D&D 5E Settings played in D&D: cause or effect?

[hawkeyefan]

I think what needs to be looked at when it comes to settings is what they offer that is different than a Tolkienesque fantasy setting. The Forgotten Realms has that covered. Yes, Greyhawk is a bit more sword & sorcery than the high fantasy of the FR, but that's all in how the elements of the setting are used. Yes Dragonlance and Mystara have some different races and so on, but again, they don't really offer much that FR can't handle.

The settings that seem to have something to offer beyond what FR offers are, in my opinion, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Planescape, and perhaps Ebberon. I admit to not being nearly as familiar with Ebberon as I am with the others.

But even of those, must they be separate from FR? Planescape is already implied in the setting, and connections to Toril already exist in past lore and in 5E material, so that's easy to incorporate. Ravenloft is another one that they could connect to FR very easily. Have another Grand Conjunction occur, and then have the realm of Barovia appear on Faerun. You can still have the mists and all the other elements intact. Or if that's too overt, then simply have mists on Faerun that transport folks to Ravenloft. I think 4E tied the Domains of Dread to the Shadowfell, so much like Planescape, this seems to be connected enough already.

That leaves Dark Sun an Ebberon. Dark Sun seems the most radically different. Alternate races, a few different classes, significant changes to how the known races and classes function, the presence of psionics, the different equipment due to the environment and the lack of metal, the e siting power structures of the Sorcerer-Kings. That's something that you can't just plop into the FR and say "okay, this is Anauroch". It needs its own setting. The question is if enough folks would be interested in it, and how does WotC put out the material for it; a full on campaign guide? An adventure path for a small level range, and put as much setting info into that as possible? I imagine this is what they're trying to determine.

For Ebberon, again I am not overly familiar with it. It never seemed all that different to me, which is why I never jumped on board. I'm sure many folks would tell me how wrong I am, and that's fine...but the major difference to me seems like the more tech or steampunk elements, and the Warforged. I don't know if that's a significant enough difference to warrant a lot of support. Would an Ebberon game feel as different from FR as a Dark Sun game would?

 

[Mephista]

A thought. One reason why a number of old settings might not appear is simply because a lot of them are outdated. Ravenloft, for instance, is a heavily human-centric setting. It has problems when elves, orcs and dwarves wander around, let alone tieflings, dragonborn, rock gnomes. It plays up the whole mystical-gypsie trope, which is frankly rather a bit of a racist stereotype at this point. Planescape is heavily dominated by the philosphy-driven factions; to be blunt, those philosphies have fallen out of favor in modern times and just don't make as much sense anymore. You can't really update them without changing them, which would alienate the old players, but without an update, it won't be as attractive to new players.

FR, for all intents and purposes, has actually gone through modernization with each edition. Its adapted to modern sensibilities and desires of new players. It also has potential to tap into a wide variety of inspiration of wider cultures - yes, the Sword Coast and Dalelands are heavily Medieval Eurasia inspired, but there are other lands that tap into Asian, Middle East, African, and American tribal cultures if wanted.

In any case, that's my 2 cents. Not saying its an absolute reason, but I imagine that its a consideration.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The evidence we have is that in the 3e era the very best selling supplements managed about 10% of the sales of the PHB

That was with books, both WotC & 3pp, coming out every month.

(Note: that's 'ambitious', not 'impossible'. Though I don't believe "Rise of Tiamat", in particular, did those numbers. I stand ready to be corrected... but I don't expect WotC to release the sales numbers that would do that.)

It was pretty terrible.

Only a subset of DMs buy more books, too. And only a subset of them buy pre-gen adventures. I would be surprised if there was any adventure* in all of 2nd Ed, 3e, or 4e that has sold 100k units.

OTOH, 1e adventures may well have (though, admittedly, that likely has more to do with the fad than the slow pace of publication, they weren't doing a lot more than a book a year back then). 5e is being published at the slowest pace in 30 years, and that builds up demand between releases. You're not thinking 'which of the d20 supplements that came out this week do I want,' but 'do I want to get the only supplement or either/both Adventures that are likely to come out this year.'

