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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Composer99" data-source="post: 8618275" data-attributes="member: 7030042">Apropos of swords-and-sorcery-and-<s>sandwiches</s> I mean, dystopia:I daresay that dystopia as a genre has room for both doomed and redeemable dystopias. What makes a story a work of dystopian fiction, to my mind, is the centrality of the dystopia to the story. The dystopia not only sets up the central conflict of the story (if there is one), but in a sense the dystopian society is a character, in and of itself, in the story.I would not say that swords-and-sorcery is not or cannot be dystopian or include elements of dystopia. Say rather that unlike the dystopian genre, if such elements appear in a swords-and-sorcery work, they are part of the setting backdrop. The fact that a great city or civilisation is "decayed" or "decadent" - which has a ring of dystopia to it to my mind - might help set up the conflict between the protagonist and antagonist (especially if the antagonist is a fell sorcerer-king or some such), but it doesn't strike me as being a central element in swords-and-sorcery. (Genre mashup notwithstanding, of course.)Apropos of the thread topic:Where I think people reasonably disagree with that take is that, given the slow pace of 5e publishing (relative to past editions of D&D), it does not follow of necessity that a lack of recent publications in a given style means that style has been "abandoned" by WotC or that the game is "moving on without" people who enjoyed content such as ToA etc. (*)If anything, the majority of content published during the early 5e life cycle was aimed at the sort of person who enjoyed either ToA/Rime-style content or late-80s/90s-style AD&D. It's only fair to give other market segments their due.What's more, it's abundantly clear that WotC is publishing material that "supports, and is for, various playstyles and settings" - Strixhaven, Ravenloft, Ravinca, Theros, Eberron, Spelljammer (soon) and Dragonlance (soon) each support and reflect a particular "flavour of fantasy" (as described in the DMG). This claim of yours seems bizarre, even kind of ridiculous, in light of the materials hat have actually been and are soon to be published. I also rather doubt that Ravinca or Strixhaven, say, are designed only with "be[ing] for the largest possible market" in mind.(*) Up to a point. I don't feel WotC has any particular obligation to cater to the gameplay preferences of, say, the Justin LaNasas of the gaming world.</blockquote>

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