D&D 5E Revisited Setting News: Its not the 2023 Classic setting, but rather for 2024

[GuyBoy]

I think there might be more to targeting an anniversary product than just the age profile of the playing audience (for which the data seems pretty clear). Being the 50th should, in itself, carry significant weight and nostalgia can be vicarious as well as personal.
For example, I’m a rugby fan and England Rugby celebrates its 150th Anniversary this year. I wasn’t actually around for the first game but I still bought the coffee table book celebrating the event.
Slightly less strongly, I started playing D&D in 1976, so I wasn’t actually “there” for the 1974 launch but I’ll still buy in to the anniversary...big time.

The selling point of Greyhawk (Blackmoor too, but I appreciate it’s less likely) is not that younger players have played it, it’s that it was the starting point and therefore carries the full weight of the game’s history into the 50th anniversary.

 

[Rabulias]

I think Greyhawk might show up. I agree that it does not have a distinctive hook like Eberron or Ravenloft. From a distance it might seem to be a somewhat generic "kitchen sink" fantasy setting, very much like the Forgotten Realms. But I believe there are a few things that might help it out:

• Greyhawk is not the Forgotten Realms. Generic fantasy is easy to understand; it's low-hanging fruit. And Greyhawk would present another approach to the generic fantasy setting (GFS).
• Related, for those who like GFS, Greyhawk is another story. It has a different history, with different villains, countries, secrets, wars, monarchs, organizations, rivalries, etc., all for players to discover. It can be an alternative to the Realms if players get "burnt out" on them. I remember how fresh the Forgotten Realms felt when it came out back in the late 1980s; this could be a reverse of that.
• Greyhawk would be new to many players. Novelty is a great thing. Many of us long-time gamers are looking at Greyhawk as a nostalgia product (and that is another selling point), but for the majority of D&D players today, they don't know what it is about, or what it is like. Sure, some may have heard about it, and some others may have actually looked at older material to learn about it, but this would put it front-and-center to the bulk of today's D&D audience.

Looking over my ramblings I guess they are all kind of related to being a different take on traditional D&D fantasy.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

IMHO The D&D audience is composed far more of experience players than new ones, and depending if they play since before 4E they will have a clue what Greyhawk is and even nostalgia for some. A segment of the audience played AD&D and another Living Greyhawk afterall.

That may be your opinion but it's refuted hard by literally every set of statistics WotC has put out for 5E. They strongly suggest most players are in the 18-30 range, and very few are over 40.

Only over-40s likely played AD&D, and Living Greyhawk had, IIRC, 200k players over the time it existed. Which seems like a lot until you consider 5E has 50m players. That would mean 1 in 250 5E players played Living Greyhawk in 3.XE, assuming literally all of them went on to play 5E.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Well said. I started playing about 15 years ago, when Greyhawk was the barely present default, and have nostalgia for that. I think it is limiting to ignore the power of borrowed nostalgia for core brand elements.

I just don't buy that this nostalgia exists for GH in a broad enough way. I see no evidence of it whatsoever outside of 40+ year-old players.

Borrowed nostalgia is totally a real thing, let's be clear. Everyone saw that recently with the '80s and Stranger Things and so on, but I think what you're not accounting for is that to borrow nostalgia you need a strong theme, strong visuals, hopefully strong sound/music, and so on, and GH has literally none of that. It doesn't have a distinctive and attractive associated art style (most of the borrow-able nostalgia-type '80s D&D art relates to DL or the FR). It doesn't have a compelling theme (nor does the FR, but no-one is trying to borrowed-nostalgia it!). It doesn't have music/sound people have already heard associated with it in any meaningful way.

You could do an "'80s D&D" push, but even then, the really big, memorable stuff from the '80s for D&D is all DL and FR.

There's no doubt some nostalgia for the start of 3E - though most players who feel that will also be 40+ now, because it's 21 years later. Those who aren't will be mid-late 30s. And I think Spiked Chains or similar idiocy probably have more tradeable nostalgia than GH from the 3E era.

None of this is to say WotC won't try to make it happen. They have an unfortunate history of failure in trying to make GH happen even when it obviously wasn't going to. They may well of course try to do what they did on the 25th anniversary and release a bunch of GH adventures, updated for 5.5E, and try to justify a 5.5E GH setting book with this, but unless they've done the update to end all updates, and one which will have 90% of people who "fondly remember" GH throwing tantrums, it'll be dead in the water.

 

[Plaguescarred]

That may be your opinion but it's refuted hard by literally every set of statistics WotC has put out for 5E. They strongly suggest most players are in the 18-30 range, and very few are over 40.

