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Message: <blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 7988900" data-attributes="member: 5948">Yeah, I'd agree with this I think.Speaking personally, I'm a sucker for big indulgent RPG background books.  I bought the massive Midgard worldbook hardcover, the Exalted 3rd ed Dragonblood book, damn near the entire range of FFG 40K rpg books, the brick-think Beckett's Diary lore book Onyx Path brought out for Vampire.  I'm very unlikely to ever actually use any of these in a game.  I'd buy the hell out of a 600 page comprehensive FR campaign setting book.  But it's fairly obvious that WotC has to appeal to a wider demographic than just me (unfortunately!)But the thing is - while WotC seems committed to their ... sedate .... release schedule, it appears from the outside at least, that this is at least partially motivated by an understandable desire to avoid the problems that beset 3e/3.5e when the sheer volume of player options, prestige classes, spells, feats etc began to be daunting and cumbersome and (in combination) cause significant balance problems.  If they were willing to make a campaign setting that was JUST a campaign setting, with minimal player material, or even game material at all other than maybe a few iconic FR monsters - you might be able to short-circuit that.  Jiust a gazetteer, comprehensive from the Hordelands to Maztica (you'd probably leave out Zakhara and Kara-tur, they are less tightly-coupled to the 'core' Realms than Maztica is).  A guide to all the minor religions and gods that got cut from the SCAG due to space.  A bit of history so that, for instance, a PC cleric of Tyr knows what it MEANS in-game that his god murdered a fellow deity and then disappeared for a century and then came back with no explanation and what the lawful, organised faith of Tyr thinks about this.  Or what does it mean to be a follower of the Mulhorandi pantheon in the 'modern' Realms?  There'd be no need for the rounds of UA or design or playtesting, you wouldn't even need the input of the game mechanics designers particularly.  You could just hand it over to setting designers - I know Greenwood and Salvatore had a huge 5e FR setting bible drawn up way back at the start of 4e because they predicted a future when WotC would want to wind back the worst of the Spellplague rubbish, and I'm sure the internal WotC 5e Realms bible has been updated since then - and let them have at it.  They couldn't break game balance because they wouldn't be writing game mechanical stuff in the first place.  And the game design team and playtesters etc could focus on whatever the next adventure or setting or mechanics-heavy book was going to be.  The opportunity cost of a big FR book might be able to be reduced this way - if you reduce the game design resources it would demand, it could potentially be done in parallel with the regular release schedule, not as part of it.  It could even be done as a small print run or even Print on Demand if WotC were unsure what it'd sell like.  Onyx Path have been operating like this for years.Would this be my personal ideal of an FR book?  Well, no - personally I'd want 600 pages of background PLUS player options for Halruaan jordaini monks and Maztican eagle knight paladins and a dozen new cleric domains for Realms gods and a pile of other things.  But that isn't going to happen.  But a pure setting book?  I'd think that's more achievable.</blockquote>

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