D&D 5E Mike Mearls interview - states that they may be getting off of the 2 AP/year train.

[doctorbadwolf]

I think you're confusing wish with believe

I certainly wish they were. But then, I mostly use the 4e Realms, with a select handful of the events of the sundering, mostly the revived gods.

 

[schnee]

And the even more ironic thing is that you get posters like @schnee for example that sincerely believe the century jump means Ed Greenwoods characters are gone.

I think you misunderstand me. I sincerely *want* them gone. .

I know better though.

 

[Staffan]

I do see a new Word every few years and they also offer other options to add on if I want to get a "complete" package.

But that's a new Word. They don't simultaneously sell Word 2010 and Word 2016. And AFAIK Word itself is fairly complete regardless of package - the different Office packages are more about what things you get beyond the core four programs (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and OneNote). But the Word you get in Office Home & Student is the same as the one you get in Office Professional - it's just that Professional also includes Outlook, Publisher, and Access.

And I guess I could choose to play only vanilla WoW but Blizzard also offers Starcraft as well - does that not split the gaming market?

Actually looking at their site it seems that Blizzard offers WoW, Overwatch, Starcraft, Heartstone and Diablo. How come they are not worried about splitting their market? How come it is just RPGs that have to worry about splitting their market?

Because they appeal to different parts of the market. WoW is an MMORPG, Overwatch is a team-based first-person shooter, Starcraft is a real-time strategy game, Diablo is a dungeon-crawler, and Hearthstone is a casual card game. They appeal to totally different people. That's like Wizards not only publishing D&D, but also Lords of Waterdeep, Attack Wing, and Tyrants of the Underdark.

But what TSR did was more like if Blizzard had said "Oh, WoW is doing great. Let's use the same engine but replace the races, and swap out one of the specializations for each class, and make a new world for it. Then we'll rake in twice as much money. And then let's do the same thing ten more times - just imagine all the money rolling in!"

 

[Staffan]

I guess that sums up my problem with the arguement against having a "living" setting. Here you are calling out Raiders of the Lost Ark as being such an amazing film and yet it is based in the middle of an intrinsically "living" world (by definition).

But the political situation that allowed for the backdrop in Raiders of the Lost Ark only lasted for a scant few years, 1933 to 1939 (the period from the Nazis seizing power in Germany to the start of WW2). After that, the world changes significantly which invalidates many of the stories you could tell. Now, that opens up a whole new bunch of stories, but if you were attracted to the world because of its 30s pulp feel, and it then turned into a world war you'd get quite disappointed in the setting's caretakers.

Using this example if Eberron did make a call on what plot hooks happened and jumped forward in time until after the next war with the Lord of Blades, you could still have an adventure set in the middle of the war just as Steven Spielberg was able to set his movie 50 years earlier then his current day.

But if I don't like the direction in which the developers are taking the setting, that makes future supplements unusable to me. And this is not some hypothetical scenario - it's one I've personally encountered in the Realms. I thought the description of Tethyr in the 2e FRCS box sounded like a very fertile setting for adventure (country torn by civil war for 20 years, so each little plot of land has its own warlord/baron that can send adventurers off to do things, or maybe the adventurers are just looking out for the common man), so I bought Lands of Intrigue, the boxed set that covered Amn and Tethyr. But the Tethyr in that box was very different from the Tethyr portrayed in the FRCS - now the civil war was over, and a rightful king along with a far more capable queen had returned and put things in order again. And all of that stuff had happened in a novel trilogy.

