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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 7251272" data-attributes="member: 37579">*cough* Ravenloft *cough*Also worth remembering that only the Realms was supported for 3.0e and for all of AD&D there was the 1980 World of Greyhawk folio until 1987. That was 9 years with only a 32-page summary of places as the only world lore. Right is the point. The majority of DMs run in homebrew worlds, or leave the setting in the background. And while a large percentage run the Realms, I'd bet a high number are just using that because it's the default of the published adventures. The reason there's no outcry is that only a small minority of D&D fans have strong feelings about past settings. Doing any published setting will be releasing a product the majority of players have no interest in, and only targets a fraction of that minority.Keep in mind that people who are fans of Ravenloft and Dragonlance and Mystara and Al-Qadim and Planescape and Spelljammer are *only* people who played during 2e. The 1e fans who skipped 3e will have had little experience with those worlds, and anyone who played 3e and onward will likely only have heard of the Realms and Eberron. Or maybe Dark Sun after the 4e book. Given how many 1e fans skipped 2nd Edition, how many fans 3e and 4e brought in, and how many brand new people are lured in by 5e... is it any wonder campaign settings seem like a super niche product? 5e is still selling well. It will take a prolonged dip in sales followed by an unsuccessful attempt at boosting sales before they think about 6e. And even then, it will take a couple years to make a change. Let's see, if it started now it would have to be a year of slow sales at least followed by a change in tactics that would take a year to make. That takes us to 2019. Two years to make 5e Revised or 6e. That's 2021, making 5e's lifespan a mere 7 years. Longer than 4e and the same as all of 3.X. But right now things are going strong so they're not going to rock the boat and risk the continued sales of the PHB. And that seems like it's going to continue for another year or two. There's good odds 5e will pass 3e's lifespan and maybe even challenge 2e's 11-year mark. Brace yourself Zapp.... D&D has always been about making money. Gary wasn't giving the books away. It wasn't a charity or free ruleset. He made it a business. D&D was always just one piece of the business model. TSR regularly released board games and other RPGs and tried to branch out into other "hobbies", such as kitting. WotC has just become smarter and realised that releasing a whole bunch of side RPGs just competes with D&D. And that if they put the D&D brand on other games, they have a built-in audience rather than having to stand alone. The D&D team has been growing the last couple years. They've just moved them to licencing and brand management and the like rather than the RPG. They're purposely not expanding the number of people working on the RPG. At this point it's probably a very deliberate choice not to release more books for D&D.</blockquote>

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