Titansgrave and why 5E needs a setting (or two) (and another take on a suggested product lineup)

[werecorpse]

Healers are important in the game. Baking setting cosmology into healers is less useful.

But clerics were religious in the 1e AD&D players handbook. They were dedicated to a deity or deities, they had holy symbols, their spells were bestowed on them by their deities. They had class level names like acolyte and priest, when they became a high priest they could build a religious stronghold dedicated to the clerics deity or deities.

Now this doesn't mean you couldn't strip away this stuff in your world and call them healers etc. but this can also be done in 5e

 

[Jester David]

Pretty sure I wouldn't have bought a completely flavorless D&D, and Wizards seems to think people in general like fluff. So they make what sells.

The Basic Rules are pretty close, lacking the same planar information and non-standard races and classes.

 

[transtemporal]

Anyhow, looking at the above, that's maybe 8-10 products a year, plus the Dungeon PDFs, so hardly gluttony.

Absolutely. While we're doing WotCs planning for them, maybe they could produce 100 products? Say 4 or 5 settings, 2 or 3 mega-adventures, 5 splatbooks per class. k thx bye xxx

 

[Jester David]

I really don't buy the claim that D&D has always encouraged worldbuilding. Or at least not to the same degree as we now thing of conworlding.

There are a LOT of flavour assumptions in the 1st Edition PHB. I'd recommend people take a good long look at those books without the lens of nostalgia. Actually read the early D&D books again. They can be surprisingly vague and uninformative at times.
For example, dwarves hate orcs, gnomes hate goblins and kobolds, orcs can breed with humans, which races are adept at which classes, demihumans are less proficient than humans, Vancian spellcasting, the gods exist and grant their worshipers superpowers, wizards like Rary and Bigby exist, etc.
Meanwhile, the DMG is pretty silent on worldbuilding. It goes into some details starting on page 86, but much of this is equally on structuring a campaign as worldbuilding. And really offers to practical advice (and advocates creating a bottom-up world starting with a village and dungeon).
And most of the old "modular" adventures assumed Greyhawk. They have a set location in their backstory. It's less that they were designed to be modular and easily dropped into peoples games and more that stories back then were just simpler and location based, making it easier to move locations and change details. Because the world didn't matter and was just a location to house dungeons.

The current edition offers a wealth of information and advice on building a world. An order of magnitude more than in the 1e books. It's not that earlier editions encouraged you to create a world, they just offered less of a choice.
The 5e books kinda present the Forgotten Realms as the default. But it's much less of a default than Greyhawk was in 3e/1e and far, far less than the Nentir Vale was in 4e. There are alternate gods included and mentions of other worlds in the flavour text of races. But the intent is obvious: people uninterested in worldbuilding are presented options to play in the Realms or play in Greyhawk. And having that choice is lovely.

Not that I'm against worldbuilding. I literally wrote a book on the subject. I was working on the map to my world just before stopping to write this.
I'm just in favour of people having the choice. And having as much information as possible if they choose to make their own world rather than just being told to do it.

 

[Jester David]

I just noticed this hilarious line from the original post:

Anyhow, looking at the above, that's maybe 8-10 products a year, plus the Dungeon PDFs, so hardly gluttony.

10 products a year was close to what they were doing during 4e and much of 3e. They had a book almost every month with minis or dungeon tiles filling in the gaps. That was a crazy amount of content!

 

[Parmandur]

The Basic Rules are pretty close, lacking the same planar information and non-standard races and classes.

And they were well worth what I spent on them, I will grant.

 

[tyrlaan]

Regarding Titansgrave, they sure picked up the pace in Chapter 3.

Definitely agree. Vastly better than the first two episodes.

 

[MarkB]

I think it's less about that and more of a disconnect between what I took to be a somewhat grimdark setting and the beer-fueled comedic fantasy that ensued. I'm all for zany comedy adventures and characters, but I like a setting that supports it.

I don't even see that as a contradiction. "Dark" is not the opposite of "funny", and some of my favourite ever D&D campaigns had serious, world-affecting backstories juxtaposed against typically goofy player interactions.

