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

[Bluenose]

It got me to thinking though. All the products so far have been set in the Realms, as are the Adventurer's League items. If all the adventures are set in the Realms, is it surprising that the majority of folks are playing in the Realms?]?

What the poll says as that the majority are not playing in the Realms.

Also, that FR is now regarded (at least by quite a few people in this thread) as some generic setting both amuses and saddens me. Amusing because of the effort some fans have put into explaining how rich and unique it is; sad because there's hardly anything like it anywhere outside D&D and it shows just how far from 'normal' fantasy D&D has moved that people will claim it.

 

[Demetrios1453]

What the poll says as that the majority are not playing in the Realms.

Also, that FR is now regarded (at least by quite a few people in this thread) as some generic setting both amuses and saddens me. Amusing because of the effort some fans have put into explaining how rich and unique it is; sad because there's hardly anything like it anywhere outside D&D and it shows just how far from 'normal' fantasy D&D has moved that people will claim it.

FR may seem "generic" at first glance, but it has its share of atypical "quirky" areas. And that is what annoyed me so much with the 4e version of it - it seemed like they made a concerted effort to suppress anything unique (like Mulhorand or Lantan) that differed from a generic D&D world. Thank goodness they've reversed that for 5e.

There is one way that FR differs from other settings and makes it unique - there never was a huge, continent-spanning empire that fell and set the course of modern history. Faerun may have had large regional empires, but never had its equivalent of the Great Kingdom, Istar, or Galifar that dominated the whole continent. That gives it an intriguing cultural diversity which is somewhat lacking in other settings (and sometimes downplayed in Realms products themselves, although less so in 5e, with its large lists of human ethnicities in the PHB and SCAG).

 

[pemerton]

All this stuff is connected and can't be ignored. That is exactly how Wizards works when trying to justify what they want to do instead of what the customers actually want.

This suggests that you think WotC is engaged in some kind of irrational vendetta against its "customers". That seems unlikely to me. I think that, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of a publicly listed company, they are trying to make money. If they had evidence that investing in Dark Sun or Eberron or Greyhawk content would make good returns, I think they would do that.

 

[pemerton]

Sounds like you're doing a homebrew that borrows liberally from FR. Without being bound to it. Hey look, I can take this map. But not that NPC. And I'll add this thing in from elsewhere.

That's exactly what I mean when I say that I'm using a setting.

For instance, when I say that I'm using Greyhawk for a game - which I did for 8 years from 1990-97 (Rolemaster campaign), and have been doing again for the past year or so (Burning Wheel campaign) - what I mean is that I'm using the map and the general history/vibe. I certainly don't mean that I'm sticking religiously to everything written in every book for the setting.

Just because, in my game, I treat St Cuthbert, Pholtus, Tritherion and others as competing denominations of the same religion, and also (due to events in the 8 year campaign) have Cuthbertianism being the official religion of Greyhawk, as (in my game) it is in Dyvers and Veluna, doesn't mean that I think of myself as not playing a Greyhawk game.

WHY run a specific setting if not for the shared background with the players?

Because it saves me having to draw a map, invent names for places and people, write the basic history, etc.

 

[Li Shenron]

It got me to thinking though. All the products so far have been set in the Realms, as are the Adventurer's League items. If all the adventures are set in the Realms, is it surprising that the majority of folks are playing in the Realms?

It's definitely a two-way effect.

I can speak for myself, that I started DMing with 3e, and it had Greyhawk as default setting. Even tho it only meant to have Greyhawk's deities in the PHB and basically nothing else about such setting in the core, because this was the only option to start with, I was essentially saying that our games were set in Greyhawk...

Except that there wasn't really anything more than this, and while searching websites for maps and adventure ideas, I eventually stumbled upon FR maps, so we were kind of playing in a Faerun world but with Greyhawk religions :/ (Incidentally, the first main 'named' location I picked from those maps was Neverwinter, without any idea that it was so popular)

After a while, I found out that while there was basically no 3e support for Greyhawk, the FRCS was a highly popular and esteemed book, and that's why we switched over. But many Greyhawk deities also carried over so as not to invalidate previous adventures and PCs... soon it was a mess of a homebrew really Not to mention the Planescape stuff that other DMs with experience dating back to AD&D brought to the table.

So yes I can say that now after 15 years I know which settings I like, but clearly the available support played a big role in determining which ones to play in the first place.

 

[Minigiant]

I guess I'm not an average gamer then because before this post I had never heard of either Azeroth or Draenor, never mind any associated lore thereof.

Lan-"Dominaria, on the other hand..."-efan

Dominaria. That place was madness.

I think Ravnica and Mirrodin surpassed Dominaria in popularity though. Ravnica is still begged for as a cross franchise book that will never happen 'til this day.

 

[Dausuul]

It's obvious that a majority of GM's/players aren't satisfied with any of the published settings. Why are we still talking about FR?

That doesn't mean that we are necessarily waiting for The Perfect Setting, though. A lot of us just like homebrewing.

 

[delericho]

It's obvious that a majority of GM's/players aren't satisfied with any of the published settings. Why are we still talking about FR?

Because, as Chris Perkins notes, about half of the people who homebrew harvest material from the pre-gen settings. That means that the market for FR specific stuff is the 35% who play in that setting plus about half of the 55% who homebrew - and at 62.5% (35 + 27.5) that's over half of the market.

(Of course, it also means that the market for Greyhawk stuff is more than just the 5% who play that setting, but 32.5% is still less than 62.5%. )

 

[Corpsetaker]

This suggests that you think WotC is engaged in some kind of irrational vendetta against its "customers". That seems unlikely to me. I think that, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of a publicly listed company, they are trying to make money. If they had evidence that investing in Dark Sun or Eberron or Greyhawk content would make good returns, I think they would do that.

It's not a vendetta, it's just business.

The problem here is they want to use the Realms because of how established it is and because of characters like Drizzt and the video games. They are only interested in spending the minimal while charging more.

They have a cost saving strategy they want to implement and these surveys are a way of making people who don't agree with feel like they are in a minority which in turn causes them just to accept it and move on. It's what they call "go with the flow".

 

[Corpsetaker]

Because, as Chris Perkins notes, about half of the people who homebrew harvest material from the pre-gen settings. That means that the market for FR specific stuff is the 35% who play in that setting plus about half of the 55% who homebrew - and at 62.5% (35 + 27.5) that's over half of the market.

(Of course, it also means that the market for Greyhawk stuff is more than just the 5% who play that setting, but 32.5% is still less than 62.5%. )

But he is using a percentage of a percentage which isn't good.

Also what happens when you expose all these new people to something different than the Forgotten Realms? They want to keep new people in these Realms because it can seem to them like there is no alternative which then makes it easier for them to buy into the video games, movies, and other merchandise.