D&D 5E (2014) Time for Non Forgotten Realms Adventure Paths?

[LuisCarlos17f]

I wonder about the complains are because allmost all the settings but FR have got the metaplot totally frozen.

 

[humble minion]

I wonder about the complains are because allmost all the settings but FR have got the metaplot totally frozen.

Nope.

Metaplot progression can be actively corrosive to a good home campaign. I'm perfectly fine with a setting I'm playing in being in a static metaplot state. It means that my PCs get to be the heroes, rather than some novel character, and it means that later sourcebooks are actually compatible with earlier ones and don't have to be written around some world-shaking event that hadn't happened when the previous book came out. Metaplot progression was disastrous in Dark Sun, widely despised in 2e/3e/4e FR, left Planescape in a broken state when the last of a planned adventure trilogy was canned, and was just plain bewildering in Dragonlance.

Metaplot is for reading. Settings are for playing in. There can often can be incompatibilities between the two.

 

[Micah Sweet]

A big adventure path would be a good way to bring back Planescape. Little gazeteer for Sigil, then a plane hop hitting the highlights. Bring back Planescape!

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I think all the WotC adventures (apart from CoS for obvious reasons) have suggestions of how to adapt them to other settings. It's generally pretty easy to do. But then I'm coming from 1st edition where most adventures where set in generic fantasyland and we just dropped them into our own worlds.

I went ahead and looked at all of them to check. Princes of the Apocalypse has one or two pages each of conversion advice for Dark Sun, Dragonlance, Greyhawk, and Eberron.

Tomb of Annihilation has this: "You can substitute a different jungle setting, changing location names as needed. Alternative D&D settings include the Amedio Jungle of Oerth, the Savage Coast of Mystara, the jungles of Xen'drik on Eberron, or a comparable setting
on your home campaign world."

Storm King's Thunder has this: "Nonetheless, you can easily adapt the adventure to your home campaign by changing the names of various locations and factions."

Tyranny of Dragons has this: "You can adapt Tyranny of Dragons to different regions of the Realms or to a different setting with a bit more preparation on your part. Change the names and locations to suit your campaign."

None of the rest of them mention adapting to a different setting at all.

So it's even worse than I thought. Princes of the Apocalypse took a few pages to give us something useful, while none of the rest of them did.

 

[Todd Roybark]

SKT is so thick with the Realmslore, you might as well play the Against the Giants conversions, if you are not in the FR.

I have nothing against Sigil...but I would like an official City of Brass product.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

So it's even worse than I thought. Princes of the Apocalypse took a few pages to give us something useful, while none of the rest of them did.

You don't need anything else. Change a few names and you are good to go.

As an example, I am running an Eberron campaign. There is a scene where the PCs are fighting on the Back of the Lightning Rail. That could not easily be moved to a different setting, because it includes features specific to one setting. However, earlier in the same campaign I ran Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. Saltmarsh is written for a generic core rules setting, and therefore can be dropped in pretty much anywhere (on a coast). By writing generic adventures for generic settings WotC can sell to more players than if they write adventures with content specific to one setting.

Another example, I moved The Styles to Luskan. The only change was to swap the area map for a map of Luskan Docks.

 

[humble minion]

You don't need anything else. Change a few names and you are good to go.

Honestly, it kinda depends on where you're porting the adventures to.

Dark Sun is an extreme example, because it's so different to most other worlds. But SKT makes all sorts of assumptions about giants that simply don't work in Athas. Tyranny of Dragons make all sorts of assumptions about dragons that don't work on Athas. A significant portion of Saltmarsh is coastal, which you could probably get away with by using silt skimmers intead of ships and replacing some of the critters, but a not-insignificant part of it is actually under the sea(!) Out of the Abyss would need basically all the FR-standard underdark races replaced, even if you accept that Athas has a) an underdark, and b) demon lords, which is marginally canonical at best. Even the relatively comprehensive notes in Princes of the Apocalypse really gloss over a lot of the complexity of a conversion like this - walrus-riders in Athas, really? You damn near need to replace everything. And from the looks of things, even the thought of converting Rime of the Frostmaiden to Athas would be laughable.

Ravenloft has similar issues - with the emphasis on more Gothic monsters, stuff like dragons, giants, demons etc are thin on the ground in the setting (and PCs advancing to 15th level then beating down a conga line of demonlords, for example, is about as thematically un-Ravenloft as i can imagine). And for SKT - where has this huge kingdom of giants been all this time?

The more conventional settings - sure. Greyhawk, Krynn, Eberron, even Nentir Vale - it's only once you step outside the bounds of 'conventional D&D fantasy' setting that things get really tricky. Even in Al-Qadim it'd mostly be a matter of art style and name changes. But there's certainly limits to the universal convertibility of adventures. Eventually the effort involved in making the conversion outweighs the benefits of buying a pre-written adventure in the first place.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Honestly, it kinda depends on where you're porting the adventures to.

It's a case of choosing your adventure appropriately. You aren't going to want to Port Rime of the Frostmaiden to Athas because it has no arctic regions, but you can port it to Eberron easily enough. You could port Desert of Desolation to Athas though. And there are many adventures that you can port to Ravenloft - Saltmarsh for example. Just add fog.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Today WotC's strategy isn't about to sell new products but the copilation or updated of the best-sellers from the past, something like the remastered version of that old movie or videogame. Now it doesn't want to sell a lot of crunch for players, but to increanse the number of players/buyers. The future plans about the fluff/lore/background aren't only for the TTRPG sourcebooks, but other type of projects as videogames. And today you don't have to spend a lot of money to get lore if you can read freely lots of fandom wikis of no-RPG IPs.

FR is now the superstar, the apple of my eye, the blue-eyed boy. Eberron has got many possibilities because it's the openest option to can add new things.

And the return of old lines has got its own risks, with possible controversies about "this is a jumping shark" or "this is not my Star Wars". It's harder to explain how new "crunch", for example PC races and classes to be added to the old lines. WotC doesn't want to sell more books but more digital titles, and then the old titles in DM Guild is enough, no worry about to hire staff or deadline problems. Those buyers want the lore/background and this doesn't need a true update.

My suggestion is to allow others to publish about the other settings, and maybe to suggest the idea of parallalel worlds are possible in D&D. I have insisted a lot of the idea of a new transitional setting based in the concepts of time spheres and chronomancers from 2nd Ed.

My theory is someday we will see modules based in Ravenloft and Dragonlance, even this with a trailer with CGI animation like the ones for Magic: the Gathering. WotC can publish modules set in Dark Suns without worry about if the Pentad Prism is canon or not. And I am afair some lines only will come back after to publish the videogame a producing a teleserie for some streaming service.

Greyhawk is practically a sacred relic. To continue the timeline or metaplot sounds almost as an heresy among the oldest fandom.

Let's say today WotC would rather to start a new building from zero than to restore the old ones.

 

[TheSword]

I mentioned it in another thread but I’m about to run a mash up of rise of the Runelords, Shattered Star and Return of the Runelords. Set in Eberron. With Morgrave University replacing the Pathfinder society. The Runelords being ancient giants of xendrik. Should be fun.