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.

 

[Remathilis]

Nellsir and Tony see my point.

I would love to see some for of condensed lore, easy enough for a newcomer (either to D&D or to the setting) to able to run something in it. I want metaplots explained (Sundering, Faction War, the Requiem), I want crunch where there is needed (powers checks, defiling, dragonmarks), I want races (muls, kender, warforged), I want monsters (greyhawk dragons, thouls, draconians). In short, I want enough material to get someone interested in a setting started. THEN let them hunt through the back catalog for Gazetteers and box sets. I don't care if its one book with a setting a chapter, a dozen web articles, of a series of hardcovers. I just want enough info get someone started and do some of the legwork of conversion.

 

[pemerton]

I don't think e-copies of old material are exactly 'support.' Maybe no (or less) 'ongoing support' would be a fair complaint?

Being able to access old material does not equal support for a setting. It just doesn't. It's like saying a tv show isn't cancelled if you can watch reruns on Netflix. I HAVE all the GH material in print. Telling me WotC is "supporting" the setting by letting us buy what we already own and is already available is asinine. Microsoft isn't "supporting" Windows '95 by archiving the manual on a wiki. Support carries a connotation of ongoing, present-time, assessment and development.

Gah. It's like reading nothing but the same books you read in high school, forever.

The comparison to Window95 is asinine. Greyhawk isn't a tool that needs repairs or adjustments if it is to keep doing its job. It's a work of fiction. The fiction is still all there.

If anyone wants to run a campaign in Greyhawk, and dooesn't own the books, they can buy them all. (Or nearly all of them.)

If you already own those books, then you can run a campaign in Greyhawk, so what's the complaint about? Are you seriously saying that you can't convert NPCs from AD&D to 5e where the module calls for it?

"Setting support" being compared to watching reruns suggests that you're not interested in running games at all, but want WotC to write fantasy novels for you disguised as gaming material. What other meaning does "assessment and development" have here? It's not as if your game is going to break because, in the conversion, you gave Iuz Horrid Wilting at will and I gave him Finger of Death instead.

 

[pemerton]

A "Classic D&D Worlds" line - maybe one book (or box set) a year, a full and beautiful treatment of a classic setting.

I would love to see some for of condensed lore, easy enough for a newcomer (either to D&D or to the setting) to able to run something in it. I want metaplots explained (Sundering, Faction War, the Requiem), I want crunch where there is needed (powers checks, defiling, dragonmarks), I want races (muls, kender, warforged), I want monsters (greyhawk dragons, thouls, draconians). In short, I want enough material to get someone interested in a setting started. THEN let them hunt through the back catalog for Gazetteers and box sets. I don't care if its one book with a setting a chapter, a dozen web articles, of a series of hardcovers. I just want enough info get someone started and do some of the legwork of conversion.

I'd love Chris Perkins to fly to Australia and GM some games for me, too, but it's probably not going to happen!

Where is the money supposed to come from to make all this possible?

If someone want to know about the metaplots, they buy the books. I can buy Planescape and Faction War for 9.99 each on DriveThru. Given that, why would WotC spend money re-writing all that stuff and trying to sell it in a $50 hardback?

 

[Remathilis]

I'd love Chris Perkins to fly to Australia and GM some games for me, too, but it's probably not going to happen!

Where is the money supposed to come from to make all this possible?

If someone want to know about the metaplots, they buy the books. I can buy Planescape and Faction War for 9.99 each on DriveThru. Given that, why would WotC spend money re-writing all that stuff and trying to sell it in a $50 hardback?

Because WotC said they want to "support their settings."

Quick, where do I find the 5e stats for a Draconian? Where is the PC racial stats for a mul? What happened to Callimshan after the Sundering? There is no answer for this stuff. These are fairly important things for people playing Dragonlance, Dark Sun, or the Realms. That's not support. If WotC is claiming to support their settings with a one-paragraph blurb in the DMG and a few pantheons in the back of the PHB, then their support sucks.

Again, the echo in the silence is deafening. It'd be nice to get a Legends & Lore style column that spells out what kind of support we ARE getting at this point. If all we are getting is themed APs MAYBE tied thematically to another setting, then say so. If we are getting a book, say it. If we are getting nothing, then say it.

 

[aramis erak]

I wanna agree with this, but...

We've long since moved on past 2e's setting splat.

In 3.X, we had (not counting a couple of licensed products like OA, RL or DL) a total of two "specific" campaign settings: Eberron and Forgotten Realms (the third, Greyhawk, was hidden in the core and slowly morphed from anything canonically Greyhawk by the time 3.5 rolled around). WotC made maybe 10 book each for them, the bulk of the 3.X line was "generic D&D" Even towards the end, Realms and Eberron material lost its unique look and began to resemble core lines (witness Races of Eberron). There was no Planescape book, there was Planar Handbook. There was no Ravenloft book, there was Heroes of Horror. There was no Dark Sun, there was Sandstorm and the Expanded Psionics Handbook.