Only over-40s likely played AD&D, and Living Greyhawk had, IIRC, 200k players over the time it existed. Which seems like a lot until you consider 5E has 50m players. That would mean 1 in 250 5E players played Living Greyhawk in 3.XE, assuming literally all of them went on to play 5E.

I never said most of the 50 millions played AD&D or LG. No statistics refute what i said, which is

• The D&D audience is composed far more of experience players than new ones
• depending if they play since before 4E they will have a clue what Greyhawk is and even nostalgia for some.
• A segment of the audience played AD&D and another Living Greyhawk

The 40 millions from 2019 are experieced with D&D 5E by now. So what does the statistics refute exactly?

 

[TwoSix]

I never said most of the 50 millions played AD&D or LG. No statistics refute what i said, which is

• The D&D audience is composed far more of experience players than new ones
• depending if they play since before 4E they will have a clue what Greyhawk is and even nostalgia for some.
• A segment of the audience played AD&D and another Living Greyhawk

The 40 millions from 2019 are experieced with D&D 5E by now. So what does the statistics refute exactly?

If you're defining "experienced player" as anyone who has played 5e since 2019, then you're probably right, but that's kind of a meaningless distinction.

What's relevant is that the statistics we've seen suggest that the number of 5e players who started playing with 5e outnumber the number of 5e players who started with earlier editions, and greatly outnumber the number of 5e players who started playing more than 20 years ago.

That suggests that any current of "Greyhawk nostalgia" is based around a fairly small portion of the fan base.

 

[Plaguescarred]

We already know they will revisit classic settings that a good portion of the fan base never played while they were official settings due to their age. We have yet to see just which ones it will be between Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Spelljammer, Planescape, Kara-Tur, Mulhorandi (Old Empire), Al-Quadim, Birthright, Maztica, Mystara etc.. the choice is large!

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I just don't buy that this nostalgia exists for GH in a broad enough way. I see no evidence of it whatsoever outside of 40+ year-old players.

Borrowed nostalgia is totally a real thing, let's be clear. Everyone saw that recently with the '80s and Stranger Things and so on, but I think what you're not accounting for is that to borrow nostalgia you need a strong theme, strong visuals, hopefully strong sound/music, and so on, and GH has literally none of that. It doesn't have a distinctive and attractive associated art style (most of the borrow-able nostalgia-type '80s D&D art relates to DL or the FR). It doesn't have a compelling theme (nor does the FR, but no-one is trying to borrowed-nostalgia it!). It doesn't have music/sound people have already heard associated with it in any meaningful way.

You could do an "'80s D&D" push, but even then, the really big, memorable stuff from the '80s for D&D is all DL and FR.

There's no doubt some nostalgia for the start of 3E - though most players who feel that will also be 40+ now, because it's 21 years later. Those who aren't will be mid-late 30s. And I think Spiked Chains or similar idiocy probably have more tradeable nostalgia than GH from the 3E era.

None of this is to say WotC won't try to make it happen. They have an unfortunate history of failure in trying to make GH happen even when it obviously wasn't going to. They may well of course try to do what they did on the 25th anniversary and release a bunch of GH adventures, updated for 5.5E, and try to justify a 5.5E GH setting book with this, but unless they've done the update to end all updates, and one which will have 90% of people who "fondly remember" GH throwing tantrums, it'll be dead in the water.

Most 3e/3.5e books were for the Forgotten Realms, the GH is the default setting just fizzled out.

I honestly think GH is the hardest setting to sell to new players, I don't buy the borrowed nostalgia argument any more then you do, the ingredients just aren't there.

 

[Plaguescarred]

If you're defining "experienced player" as anyone who has played 5e since 2019, then you're probably right, but that's kind of a meaningless distinction.

What's relevant is that the statistics we've seen suggest that the number of 5e players who started playing with 5e outnumber the number of 5e players who started with earlier editions, and greatly outnumber the number of 5e players who started playing more than 20 years ago.

That suggests that any current of "Greyhawk nostalgia" is based around a fairly small portion of the fan base.

But any of the classic settings they will revisit is in the same boat as Greyhawk, so WoTC will have their reasons to release some, be it nostalgia, hallmark tribute, origin or whatever other reasons.

 

[TwoSix]

But any of the classic settings they will revisit is in the same boat as Greyhawk, so WoTC will have their reasons to release some, be it nostalgia, hallmark tribute, origin or whatever other reasons.

I don't disagree. I just think Greyhawk's only real hook is nostalgia, whereas some of the other nostalgia settings are actually different than what 5e has already released.