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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[FormerlyHemlock]

Ummm.... he gives a breakdown of his time in the video. You know, the video this thread is commenting on.

He says he spends 60% of his time in mandatory meetings. And, since he also comments that he's so busy that he hasn't been able to DM his game (either during lunch or the other free times we've heard of: the D&D team has noted they often work a couple extra hours each day and take a half-day Friday to game. Which also serves as valuable playtesting time) that means he's potentially working through lunch or pulling some OT. That implies he's spending more time in meetings than before, or his workload increased, or both.

Some meetings are productive meetings: design meetings, artistic coordination, running a team of writers, meeting with outsiders like Ed Greenwood and Kobold Press. I'm a software developer, and while I try to avoid all of the meetings that I can so that I can stay in my cave and purely write code , most of the meetings I actually attend end up somehow improving our product, and so do most of the ones I skip. Meetings are a fact of life when you're trying to scale up a product to something bigger than two guys in a garage.

In other words, "meetings" can very well be part of a D&D development. It just depends on the agenda of those meetings.

 

[Osgood]

I wish we had some concrete information about when and how settings will be released.

I would love to see the campaign settings released as boxed sets. They could have maps and other handouts, and evergreen, system-neutral setting books. The system specific information (races, classes, feats, backgrounds, flaws, bonds, monster stats, etc.) can be free PDFs... that way the campaign setting remains relevant across editions.

 

[Gnarl45]

I don't really know what to think about all of this. Last time WoTC tried to do something original, it didn't work for me. I can't help being skeptical when these guys talk about their "new and better approach".

 

[sidonunspa]

Perfect, absolutely dig, they just keep nailing it for me with this edition. There is no need at this point to release a fifth FR campaign setting book/boxed set, etc.

except we have no real idea what the Sundering did... they say the gods came back.. ok which ones?

4th made tons of changed to the realms.. and 5th changed 'most of them' back.. its that most of them I want to know about..

now hunt though 10 adventures, 1 game, and a novel or 6 to get the details I'm looking for.

 

[sidonunspa]

True, but I have a feeling that list is far from complete.

we already know it is...

Greenwood already stated that Elestreee is back.. but for the life of me I can't find it in print anyplace.

besides can you imagine how PISSED she would be?

 

[wedgeski]

Finally, WotC/Hasbro sounds like a poorly managed company. 5+ hours a day of cross-functional meetings is incompetent.

I have meetings where a six-month software project is hashed out, designed, planned, and resourced. Meetings are not inherently evil things! I can imagine creative teams such as Wizards' get a lot out of sharing ideas around the table as well.

 

[Jeff Albertson]

Don't tell me you are one of those Spellplague deniers.

I don't deny it, I just don't acknowledge it, just like I don't acknowledge the Time of Troubles, Age of Mortals, Prism Pentad, Grand Conjunction, Unhuman War II, The Faction War, and all that other busybody, ruining the original campaign vision writing malarkey.

 

[TrainedMunkey]

Hmm, my group will be moving onto DCC RPG, which makes me sad, my staple has been D&D since 1980.

My group is made of the children of the older players and some grognards. We sat down and discussed where we want our group to head and none of us have liked the direction that Hasbro is heading, hence we will be changing systems. It just doesn't seem exciting to even the new players. Perhaps we will revisit D&D once some more material comes out. A couple years down the road.

 

[I'm A Banana]

PET THEORY:

They're making an "app" for each setting that would be a searchable database of all previously released material, along with the 5e conversion rules already implemented (in a "layer" you could turn off and on), and pdfs of the complete book collection for each setting. Optional microtransactions for new material for the setting. App would be cross-platform (smartphones and also browser-based).

Hehehe, it'd be pretty sweeeeeet....

 

[neobolts]

I wonder if the model for a new adventure is AP + Setting Info + Player's Web Enhancement?

I think it is more likely that the second and third thing might be the same thing.

Some meetings are productive meetings: design meetings, artistic coordination, running a team of writers, meeting with outsiders like Ed Greenwood and Kobold Press.

You are probably right. But perhaps that WotC has become an Office Space hell where dreams of dragons and flying castles are cast aside, and employees attend meetings all day about fire safety, breakroom policies, and the correct way to staple your TPS report.

PET THEORY:

They're making an "app" for each setting that would be a searchable database of all previously released material, along with the 5e conversion rules already implemented (in a "layer" you could turn off and on), and pdfs of the complete book collection for each setting. Optional microtransactions for new material for the setting. App would be cross-platform (smartphones and also browser-based).

Hehehe, it'd be pretty sweeeeeet....

As much as I want to celebrate this idea, I worry it would end up being overmonetized and poorly implemented.