Crawford confirms the brilliant strategy of the D&D team. Thanks for posting the highlights Morrus. Sales and fans returning to D&D are proof that they are doing something right.
Bravo!
Bravo!
Not the same sort of thing, but the thing you're looking for, I think.
The "hints" from the already published adventures are how the baddies are "going elsewhere" after a failure to try again. Tiamat's plan for Krynn didn't work , so she tries on Toril. Same with Tharizdun, who failed on Oerth, and is trying on Toril. I think this might lead up to some crazy Planescape or Spelljammer style realm-hopping adventure.
That said, I'm not sure how OotA fits into that idea. But we haven't seen it yet.
Wow, tough crowd. WotC really can't say anything without people tearing it apart and/or assuming the worst.
Not seeing the problem.
To me, it's like the approach they are taking with the new Star Wars movies. The past will be mined for ideas and inspiration, but, they are not locked into previous lore and are free to tweak/change what they want. Best of both worlds IMO.
How did you feel about Greedo shooting first?
Nobody is altering what already happened retroactively, it's all new stories. New stuff can happen, in unexpected ways. Someone from place X can go to place Y, even if they have never been to place Y before. Place X is not harmed by that person going to place Y. Nobody is saying that person is retroactively now from place Y instead of place X.
That's true. But it still comes at the expense of place X. Meaning, place X receives no further detail or "action" because place Y gets 100% of the attention.
Why not mix it up and have this adventure path from this world, and the next adventure path from that world? That's how you properly represent a multiverse. It's really not very "multiversal" to have all of the classic villains from other worlds continually showing up in the Forgotten Realms. It seems way less "cool mashup" and much more like "bad sequel" to me.
The problem is that not everyone wants to use the Forgotten Realms setting. Some people, in fact, really dislike the Forgotten Realms setting. Some people, like me, have a consistently running, 32-year-old Greyhawk campaign. Some people want to have their campaigns set in the bleak world of Dark Sun... not the Anauroch desert. People grow to love these worlds as if they were their favorite fiction or movie.
How did you feel about Greedo shooting first?
The problem is that not everyone wants to use the Forgotten Realms setting. Some people, in fact, really dislike the Forgotten Realms setting. Some people, like me, have a consistently running, 32-year-old Greyhawk campaign. Some people want to have their campaigns set in the bleak world of Dark Sun... not the Anauroch desert. People grow to love these worlds as if they were their favorite fiction or movie.
How did you feel about Greedo shooting first?
Then some people aren't the target audience for these supplements. That's always going to happen.
What should WOTC do? Cater to the vast majority of D&D gamers who actually do play in Forgotten Realms (when you consider the numbers for Adventurers League, LFR, and the popularity of previous AP's) or cater to a 40+ year old gamer who's campaign setting hasn't had any published material in twenty years?
OK to be fair, that's not accurate. Greyhawk has had published material over the past 20 years. Paizo in fact was writing adventures set in Greyhawk for Dungeon magazine. Savage Tide for example is Greyhawk, and it's from 9 years ago.
There is no doubt about it. The multiverse idea was absolutely a classic D&D concept.
And yet, we refer to The Temple of Elemental Evil, The Lost Caverns of Tsojocanth, The Tomb of Horrors, Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure, White Plume Mountain, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Scourge of the Slavelords, Queen of Spiders, etc as classic Greyhawk adventures. We don't refer to them as classic multiverse adventurers. They are things that are wrapped up in the fabric of what makes Greyhawk so awesome. You CAN make sense of Mordenkainen journeying to Toril and roasting hot dogs over a campfire with Elminster. But Mordenkainen belongs to Greyhawk just like Gandalf belongs to Middle Earth. Just like Elminster belongs to the Forgotten Realms. What we've seen so far isn't really a rich exploration of D&D's many multiverses. What we've seen is D&D's rich multiverses being imported into the Forgotten Realms. I know that's an overstatement, because so far we've really only seen Elemental Evil assimilated. My point is in specific reference to Crawford's mention that we might see the same sort of thing with future products.
I'm just saying that I disapprove of that path. Hopefully my worries are unfounded and we'll have an adventure path set in Greyhawk.
That said, I'd like to see WotC have a section in each adventure as to how to adapt it to different settings, or maybe a downloadable pdf, such "Running Princes of the Apocalypse in other settings." Maybe even having separate one or two page documents for the different major settings (other than the Realms).
Would that be anything similar to the section they *did* include in Princes of the Apocalypse on adapting it to other settings?
Heh, Savage Tide took one of the hallmark adventures of the Known World and mashed it into Greyhawk. And Paizo was largely applauded for doing so. It was a pretty popular AP.
But, apparently, taking Greyhawk elements and putting them into FR is a bad thing?
And, fair enough, I should have said ten years.![]()
I'm running Savage Tides right now for 5e. It's going well. My party just finished the thieves guild in Sassarine and is off to watery adventures...
Still, no update in the past 8ish years isn't itself an indication it should not see any updates. After all, Planescape hasn't seen updates in a longer period of time, but apparently it ranked high in WOTC's survey of settings and is more likely to see an update.