 

[Remathilis]

A thought. One reason why a number of old settings might not appear is simply because a lot of them are outdated. Ravenloft, for instance, is a heavily human-centric setting. It has problems when elves, orcs and dwarves wander around, let alone tieflings, dragonborn, rock gnomes. It plays up the whole mystical-gypsie trope, which is frankly rather a bit of a racist stereotype at this point. Planescape is heavily dominated by the philosphy-driven factions; to be blunt, those philosphies have fallen out of favor in modern times and just don't make as much sense anymore. You can't really update them without changing them, which would alienate the old players, but without an update, it won't be as attractive to new players.

FR, for all intents and purposes, has actually gone through modernization with each edition. Its adapted to modern sensibilities and desires of new players. It also has potential to tap into a wide variety of inspiration of wider cultures - yes, the Sword Coast and Dalelands are heavily Medieval Eurasia inspired, but there are other lands that tap into Asian, Middle East, African, and American tribal cultures if wanted.

In any case, that's my 2 cents. Not saying its an absolute reason, but I imagine that its a consideration.

Ravenloft is a setting that adheres to a genre trope: Gothic literature. It's evoking a series of tropes that were prevalent in that genre. To remove them is to turn Ravenloft from Gothic horror to Hammer horror. Dark Sun has a similar problem; pulp Sword and Sorcery is full of mostly-naked women, male power fantasy, the "noble savage" stereotype and disdain for civilization/authority. Guess that one is trash too.

As to the factions, which philosophy is outdated and no longer practiced: aethesim, transcendentalism, nihilism, stoicism, social Darwinism, legalism, authoritarianism, vengeance, empiricism, discordance, anarchy, libertarianism, Zen, or existentialism?

 

[MechaPilot]

Bu there's such a large variety of such books already available (I've got ICE's old Nightmares of Mine; I imagine that WotC tackled some of this stuff in Heroes of Horror, though I've never read that one). I doubt that WotC is going to put in the effort to write and publish another book to compete in this relatively niche space of GMing advice for horror RPGing.

Whether Ravenloft works or fails to work as a horror setting depends at least as much on how it's run as the mechanics used, though I'd say how it's run is even more important than the particular rules used for fear, horror, madness, etc. (but that's a personal opinion). If WotC puts out an adventure for Ravenloft for 5e, they would be remiss not to include this information for those who are being introduced to the setting for the first time with that adventure, or who may not have puchased any other books containing treatises on horror gaming. To not include that information would be akin to publishing a DMG with no DM advice, only rules.

If WotC puts out Ravenloft adventures for 5e, the first adventure should contain the type of advice about running a horror game that I mentioned; naturally, subsequent adventures don't need a reprint of that advice.

 

[Shasarak]

A thought. One reason why a number of old settings might not appear is simply because a lot of them are outdated. Ravenloft, for instance, is a heavily human-centric setting. It has problems when elves, orcs and dwarves wander around, let alone tieflings, dragonborn, rock gnomes. It plays up the whole mystical-gypsie trope, which is frankly rather a bit of a racist stereotype at this point.

The question is: If your local castle really is infested with Vampires, do you really care if there are a couple of Tieflings and Warforged in town?

 

[Hussar]

I'm afraid it's not any kind of proof. I don't doubt 5e is doing exceptionally well, and indeed I don't doubt that the four adventures to date are doing significantly better than similar adventures in the past. But 100k copies sold such a large number for a non-core book that simply looking at a chart (that tracks relative sales without giving the underlying numbers) won't help.



Again, I'm afraid that doesn't help. I don't for a second believe the "Advanced Class Guide" sold 100k units, either. Or, indeed, half of that. Given that it's a late-edition niche supplement, and given also that much of the material will be appearing online for free (legally, that is), I wouldn't be at all surprised if it sold fewer than 20k sales.

Please understand that I'm not trying to run 5e down here. As I said above, I fully acknowledge that it's doing exceptionally well, that it's "really on a tear", or whatever superlatives you wish to apply. And it's also a really good game. All I'm noting is that 100k units is a really big number, and also that "Rise of Tiamat" is likely to be the weakest-selling of the 5e books to date (being a higher-level adventure, being a sequel, and being the follow-up to the not-so-well-received HotDQ). So for that one particular book to have that level of success... sorry, I'd need to see the numbers.

Oh, I totally get that and I agree. I'm just trying to find any data.

