D&D 5E Seriously, why no setting support?

[transtemporal]

Honestly, I would be most happy if they rented out the settings. Establish some quality control so the renters don't sink the setting, and let them go forth. If the rental is a dud, disavow it.

Isn't that just a license with "publishing approval" conditions? i.e. we have to review and approve anything you want to publish?

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

Not at all. You're just querying the status of an expectation that he set, but heres an example of what not to write "Hey Mike you ^%$$#$ %$$#, you said we were going to have Eberron by xmas! Where is it you lying ^$%$#?!"

There's a traditional Australian song by Kevin "Bloody" Wilson about Santa Claus. Don't look it up if you're easily offended by lots and lots of swearing

 

[transtemporal]

There's a traditional Australian song by Kevin "Bloody" Wilson about Santa Claus. Don't look it up if you're easily offended by lots and lots of swearing

Yikes Kevin Wilson is "traditional" now? lol

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It sure reads to my cynical eyes like spinning FR unexpectedly coming in fourth. ;|

Eberron 'needs' a lot. For one thing, it was always kinda a catch-all setting, with a place for everything that'd ever been in D&D. And, of course, it had it's own new stuff, too. It's magic-as-technology setting could be left a backdrop but would really benefit from a big list of common (on Eberron) magic items that pulled back a bit from the 'just better' 5e philosophy.

Dark Sun also clearly needs some significant adjustments, rules and alternate options to make work, just as it did in AD&D and 3e.

Planescape, for all it's weirdness, maybe not so much.

Seems likely. CoS was a pretty well-received product.

Yes, regardless of topic. But feel free to vent here, anytime, instead.

I opted for politely asking him with friendly smiley faces if we could expect to see an update at some point.

I think Eberron needs only a few things that aren't already out or in that UA article. Just need the UA article material updated, and PC race writeup for some of the volo's races that didn't get them. Like gnolls. Call 'em Eberron gnolls if you gotta. Then we need Kalashtar, a decent amount of new monsters (who doesn't like those?) an article's worth of info on dragons and giants, and the basics of the setting that aren't in the writeup for those options above, the Mystic class, and the aforementioned magic item guidelines.

I think there is room to do a lot more without retreading anything, though. Especially if they call in Keith Baker to have some fun with parts of the setting that haven't been done that much yet.

What I'd most like to see is something like the Ravenloft story, with a "elemental evil player's companion" (built into the adventure book or separate, I don't care), for Eberron, Planescape, and Dark Sun, and maybe for Mystara, Dragonlance, and Greyhawk.
Combine that with a PHB sized book about building worlds, with setting info for each of those along with some alternate rules options, variants, etc as that year's big release.

If each setting opens up in the guild when the storyline comes out, Keith Baker has said that he is eager to put out some new content on the that platform, and I'd love to see it.

Also, Dragonlance used to be one of the most popular fantasy properties around. And Weiss wants to do a rewrite/Unabridge Author's Cut version of the original Chronicles.

And most of these worlds are ripe for cartoons, especially Eberron. An RPG of the Chronicles story from DL would be great, if they could get the right people to do it.

and I think that if they promoted DDO during the Eberron based storyline, Turbine would be happy to build some content to tie in to the story line.

 

[fjw70]

Just for the sake of weighing in on this, I hate PDFs. I have hated reading ebooks since they became a thing, and have gone for print whenever it was available. I would rather see a printed book of UA than a PDF version of the core books. This is not some grognard who doesn't want change btw, I am millennial. E-books just feel so flat and boring compared to a real thing.

I actually appreciate pdfs more as I get older and my eyesight deteriorates and I refuse to wear reading glasses. With pdfs I can make the text as big as I want.

Of course there are other benefits too.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

I love the books. I just got my copy of the limited edition Volo's. It's beautiful. I noted that the cover felt strange and one of the FLGS guys said, "Yeah, it's almost like it could be the skin of some humanoid creature!" You can't get that from PDF's

But at the same time, working on a campaign, sitting at a computer, referencing, cross-referencing, etc. between using various websites and book flipping, it gets pretty old, fast. I'd rather just be able to Ctrl-F.

 

[Uchawi]

Greyhawk is the only setting that can even attempt the 5E minimalist approach, as every other requires new classes and rules. However, I do not even consider minor settings when I make that statement like oriental adventures, or al-qadim. Which in fact, probably would deserve new clases and rules. The only way not to be forgotten, is to play in the forgotten realms.

