D&D 5E Dear WotC: An Idea On How To Make Next a Success - Bring Back The Stories!

[Sunseeker]

I can't honestly say, in my experience, I have never played a published setting outside some video-game translations of D&D(Eberron in DDO, Forgotten Realms in NWN and NWN2). All my games and campaigns have either been "adventure till we drop" style where we're given some general guidelines and make it up from here, or homebrew campaigns, which I include EnWorld's own Burning Sky in. I've played a few one-shot style dungeon crawls that may or may not have been tied to a particular setting, but on the whole I have not played any pre-defined game worlds.

The problem I feel with making a specific setting "Core", is the problem presented with 4e's Dragonborn and Tieflings, which instead of using a generic background like Elves, Humans and numerous other species, specifically came from Bael Turath and Akroshia(sp) respectivly. They lacked the more generic background given to them in other editions of simply being "demon blooded" or "dragon blooded" creatures. With more and more material added on to them that referenced that history, it became difficult to extricate what should simply be half-breeds or anomolies of any setting, to any game.

If the background remains in the fluff, that's great, but when we start seeing spell-names reference it, feats, powers, maneuvers, backgrounds, themes, it really becomes hard to suspend your disbelief that we're actually in MY world and not THEIRS. Which I honestly feel is a worse problem than having no unifying background, because it would demand that THEIR world be the bestest, most amazing incredible setting to ever be created.

The game should focus on general mechanics first and foremost. Then it can overlay story elements as fluff upon them, and add story-specific crunch in the setting-specific books.

 

[tlantl]

My players and I build our own worlds with our own lore. I have been at this for some time and I've been horrified at how the owners if the IP have butchered their settings as well as the basic game every time they decide to release another version of the game they call D&D.

Ask any forgotten realms user and you will see what I mean. I like the published settings for the stuff I can mine from them or the ideas I get when reading them but I never base any of my campaign on them.

As for the Pathfinder adventure paths and Golarion, well there's some stuff I can use but I'm not going to subscribe to any of them or even use them as written but one or two gems can be mined from the stuff they write. I'm not all that impressed with most of the stuff I've read. I have seen better in the old Dungeon and Dragon magazines from the early days.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

No thank you. I do not wish to board a new Dragonlance railroad.