Bringing back old product lines as one-shot books

[MerricB]

True enough. It wouldn't be "complete" per se. But I think you could make such a book complete enough to be a fully playable setting. And I'd rather have a playable 3.5-version that didn't please everybody, due to the necessity of leaving stuff out, than to have none at all.

Here's how you do it: you get your 3.5E books out, and you get your original setting books out. You take all the setting information from the original books, and then you must see what mechanical aspects have to be transferred.

That last is the only thing which makes a conversion difficult.

Wizards have spent the last four years putting out tools for creating your own campaign setting. Surely some of those tools apply to the conversion? Good. Use them.

Why do Wizards have to do it for you?

When you have your mechanical conversions done (for those elements that are actually important to your game), write up a few descriptions of them and submit them to Dragon! That way you share them with everyone else. Remember those Campaign Classics articles? They'll happily print further such articles, I wager.

Cheers!

 

[reanjr]

Given the reaction of the Planescape "fans" to the Planar Handbook, I think any chance of this happening has been lost.

I think the MotP was alot more akin to Planescape than the Planar Handbook. And from what I've heard it was well-received by Planescape fans. No, it's not enough, but it ceratinly did give you all the basics and changed very little that was important (Astral and Ethereal stuff was the biggest change, along with Shadow, but that had been rumored about even in Planescape).

The fact of the matter is that the Planar Handbook was crap. It doesn't have to do with Planescape, or the modern system of the planes or anything else. It's just that the book was poorly done.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

About the only one I really want to see is Al-Qadim, but I don't think that one book would easily encapsulate all the stuff given the size of it. I was never too much of a fan of the other settings.

I'd also agree its most important to stay true to the setting.

I don't necessarily need a specifically Al-Qadim setting, but an Arabian Adventures would be nice. I really would not want to see a butchering of "The Complete Sha'irs Handbook."

 

[DragonLancer]

If they did such a "campaign setting" to bring Dark Sun back that would be great. But it would have to be the DS we know, not the messed about version from Dragon.

 

[reanjr]

I will express the concerns about this sort of endeavor that I expressed in the Spelljammer thread, but I won't be so wordy.

stay true to the setting

if WoTC can't...
1 - leave out 3/3.5e elements that really don't fit the setting
-and-
2 - alter classes from their vanilla 3/3.5e to reflect how they are supposed to work in the world...

then they shouldn't bother.

If they can respect the settings and not make gross alterations that ruin the flavor (paladins/sorcerers in darksun? come on....) then go ahead and I'd gladly buy the books in a heartbeat and love WoTC forever.

I know you can just say, "my worldX doesn't have stupidAdditionY" but, meyh.

EDIT:

I agree with this, if such a project is undertaken - I'd recommend just converting the core for the world. Once the races, classes, et ceteral general are presented the stuff from other products largely falls into place easily, or is converted with little trouble.

There's a pretty easy way to go about this, though. Rules-mechanics-wise, 3e is alot more compressed. I don't think it would be hard at all to do a rules update for an entire setting in half of a book. You might miss some trivial spells, etc., but you should be able to get all the rules updated.

In an appendix, you can then try to put together a comprehensive table of NPCs. Give them a race, class levels, alignment, and a one sentence description. These tables would update all the NPCs from the old setting (for instance if someone should have been a sorcerer, but in 2e was a wizard for lack of options). They would also offer tons of places for a DM to look for adventure-kernels.

Finish up with the actual content of the campaign. Should probably move the campaign forward a couple of years (or even a couple of hundred). Give a detailed history of that interim time and a brief history of everything before 3e. Detail the peoples, regions, etc. but do it briefly, with special attention so as to not contradict anything previously published.

It would serve as a one-shot campaign setting for those who never played the setting before. It would provide ideas, variant classes, spells, etc. to rules types. And it would provide a complete rules update for old-schoolers. Drop in an advertisement in the back for the old PDFs and you've also opened up a new revenue stream to those who were not aware of those products.

Make it a giant book (320 pages), respectable (but not overblown) art, on par with books like the Complete X series, and tack on a $35 price tag.

I would think it would be almost guarenteed profit. Maybe not a high margin, though.

I think the major problem WotC (and Hasbro) would have with this idea is that it would take away revenue from Eberron and Forgotten Realms. Big companies like to show big numbers for small numbers of items. They like to be able to say what they produce that's profitable in a single sentence. By diversifying, they detract from their "flagships".

This is the reason Dragonlance, Ravenloft, and Oriental Adventures have been spun-off to third parties. Wizards gets to receive revenue at 0 risk and stay focused on their business model of publishing spells, feats, and prestige classes behind a not-so-subtle veil of new content. I don't think you'll be seeing them give up on this idea any time soon.

If a quality company wanted to produce new Al Qadim, Spelljammer, or Dark Sun stuff, I'm sure Wizards would be willing to go forward with that. But I doubt they'll give two licenses to the same company, which would leave out Sword and Sorcery/Arthaus/White Wolf, AEG, Sovereign Press, and probably even Kenzer Co and the like.