Actually, there WAS a Ravenloft book. Produced by White Wolf's Sword & Sworcery impriint, under license, rather than by WotC. No risk to WotC.

There was also a fan version of both Birthright and Dark Sun, free to download, licensed by WotC.

Just had to know where to look.

 

[Trickster Spirit]

Because WotC said they want to "support their settings."

Quick, where do I find the 5e stats for a Draconian? Where is the PC racial stats for a mul? What happened to Callimshan after the Sundering? There is no answer for this stuff. These are fairly important things for people playing Dragonlance, Dark Sun, or the Realms. That's not support. If WotC is claiming to support their settings with a one-paragraph blurb in the DMG and a few pantheons in the back of the PHB, then their support sucks.

Again, the echo in the silence is deafening. It'd be nice to get a Legends & Lore style column that spells out what kind of support we ARE getting at this point. If all we are getting is themed APs MAYBE tied thematically to another setting, then say so. If we are getting a book, say it. If we are getting nothing, then say it.

Said column is called Unearthed Arcana, and I expect we'll eventually see Dragonlance and Dark Sun race and class info covered in much the same way as they did Eberron. As for Calimshan, it's entirely possible they don't know the answer either. My impression was that they worked out a broad concept with Greenwood, Salvatore and co. on what the Sundering would accomplish, but unless Chris Perkins' 7 years of storylines included fleshing out the Forgotten Realms post-Sundering, who's to say Wizards has even worked on any locations outside of the AP regions along the Sword Coast?

 

[Remathilis]

Actually, there WAS a Ravenloft book. Produced by White Wolf's Sword & Sworcery impriint, under license, rather than by WotC. No risk to WotC.

There was also a fan version of both Birthright and Dark Sun, free to download, licensed by WotC.

Just had to know where to look.

Ravenloft and Dragonlance (also under licence) both had the licences revoked in 2006 (Paizo might have lost Dragon around the same time) to prep for 4e. Those books are very OOP, and aren't going on Drivethru.

The fan versions are just that, fan stuff. Good people, but there is a lot of contradiction and support is... sporadic (I can't speak to those settings, but Ravenloft and Mystara is both a chaotic mess of several editions at this point).

 

[I'm A Banana]

Is the difference between setting primarily mechanical - that in FR you roll a d20 to attack, but in DS you roll (say) 2d12 (? because PCs in DC are "uber")?

I think that mechanics are valuable in setting distinction because they define certain setting elements. This can be quite a subtle touch (such as Greyhawk's mages being mentioned in spell names, or the deep history of FR - spells and dungeons being the mechanical elements), a more overt influence (Dark Sun's defiling mechanics and psionics rules, the Fear/Horror/Madness of Ravenloft), or somewhere in between (Planescape's ubiquitous portals being used to cut to the relevant questions at the heart of the challenge).

I would have thought the difference between running a dungeon crawl and running some other sort of adventure isn't mechanical, but mostly about the fiction. (Also - isn't I6 one of the classic dungeoncrawls? I don't actually understand why you think Ravenloft doesn't do dungeon crawls.)

Like I said - you can do a dungeon crawl in Ravenloft, but that's not what's interesting or unique about the setting (and there's a distinction here between I6 and the setting of Ravenloft - they serve very different design goals). A dungeon crawl doesn't leverage what makes the setting special.

By "mechanics" I don't just mean the numbers and dice, I mean the rules elements that each setting is stepped in. This being D&D, those rules elements also often embed themselves in the fiction (PS's portals are both an element of the world, and an element of adventure construction; likewise, Defiling is a world element and a character-building element and an element of creating antagonists and...).

 

[Nellisir]

"Setting support" being compared to watching reruns suggests that you're not interested in running games at all, but want WotC to write fantasy novels for you disguised as gaming material.

If WotC could up their author game a little, sure, that'd be cool. Novels have plots and storylines, though, and typically emphasize characters over places. I'd say more like a fantastical guide/history. A non-fiction approach to a fictional creation that works in sync with the game mechanics and design. That's what campaign settings ARE. Other people writing fantasy for you.

I read lots of stuff that I don't ever intend to run or use. I read SF but don't own a spaceship or a stargate. I read fantasy but have not yet cast a spell. I read history and the people are all dead. A reading list limited to material of immediate and practical use would be limiting and boring.

Paraphrasing the same old arguments:
'Wanting WotC to make stuff for you is [perjorative]. Make your own stuff.'
Well, yeah, and I could write all my own books and never read someone else's book again. OR I could read WotC AND write my own stuff. It's weird how the two aren't actually incompatible.

