Chris Perkins: Reintroducing Settings in Ways that Surprise People

WotC's D&D Story Manager, Chris Perkins, was the subject of an interview by a chap called Chris "Wacksteven" Iannitti. One of the topics covered is campaign setting books; Perkins says that they want to reintroduce settings in "surprising" ways, and that they're not guaranteed to be books. (thanks to Mistwell for the scoop)

The video is below, but if you can't watch it right now, here are the highlights as listed by pukunui on WotC's website:

• He can't talk about products that haven't been announced yet
• They value all of their worlds, as each one has "tons of fans"
• They are focusing on specific areas within settings to detail and "codify" via their story bibles
• Their goal is to "challenge people's expectations" re: sourcebooks
• They're "not interested in releasing books for the sake of releasing books anymore"
• They want book releases to be events that will "surprise and delight people"; they also want to put out books that people will actually use rather than books that will just get put on a shelf to "stay there and slowly rot"
• "One of our creative challenges is to package [setting] material - reintroduce facts and important details about our worlds - in a way that we know that DMs and players are going to use, that's going to excite them, that's actually going to surprise them. We may get that content out, but I'm not going to guarantee it's going to be a book. I'm not going to guarantee that it's going to be anything that you've seen before. But it will be something."

[video=youtube;alnwC34qUFs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alnwC34qUFs&feature=youtu.be[/video]
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[Morrus]

To give credit where it's due, [MENTION=6776322]HobbitFan[/MENTION] posted a link to the video first:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?436305-Found-this-interview-on-Youtube

I'm sure lots of people have, but Mistwell is the person who gave me the scoop, and thus the person I thanked!

 

[Evenglare]

I think they should focus on making books people want to buy. I want to buy setting books. I don't want to buy adventure paths.

This.

 

[pukunui]

I'm sure lots of people have, but Mistwell is the person who gave me the scoop, and thus the person I thanked!

You also quoted my summary from the WotC forums. I found the video via HobbitFan's post here at EN World.

 

[Morrus]

You also quoted my summary from the WotC forums.

Which Mistwell pointed me to, and for which I also mentioned you.

 

[pukunui]

Which Mistwell pointed me to, and for which I also mentioned you.

Yes. I'm just saying that I feel [MENTION=6776322]HobbitFan[/MENTION] deserves a mention too. If he hadn't posted the link here, I wouldn't have posted a summary over there, and Mistwell wouldn't have pointed you in its direction.

 

[Morrus]

Yes. I'm just saying that I feel @HobbitFan deserves a mention too. If he hadn't posted the link here, I wouldn't have posted a summary over there, and Mistwell wouldn't have pointed you in its direction.

I'd say your post on WotC's boards would be the ideal place for you to give him credit for pointing you to the video. And I'll thank the person who pointed me to it. And HobbitFan can perhaps thank the person who pointed him to it, if such a person exists. But let's stop derailing this thread, eh?

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

The grim reality is that this book is the 3rd Edition FRCS. Speaking as someone who actually liked the Spellplague, the Forgotten Realms have undergone the tabletop equivalent of a server rollback. Expect anything that the Sundering actually updated to be quietly brushed under the carpet. I give Salvatore two or three novels before he just straight up starts calling Drizzt's companions by their old names again -- if he hasn't already.

They started referring to themselves by their old names during the same novels they came back to life. They only mention their old names to each other in one small scene and Regis tells everyone that he likes his new name and wants to stick with it. But, the rest feel like their old names are their real names and switch to them almost immediately when they move away from their new home towns where no one will recognize them.

As for the FR, the problem is that the post-Sundering realms are actually somewhere between the 4e and 3e campaign settings. For instance, we know from the Sundering adventures, the novels and LMoP, HotDQ and PotA, that:

-A bunch of gods have returned. Even ones that were dead before 3e started.
-Neverwinter was still destroyed in the eruption of Mount Hotenow that existed in the 4e NWCS, Lord Neverember is still in charge of the city as per that book. Though we don't know how much of the city has been rebuilt, how much of an issue the Far Realm incursion still is, whether the Ashmodai still have a large presence there, and so on. Lost Mines starts in Neverwinter and you meet your contact there but the adventure doesn't say anything about the city at all other than it is a city and things can be bought there normally. We know that the Sundering has "completely cured the Spellplague" but we don't know if that means that all the spellplagued creatures went completely back to normal or not.
-We know the Sundering returned all the lands of Toril back to Toril...so presumably the map looks like the one in the 3e campaign setting again. However, Genasi have had their own country for nearly 100 years now. They've definitely spread out to other countries, however and their country vanishing leaves them without a homeland but they should be accepted as a normal part of the population by now. Regis in the novels remarks that his new mother was half genasi making him a quarter genasi and therefore he can hold his breath a long time. Likewise for Dragonborn. However, what we don't know is if the countries that have spent 100 years in Abeir have been changed at all by that process.
-When the Weave returned everyone just pulled out old spellbooks and started casting spells the same way they did before the Spellplague. It works exactly the same as it did in 3e.

Using the best information we have now, it seems like the best option for running 4e is to use the 4e description of every country that isn't from Abeir. Then to replace the description of every other country with their 3e FRCS descriptions. Though, it would be nice to have an official post of information somewhere that at least had a summary of the Sundering changes so that we could make it work even without a CS.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I have to disagree about the MMO part. Maybe we won't get tabletop rules, but you can get lore. We know that a MMO is coming out this year (Sword Coast Legends).

This is a little off topic but I keep seeing this being stated. Sword Coast Legends is not an MMO. It's a multiplayer game for up to 4 players and a DM. It is, essentially, a single player RPG that allows other people to connect and play the other characters in your party while having a DM connect and be able to throw surprise encounters on you when he feels like it.

Unfortunately, it appears that people get super freaked out when they see the words "multiplayer" in an RPG. Bioware was going to release Shadow Realms this year, which was essentially the same thing. It was a multiplayer coop RPG with up to 4 people and a DM who got points to throw encounters at the players from time to time. I thought it sounded awesome. But then I read the comment section regarding the announcement that was entirely filled with people saying "We don't need another MMO! Why don't you just make a single player RPG?" Apparently, everyone complained at them for long enough that they officially cancelled the game a month ago.

 

[Mirtek]

-We know the Sundering returned all the lands of Toril back to Toril..

Actually we don't know that. Most assume that this will be one of the outcomes once the dust settles, but as of the latest novels the dragonborn homeland is still sitting on Toril and a novel scheduled for October will take place there. So maybe it will move back during this novel, but so far it's on Toril still. We haven't read anything about the genasi homeland or the continent that has replaced Matztica. Everybody assumes they are not for long, but actually nothing written has send them back yet

 

[pukunui]

Everybody assumes they are not for long ...

Probably because the summary of the Sundering indicates that "The intermingling of worlds brought by the Spellplague also comes to an end, as what belongs to Abeir returns to Abeir, leaving Toril looking much as it did before."