They are certainly ambitious with this… one thought that crossed my mind is how distinct these worlds are.
A lot of the blame for TSR failing was put on them supporting too many settings, is this essentially a similar case or are they more like different regions within the Forgotten Realms? The fact that they have a rulebook for every world rather than a world book and adventure only makes me think that they are really closer to separate settings, but not sure
I see where you are coming from with this: the thing is, these are less "different Settings" like The Forgotten Realms, Mystara, Spelljammer, and Greyhawk and more "different games" like Dungeons & Dragons, Gamma World, Boot Hill, and Star Frontiers (albeit with an underlyingly compatible house system).
A better model than 2E might be 5E: they are doing a Stor.light set of books in 2025, and a Miatborn set of books in 2026, and have 4 other Settings already queued up (Elantris, Warbreaker, White Sand, and "Worldhopper" which will act as a sort of Planescape connecting other smaller world wirh the Big Five). Ot doesn't really seem thst they planning to put out more Stormlight Arc 1 (through Book 5) or Mistborn Era 1 & 2 support past rhe initial set of books: they look to each have enough material for GMs and players to go use those Settings for years each.
The two big issues with 2E Settijgs were sameness ("more D&D style fantasy, but this time with more Divine Right of Kings!"), but also running multiple ongoing product lines. 5E has been pretty successful with one-and-done approaches to Settings, and while this is more a three-and-done situation...they don't seem to ne trying to keep ongoing Stormlight releases in competition with 5 other worlds.
And because the characters from each world are so distinct, even of they play together it is more exciting to mix and match than it necessarily is woth D&D (a Mistborn, a Knight Rafiant, an Aqakener, and a Sandmaster walking into the bar is a very different energy than four Wizards with identical mechanics walking into a bar).
There are 6 basic non-Magic careers in the game, and each will have 3 talent tree paths they can follow (in Stormlight, the Agent can be a Thief, a Spy, or an Investigaor...or mix and match), ao 18 non-Magical "Class options" per rulebook.
The Mistborn book will replace 8 out of 18 from the Stormlight book (Spy is replaced with rebel...because there are not multiple nations in the Final Empire; Artifabrian is replaced with Inventor, because Elemental spirits are not being trapped to power minor magical items on Scadriel).
Om the magic side, there are 9 available Orders of Knight Radiant, each with 3 Talent tree paths. None of those translate to Mistborn in any form, so that is 27 "Class options" being replaced with 16 metals, each of which will get an Allomancy and Feruchemy Talent tree for 32 magical "Class options" (thrybwill by nature be more mix and match than Radiants: having 1 or 2 is common).
And both books will have different sets of Ancestries (no crab people on Scadrial, no Kandra on Roshar)
Mystara, Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, even Spelljammer or Dark Sun...did not replace most of the Class and Race options for AD&D.
www.enworld.org