For example, to put things in perspective, the best selling Pathfinder books on Amazon right now are the Core book (#5000 ish) and the Beastiary 5 (7598). Bestiary 1 clocks in at about 14000. Hoard of the Dragon Queen is the worst selling D&D 5e product and clocks in at #7309. So, it does shed some light on things. The worst selling WotC supplement is selling better than virtually all Pathfinder supplements. So, how many books is Pathfinder selling? Again, I dunno, but, it does point to the idea that maybe this 100k books isn't that unreasonable.

When a year old module is selling better than the newest supplement for a similar game (and monster manuals tend to be the best sellers), I'd say it's not doing too badly. Maybe there is something to this 100k thing.

Of course, when all three 5e core books are still in the top 1000, and the PHB and DMG are in the top 500 of books, even after a year of release, that's a truckload of books.

 

[Hussar]

Ravenloft is a setting that adheres to a genre trope: Gothic literature. It's evoking a series of tropes that were prevalent in that genre. To remove them is to turn Ravenloft from Gothic horror to Hammer horror. Dark Sun has a similar problem; pulp Sword and Sorcery is full of mostly-naked women, male power fantasy, the "noble savage" stereotype and disdain for civilization/authority. Guess that one is trash too.

As to the factions, which philosophy is outdated and no longer practiced: aethesim, transcendentalism, nihilism, stoicism, social Darwinism, legalism, authoritarianism, vengeance, empiricism, discordance, anarchy, libertarianism, Zen, or existentialism?

True, but, by the same token, we've gone a long ways from the original source material for both Gothic Horror and Sword and Sorcery. I'll cop to not reading a lot of Gothic Horror, so, I'll let others take care of that, but, Sword and Sorcery, as a genre, over the past twenty years, has grown quite a lot. Glen Cook's The Black Company novels are solidly S&S fantasy that doesn't make you want to wash your eyes out with bleach after reading it. Stephen Erikson's Malazan series has very strong S&S themes running through it that is very much turning the "noble save" stereotype straight on it's ear. Heroic Fantasy Quarterly has been out for over six years now and is doing fantastic (ahem) stuff with the genre.

So, no, just because some of the source genre material was "mostly naked women, male power fantasy" doesn't mean that it hasn't moved on. Since a lot of the setting fans, though, strongly resist any changes to a given setting, trying to update it to reflect changes in the genre becomes extremely difficult. D&D fantasy doesn't mean humanocentric worlds anymore. At least, not necessarily. So, a world like Ravenloft, or Dragonlance, very much shows its age when you start playing it in newer editions.

I'll use Dragonlance as an example. What do you do with bards in Dragonlance? The bard class has changed, and changed radically, in the years since DL came out. Do we ban bards? After all, being able to heal by magic is a sign of the gods in DL. If you're running War of the Lance era DL, which is the most popular era, how do you deal with it in an official sourcebook? So on and so forth. One of the conceits of DL was that the wizards were overwhelmed by the general populace because they ran out of spells. But, a 5e caster never runs out of spells. There's always at-wills. Add in warlocks to the mix, a concept completely absent from DL, and now you have casters with long range firepower that never runs out. Major change to the setting.

So, if you're publishing a DL sourcebook, what do you do? Strip out half the PHB? Not going to happen, not if you want to actually sell the setting. Keep these things in but just lampshade it? What?

I think [MENTION=6786252]Mephista[/MENTION] makes a very strong point here.

 

[Remathilis]

The question is: If your local castle really is infested with Vampires, do you really care if there are a couple of Tieflings and Warforged in town?

Well, considering the oddities of Ravenloft, most people wouldn't know there is a vampire in the local castle. Strahd is viewed as still human, exceptionally long lived due to his knowledge of magic, but human none-the-less. Most other domain lords appear human as well; either because of shapeshifting, magic, or they literally are just humans (with extra "gifts"). Only a few domain lords are known as monsters, and those who are tend to be in hiding and not "lords" in a political sense.

Now, while I am wont to give the old "demi-humans" more of a pass due to proximity to humans, there is no way a tiefling, drow, dragonborn, goliath, or warforged (to name a few) is going to be accepted; except in a domain like Darkon (which is very racially intermixed).

