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

[Hussar]

So products with setting material and cool inspiration are bad for the industry. Hard to wrap my head around that.

Really?

We know that putting a product in a specific setting, in the past, meant decreased sales. Erik Mona talked about any Dungeon or Dragon issue that was setting specific basically sold about half as well as a generic magazine.

Why would it be surprising that lots of setting books would be a bad idea? Paizo’s primary product is adventure paths with linked in lore. Ten or more years now of material for a single setting. It’s not like they have multiple settings.

WotC doing the same thing.

I want stuff I can use right now. I don’t buy books for “inspiration”. I buy books so I don’t have to do the grunt work running a game. For me, I’ve never bought setting books. They’re a fun read I suppose, but they’re largely not much use at the table.

Heck the last setting book I bought was Primeval Thule and that’s about ten years ago.

Nope. For me, give me AP’s or smaller modules and the odd monster book and I’m pretty content.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Really?

We know that putting a product in a specific setting, in the past, meant decreased sales. Erik Mona talked about any Dungeon or Dragon issue that was setting specific basically sold about half as well as a generic magazine.

Why would it be surprising that lots of setting books would be a bad idea? Paizo’s primary product is adventure paths with linked in lore. Ten or more years now of material for a single setting. It’s not like they have multiple settings.

WotC doing the same thing.

I want stuff I can use right now. I don’t buy books for “inspiration”. I buy books so I don’t have to do the grunt work running a game. For me, I’ve never bought setting books. They’re a fun read I suppose, but they’re largely not much use at the table.

Heck the last setting book I bought was Primeval Thule and that’s about ten years ago.

Nope. For me, give me AP’s or smaller modules and the odd monster book and I’m pretty content.

Back in the day, I would buy setting books for inspiration and because they were a good read. If WotC still produced them, I would still buy them.

 

[Hussar]

Back in the day, I would buy setting books for inspiration and because they were a good read. If WotC still produced them, I would still buy them.

I get that, but, back in the day, you had, what, a couple of book stores that carried fantasy and SF? Compared to today where you have F&SF available in a bajillion different forms and media? I get that that's what you liked to do. Fair enough, but, you expressed surprise that setting books are bad for the industry. My point is that the market for "inspiration material" is so much bigger than it was then.

Never minding that so much of the setting material was just random name dropping without any extra material. I mentioned earlier about using the Shining Citadel material that I found for my campaign. Ok, great. But, the Shining Citadel is a couple of paragraphs in the entire Manual of the Planes for 3e. That's it. I really would never buy a 300 page book so I could use a single entry. And that's what setting books are for me - 99% wasted space for that 1% I'll actually use in game.

I don't find the notion that setting guides are largely not great sellers to be surprising at all. How many books should I buy that I only use 1 page out of? Take a couple that I actually like - 2e's Faith's and Avatars and Powers and Pantheons. Both Forgotten Realms setting books (although with a LOT of crunchy bits too) with tons of setting material. I really enjoyed reading them. One of my all time favorite characters is a priest of Kossuth. Fair enough. But, I also realize that that priest is the only thing I've ever actually used from these books. They just sit on my shelf gathering dust.

My criteria for game books is that they do not sit on my shelf. If all they do is sit on my shelf, then they were a waste of money.

 

[Parmandur]

I get that, but, back in the day, you had, what, a couple of book stores that carried fantasy and SF? Compared to today where you have F&SF available in a bajillion different forms and media? I get that that's what you liked to do. Fair enough, but, you expressed surprise that setting books are bad for the industry. My point is that the market for "inspiration material" is so much bigger than it was then.

Never minding that so much of the setting material was just random name dropping without any extra material. I mentioned earlier about using the Shining Citadel material that I found for my campaign. Ok, great. But, the Shining Citadel is a couple of paragraphs in the entire Manual of the Planes for 3e. That's it. I really would never buy a 300 page book so I could use a single entry. And that's what setting books are for me - 99% wasted space for that 1% I'll actually use in game.

I don't find the notion that setting guides are largely not great sellers to be surprising at all. How many books should I buy that I only use 1 page out of? Take a couple that I actually like - 2e's Faith's and Avatars and Powers and Pantheons. Both Forgotten Realms setting books (although with a LOT of crunchy bits too) with tons of setting material. I really enjoyed reading them. One of my all time favorite characters is a priest of Kossuth. Fair enough. But, I also realize that that priest is the only thing I've ever actually used from these books. They just sit on my shelf gathering dust.

My criteria for game books is that they do not sit on my shelf. If all they do is sit on my shelf, then they were a waste of money.

The 5E approach, of making "genre boosters," seems to be working well.

 

[Hussar]

The 5E approach, of making "genre boosters," seems to be working well.

"Genre boosters" --- I like that phrase.

But, yeah, when 3e first came out, I was buying books left right and center. Then, I realized that I wasn't actually using most of the stuff I bought, so, I scaled WAYYYY back. My primary buying criteria became "Will I use enough of this book to justify it being on my shelf?"