'Wanting WotC to make stuff for you is [perjorative]. There's lots of other stuff that WotC doesn't make.'
Well, yeah, and I read that stuff too. Once again, one does not exclude the other.

'Be a passive consumer. Don't rock the boat. Take what WotC gives you. Be grateful for what you have; don't ask for more.'
No.

 

[pemerton]

Because WotC said they want to "support their settings."

Sure, but by "support" they don't mean "spend money in ways that does not generate viable returns"!

Less than a week ago, I read this in the ENworld summary of a Chris Perkins interview:

* Their goal is to "challenge people's expectations" re: sourcebooks

* They're "not interested in releasing books for the sake of releasing books anymore"

* They want book releases to be events that will "surprise and delight people"; they also want to put out books that people will actually use rather than books that will just get put on a shelf to "stay there and slowly rot"

"One of our creative challenges is to package [setting] material - reintroduce facts and important details about our worlds - in a way that we know that DMs and players are going to use, that's going to excite them, that's actually going to surprise them. We may get that content out, but I'm not going to guarantee it's going to be a book. I'm not going to guarantee that it's going to be anything that you've seen before. But it will be something."​

They're not going to publish books just because some potential customers want the content. They're going to release information in other ways. Clearly a major constraint is going to be financial.

Quick, where do I find the 5e stats for a Draconian? Where is the PC racial stats for a mul? What happened to Callimshan after the Sundering? There is no answer for this stuff. These are fairly important things for people playing Dragonlance, Dark Sun, or the Realms. That's not support.

The Realms metaplot I don't know anything about, but given that all the modules for 5e (including many of the later ones for the playtest) are set in the Realms I would have thought that support is happening. And a quick Google for "Forgotten Realms novels" led me to this site, which tells met that 4 FR novels are due this year. Maybe they will tell us about what happened to Callimshan after the Sundering.

As for the stats for a Draconian or a mul, the time-honoured tradition is to make it up! What number of D&D groups do you think is out there who would be playing Dragonlance, or Dark Sun, except for that fact that WotC has not supplied them with stats for a Draconian or a mul? Furthermore, for $19.99 you can buy the 4e Dark Sun book from DriveThru and convert the mul stats across if you want to. (Or, if you find it easier to convert from AD&D, the 2nd ed boxed set is $9.99.)

From WotC's point of view, if a few stat blocks like this are really all that is at issue, I imagine it would be cheaper for them to do another UA down the track (a bit like the Eberron one) then actually author and publish a book.

Paraphrasing the same old arguments:
'Wanting WotC to make stuff for you is [perjorative]. Make your own stuff.'
Well, yeah, and I could write all my own books and never read someone else's book again. OR I could read WotC AND write my own stuff. It's weird how the two aren't actually incompatible.

'Wanting WotC to make stuff for you is [perjorative]. There's lots of other stuff that WotC doesn't make.'
Well, yeah, and I read that stuff too. Once again, one does not exclude the other.

'Be a passive consumer. Don't rock the boat. Take what WotC gives you. Be grateful for what you have; don't ask for more.'
No.

None of those is a fair or accurate paraphrase of what I posted.

I don't care if you want more stuff or not. If WotC published an updated GH map, there's a good chance I would buy it, to add to the half-dozen other GH maps I already own.

I don't care if you ask WotC to publish stuff or not, though I think it's unrealistic to expect them to publish stuff at a loss. Particularly in relation to settings, where they have institutional memory of how publishing setting material at a loss was a contributing factor in the bankruptcy of their predecessor.

I was responding to the claim that playing D&D in GH is not supported. And that claim is not true. There is a vast range of products (I pointed to them upthread) currently available at good prices. If you want to play D&D in GH, buy one of those products. If you already own them, then you already have the support you need: use it.

When I started a new fantasy campaign recently, I wanted to use Greyhawk as the backdrop. So I pulled all my old Greyhawk stuff down of the shelf (where it had sat, largely undisturbed, for several years) and had a look over the maps and some of the geographical descriptions.

I knew that one of my PCs was a forest-dwelling sorcerer-assassin, and another was a mage who was a member of a sorcerous cabal and had lived in a tower in arid hills overlooking rough and arid countryside. And I knew I wanted to run a scenario with nautical elements.

So I started the game in Hardby: its a seaport whose ruler is a Gynarch (hence sorcerous cabals), that is close to both the Abor-Alz (arid hills with towers in them) and the Gnarley Forest (a suitable origin point for a sorcerer-assassin).

The material provided me with the support I needed: maps, geographical descriptions, and some NPCs (the Gynarch of Hardby). Anyone who doesn't have that stuff on shelf can buy it from DriveThru and get the same support for their game.

That's support for playing D&D (or any other fantasy RPG) in Greyhawk.

EDIT: some of the above ninja'd by [MENTION=6701829]Trickster Spirit[/MENTION].