D&D 5E D&D's Classic Settings Are Not 'One Shots'

In an interview with ComicBook.com, WotC's Jeremy Crawford talked about the visits to Ravenloft, Eberron, Spelljammer, Dragonlance, and (the upcoming) Planescape we've seen over the last couple of years, and their intentions for the future.

He indicated that they plan to revisit some of these settings again in the future, noting that the setting books are among their most popular books.

We love [the campaign setting books], because they help highlight just how wonderfully rich D&D is. They highlight that D&D can be gothic horror. D&D can be fantasy in space. D&D can be trippy adventures in the afterlife, in terms of Planescape. D&D can be classic high fantasy, in the form of the Forgotten Realms. It can be sort of a steampunk-like fantasy, like in Eberron. We feel it's vital to visit these settings, to tell stories in them. And we look forward to returning to them. So we do not view these as one-shots.

- Jeremy Crawford​

The whole 'multiverse' concept that D&D is currently exploring plays into this, giving them opportunities to resist worlds.

When asked about the release schedule of these books, Crawford noted that the company plans its release schedule so that players get chance to play the material, not just read it, and they don't want to swamp people with too much content to use.

Our approach to how we design for the game and how we plan out the books for it is a play-first approach. At certain times in D&D's history, it's really been a read-first approach. Because we've had points in our history where we were producing so many books each year, there was no way anyone could play all of it. In some years it would be hard to play even a small percentage of the number of things that come out. Because we have a play-first approach, we want to make sure we're coming out with things at a pace where if you really wanted to, and even that would require a lot of weekends and evenings dedicated to D&D play, you could play a lot of it.

- Jeremy Crawford​

You can read more in the interview at ComicBook.com.

 

[Parmandur]

Right, which is why you don't make it for kids. Teenagers don't want stuff that is made for teenagers, they want stuff that is made for adults.

Yeah, there was a leaked internal document from WotC marketing from the 3E era that came out a long bit back, and making the game for teenagers while giving the impression that it was for adults was their whole prodict strategy, in essence.

I would propose that they have found a good balance of doing just that, within the parameters of current PG-13 blockbuster movie sort of material. Their books do have plenty of goofy edge Lord stuff, like the main plot of the Spelljammer Adventure or the slave gladiator arena in the same Adventure.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, and I have to say, if I was an older teenager right now? WotC would be losing me. Because nothing they're doing speaks to older teenagers. Younger, I'm sure they're doing well, though they wouldn't be making me a life-long obsessive, because what did that was the sort of detailed lore they're increasingly eschewing. Even in the 1990s D&D lost ground by being, and I hate to say this, insufficiently edgy. 3E, for all it's many, many, countless failings did bring some of that edge back. Even early 5E still had a bit of that vibe, but it has been steadily draining away, and I'm terrified we're going to get full-twee-mode Planescape rather than the Planescape of the 1990s which retained enough edge to prevent it going twee.

I'm not sure that I agree. They are tapping into Gen Z with their newer lead designers (De Armas graduated from College in 2020, after starting D&D in in 2019!). I look at Wotchligjt, I look at Journeys Through the Radiant CitDel, and I look at how.yoing people I know have responded...you might be surprised.

 

[Faolyn]

I don’t care if I’m the minority, I’d love to see another campaign style book focused on another part of the Forgotten Realms before anything else.

Judging by all the threads here that have been about the Realms, I think you're the majority.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Clearly what D&D needs is the artistic styling of Rob Liefeld and the brilliant writing that almost bankrupted Marvel.

 

[The Glen]

I do miss Mystara. I'm happy that there is a fan-created 5E adaptation floating around on the 'net, let me see if I can find a link.
(Found it! Special thanks to Glen Welch for all the heavy lifting.) And DriveThruRPG has all of the classic Gazetteers and most of the adventure modules, too. So yeah, I understand why Wizards of the Coast might be unwilling to take on the risks of adapting every campaign setting to the new edition...but I'm thankful that whenever this happens, the fans rise to the challenge and fill the gap.

Hollow World not so much, but I can kinda see where they were trying to go with it. I adapted Nightwail to my Isle of Dread campaign setting back in the day, and it was a lot of fun.

But I did like Red Steel, too.

I here he's working on the DMG as we speak. Mystara is one of the "problematic" settings because of its use of real world allegories. The counter to the problematic claim it was the best selling settings outside the US specifically because of the allegories and BECMI being translated into so many languages. People like their culture being represented, especially their myths and legends.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Right, which is why you don't make it for kids. Teenagers don't want stuff that is made for teenagers, they want stuff that is made for adults.

Exactly. This guy remembers being a teenager!

The RPGs and books we bought at 15+ (and even a little before that) were the ones that seemed to be aimed at adults, and stuff that seemed to be aimed at kids, even about kids our age, just profoundly didn't get us, man (one of the biggest misses being Cybergeneration by Mike Pondsmith - we'd absolutely loved every part of Cyberpunk 2020, and then Cybergeneration basically is Mike Pondsmith proving that he does not remember being a child, let alone a teenager, AT ALL, as someone adults weirdly seem not to.

