D&D 5E D&D and who it's aimed at

[Lanefan]

You know, I often find myself wondering "if this classic TSR product were released today instead of 30-40 years ago, would it be as popular now as it was back then?"

I also wonder the inverse "if this modern D&D product was released 30-40 years ago instead of today, would it be as popular and classic as many of the older TSR products?"

Like . . . if Eberron was released in TSR-era D&D, would it have been popular? Or Nentir Vale/Exandria? Or Descent into Avernus, Rime of the Frostmaiden, the adventures from Candlekeep Mysteries, or Storm King's Thunder?

Or, if White Plume Mountain, Against the Cult of the Reptile God, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Spelljammer, Planescape, Greyhawk, Ravenloft, or Dragonlance were released for the first time ever today, would the same people that cherish these classic adventures and settings actually hate them?

The one out of all those that I'm pretty sure would have been a fairly big success if released in a different era than it was is Nentir Vale and the associated principle of a "points of light" setting. I think that would have gone over wonderfully* if released by TSR in, say, 1982 as a setting for Basic/1e; if only based on the mileage that Judges Guild (a not-well-distributed 3pp) got out of their Citys State of the Invincible Overlord/World Emperor.

* - and by that I mean significantly better than it did at its actual release.

 

[Hussar]

Assuming no floating ASIs here:

With 30-ish different playable species each with their own bespoke and locked-in ASI pattern, some sort of spreadsheet or chart will be needed so that players can quickly compare one species' mechanics to the next without having to flip to a lot of different pages in several different books.

Ahh, that was the part I missed. The "no floating ASI's". So, basically, the way it is now, in all the pre-Tasha's material.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, I definitely don't agree with that interpretation. In REH, it's cyclical, not some kind of linear "progress": Civilizations rise out of savagery, grow corrupt and decadent, decline and fall, rinse and repeat. The Hyborians aren't "more civilized" than the Atlanteans; the Thurian Age, too, had its decadent civilizations and upstart barbarians (e.g. Kull). A second cataclysm will end the Hyborian Age and make way for our own...and the rise and fall of civilizations will continue in our history.

But cyclical rise and fall is not dystopian. Dystopian is just fall. There's no hope in a dystopian setting. That's what makes it dystopian. A cyclical setting is just... well a particular view of history.

 

[Hussar]

And this has really been true for 40+ years. S&S has tried to make a comeback at various times, but I don't think it's ever really been successful. More's the pity, IMO, but there it is.

There are a few glimmers of hope though. Stephen Erikson's Malazan series does scratch the itch very well, even though he writes those damn door stopper books.

For shorter fiction, can I suggest Heroic Fiction Quarterly, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly | Prose. Poetry. Pulp. - a really fantastic semi-prozine.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Like . . . if Eberron was released in TSR-era D&D, would it have been popular?

It cannot be emphasize more how Eberron shook the room when it came out. It was like Elvis had just walked onto the talk show stage for all the monocle popping that came with magitech, distant gods, dragons that weren't color coded for your convenience, whole monster nations, a whole new cosmology, etc, etc.

People were straight u saying that was the end of D&D; that we were never going to see DL or FR material again because Eberron was sooo different that it was going to skew everything that way and things were going to go straight to hell because of the 'magic robots'.

Meanwhile, I'm like 'Bet. This was what I was expecting when I started playing and I've been waiting for D&D to catch up to my homebrew.'

And 20 years later, Eberron just gets to keep quietly doing what it's doing while people are still getting to lay down their digital lives over how much they hate kender.

 

[Mercurius]

But cyclical rise and fall is not dystopian. Dystopian is just fall. There's no hope in a dystopian setting. That's what makes it dystopian. A cyclical setting is just... well a particular view of history.

Yeah, I definitely don't agree with that interpretation. In REH, it's cyclical, not some kind of linear "progress": Civilizations rise out of savagery, grow corrupt and decadent, decline and fall, rinse and repeat. The Hyborians aren't "more civilized" than the Atlanteans; the Thurian Age, too, had its decadent civilizations and upstart barbarians (e.g. Kull). A second cataclysm will end the Hyborian Age and make way for our own...and the rise and fall of civilizations will continue in our history.

I'm thinking that Howard was probably influenced by Madame Blavatsky and Theosophy, which included mention of Atlantis, Hyperborea, Lemuria, etc, and influenced many authors around the turn of the century and after. Furthermore, Blavatsky drew from the cyclical model of the Indian Yugas - and pretty much every premodern culture had some variation of cyclic history.

Meaning, cyclical isn't dystopian - it is premodern and/or esoteric/mythological.

But in terms of time, one quality that many dystopias have in common is a kind of "false eternal present." We see this in 1984, as Winston's job was to continually re-write history to suit whatever the current view and activity of the ruling class was. So I would say that dystopias are, for the most part at least, static in terms of time. Both utopias and dystopias are meant to be the end of a process, a final form. This is not to say that progressing or changing utopias and dystopias haven't existed, just that a lot of the more well-known ones play with this idea of "ending time," if only implicitly.

 

[MGibster]

In a way, Spelljammer is the disco of D&D settings, in terms of how it was a unique shining star, yet short-lived and then nova-ed and died out.

I'm not going to be able to look at Spelljammer again with singing:

Oh, I love the night life
I got to boogie on the disco round, oh yeah

I'm going to sing that while playing a bard in Snarf's campaign.

 

[MGibster]

People were straight u saying that was the end of D&D; that we were never going to see DL or FR material again because Eberron was sooo different that it was going to skew everything that way and things were going to go straight to hell because of the 'magic robots'.

My criticism of Eberron is that it reminds me of the Flintstones but instead of stone age technology we have magic. But Eberron is an excellent setting that's just so darned interesting that I can overlook the Flintstones aspect.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I was more thinking "taking all of the same ideas, but originally published in a different time period and system". So, Eberron wouldn't be published in the 90s with 3.5e mechanics, but instead would have AD&D 2e versions for all of the same main concepts. Maybe something like the Mystara gazetteers or Forgotten Realms box set. Or Tomb of Horrors/Expedition to the Barrier Peaks would be first published in a 5e-style Adventure anthology, like Tales from the Yawning Portal or Candlekeep Mysteries.

As I said, this question is impossible to answer. It was just something I was pondering. Would Spelljammer get as much of a cult following as it currently has if it had never been published in 2e, but was published now as the Spelljammer: Adventures in Space 5e book set? Or would most people just dismiss it as too goofy and absolute nonsense that has no place in D&D? If Curse of Strahd and Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft were the first Ravenloft products ever in the history of D&D, would the same people that love the Ravenloft of 2e/3e actually enjoy the 5e version?

I know I wouldn't be very excited about them. Worldbuilding matters to me, and those products don't care about it.

 

[Jahydin]

The more I think about it, the more I realize my issue is mostly the character art.

I'm on board with monsters like this:

Neat environments like this:

But then the adventure party looks like:

And I'm immediately turned off. There is just nothing in there that screams deadly dungeon delver. They look like they'd last about a minute in the Tomb of Horrors...