Jeremy Crawford On The Dark Side of Developing 5E

WotC's Jeremy Crawford spoke to The Escapist about the D&D 5th Edition development process and his role in the game's production. "There was a dark side where it was kind of crushing. The upside is it allowed us to have a throughline for the whole project. So I was the person who decided if what we had decided was important two years prior was still being executed two years later."


You can read the full interview here, but below are the key highlights.

• Mike Mearls started pondering about D&D 5th Edition while the 4E Essentials books were being worked on in 2010.
• There were "heated discussions" about the foundations of 5E.
• Crawford is the guy who "made the decision about precisely what was going to be in the game".
• Crawford considers D&D's settings as an important pillar.

For another recent interview, see Chris Perkins talking to Chris "Wacksteven" Iannitti.

 

[Nellisir]

I didn't say (and they didn't say) that they wouldn't do it. They said they wouldn't be devoting specific books to it or doing it in a way "people expect." For instance, if they had a political/royalty-focused adventure path in mind, they might set it (by default) in Cormyr, and introduce details and "campaign advancement" throughout.
As far as not doing the "fiction" through the RPG, that could mean all kinds of things. They're going to advance the campaigns/meta-plots via novels. Or via an MMO. Or an online animated series. Or interpretive dance.
Some of these options may be more likely than others. But they're all just examples and possibilities; I have no particular inside info.

As an aside (not a correction) to this, I'll say that the Monster Manual had a TON of "mini-fiction" embedded in it. Whether it's "static" or "narrative" probably depends on one's perspective, and isn't really important. It's clearly there, and it's clearly something they spent a lot of time and effort on.

They did a mix of setting fiction and adventure with the later FR books. I'm curious how those sold, because I really didn't like them.

 

[HobbitFan]

If this is the new model, adventure path with a modicum of setting information...why did they do the Sundering? Why announce that big changes were occuring and the Realms were going to be fixed if they fans weren't ever going to see that?

Was all that just hype to sell those 6 novels and the associated playtest modules?

 

[Fildrigar]

It's entirely possible they will surprise us with a FR setting book soon. We just don't know.

 

[Rygar]

A quick addendum to my previous post. All IMO.

• Dragonlance: Narrative is out of date; static info probably OK; mechanics probably OK.
• Birthright: Static info is good, campaign narrative is actually cohesive and usable; mechanics could be/should be updated. A rules module for running Birthright-style games would be great; more substantial than an Unearthed Arcana article.
• Ravenloft: Static info is something of a mess, campaign narrative is a mess; mechanics are basically fine. I don't know what is next to what anymore, or who rules what.
• Planescape: Static info is basically OK but could be tweaked to match current cosmology; never really had a strong campaign narrative; mechanics are basically fine. Could use more monsters.
• Dark Sun: Did 4e roll back the timeline here? I think static info is basically OK, campaign narrative always seemed klunky; mechanics need updating.
• Spelljammer: Static info is fine; no strong campaign narrative; mechanics might be fairly simple to update. Good candidate for an Unearthed Arcana-type article.

All that aside, there's the question of having a product in print. Yes, pdfs are convenient, but many people find them inconvenient or difficult to read for a long time (http://www.washingtonpost.com/local...96ca86-b871-11e4-9423-f3d0a1ec335c_story.html). In the aforementioned thread on a FR campaign book, another point of appeal for the 4e book was its availability in print.

How is Dragonlance's narrative out of date? It is at least tied for Forgotten Realms as having the most complete narrative with virtually everything from the world's creation to its present having at least sufficient detail to run a campaign, if not exhaustive narrative and detail. Its mechanics can't be anything but ok, Dragonlance has never had any campaign specific mechanics, its always been pure D&D with different narrative on top of it.

 

[Harry Dresden]

How is Dragonlance's narrative out of date? It is at least tied for Forgotten Realms as having the most complete narrative with virtually everything from the world's creation to its present having at least sufficient detail to run a campaign, if not exhaustive narrative and detail. Its mechanics can't be anything but ok, Dragonlance has never had any campaign specific mechanics, its always been pure D&D with different narrative on top of it.

Actually, there were specific mechanics when dealing with magic and the phases of the three moons.