True, but, by the same token, we've gone a long ways from the original source material for both Gothic Horror and Sword and Sorcery. I'll cop to not reading a lot of Gothic Horror, so, I'll let others take care of that, but, Sword and Sorcery, as a genre, over the past twenty years, has grown quite a lot. Glen Cook's The Black Company novels are solidly S&S fantasy that doesn't make you want to wash your eyes out with bleach after reading it. Stephen Erikson's Malazan series has very strong S&S themes running through it that is very much turning the "noble save" stereotype straight on it's ear. Heroic Fantasy Quarterly has been out for over six years now and is doing fantastic (ahem) stuff with the genre.

Horror is a strange-beast; it's bread-and-butter is otherness and one of the key elements that separates gothic horror from modern horror is the idea that evil can appear anywhere, in any form. Ravenloft (as a setting) isn't about storming evil castles full of undead, necromancers, and monsters; its about betrayal, isolation, fear, but also hope. Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, for all the fun I had with it, wasn't Ravenloft; it was a giant dungeon full of undead with final boss who was a vampire. It wasn't Dracula, it was Castlevania. My fear is that any further attempts to move Ravenloft away from the Gothic mode of storytelling will just move it further in the Castlevania model.

So, no, just because some of the source genre material was "mostly naked women, male power fantasy" doesn't mean that it hasn't moved on. Since a lot of the setting fans, though, strongly resist any changes to a given setting, trying to update it to reflect changes in the genre becomes extremely difficult. D&D fantasy doesn't mean humanocentric worlds anymore. At least, not necessarily. So, a world like Ravenloft, or Dragonlance, very much shows its age when you start playing it in newer editions.

Almost any work is a product of its time. Peter Jackson wanted Arwyn to be a prominent part of the Lord of the Rings to give women a representation in Tolkien's "all boys" club. They even filmed her in Helm's Deep! (and used a lot of clever editing to remove her later when fans rebelled). Some think it would have given Arwyn something important to do and given girls another role model (beyond Eowyn, of course) while others thought it was Heresy.

I'll use Dragonlance as an example. What do you do with bards in Dragonlance? The bard class has changed, and changed radically, in the years since DL came out. Do we ban bards? After all, being able to heal by magic is a sign of the gods in DL. If you're running War of the Lance era DL, which is the most popular era, how do you deal with it in an official sourcebook? So on and so forth. One of the conceits of DL was that the wizards were overwhelmed by the general populace because they ran out of spells. But, a 5e caster never runs out of spells. There's always at-wills. Add in warlocks to the mix, a concept completely absent from DL, and now you have casters with long range firepower that never runs out. Major change to the setting.

Well, one thing to do is what Faerun is regularly lambasted for; Realms Shaking Events that change the world to fit the new rules. Then again, what setting DOES survive the ruleset change? Dark Sun was radically altered to fit 4e conventions in. Eberron required massive canon updates to accommodate the 4e races (the dragonmarks open to any race was a HUGE change to the lore). Even Greyhawk had to be reworked to fit the 3e "default world" model. I'm not saying the setting shouldn't adapt or change, but that when you're cutting out major elements of its core essence to fit the "default game" in it, why bother?

So, if you're publishing a DL sourcebook, what do you do? Strip out half the PHB? Not going to happen, not if you want to actually sell the setting. Keep these things in but just lampshade it? What?

You sell only Forgotten Realms for as far as the eye can see and drop the silly "multiverse" crap because obviously the "Worlds of D&D" no longer work in D&D...

 

[Shasarak]

Well, considering the oddities of Ravenloft, most people wouldn't know there is a vampire in the local castle. Strahd is viewed as still human, exceptionally long lived due to his knowledge of magic, but human none-the-less. Most other domain lords appear human as well; either because of shapeshifting, magic, or they literally are just humans (with extra "gifts"). Only a few domain lords are known as monsters, and those who are tend to be in hiding and not "lords" in a political sense.

Now, while I am wont to give the old "demi-humans" more of a pass due to proximity to humans, there is no way a tiefling, drow, dragonborn, goliath, or warforged (to name a few) is going to be accepted; except in a domain like Darkon (which is very racially intermixed).

All I am saying is that if you do not notice that there are Red Dragons camped out in Strahds Castle then you probably are not going to notice that John Smith is actually a 6' Goliath.