Another issue is that it often creates a very weird, unstable world, because the metaplot machine needs fuel. Just look at the period of 1357 to 1372 DR (15 years, the period between the 1e FRCS and the 3e FRCS). In that time, the Realms have had these things happen:
* The ancient god Moander rising again, but being banished.
* The Time of Troubles, where a few gods died (notably Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul), a few new ones ascended (Cyric and the new Mystra), and a few gods disappeared (Waukeen).
* Invasion of the Tuigan horde (essentially the Mongols).
* Maztica (America) discovered.
* The reclamation of Tethyr.
* A plot by the new god Cyric to mind-control people into worshiping him, which backfires and leaves Zhentil Keep in ruins and causes him to lose the portfolio of Death to the new god Kelemvor.
* Daggerdale is liberated from the Zhentarim who were occupying it.
* The goddess Waukeen is liberated from her captivity in the Abyss by a band of adventurers, and she returns as the Goddess of trade and wealth.
* With the help of an artifact provided by Khelben Blackstaff, Fzoul Chembryl manages to release Bane's demi-god son Iyachtu Xvim from a prison beneath Zhentil Keep, and have him claim the portfolio of Tyranny from Cyric and become a lesser god in the process.
* As fallout from the previous point, the Harpers split because the leadership did not approve of Khelben providing Fzoul with said artifact.
* Manshoon, the leader of the Zhentarim, is killed by Fzoul Chembryl as part of the latter's effort to take over the Zhentarim. Somehow his Static Clone spell (which created a bunch of backups for him) got messed up, and all the clones activated and started fighting one another to the death. One of them got vampirized.
* A dragon leads an army of orcs and goblins in an attack against Cormyr, but is repelled. King Azoun IV dies in the process, leaving his young son Azoun V the nominal king, but the country lead by a regent.
* Mulhorand invades and conquers Unther.
* Turns out Bane was using his son Xvim as an incubator of sorts, so Bane returns (killing Xvim in the process).
* A flying city full of ancient archmages that went on a tour of the Shadow Plane in order to avoid the destruction of Netheril reappears.
* The town of Tilverton, near Anauroch, was destroyed by some unknown magical force but that seemingly had something to do with shadows.

That's a lot of stuff happening in quick succession. For someone jumping in at this point in the setting's history, that's a lot of recent events to take in and try to make sense of - and that's another problem with metaplots: they make it harder for new people to become accustomed to the setting, because they can't just get the core book and some random sourcebook. Because the sourcebook will probably refer to a bunch of stuff that happened in between the release of the core book and that particular sourcebook, and the new customer will go "What the heck is this? Why are they talking about the Banedeath a lot - there's nothing about that in the core book? Is that something I'm supposed to know about? Screw this, I'll go back to Diablo."

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

I see more splitting of the player base every time they make a new edition rather then every time they make a new setting.

We agree on that, but I also believe new editions, if done properly, can help refresh a game line. Once every 10 years seems like a good choice to me.

If you believe the poll results that showed the majority of games as categorising themselves as "Home Brew" then does making a Forgotten Realms adventure "split" the market any more or less then making a Greyhawk adventure?

Once again, I'm just trying to guess here, but when I think about DMs homebrewing, I believe they either create everything on their own (and you won't sell anything to them anyway) or adapt the stuff they get to their own worlds. In any case, it becomes clear to me that, in their core game line, WotC can achieve maximum profit from selling stuff that is generic enough to suit the basic assumptions of most D&D campaigns (orcs are evil, elves are good, magic is highly accessible to the protagonists of the adventure...).

Then, why Forgotten and not Greyhawk or Dragonlance? As I see it, if the potential sales of each product equals those who are looking for generic material and those who are looking for material on their favorite campaign setting, WotC should focus on the Realms and ignore any other setting with the same potential for generic material simply on popularity basis.*

Still, I believe that WotC makes a mistake on leaving behind stuff like Planescape or Dark Sun, because those settings invite the DMs to try a different way to play the game, and that invitation is equally open to homebrewers and fans of other official settings. Unless you're one of those guys who only play D&D, and only play it in your setting (they exist, I know some of them), you're potential market for Dark Sun or Spelljammer, as I see it, much like you're potential market for RPGs that are not D&D.

*Regarding this discussion, I'll just accept WotC's vision on the matter, I'm not willing to discuss if the Realms are really more popular, much like I won't discuss if 5e is really the most successful D&D edition, you're free to believe otherwise.

 

[DEFCON 1]

How would it be "reprinting relevant text" when the world has undergone a catastrophe since the last campaign setting was published? Much of what was in the 4e setting book is now obsolete, and virtually all the information from pre-4e products are now a century or more out of date.

