D&D General Fundamental Problem Of Old Settings

[Zardnaar]

One of the things I like about the way Midgard does it is that while the villains and gods stories may advance, there are no canonical uber-heroes to steal your characters thunder - it's assumed that whoever did the deeds that advanced the plot from the modules (like Freeing Nethus) would differ from table to table.

I really, really like that approach.

Yeah not a fan of the railriaded DL adventures where you play the Heroes of the Lance.
But yeah if you have advancing timeline that's the way to do it. I'm not that reactionary in terms of change more make it organic and don't negate whatever attracted the players to the setting in the first place.

 

[Lanefan]

Any novels and tie-in media should be set in the setting's past, so that they help explain how things got to "Year Zero".

Yeah, that worked so well for Star Wars...

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah, that worked so well for Star Wars...

Yeah Knights of the Old Republic/Tales of the Jedi is great.

 

[Beleriphon]

Any novels and tie-in media should be set in the setting's past, so that they help explain how things got to "Year Zero".

Eberron's few novels are explicitly set after the campaign start date, however they are also explicitly non-canonical and simply examples of the types to things that happen in Khovaire and beyond. For example the Thorn of Breland novels are about a spy in service to the King, all of them take place in 998 YK (ie, immediately at the start of the setting's current year) but none of the would have an impact to a home game, even if you assumed they are "true" for the setting.

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

(Another related thing I liked as I read through the Midgard Worldbook...

...it manages to be a world with a serious hero shortage without turning grimdark (the tone is closer to Greyhawk, if it had 2e Forgotten Realms magic levels). No Drizz't, Elminster, Seven Sisters or Minsc to be found... heck, I can't even think of a Mordenkainen or Tenser. Pretty much everyone of any great power is evil, or a deeply conflicted neutral at best. If they are good and powerful, there's something seriously wrong with their idea of "good" - like the arch-sexist Perunalia, conquered Krakovar, slaveholding Ironcrag Cantons or near-to-civil-war Dornig and Magdar Kingdom.

Nobody is coming to save the day but you.

 

[Zardnaar]

(Another related thing I liked as I read through the Midgard Worldbook...

...it manages to be a world with a serious hero shortage without turning grimdark (the tone is closer to Greyhawk, if it had 2e Forgotten Realms magic levels). No Drizz't, Elminster, Seven Sisters or Minsc to be found... heck, I can't even think of a Mordenkainen or Tenser. Pretty much everyone of any great power is evil, or a deeply conflicted neutral at best. If they are good and powerful, there's something seriously wrong with their idea of "good" - like the arch-sexist Perunalia, conquered Krakovar, slaveholding Ironcrag Cantons or near-to-civil-war Dornig and Magdar Kingdom.

Nobody is coming to save the day but you.

We're in Nuria. Pharoah is lvl 13, but the other returned pharoahs don't tend to play nice.

I'm building an old god+ ancients storyline.

 

[Henry]

I believe Paizo has done a pretty good job of advancing the Golarion timeline, it’s a good example of resolving things while at the same time making more complications to replace them, without taking away the adventuring environment or making major missteps. Even their biggest changes (bringing back Tar-Baphon, closing the Worldwound) hasn’t made such huge changes that you still can’t run a Crusading campaign or an Ustalav campaign - still plenty of demon-killing to do, and Tar-Baphon hasn’t overrun all of Ustalav or anything.

 

[gyor]

Or even franchises. We saw this with virtually every D&D setting and other franchises such as Star Trek/Wars.

That is crash TV erm crash RPG. Crash RPG is when someone invents something that people like for whatever reason. A future author takes over and what do they do? Some combination of.

1. Kill off existing characters

2. Blow something up. A big war, world shaking event or literally blowing the world up.

3. Something involving time jumps/travel.

4. New characters heavily handed replace the old.

TSR was notorious for this. Last seen during 4E and the Realms. Apart from being a bad idea to begin with it often leads to an arms race between authors as they try to top each other.

And of course if you object you get called toxic. I suppose blowing something up is an easy story to write.

My default position for setting if they ever get redone us to go back to the original release/key release tied to the setting.

This means War if the Lance for Dragonlance,the grey box for FR, 1991 boxed set for Darksun.

This is because it's simple and doesn't invalidate anything. If you want to blow the world up that's not a problem.

But but but what about the new generation? They already have their new stuff. I'm not a big fan of Ravenloft but I don't expect them to change Ravenloft to appeal to me.

There's not much in old settings that won't on the surface appeal to new players. Dragonlance for example is classic good vs evil. Not everything will appeal to everyone or maybe execution is slightly off but that's fine.

But but but what if it doesn't sell? Basically anything with the words D&D on it atm is going to sell well. Some of those settings have been buried since the 90s who knows how a well done update will do. In talking about the bigger settings,not say Birthright.

But but but it splits the D&D playerbase. In the 90s that was true as each setting got flow on support adventures, novels, splat material. These days it's more or less one and done there's no flow in Ravnica support.

Even a map folio release with old maps reprinted would have been useful as PDFs don't work well in that regard.

I'd say the last time this was done was the War of the Spark plotline because 4 guilds have different guildmasters and a lot of things were changed making Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica out of date in alot of ways.

Before that 5e radically changed the Forgotten Realms with Sundering and other events (remember even 4e Realms had its fans, not just critics).

 

[gyor]

I believe that FR, Star Trek, and Ravnica do it right, I prefer living settings over fossilized settings even if I don't like all of what occurs, it's part of the adventure of the setting.

 

[bedir than]

Even in my homebrew I play within the same five years or so.