Here is what I'm seeing in all these threads and its pretty simple. People are complaining about the release schedule, I get it. In 2e through 4e there was a crap load of material coming out, especially 2e. Setting material, player character material etc. And it opened up whole new vistas in the game for players. But the money makers were core rules. They were the ever green product with diminishing sales on supplemental material. I don't know many groups that had lots and lots of supplements and my original game used the core rules, the first four PHBR books and every now & then random FR materials though we didn't really play in the Realms. They were nice, tight etc. We mostly used a 1e pub with a 2e DMG and the white box for our games. We picked the white Bok and phb up at a yard sale. What that taught me, going into converting to 2e was that supplements weren't necessary but nice. I grew up in a small town in southeastern Ohio, to get more material we had to drive 45 minutes away to get them. There was more than enough stuff in the DMG to create new things and useour imaginations to make the game play how we liked it including building new classes, races etc. After I got a job I had money to burn on d&d and comics and got some cool stuff out of that but didn't ever really use it. It was nice to read.
I don't see a need for a dearth of material like started being churned out in 2e, especially with the guidelines in the new DMG. But here's what I see and you can call foul all you like, but I see people who came up in 3e where everything needed WOTC to hold our hands because it was so damn easy to break the system and throw everything off kilter in making up our own classes etc and that changed the way the game is played. It went from characters to builds. It went from a game of imagination to a game of "tell me what I can play oh might wizard of the coast!" And the focus became "is this class balanced with this one, what build is better for such and such" and that my friends is munchkinism". Balance before was not letting player A outshine player B. You gave each player something to do with his character in mind, not who was more powerful or who had the bossest items. This is what supplementitist leads us to, how do I build a damage monster and people saying "the ranger is weak and the Blade Pact Warlock sucks" without looking at what that class "build" *vomit* is meant to do and how to do it. We forgot how to play the game outside the game! We forgot about how bad ass our Blade Pact is and how it evokes that Elric like archetype we all wanted to play before we heard of Drizzt! How close that ranger is to Aragorn! Our archetypes have been replaced with numbers on a sheet of paper! Our characters with builds! Our imaginations with supplements!
For years all there was was Greyhawk or the scantly defined known world. So we made stuff up. What's stopping you from making stuff up? I had more fun writing about the City of Vadaneir and the followers of that vile Necromancer Kultha Zif than I ever did reading about Waterdeep and the Machinations of the Zhentarim! More fun creating the Warg Rider tribe of Goblins and their sorcerous Queen Cashtetz (yes, Cash
) and how they harassed Sasha Quickblade and co. than Obould Many Arrows and his orcs. I was more excited about my Kender Thief/Druid accidentally killing the dark god Hurst and becoming the god of death than TSR telling me about the Planes and Kelemvor with his wall of the faithless.
I remember making a barbarian class for a player because he wanted to play Conan, working with my DM to create a trollkin race based on Pip the Troll from the Warlock comics, even a race called the Him to emulate Warlock.
This stuff stands out in my mind as a ton more fun than when I played third edition and first tried crafting these things and seeing how intricate the system was and how easily it broke and then listening to players beg me to let play race A with template W and class combination C to deal the most damage, requiring five supplements and a web enhancement. When we first started 3e I had a player that had a paladin and on a whim I gave him a magic tattoo that enabled him to do things like we would make up in my old games. It was then that I realized, it doesn't work that way anymore because his character then broke the game because breaking up the party was a no no now and without his character the other players were SOL in most encounters and with him they needed a CR rating three higher than their level for it to challenge him. Net result, lots of needless death. In the old days we would all wind up doing our own things within the context of the adventure. The tattoo wasn't that damn powerful in the old days but in 3e it was a campaign killer. I had to rely on WOTC to give me material to keep the game balanced within the party climate. If I wanted Kobolds that exploded on death, well, it wasn't as easy to figure out what it meant as the old days. Hand holding ensued. Bah humbug on that!
Now with 5e I see a game that harkens back to the days of yore, that encourages me to use my imagination as a DM and player. To work with my DM and players in a symbiotic relationship to make what is fun and not fear the breaking of the game. Classes are back to inside and outside of combat. I have solid, easy to use guidelines to make things up that I want to make up. Could I have done it in 3e? Yeah with a lot of work or buying this here supplement.
Now what I'd like to see down the pipe, yeah I'd like to see more products. I'd like to see a book on undead or something like Dungeonscape from 3e. New Monster Manuals. But I want them done well and rare. One thing we learned in 2e through 4e is more supplements do not make for a better game but those high quality ones we got every now and then were awesome. I'd rather see a 128 page gazetteer for the Realms than a book with a Gazetteer and a bunch of new rules that are shaky. The problem with those sorts of books though is they take the game out of the DM and player hands. They also make it easier to pull from but I'll tell you, sometimes my ideas are just better for me and my games and no amount of Libris Mortis will make my players personal war with Kultha Zif any better. A dungeon book? That can inspire me to make a kick ass dungeon with cool traps and riddles. But I love using my imagination more than reading what WOTC has in mind for how a dungeon works or how goblins behave etc.
Essentially, use your imaginations like us old Grognards had to.
), GDQ are closely tied together. So on and so forth. Very few, AIR, were strictly stand alone modules.
