D&D General Greyhawk setting material

[Son of the Serpent]

Something ive been thinking about. Some stories may involve themes and patterns that do lend themselves to differently structured rules inherently better or worse. Its part of the reason why over on the thread about controlling wotc for 5 years i said i thought wotc should start considering releasing dnd in simultaneous sibling editions. So that stories and themes as well as sensibilities that favor not just different rules and cosmologies but actual different structural types of rule systems and different structural types of cosmologies (in any way cosmology can be applied there) could be published advancing simultaneously but mostly independantly.

Just a thought.

 

[Zardnaar]

Mystara suffered greatly from TSR's nuke everything phase. When they put the setting on its ear with Wrath of the Immortals and switched it to 2nd edition the sales plummeted. If Wizards wants to introduce mystara to 5th edition just retcon it back to 1,000 timeline. Wouldn't be unprecedented they've largely undone the spellplague because that was terribly received. Time travel is a major plot point in mystara with one of the paths of immortality requiring it. The beauty of the setting was yes some of it was goofy but most of it was dead serious. It's kind of like the Galapagos of D&D. Since it was developed separate from the other settings it evolved its own unique biome which most people remember for the originality of the monsters and races while also keeping the human civilizations distinct.

TSR nuked most of the settings it's why I think going back to the start is the best option, not just for Greyhawk.

It's one thing 4E got right conceptually, with Dark Sun. I would have gone back slighty further to Kalak being around mostly for PCs to kill him.

Novels at one point we're making more than D&D so I suppose nuking all the settings in the novels made some amount of sense from that PoV.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Quick minor add on to my most recent comment. I think releasing editions in triplets could be enough to pull off what im saying. But maybe more. I think 7 would likely be too many. I think that could drown the company. Somewhere between 3 and 6. But a minimum of 3. More people play d&d than ever before. If this was gonna be a good idea now would be the time. While the iron is hot.

 

[The Glen]

It didn't help in the death spiral days of TSR they were selling stuff for less than what it cost them. They were just spamming out drivel.

 

[Zardnaar]

It didn't help in the death spiral days of TSR they were selling stuff for less than what it cost them. They were just spamming out drivel.

Yep they were hiring freelancers who did whatever. It's how we got surfing Druids on Athas.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Agreed. A lot of that was intentional sabatoge though tbh. The economic mismanagement i mean. Which went hand in hand with creative mismanagement. Pacing wise and quality wise.

 

[Zardnaar]

Agreed. A lot of that was intentional sabatoge though tbh.

Late 80s maybe they sort of tried a reboot later.

Does anyone really like the TSR metaplot in any of the settings? If they reboot back to the start you can easily add it back in.

 

[The Glen]

If you want to make any of the old TSR guard Flinch mention Buck Rogers. A lot of the damage was because Williams wanted everything that was Gygax related or inspired, as well as anyone that was friends with him, gone. That's the primary reason why greyhawk was left to flounder as badly as it was at least until we got a new life in 3rd Edition

 

[Zardnaar]

Buck Rogers was her family IP. She more or less milked TSR to fatten her own pockets.

Essentially she licensed it from her family transfering D&D money to Buck Rogers.

Kind of conflict of interest but TSR was private.

 

[The Glen]

Late 80s maybe they sort of tried a reboot later.

Does anyone really like the TSR metaplot in any of the settings? If they reboot back to the start you can easily add it back in.

It's a fine balancing act with a metaplot. One side of the coin you don't want the setting to stagnate which is what happened with greyhawk because there was all this International tension but nothing ever became of it. Greyhawk Wars did shake this up without going too far too quickly

On the flip side you also don't want change the setting to much because then you lose the charm of what people were attracted to in the first place. That's why the setting nukes weren't well-received. If you look at mystara after Wrath the Cold War tension of having to equally powerful Empires always on the brink of War was gone with the destruction of one Empire and the emasculating of the other. Then the metaplot became all about the NPCs rather than characters.