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

[cmad1977]

It's probably been said but...
My guess is that to release a setting book for one particular setting only caters to people who REALLY want that setting.
An Everron book isn't going to appeal to Dragonlance fans, or Dark Sun fans for example. Sure there is some crossover. My feeling is the best option would be to release a book that covers important thematic/mechanical elements from a few settings.
As someone who isn't really interested in a setting per se, a book of a few setting would interest me as it would allow me to cannibalize a variety of options from a variety of sources if I like.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[delericho]

My guess is that to release a setting book for one particular setting only caters to people who REALLY want that setting.

Pretty much. The biggest group of players (55%) don't use a published setting at all. The next biggest is FR, with about 35%, then Greyhawk at about 5%, and then all the others at about 1-2% each. (Source)

The one key wrinkle in that is that a lot of 'homebrewers' are quite comfortable incorporating setting-specific materials into their worlds, so they're not totally disinterested in it. But, for that purpose, the closer to generic the published setting is, the more useful it is - it's easier to pull material from FR into most homebrews than it is to adopt a more out-there setting such as Spelljammer.

 

[Parmandur]

Pretty much. The biggest group of players (55%) don't use a published setting at all. The next biggest is FR, with about 35%, then Greyhawk at about 5%, and then all the others at about 1-2% each. (Source)

The one key wrinkle in that is that a lot of 'homebrewers' are quite comfortable incorporating setting-specific materials into their worlds, so they're not totally disinterested in it. But, for that purpose, the closer to generic the published setting is, the more useful it is - it's easier to pull material from FR into most homebrews than it is to adopt a more out-there setting such as Spelljammer.

Yup, over half of homebrewers crib from other setting products, and the remainder probably aren't even big book buyers for WotC; hence the current focus on FR, and people who crib FR.

After the pseudo-Artificer Forge Cleric on Monday, though, the mechanical expansion covering the crunch bases for different settings seems probable, and very useful still to FR (because everything is in FR, somewhere), and the buffet style homebrewers. Also, can drive sales of old edition fluff...