 

[Jester David]

As mentioned, most people who buy the books are doing homebrew. The largest minority plays in the Realms. Any other setting is a fraction of a fraction of the audience. Selling those books at numbers worth selling is unlikely, even for WotC.
(You don't have to look far for an example. 4e's Dark Sun product was as much generic player crunch options as it was setting book. Likely to broaden the audience.)

Generally speaking, if you're a fan of a campaign setting, you already own that product. So any revision of that setting has to market to people who aren't fans and the smaller percentage of fans who already have the setting material but will buy it a second time. And unlike rules products - which are wholely incompatible after an edition update - 95% of most campaign settings work just fine between editions.
That's a hard sell.
Reprinting a campaign product means competing with past products. The books are already out there for interested people, available used and typically for a price lower than you could buy the book if it were new. I've said before that you can generally get a couple Eberron books off Amazon for less than the price a new campaign setting hardcover would run.
This just gets harder with PDF and Print on Demand options available.

Eberron and Dark Sun are the most different worlds. Eberron has five races, dragonmarks, and artificers. And maybe dragonshards (which were a big part of the setting but never interesting in the rules). That's 20 pages of content. Tops. Not even 10% of a 320-page hardcover book. Dark Sun has three races, defiling, and elemental priests. So that's even less.
It's hard to justify buying an entire hardcover book just for that content...

Lastly... are books the best format to release campaign settings in?
I mean... I love my big hardcover campaign setting books. But they're not easy to use. Flipping is slow for rules, and even worse when looking through a page for world information, rumors, the head of a city, etc.
Campaign settings are tricky because worlds are sprawling an interconnected. Characters relate to cities, nations interact, race information overlaps with nation information. But you can't easily fit that into a book. Instead, the elf entry says "x" while the elf nation information says "y". Neither can say both, because that's redundant, despite it being necessary in both places.
The *only* campaign setting I've seen work around that level of interconnectivity worth a damn was Ptolus.
Really, digital tools (a wiki or Realm Works) is likely a far superior way of conveying that information than a book.

 

[Werebat]

I want to see Dark Sun redone for 5th, but I know that they'll use the new antlike thri-kreen with their tiny butt-pods, and make half-giants medium somehow, and a bunch of other horrid crap. Yech.

Though I guess I could just house rule all of that.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Eberron is interesting/engaging enough on its own merits that a storyline is all that would be needed to get newer players into it enough to buy a book for it.

That said, a world building book with info and options for the major settings would be a pretty good bet. Especially if it came after a story line each for at least two of the settings detailed therein, and included some optional Rules stuff like Dragonmarks as a layer outside of what is there already (I don't dig the feat approach. Even Keith has suggested it isn't how he'd have done it had he had full control.), Action/Hero points, whatever weirdness Dark Sun needs, and a couple new classes, like Artificer and Mystic.

Such a book would pretty much much have to also have new feats, subclasses, races, monsters, spells, items mundane and magical, and could easily have alternate/optional rules for skills. Perhaps also rules for organizations, strongholds, airships and spelljammers, and some guidance on worldbuilding, using various DnD settings as examples.

I find the idea of what you're talking about...a DMG2/Worldbuilder's Guide...pretty interesting. I'd be down with that for sure. I don't know how likely it is, though. My guess is that the mechanical book they're talking about for next year will be based in the Realms, but will have mass broad appeal, and maybe a couple of nods to the other settings (gladiator subclass, artificer, a couple other setting related items that are applicable to a general setting too).

We'll see.

After listening to the recent podcast I have a theory. They've said that the barriers between worlds are weakening. They've said that there is a master plan and that we should consider all the supplements to be like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. Various other things in combination with all of this make me think that the next adventure campaign will be Halaster and Undermountain which will lead into Planescape, which will suddenly open the door for travel between worlds and thus the following campaigns will be Dark Sun and Eberron.

Personally I'm hoping that the inclusion of the Neogi in Volo's means that we're also going to get a Spelljammer campaign, but I realise that's probably not going to happen

I imagine that this might be more possible. Linking Waterdeep/Undermountain with Sigil and then the Planes seems like a first step toward opening up the whole D&D multiverse.

These ideas are all cool, and right up my alley. I just don't know if I'd consider my tastes to be that of the majority of the audience.