Besides, even darker settings can have their lighter sides. This is the equivalent of the early chapters of Lord of the Rings, with the characters indulging in big parties and taking shortcuts to mushrooms, while hints of the oncoming darkness occasionally loom into view around them. Let the serious stuff come around in good time, and meanwhile enjoy these innocent times while they last.

 

[Mercurius]

Absolutely. While we're doing WotCs planning for them, maybe they could produce 100 products? Say 4 or 5 settings, 2 or 3 mega-adventures, 5 splatbooks per class. k thx bye xxx

Huh? .... nevermind.

I just noticed this hilarious line from the original post:

10 products a year was close to what they were doing during 4e and much of 3e. They had a book almost every month with minis or dungeon tiles filling in the gaps. That was a crazy amount of content!

I'm glad you think I'm hilarious. Oh, and you're wrong. I said 8-10 products meaning ALL products. WotC was churning out 10+ hardcovers alone, not to mention other products. Let's take 2009 by way of example:

Hardcovers:
The Plane Below
Draconomicon: Metallic Dragons
Primal Power
Dungeon Master's Guide 2
Adventurer's Vault 2
Dragon Magazine Annual
Divine Power
Eberron Campaign Guide
Eberron Player's Guide
Monster Manual 2
Arcane Power
Player's Handbook 2
Dungeon Delve
Open Grave

Adventures:
Prince of Undeath
Revenge of the Giants
Seekers of the Ashen Crown
Kingdom of the Ghouls
Death's Reach

Tiles:
Sinister Woods
Arcane Towers

Cards:
Player's Handbook 2: Warden, Bard
Martial Power: Warlord
Player's Handbook: Wizard, Fighter

Hmmm...let's see, I count 14 hardcovers (not including the Giant one, which I'm counting as an adventure), 5 adventures, 2 tiles, and 5 card decks - that's 26 products. I'm just going on Amazon publishing dates, so there might be more.

Now let's see. I suggested a modest 8-10, and to you this is "hilarious" because it is close to the output of 4E and 3E, but the reality is that what I'm suggesting is about one third of a peak year in 4E's cycle (I'm guessing 3E was as much, 2E even moreso).

OK, what is hilarious again?

 

[Jester David]

I'm glad you think I'm hilarious. Oh, and you're wrong. I said 8-10 products meaning ALL products. WotC was churning out 10+ hardcovers alone, not to mention other products. Let's take 2009 by way of example:

[/I]Hmmm...let's see, I count 14 hardcovers (not including the Giant one, which I'm counting as an adventure), 5 adventures, 2 tiles, and 5 card decks - that's 26 products. I'm just going on Amazon publishing dates, so there might be more.

Now let's see. I suggested a modest 8-10, and to you this is "hilarious" because it is close to the output of 4E and 3E, but the reality is that what I'm suggesting is about one third of a peak year in 4E's cycle (I'm guessing 3E was as much, 2E even moreso).

OK, what is hilarious again?

Some years have 12 books, some have 10, and some have 9. Plus the occasional accessory, mini set, tiles, and setting book. It varied from year to year. Going with the most prolific year in recent memory to make a case that 10 products isn't that much is a pretty weak argument. And doesn't prove me wrong.
(And it doesn't change the fact that a product almost every single month is a LOT of content and would require staff that WotC doesn't have and would almost certainly result in a decline in quality. In a single year we'd see more content for 5e than 1e saw in half a decade.)

That's what's hilarious. It's like suggesting going from a 8000 calorie/day diet to *just* 4000 calorie/day. Even though it's half as much it's still waaaaay more than is really needed and going to result in some serious bloat. It's going to delay becoming seriously obese by a few years, but it's not really a solution.


No one NEEDS a new campaign setting every year. Even if you change settings after every campaign, you'll be lucky to need a new one every 1 1/2 to 2 years. And D&D doesn't have the audience to put out a book only half the market is going to buy. Ditto accessories. There's enough material in the PHB for a half-dozen campaigns. Years of adventuring. You might be able to use a new accessory to two, but after three or four they cease to be needed. Putting out that much in a couple years saturates the market. It kills the game.