D&D 5E 5e isn't a Golden Age of D&D Lorewise, it's Silver at best.

[teitan]

That’s fair, but I’m not sure how else to gauge it. My gaming group in the 90s didn’t care about Spelljammer at all, but I have no clue how representational we were - I really just have a sample size of 1.

…then again, based on the number of people on Reddit exclaiming “OMG! A playable ooze! This is a dream come true!”, it’s entirely possible I’m just way out of touch with how people play D&D these days.

Spelljammer failed and was done withing 15 months. It was a widely ridiculed setting back in the day. I was shocked to see the revival a few years back with people talking it up and then realized that what was being talked up wasn't actually "Spelljammer" but the idea of Spelljammer because it's a very cool idea that was not implemented well at all. The best thing going for it was countered by the silly stuff and the rules for Spelljamming themself. Things like Neogi and the Mindflayers and the Spelljammer and Rock of Bral, the ship designs and all that were some very cool concepts but the execution was just bad. WHat we have coming though looks cooler but we will see if the rules live up to the images.

 

[teitan]

My son's group (all 14) has an aarakocra (flyng bird person), a centaur, and at one point, a sentient hat (though I think he switched) - yeah maybe we're just out of touch now!

Edit: And a minitour - because, why not.

Sounds like a 2e era party as well and some mid 3.x era parties.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Poor argument. Aside from L5R, all of those were story franchises of their own with an RPG as an afterthought. The ability to play in those settings is usually in spite of the story-driven franchises that they are based upon and one usually has to ignore the main storyline in order to make them playable.

This. When you are running games based on movie or TV franchises any metaplot is a problem that the DM has to cope with. It's very much a drawback, not an advantage. The advantage is that players know the setting from the show, so you don't have to explain it to them. But this can be a drawback too, if the players know too much.

This generally means setting the game in a self-contained bubble where interaction with the movie/TV series is limited.

 

[teitan]

Yeah, but recent polls don't show that. There's this survey from 7 years ago that said that Eberron, the Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, and Planescape were all equally popular. And that was near the start of the edition. So if newer surveys show that the Forgotten Realms is the most popular setting when compared to all of those other ones it was on par with not that long ago, I'd say that the fact that nearly every D&D 5e adventure has taken place there has certainly had a major impact on its popularity. Which, again, isn't because people think the setting is superior to others, but because it was literally the only one that got official support for over half of the edition.

Let's be fair though, nothing is marketed now as Forgotten Realms, so the shine is gone. It's now The Sword Coast and just Dungeons & Dragons. The Forgotten Realms label hasn't been used on a D&D product since before 5e launched ten years ago. It's been defaulted into the game as the base assumption.

 

[teitan]

@AcererakTriple6 boy, this took some digging, but Chris Perkins speaking at Hame Hole Con 2015 said the following, and I think this might be even more true than it was then:

Home-brew vs. published -- A great bulk of those who play D&D run homebrew settings. But of those home-brew campaigns, over half of those homebrewers do pillage from other settings ... 15% or 50% of the world they've created has hawked stuff from other worlds. They're comfortable pillaging our products for ideas. That homebrew number, I can't remember the exact percentage, but I think it's like 55% homebrew. And then it's like 35% Forgotten Realms, and then everything else ... Very few people right now, turns out, running Dark Sun campaigns. A sliver of a sliver. Very few people running Hollow World campaigns. Very few people are running Mystara campaigns. It pretty much goes Homebrew, Forgotten Realms, I think Greyhawk's at 5% ands then everybody else is at 2% or 1%.

BBS008 Chris Perkins WotC at Gamehole Con 2015 - Gaming and BS RPG Podcast

Chris Perkins from Wizards of the Coast spoke at Gamehole Con 2015 and talks about WotC's different release schedule and hints at an upcoming product!

gamingandbs.com

WotC's Chris Perkins Talks About... Everything! Upcoming Storylines, Products, Staffing, Other World

WotC's Chris Perkins, Principal Designer for Dungeons & Dragons, was at Gamehole Con a couple of weeks ago. He took part in a panel there in which he covered a lot of things - product schedules, partnerships, other worlds, story flavours, staffing, upcoming storylines, Greyhawk, and so much...

www.enworld.org

More evidence for the popularity of Greyhawk that everyone keeps saying isn't popular...

 

[Paul Farquhar]

More evidence for the popularity of Greyhawk that everyone keeps saying isn't popular...

I don't think anyone has suggested it's unpopular, only that an update would be unnecessary and divisive.

People are clearly managing to run Greyhawk games using existing materials. Without metaplot setting lore is edition-agnostic.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Spelljammer failed and was done withing 15 months. It was a widely ridiculed setting back in the day. I was shocked to see the revival a few years back with people talking it up and then realized that what was being talked up wasn't actually "Spelljammer" but the idea of Spelljammer because it's a very cool idea that was not implemented well at all. The best thing going for it was countered by the silly stuff and the rules for Spelljamming themself. Things like Neogi and the Mindflayers and the Spelljammer and Rock of Bral, the ship designs and all that were some very cool concepts but the execution was just bad. WHat we have coming though looks cooler but we will see if the rules live up to the images.

What we have coming, all my complaining aside, actually shares a lot of DNA with 2e Spelljammer. If anything, they're actually leaning harder into the silly aspects of the setting.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't think anyone has suggested it's unpopular, only that an update would be unnecessary and divisive.

People are clearly managing to run Greyhawk games using existing materials. Without metaplot setting lore is edition-agnostic.

The same could be said for most settings.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I haven't read all.
But here are my two cents anyway:

If they do more lore they run into at least one of those problems:

Fans are crying because...

... they repeat old lore and waste pages that could be used on crunch.

... they write new lore that is different than the old one and has to be rejected by default.

So they settled to repeat a bit and rewrite a bit and add a bit. They sometimes get flak, but as long as the crunche they deliver with it is solid, it works.

(Remember that they were testing the waters with sword coast adventurer's guide for a book with relative more lore, which was not received that well.)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The same could be said for most settings.

All.