is one of those hinted at original settings for next year.

Because they are not buying, or more specifically they are not buying novelty. As far as I can tell, the really remarkable sales story from 5e is that old stuff continues to sell. Curse of Strad is one of the more popular books despite being old. Tyranny of Dragons continues to sell. All those extra customers are buying out of the existing catalogue and not necessary purchasing the new hotness.
That they have not ramped up production is telling; it is at least telling us that they do not believe that doing so increases sales enough to be worth it.

At some point D&DBeyond is going to have the same problem that plagues most online stores, discovery. Drivethru and DMsGuild have had this issue for years, in that there is a lot of content buried under a mountain of trash. Steam has a similar problem, so it offers recommendations and wishlists and the like.
D&DBeyond is heading toward a similar place where the sources screen is going to become overwhelming and accelerating the book production accelerates the issue.

 

[Umbran]

Oh boy, this again. Being literalist about "need" isn't particularly helpful, I don't think.

There is a difference between ,"I see this as a very real problem for the game" and "I want this". Your word choice didn't differentiate between them.

If you are going to be vague, you have few grounds to gripe about people failing to read your mind over the internet.