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Message: <blockquote data-quote="flametitan" data-source="post: 7701417" data-attributes="member: 6822731">I still don't believe we know enough to treat this as a significant event. We know that Evans is ending her line, and that there's rumours that Greenwood and Salvatore are ending their lines, with a layer of NDA. We don't know if that means they're stopping novels entirely, or if there's simply a restructuring to it. Wait and see.They've noted around release that they wouldn't be able to do a traditional campaign guide style release. The problem is that without advancing timelines or altering the setting there's nothing you can really add to a campaign setting aside from updating stats. If you just want fluff, it's already there. Even more importantly, there's wikis floating about collecting this information and putting into a single place that's (ideally) better organized than a book could ever be. For free.And advancing the timeline's not always a good option either. Changes have to happen, moving years around doesn't make setting book B different from setting book A. And if you alter the setting to advance the timelines, you will upset somebody. The question is if more people are angered than people interested in your new book.There were some lofty ideas for a campaign setting book that'd instead have branching timelines back in 2014, but I can't imagine how feasible that'd actually be.There's a reason not to license out: WotC doesn't want to compete with itself. Too many books and you run the risk of overwhelming a new player. Too many books and you begin to splinter profit. And that splintered profit isn't going straight to wotc, either. Depending on the negotiated license, the people actually writing the books get a cut, too.It's easier to write a book that's usable by most people than to risk splintering. Even if you don't run the adventure, the books wotc release are where the setting details you want are located, have new generic and specific monsters, and maps! The maps are a big sell for me, as it can be tedious to draw up your own.And I think that's how wotc wants things. The core is more important than the splat. If the core sells well, that means D&D has a wider audience, and that wider audience would look at D&D related items that aren't books. This is the net you want to spread, not settings. People aren't likely to buy from a lot of different settings, but they may be more willing to spend on D&D related merchandise.I don't actually know how important setting is to most people compared to system. If people don't like the default setting for a system, it's all too easy to just remove it and make your own world. Likewise, if you don't have much in the way of brand loyalty, then it's just as easy to take a setting you like and then port it into a system you prefer.I don't have any hard data, but I suspect that's why when people talk about 5e vs. pathfinder, setting doesn't come up.</blockquote>

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