Although, to be fair, I did have a Dragon sub for quite a few years... Hey, you can't go cold turkey and there is no better bathroom reading.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I get that, but, back in the day, you had, what, a couple of book stores that carried fantasy and SF? Compared to today where you have F&SF available in a bajillion different forms and media? I get that that's what you liked to do. Fair enough, but, you expressed surprise that setting books are bad for the industry. My point is that the market for "inspiration material" is so much bigger than it was then.

Never minding that so much of the setting material was just random name dropping without any extra material. I mentioned earlier about using the Shining Citadel material that I found for my campaign. Ok, great. But, the Shining Citadel is a couple of paragraphs in the entire Manual of the Planes for 3e. That's it. I really would never buy a 300 page book so I could use a single entry. And that's what setting books are for me - 99% wasted space for that 1% I'll actually use in game.

I don't find the notion that setting guides are largely not great sellers to be surprising at all. How many books should I buy that I only use 1 page out of? Take a couple that I actually like - 2e's Faith's and Avatars and Powers and Pantheons. Both Forgotten Realms setting books (although with a LOT of crunchy bits too) with tons of setting material. I really enjoyed reading them. One of my all time favorite characters is a priest of Kossuth. Fair enough. But, I also realize that that priest is the only thing I've ever actually used from these books. They just sit on my shelf gathering dust.

My criteria for game books is that they do not sit on my shelf. If all they do is sit on my shelf, then they were a waste of money.

I loved those books too. Reading and enjoying them is use enough for me. In fact, I'm very glad I still have most of them, since the concept has apparently gone the way of the dodo.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The 5E approach, of making "genre boosters," seems to be working well.

If you like what they put out, sure.

Oh, you were just talking about money. Nevermind then.

 

[Parmandur]

If you like what they put out, sure.

Oh, you were just talking about money. Nevermind then.

Enjoying them is nice, but without money the whole enterprise falls apart. Fortuitously, I do enjoy them, as well, and frankly their commercial success nothing more or less than an epiphenomenon of people enjoying them.

 

[Hussar]

If you like what they put out, sure.

Oh, you were just talking about money. Nevermind then.

Maybe he was, but I wasn't.

See, the trick is, lore has never been the primary draw for me for buying a book. Lore is, by and large, the lowest priority because, I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I won't use most of it. Give me a book of lore, and I might use a page or two, and then it's off into my own stuff, either drawing on other sources, or going my own direction. Like I said, a major element of my current campaign is the Shining Citadel. But, the sum total of lore for that is about a paragraph. All the stuff that I've added - I'm going to assume my players aren't reading this - that the Shining Citadel was a weapon used to destroy the Primordial Zargan (borrowing lore from WAYYYYY back, but, also some 4e goodies I found when perusing the wiki about the Dawn War), created by ancient beings in collaboration with Asmodeus and Vecna.

Now, none of that is remotely Forgotten Realms canon. And, the notion that I'd need to buy a 20 year old, out of print, 3e book just to FIND the only piece of Forgotten Realms lore (well, Shadowfell lore to be exact) means that I would never have done this in the past.

But, what's the point of adding yet more lore here? Filling in the blanks? Piling on yet more stuff?

See, changing mechanics makes sense. We play the game, we, as in all the D&D gamers playing the game, use the mechanics and problems or issues get identified. If enough people are having problems, then, well, we go back and rework the mechanics and send out the newly revised mechanics into the wild to see if they survive. So, we get slimmed down caster stat blocks because enough players are having difficulties with caster stat blocks that make them hard to use.

But lore doesn't work like that. Lore is sticky. It's forever. Put something out in the wild and it must never, EVER be changed less we disrespect the canon. Lore is valued for its place in the history of the game. So, we cannot ever change lore without massive reactions. And, because lore is almost entirely subjective in its quality, any new lore is automatically rejected because it didn't come first. All putting out setting book after setting book does is paint creators into smaller and smaller corners because heaven forbid they change anything. Doesn't matter if the changes are good, bad or in between. All change to lore is automatically bad.

I totally do not blame WotC at all for being up front about not being setting material creators. They've basically washed their hands of it because it's always a losing proposition to even try.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I interpret it differently. I take it as basically proof that the level of detail offered in AD&D and d20 supplements is much deeper than is actually useful.

The idea a role-playing game should simulate a full reality has been thoroughly debunked. Focusing only on what's strictly necessary for the story and action has proven a much more practical approach.

In other words, what if your golden age is only a stone age of senseless minutiae and the current age is D&D's second golden age after the first early years without campaign bloat?

No.

Products that people don't want are bad for the industry. They can even clog up the works for books that people do want.

It hasn't been debunked at all and you've provided no evidence that it's been debunked.

The most popular setting in D&D is also it's most lore intensive setting by far, the Forgotten Realms, so to pretend the depth of it's lore had nothing to do with it's success is extremely disingenuous.