Any other good companies out there that you would trust doing these settings? I think each campaign would lend itself best to particular companies (Ravenloft/White Wolf was a perfect match)

 

[Derren]

If WotC would make a new Council of Wyrms setting book I would buy it imediately. Considering the apparently high demand for dragons this idea isn't that crazy.
One wouldn't even loose much information because in 2 Ed the setting also consisted only out of one book.
Also one could boost draconomicon sales with this setting.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Aren't there a lot of unofficial/official fan sites for these settings out there? I think Sovereign Press would be pretty peeved off if WotC put out its own sourcebook on Dragonlance...

 

[reanjr]

Aren't there a lot of unofficial/official fan sites for these settings out there? I think Sovereign Press would be pretty peeved off if WotC put out its own sourcebook on Dragonlance...

From what I remember of the licensing deal between Arthaus and Wizards over Ravenloft, Wizards is not allowed to produce material on the setting. I would imagine it is the same for Dragonlance and Sovereign Press. Of course, it may be different since there are alot of former Wizards people working with Sovereign Press.

 

[Alzrius]

From what I remember of the licensing deal between Arthaus and Wizards over Ravenloft, Wizards is not allowed to produce material on the setting. I would imagine it is the same for Dragonlance and Sovereign Press. Of course, it may be different since there are alot of former Wizards people working with Sovereign Press.

That didn't stop there from being Ravenloft and Dragonlance articles in Dragon #315. Of course, you could make cases that that was Paizo, not WotC, and that neither of those articles really built on anything that hadn't been done already, etc.

I would very willingly buy FRCS sized books for Spelljammer, Dark Sun, Birthright, Al Quadim, and especially Planescape. Wonderful idea; I hope the powers that be at Wizards see this and put some thought into the idea.

I would be 100% totally, completely, absolutely and religiously all for this. While I'd love to see many of the settings in question come back as entire lines, I would be satisfied--even delighted--with one-shot books, so long as they were truly complete enough to serve as campaign guides.

These guys pretty much said what I would say to this idea. I couldn't be more in support of it if I tried.

That said, there have been some concerns here that are valid. The one about stuff being squeezed out due to space limitations, or just falling through the cracks, is a good one. Even a 300+ page book (which is what such a one-shot would have to be to do the setting justice) would have a hell of a hard time getting everything in there, and some people would be upset about that. If you're a huge fan of the Astromundi Cluster, a six-page section on it will never satisfy you like the original boxed set on that sphere did.

Streamlining in regards to the rules is another. 3E did away with a lot of extraneous rules (such as how priests of specific mythoi are now all clerics with different domains), and for better or for worse, that'd happen on any setting update. Is it really worth making old kits into prestige classes, for example, when you could also justify them with a few feat and skill choices? Worse is the question of what to do about rules in 3E that weren't around in 2E. The inclusion of, say, monks into a campaign that had none before ("Monks? There are no monk orders in Cerilia!") is the sort of thing that riles the old guard up very quickly. However, it is a question that needs to be addressed, because while things like that weren't present in the 2E incarnation, it was because they didn't exist, not because of a desgn choice, and updating the campaign means possibly including updates in things like this.

The last stumbling block is the world-setting itself. Namely, should it be seen as having been frozen from the last products, or does it need to be advanced? This is a separate query from the previous ones, but no less important (I, for example, loved seeing Dark Sun get pushed three centuries into the future, even though I hated seeing them shoehorn in paladins and sorcerers). On the one hand, some purists will demand that a campaign setting not have advanced, since otherwise its more tampering with something they already know and love. On the other hand, many fans of the older settings won't want to buy fluff material that might as well be word-for-word with their old boxed sets. Again, there is no easy answer here.

It's questions like these that prevent the beloved older settings from being revived by WotC.

 

[JDowling]

. . . Finish up with the actual content of the campaign. Should probably move the campaign forward a couple of years (or even a couple of hundred). Give a detailed history of that interim time and a brief history of everything before 3e. Detail the peoples, regions, etc. but do it briefly, with special attention so as to not contradict anything previously published.
. . .
Any other good companies out there that you would trust doing these settings? I think each campaign would lend itself best to particular companies (Ravenloft/White Wolf was a perfect match)

- the first bit is what i'd be worried about, and probably the section of the book I'd ignore. I've never been a fan of "official advancing time lines" that have massive world altering effects. But, that's probably just me, and those bits are easily ignored (i have the origonal flavor elements anyway).

- the second bit. I really don't know who I'd trust to do it . I wouldn't really care as long as they respected the setting, didn't throw in a lot of crap from 3.5 that just doesn't belong (paladins, etc), and if they could get some BROM work in there awesome

Your basic outline of how to go about things is pretty much the way I'd go about it though if I were to ever run Darksun again, and that is a tempting notion... hrm ...

Darksun is funny about moving the time line up a couple hundred years I suppose. I was a big fan of the origonal setting, before the whole Kalak being assassinated thing and Tyr becomeing a freecity. I liked the feel that the world was hopeless in a way, but you'd still fight tooth and nail.

It's hard to imagine what a couple hundred years would do to Darksun, would Rajad(???) (wow, I can't remember his name! the guy locked up in the prison by Dragon and co, it's been too long!) have broken free? if so what are the ramifications... have more (epic gesalt psion/wizard hehe) Sorcerer Kings fallen? et cetera.

It'd be an interesting read if I used that section or not, of course.