 

[Nellisir]

How is Dragonlance's narrative out of date? It is at least tied for Forgotten Realms as having the most complete narrative with virtually everything from the world's creation to its present having at least sufficient detail to run a campaign, if not exhaustive narrative and detail. Its mechanics can't be anything but ok, Dragonlance has never had any campaign specific mechanics, its always been pure D&D with different narrative on top of it.

No WotC setting book that's up-to-date with the novels. It definitely has a narrative. If they want to reboot it, that's fine, but I think it could use a new point of entry. I'm not even sure what the point of entry product would be if they don't. The 1e hardcover? Is there a "core" DL boxed set? (I really liked the Taladas boxed set when it came out.)

There are class options that could use updating to 5e, but otherwise the mechanics are good. I don't know if the static info has changed much.

Edit: "out-of-date" means that the setting info doesn't match up with the novels. FR has the same problem with Sundering novels. DS is better off ignoring the novels, IMO.

Actually, there were specific mechanics when dealing with magic and the phases of the three moons.

The 1e hardcover had also classes for the Knights of the Rose, the Crown, and...the other thing. The sword? I don't know enough about them to judge if they should be feats, or subclasses, or backgrounds, or flavor text, or something new, but it ought to be addressed.

 

[Shasarak]

About a year ago, Mearls stated that WotC wasn't intending to focus its efforts for D%D on the RPG publishing market. He even talks about settings, and notes that the main value of the settings is not in publishing RPG books for them.

That's not 2012, but it's unlikely that Mearls just made all that up off the top of his head at a gaming convention. They've been planning this approach for some time, and have given plenty of notice of it!

I wonder if Mike wants to license out the whole TTRGP side of the business? Hopefully these new Adventure Paths do well enough that they can get to the meat of the game.

 

[Henry]

The 1e hardcover had also classes for the Knights of the Rose, the Crown, and...the other thing. The sword? I don't know enough about them to judge if they should be feats, or subclasses, or backgrounds, or flavor text, or something new, but it ought to be addressed.

Not to mention the gnomes and their flawed steampunk devices, the alignment shifting mechanic, or the very different wizard progressions - Dragonlance was RIFE with different mechanics, not bereft of them.

 

[Nellisir]

About a year ago, Mearls stated that WotC wasn't intending to focus its efforts for D%D on the RPG publishing market. He even talks about settings, and notes that the main value of the settings is not in publishing RPG books for them.

Maybe I misread it, but I got something a little different out of it. He notes that the previous plan has begun and ended with TTRPGs; they're changing to look beyond that. I don't read it as abandoning RPGs or settings altogether, but as looking for ways to leverage a setting into multiple platforms rather than just one. So, (AS AN EXAMPLE), instead of a Grey Realms book every month (12 books), we get 4 books, a board game with two expansions, a phone app game, some plushies, and...something else hip and new. A twitter feed or whatever.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

More seriously, from Crawford's interview: Gamble, risk, wouldn't of pan out, could succeed, frequent reports. Not signs 4e was an economic success and that 5e would be one.

Of course not. He's not there to talk about 4e. He's there to talk about 5e. But it is utterly inarguable that, during the entire playtest, they continued to rake in tens of thousands of dollars (at least) from DDI. This income almost surely is how the D&D portion of WotC was able to produce essentially nothing for nearly three years while taking a large gamble.

And, again, any game that has "D&D" written on the cover is going to sell extremely well. The (first) 4e PHB/DMG/MM all sold very well, and we had people speaking to that effect. Hell, even when talking about 5e, they've (repeatedly) stated that these start-of-the-line books are always the best sellers. By the standards of any other game, even Pathfinder, 4e was an enormous success. By the standards of the 800 million billion ton gorilla that is Hasbro, it's almost certainly not possible that 4e, even without Pathfinder, could have "succeeded." We've already got a pretty clear indication that 4e itself had its gamble pitched to the higher-ups (mainly, "we can bring D&D into the digital age and tap the subscription market to generate top-tier revenues"), and the gamble worked...again for the standards of the TTRPG market. DDI was an enormous success by those standards even if you account for all the stuff that went wrong or disappeared as vaporware. It just didn't live up to WotC's hopes and, thus, Hasbro's expectations.