One setting per year?

[Whisper72]

Well, Spelljammer was not really a setting as such. I would like to see it given the treatment of a one-shot book like the Ghostwalk thingy.

 

[Steely Dan]

Well, Spelljammer was not really a setting as such.

It was intended to be, but too many people just used it as a taxi service to get from Toril to Krynn or what have you.

 

[Najo]

I still think it'll be an Eberron - Psionic Rules pairing. That said, I love Dark Sun as well. Both worlds have strong following and evoke cool mental imagery.

The Eberron world has so many options for potential rules-crunch material that I think WotC will continue to develop in that direction.

With regards to Dark Sun however, how has the online fan content / 3e conversions been received? I hadn't followed it closely, so if that is really popular, then maybe I am wrong about Eberron.

C.I.D.

Dark Sun and Planescape both have very unique and exiciting settings. Their fan base has remained strong over the years. Whenever polls have been done, those two come out near the top over most of the others. Forgotten Realms is still the top of the heap. They win out over ravenloft, spell jammer, dragonlance and dare I say, greyhawk even.

The problem with Dark Sun, it had a number of differing visions. Early on more brutal, brom inspired era, mid-way super heroic kill off the world's "gods" era and then the aftermath with silly bio cybernetics and psionic space halflings running around with the secrets of all of life. The first era is the strongest one, and the foundation of the setting. The slight push into the heroic era was good, but went to far as they killed off mythic symbols of the setting and went over the top with it. The last stuff was silly. Athas.org, even with all of their hard work, embraces all of it and feels like the silly era dark sun. I think that divided the fan base in half. They use everything is the mainproblem, instead of reenvisioning the setting.

When dragon/ dungeon took a whack at dark sun, they tried to return to the original feel by moving the setting ahead 300 years and removing the silly stuff. This was good, but they failed to keep some aspects of the setting's brutal and godless world where magic is outcast by alerting Dave Nonaan's article and putting back in paladins, monks, bards and sorcerers, removing penalties for wearing armor in the heat and removing weapon breaking with non-metal weapons. This hurt the reception of dark sun's relaunch.

Dark sun has ALOT of potential. It ties WAY more into psionics than Ebberon does. Darksun replaces the role of the wizard with the psionicist and leaves wizards being hunted and killed for using magic. Psionics are studied on Athas like martial arts in our world.

As for planescape, it has been held together by fans fairly well. It is the next most popular setting to forgotten realms, even over Ebberron. I would be surprised if we do not see it come back in some form.

Speaking of which, Planescape has popped up in multiple D&D 3.5 books. Demonweb Pits has Sigil in it, Planar Handbooks advances the story line of the factions and gives them prestige classes. Sigil is presented as a setting there. The concepts of the bloodwar, the bazatuu and the tanari are from planescape. Sigil is detail in the manual of the planes I think, or at least everything to run the setting is there.

Planescape was basically restored in 3.5 secretly with the only exception being 1st level planar characters who can be summoned by wizards to the material plane.

I think that shows the underground movement to bring that setting back. I know alot of the fans and the designers loved that setting. We played it for a while, and it offers something no other setting does.

 

[Najo]

I still think it'll be an Eberron - Psionic Rules pairing. That said, I love Dark Sun as well. Both worlds have strong following and evoke cool mental imagery.

The Eberron world has so many options for potential rules-crunch material that I think WotC will continue to develop in that direction.

With regards to Dark Sun however, how has the online fan content / 3e conversions been received? I hadn't followed it closely, so if that is really popular, then maybe I am wrong about Eberron.

C.I.D.

On other thing, I like Eberron, but I think they made one mistake with it early on. The tried to cram everything in at first and they should have stuck with defining eberron instead of finding ways to sell every book they could. Personally, I do not think eberron showed how cool a setting it could be until the Eberron's Player's guide came out. That subject matter to me is Eberron. Keep the dragonmarked, lightning rail, elemental airships, warforged, artficiers, dinosaur riding halflings, death worshiping elves, lich cults, non-diety churches, the emerald claw, the 13 orbiting planes, the draconic prophecy, the kalashatar, shifters, changling...

see, that stuff is cool. Very different. Keep out the generic crap like goblins, orcs, night hags and other boring stuff (unless they change it into eberron versions).

