D&D 5E The case for (and against) a new Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book

[Mecheon]

An NPC from Princes of the Apocalypse appears in Dragon Heist trying to redeem herself for example. So your point is invalidated in this example.

That's a homage, a fun little thing for repeat readers. It isn't an overall metaplot. This hardly invalidates anything I have said. The age of the big ol' setting metaplot died years ago. There's a timeline if you want to play them going into each other, sure, but is this some big setting wide metaplot that all products adhere to? No. They've long given up on that and just "Whatever you want to happen, it happens. Want this in another setting? Here's some ideas of where to put it. Have fun!"

I do not see the need to be throwing more more Forgotten Realms stuff over and over when no other setting is getting that sort of treatment, and especially when other settings are lacking anything on them to even mechanically come into 5E.

And additionally if some future FR book comes out, unless it has something that's mechanically useful to me, I can 110% confirm I will consider it a useless product and not buy it if it is just setting and lore information

 

[Parmandur]

Page counts aren't the best metric to go by. If you compare the font sizes used in the two books, you'll see that there are significantly more words per page in the FRCS than there are in the SCAG.

Actually, I just double-checked this, and... it's close than I thought. The FRCS is a bit denser (~1260 words per page for SCAG, ~1360 words per page for FRCS), which adds up over enough pages. SCAG is way easier on the eyes, but is not massively less dense.

 

[Prakriti]

Actually, I just double-checked this, and... it's close than I thought. The FRCS is a bit denser (~1260 words per page for SCAG, ~1360 words per page for FRCS), which adds up over enough pages. SCAG is way easier on the eyes, but is not massively less dense.

My own estimate was closer to 1,000 vs. 1,400 words per page. But the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

 

[humble minion]

And additionally if some future FR book comes out, unless it has something that's mechanically useful to me, I can 110% confirm I will consider it a useless product and not buy it if it is just setting and lore information

That's entirely fair. It's only worth buying if it's useful to you.

Conversely, I haven't bought any of the FR mega-adventure modules and I won't buy any in future, because for me it's not worth paying hardback prices for a few scraps of setting information, scattered amongst an adventure I'd have to deliberately avoid reading so I don't spoil myself in case I ever get to play it. But I'd lay money down for a big comprehensive all-Realms setting guide (regardless of whether or not it contained any actual game mechanics) in a heartbeat.

WotCs dilemma, I suppose, is that they know they have customers like you and customers like me, and would like to maximise the amount of money they can make out of both of us...

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

Looking back at a copy of the 3E FRCS... do people seriously want this geography section reprinted, with a handful of changes to see "what it looks like in the year 5E is set in"?

We wants it! We needs it! It's precious... The nasty little wizardies of the coastsies won't give it to us! We hates them forever!

 

[Urriak Uruk]

No it’s not a joke, it’s, that in spite of me saying repeatedly, that telling people to buy an adventure for scant setting materials is wrong. Telling them to eat 40 bucks for what amounted to a $10-14 book 6 years ago is wrong. Telling people that If they want to run their own Underdark campaign to go buy Out of the Abyss is wrong. I’m advocating for the reintroduction of tool kits like an Underdark sourcebook rather than telling people to buy an adventure and eat a crap sandwich and smile even if they don’t want to necessarily run Out of the Abyss or Storm Kings Thunder etc.

Like I’ve said repeatedly in this thread, half a decade ago we wouldn’t be telling people things like that. We would have been looking at page counts and how useable the material in the book was for a home brew in a page count to cost ration and there would have been pitch forks and torches.

I don’t blame WOTC. They clearly are doing something right but they aren’t telling fans “if you want to run your own Underdark campaign then buy Out of the Abyss and suck it if you don’t use 75% of the material” because they aren’t selling them as sourcebooks but as adventures and stories. It’s only a small contingent of fans that are telling people to suck it up, RPGs are a premium hobby, and to use these things as sourcebooks and that is NOT WOTC intent either!

This is like if someone bought the SCAG and complained, "I only want the class and background options! How dare they make me buy an expensive book filled with setting material that I don't want to use!"

Is the primary cost of Tomb of Annihilation a sourcebook to Chult? Of course not. But it does have that material if you want it, and is honestly a far better guide to Chult than anything written on the peninsula in the 3E FRCS book.

I mean look, WotC works on releasing only something like 4 books a year. The sourcebooks you're asking for are honestly a waste of a slot, because 90% of the material you want already exists for purchase on the DMsGuild. The other 10% is being drip-fed through these adventure books.

 

[teitan]

This is like if someone bought the SCAG and complained, "I only want the class and background options! How dare they make me buy an expensive book filled with setting material that I don't want to use!"

Is the primary cost of Tomb of Annihilation a sourcebook to Chult? Of course not. But it does have that material if you want it, and is honestly a far better guide to Chult than anything written on the peninsula in the 3E FRCS book.

I mean look, WotC works on releasing only something like 4 books a year. The sourcebooks you're asking for are honestly a waste of a slot, because 90% of the material you want already exists for purchase on the DMsGuild. The other 10% is being drip-fed through these adventure books.

Did you not see where I said I personally am fine with how it is? I’m sure I said it several times. I’m playing devil’s advocate and honestly people would rather buy physical books than PDFs. E-Books are on the downturn for the last handful of years and people aren’t consuming digital product aside from music and video likes they were. The E-Book revolution is over and that includes PDFs which are more and more becoming a market for scholars. While they generate a profit still facts remain facts.

Like I’ve now said multiple times I’m fine with a region book approach personally. I’m just putting out why the same people saying the same ol thing over and over again are wrong. First it was “you can’t put the Realms in one book”. Well they have. Then it was page counts being similar in SCAG vs the FRCS and lo and behold the fonts are really different so the word count is very, very different. Now it’s pointing out people are saying “if you wanna run an X style campaign by adventure Z and use the information in that” and the information being a few scant pages that really can’t be used that way. Now the worm is turning on that argument. It looks a lot like people trying to gatekeep at this point to me.

And like I’ve said before... five or so years ago we would all be up in arms over such comments.

 

[teitan]

The humor in all this is people acknowledge that the SCAG is inadequate (while acknowledging it sales) but argue against it with pdf this, old product that while talking out the side of their mouth about wanting Dark Sun, Planescape, Spelljammer etc. updated. Kind of a double standard there and most of those settings truly don’t need an update and just a rules upgrade.

 

[Mecheon]

Kind of a double standard there and most of those settings truly don’t need an update and just a rules upgrade.

I think its moreso saying people want mechanical updates and not story updates.

 

[teitan]

I think its moreso saying people want mechanical updates and not story updates.

Well using the seafaring and vehicle rules in Saltmarsh and Avernus they could make some modifications to do a bang up Spelljammer with the pdfs from DMSGUILD. And for Planescape they could use Avernus (It’s a Planescape adventure after all) and some PDFs as well or hit EBay. Dark Sun, heck they have a plethora of options for psionics I’m Unearthed Arcana and again... pdfs. What we see though is “we want this book”.