It is obsolete *only* if you continue to think of the Realms as this millenia-long "story" that needs constant updating with all new information in every single section of the entire Faerunian continent. Now... my guess is that those of you who want a new FRCS are the ones who do think that. Which is fine, I guess. You want what you want. But let's be honest here... you aren't wanting this book for gaming purposes.

When it comes to gaming in a campaign setting... the thing that always amazes me is people who think that they are actually "playing in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting" once they start their game. Which isn't true. Because as soon as you start your own campaign, you are no longer playing in the "official" Forgotten Realms (the one who has this millenia-long "canon" people get so amped up about)... you are playing in YOUR Forgotten Realms. YOUR campaign will change things. Change things AWAY from the "official" setting. Your game will oftentimes directly contradict things established in the "official canon". Which quite frankly is exactly the point! YOUR campaign is not beholden to the "official" setting whatsoever!

But you know what that means? It means that if the setting for your game is not the "official canon" of the game as soon as you start playing... then it doesn't matter what information you use to create your setting.

If your group of players decides to go to Halruaa for a story arc... you are going to create a whole bunch of stuff that isn't "official canon" for Halruaa-- plotlines, adventure sites, NPCs. Mainly because not a whole bunch of stuff has been written for Halruua, certainly not enough to run a full 20-level campaign in. So if you are going to do that-- make up a whole crapton of stuff about Halruaa... then there is absolutely no difference in just using 1E or 2E Forgotten Realms campaign book past info about Halruua than there is in either making stuff up out of whole cloth, or incorporating other game material from other products and "calling it" Halruaa setting material for your game.

Which means to me... nobody NEEDS an "official canon" campaign setting book of the "current year" of the Forgotten Realms for their games. Because as soon as you start a game there, you're off the reservation anyway! Your game is no longer "official canon", so you gained absolutely nothing by using an "updated" 5E setting book as opposed to using the 4E setting book, or the 3E setting book, or the old grey box. And you certainly don't need "new information" about obscure parts of Faerun... parts you've never played in before and thus all the information that has already been written about them in previous books might as well not even exist... in order to play your game.

You're going to gerry-rig your campaign using anything and everything under the sun. So it doesn't matter whether Perkins and Co. spend their precious hours writing a bunch of "new details" about Halruaa to make it "current", or you just use any or all of the details previously written about Halruaa. Because if you've never played a game there before, ALL of it is going to be "new details" for your game.

 

[cmad1977]

What's funny to me is that this UA addresses things people have asked for...
And it's still not good enough for the people asking for these systems.
Which I find unsurprising.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Corpsetaker]

But let's be honest here... you aren't wanting this book for gaming purposes.

Got to stop you right there!

TONS of people choose the Realms as their campaign world for that very reason. They want to play in a current ever growing world because it allows their characters to either be a part of it, or witness those changes happening. That's part of what makes the Realms different than just another high fantasy setting.

 

[Mistwell]

Right, and I prefer that they would spend their resources doing a proper Realms book.

I mean they must have a proverbial crap ton of stuff done over the last three years and they have Matt Sernett working there as their Loremaster.

OK and that's fair that our preferences differ. I was just reacting to the "everyone would be happy if they did this" comment.

 

[Corpsetaker]

But what TSR did was more like if Blizzard had said "Oh, WoW is doing great. Let's use the same engine but replace the races, and swap out one of the specializations for each class, and make a new world for it. Then we'll rake in twice as much money. And then let's do the same thing ten more times - just imagine all the money rolling in!"

You're oversimplifying it here. Having multiple campaign settings could have worked if they had just done them a bit differently. FR and Al-Qadim could have been under the same umbrella really. The rest gave their own unique flavour that lots of people really enjoyed. The problem with companies like Wizards is they are more interested in making their profits grow instead of being happy with "just making a profit". This is why smaller companies are better for the community as a whole because they are run by gamers who provide lots of different material for lots of different gamers. Sure Paizo isn't the richest or the biggest, but they give their customers what they "all" want and they are doing just fine.

See, it can be done when you aren't a slave to the profit treadmill.