 

[Cyronax]

Dark Sun and Planescape both have very unique and exiciting settings. Their fan base has remained strong over the years. Whenever polls have been done, those two come out near the top over most of the others. Forgotten Realms is still the top of the heap. They win out over ravenloft, spell jammer, dragonlance and dare I say, greyhawk even.

The problem with Dark Sun, it had a number of differing visions. Early on more brutal, brom inspired era, mid-way super heroic kill off the world's "gods" era and then the aftermath with silly bio cybernetics and psionic space halflings running around with the secrets of all of life. The first era is the strongest one, and the foundation of the setting. The slight push into the heroic era was good, but went to far as they killed off mythic symbols of the setting and went over the top with it. The last stuff was silly. Athas.org, even with all of their hard work, embraces all of it and feels like the silly era dark sun. I think that divided the fan base in half. They use everything is the mainproblem, instead of reenvisioning the setting.

I also enjoyed the earlier vision of Dark Sun as seen in the first boxed set and the dragon kings book. I also liked the City By the Silt Sea dungeon boxed set a lot.

Those three products could form the core of a great 'Points of Light' type campaign world. It would be a hell of a product!

But, the developers keep hinting about Eberron more than anything outside of the confirmed publish of the 4e FRCS. So by that token, I would enjoy Dark Sun getting to be the third setting released -- especially as it takes advantage of the new 4e psionics rules.

 

[Aristotle]

I love Dark Sun, and still hope we see one-shots for it, other old settings, and whole new ones. That said...

<< edit: I recently found my cloth map from the original Dark Sun boxed set. This has to be my favorite game accessory of all time. I'm in the process of framing it. >>

Planescape, Spelljammer, and Ravenloft all make excellent candidates for one-shots, as they all have implied entrances/exits into just about any other campaign setting. In essence they all work as cap-systems (or "expansions" for those thinking along mmo terminology) regardless of your primary setting. Others may fit that bill too, but I only have experience with these three. If it were going to cap the default setting, Planescape would require the most retooling due to massive changes in the cosmology. Depending on the description of the astral sea, a tweaked version of Spelljammer may even be a better fit for the new planes than Planescape. Ravenloft wouldn't require much change.

I never collected these settings, as I didn't want to collect the endless supplemental material that follows, but a one-shot cap-system campaign guide... would likely be in my collection. If they only intend to do one book, and that one book turns a profit, then the campaign setting is a success. It's when they pump out supplements and sales die off that settings are seen an unsuccessful.

 

[PeterWeller]

<< edit: I recently found my cloth map from the original Dark Sun boxed set. This has to be my favorite game accessory of all time. I'm in the process of framing it. >>

The cloth map is actually from the second boxed set. I framed mine.

 

[herald]

Planejammer! Awesome idea.

I've been pushing this for years.

 

[herald]

As for bringing a setting back into the light, WOTC does have a advantage that TSR didn't have. The digital inititive, which ordinarily I don't care for, could do wonders for reviving a setting.

Articals could be done via Dungeon or Dragon to talkabout using the 4e classes in a existing game world. Wiki's could be created to build up a wealth on knowledge form existing data and perhaps some notes be created from the current staff on how to update the informaton.

Traffic from the sites and feedback from said articals could indicate how WOTC then applies it's resources to new material. Perhaps all that the market will bear is a pdf printing of certain materials, but a robust interest such as FR or Eb merit full print lines.

The main problem with TSR was that as Ryan Dancy pointed too many setting compeating against each other. Perhaps this needs to be sussed out to a further point. Too often I saw TSR products all crammed together on a shelf that cover each other up. Too often because of that, the products looked bad, often they were damaged.

If WOTC is looking to truely move forward with it's digital initiative, I hope that they consider writing for the future settings digitally before they do so in an analog way.

 

[amethal]

I hope this "a setting every year" idea happens as planned.

I'm not sure whether I'll switch to 4th edition or not, but I'll happily buy the setting books anyway, whether they are new settings or reinventions of old ones.

I like settings.