I would propose that they have found a good balance of doing just that, within the parameters of current PG-13 blockbuster movie sort of material.

I strongly disagree. It's PG, not PG13 - that's the real problem here. Spelljammer in 2022 is exactly like it was in 1990 or whenever - super-cool if you're 12-14, unspeakably lame and awful if you're say, 16-18.

I'm not sure that I agree. They are tapping into Gen Z with their newer lead designers (De Armas graduated from College in 2020, after starting D&D in in 2019!). I look at Wotchligjt, I look at Journeys Through the Radiant CitDel, and I look at how.yoing people I know have responded...you might be surprised.

Witchlight yes. That's more like it and it shows they can get it. Though it slightly lacks bite/edge from what bits I've read.

Radiant Citadel is purely aimed at proving WotC are diverse (they aren't) and can celebrate diverse cultures (they can, but they usually don't) and so on. The problem is it's BORING AS HELL, because it's trying to be purely positive. It is most possibly the most profoundly boring setting/set of adventures that I've ever seen. If you look at work actually being produced by younger authors, it's approximately a thousand times more edgy and real and critical in its approach than Radiant Citadel. I think, even as ultra-left, way before-my-time kid (on every social issue), I would have balked at Radiant Citadel, just for it being boring. It's representation, which is cool, but it's not more than that - it's just representation, not a real change. And there won't be real change whilst the same WotC lifers are in charge of every department.

Disney has put out a couple of movies along similar lines, and stone cold guarantee people won't be going "How great was Raya and the Last Dragon?" in 10 years, they'll be going "That movie bored me senseless as a kid and had nothing to say and no style". This isn't true of all of Disney's recent output - I expect Encanto to survive the test of time - but it genuinely has more real edge, more to say about real people and relationships, than, say, Last Dragon.

 

[Reynard]

Exactly. This guy remembers being a teenager!

[it'sbeen84years.gif]

 

[Parmandur]

Witchlight yes. That's more like it and it shows they can get it. Though it slightly lacks bite/edge from what bits I've read.

They really sold it on the possibility of getting through the whole Adventure without getting into any fights...but that would take some fancy talking and thinking from players, to be honest, and there is plenty of PG-1÷ pushing material in there.

Radiant Citadel is purely aimed at proving WotC are diverse (they aren't) and can celebrate diverse cultures (they can, but they usually don't) and so on. The problem is it's BORING AS HELL, because it's trying to be purely positive. It is most possibly the most profoundly boring setting/set of adventures that I've ever seen. If you look at work actually being produced by younger authors, it's approximately a thousand times more edgy and real and critical in its approach than Radiant Citadel. I think, even as ultra-left, way before-my-time kid (on every social issue), I would have balked at Radiant Citadel, just for it being boring. It's representation, which is cool, but it's not more than that - it's just representation, not a real change. And there won't be real change whilst the same WotC lifers are in charge of every department.

I mean...Radiant Citadel was mostly written by younger writers? And yeah, it's a "Solar Punk" environment...but that's in with Zoomers now. It may have been boring to you...but you and I aren't the target audience. My children who fell in love with the Ruby Pangolin are.

 

[CleverNickName]

"It is like Steampunk, but there is no steam. Or clockwork. Or bowler hats. Or Victorian England analogues. There's noir and pulp adventure, though, which, you know, aren't steampunk either. So, yeah, 'steampunk-like!."

Me, in this thread:

 

[Ruin Explorer]

People like their culture being represented, especially their myths and legends.

They like it less when someone makes them all into animal-people though.

Which was part of the issue with Mystara.

Or worse when it introduces horrifying racial stereotypes of oppressed minority groups and then assigns them to orcs (let's not even get into The Orcs of Thar).

So whilst you're absolutely right that "real world equivalents" (rather than allegories) are the core problem with Mystara, I don't think they're quite as innocent and wonderful and flawless as you're implying. Plus standards for representation in the 1990s were vastly lower than the 2020s.

And even the 1990s, you might be unaware, but there an ongoing issue with sourcebooks about [Country X], which is that, yes, we, as Brits, bought every Britain sourcebook for every RPG we owned. Problem was though, 99% of them SUCKED MONKEY NUTS. They were absolutely awful. So they got sales, sure! But they also got me STILL ANGRY 25+ YEARS LATER. I guarantee you some of the Mystara sales have a dude in India quietly fulminating about how much the Mystara take on India sucked or whatever. I mean we could go through the UK sourcebooks and I could identify the big problems with each one - the least awful was the Cyberpunk 2020 one, which seemed dumb in the 1990s but turned out to be somewhat prescient re: flag-shagging, Brexit and so on. The one that wound me up most was one of the World of Darkness ones, which seemed to have been written by someone who had last been young or cool in about 1981, and was absolutely certain that UK nightlife and party culture and so on was still exactly like that, in like 1994. How do you do like an entire chapter on the nightlife of the UK, writing in the 1990s, and not mention raves? And that is tinest point of the tip of the iceberg of how much that sucked. It was written by a Brit too, to add insult to injury. Just one who was completely out-of-touch (and also probably didn't live in London, given some strange ideas about that).