D&D 5E What of the already done settings do you think WotC is revisiting for a Setting Book?

[Yora]

Something like that is probably what the setting needs to give it a bit of a kick in the pants. I mean, what it didn't need was the 4E idiocy, but more of a metaplot to give it some shape/form and to actually change some places - which might anger purists, but like, any change does that, and the big problem the FR has sort of walked into is that it has gradually seemed sleepier and sleepier.

To be a good campaign setting, the world needs primarily to be a stage for the players having adventures in which they are the heroes.
That's the big problem with metaplots. They always turn out to be someone else's adventures in which players are spectators at best, or all the good stuff happens somewhere else where they are not.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

To be a good campaign setting, the world needs primarily to be a stage for the players having adventures in which they are the heroes.
That's the big problem with metaplots. They always turn out to be someone else's adventures in which players are spectators at best, or all the good stuff happens somewhere else where they are not.

It also needs verisimilitude. And our experience of the real world tells us nothing stays the same. Wars happen, boarders change, cultures change, technology changes.

 

[Yora]

Sure, but why do you have to forward time at all?

 

[Parmandur]

I'm aware pretty much all card games are going through the roof in the pandemic. My point is precisely that if this sells well, that's likely the major factor. As for the "incidental randos make us more money than whales", I'd need to see a cite before believing that, as it runs pretty hard against the history of TCGs and similar products (which started out with that being true, but then that changed).

It never really stopped being true of Magic,, that's why WotC is so flush with cash all the time. Mark Rosewater talks about this fairly frequently ("throwing together a few random cards I purchased at Walmart in the last 15 years ago" being the most common format and so on), but here's recent one with some numbers:

Magic: The Gathering Head Designer: "Less Than 10%" of MTG Players Have Ever Played in a Sanctioned Tournament

Mark Rosewater says that less than 10% of Magic players have ever played in a sanctioned event As Magic: The Gathering becomes more and more popular

mtgrocks.com

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Sure, but why do you have forward time at all?

True, Eberron avoids the issue by having the setting info be at a fixed point in time. For the Forgotten Realms to imitate that would itself be a major shakeup.

 

[Parmandur]

I mean, I admit I'm not an expert, but I've seen nothing at all about Exandria that is outside the bounds of what would be called "generic fantasy".

It's not ultra-generic, like Mystara, say, but it's generic. It's a just a high-quality modern generic that's a lot more interesting to modern people. Like the Forgotten Realms was in the 1990s, frankly. That's what Exandria really reminds me of - 1990s FR, back when stuff was actually moving and was surprising and new and so on.

This is accurate. I love Critical Role, and Mercer's skill at weaving elements together, but Wxandria is generic: the gods are simply the 4E default pantheon, even. It's about execution, not raw originality. I love that there is very little in the way of "this world is different, because Halflongs ride donosaurs!"

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It never really stopped being true of Magic,, that's why WotC is so flush with cash all the time. Mark Rosewater talks about this fairly frequently ("throwing together a few random cards I purchased at Walmart in the last 15 years ago" being the most common format and so on), but here's recent one with some numbers:

Magic: The Gathering Head Designer: "Less Than 10%" of MTG Players Have Ever Played in a Sanctioned Tournament

Mark Rosewater says that less than 10% of Magic players have ever played in a sanctioned event As Magic: The Gathering becomes more and more popular

mtgrocks.com

That example doesn't remotely support the idea that whales aren't the main customers.

For example, in the early 2000s, I knew several people who owned between hundreds and thousands of MtG cards, and actively traded them and so on.

How many of them had "participated in a sanctioned tournament"?

None. At least none I knew personally. Some had been in "unsanctioned" events.

So I totally believe him when he says "Only 10% of players have participated in a sanctioned tournament". I also totally believe the "most common format MtG is played in is people just slapping some cards together from years ago". But neither of those statements is remotely the same as "most of our business comes from random purchases rather than people who fairly consistently buy our stuff".

I love that there is very little in the way of "this world is different, because Halflongs ride donosaurs!"

Eberron is feeling personally attacked lol.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Sure, but why do you have to forward time at all?

You don't have to, if you're happy to see your setting gradually fade into the rear-view-mirror of history.

You do have to if you want to keep it relevant and accessible to new players.

 

[Yora]

In my experience, timeline advances make settings unplayable.

Something interesting is happening in the world that involves important people and factions. I would love using those ideas in my game, but I know there will be another timeline update in a few months, and whatever I do to the NPCs and places in my campaign will be different than what the new official timeline update says happens. So I have to wait for the next update before I can plan my campaign. But then I know there will be another timeline update some more months down the line, and I first have to wait for that to come out before I can actually start planning my campaign.
There never will be a good point to start a campaign that deals with major developments in the world until we have the full story complete. That's not producing game content, that's producing fiction dressed up as game content.

The only good way to still actually run a campaign and not running into the next timeline update making everything invalid is to prepare campaigns that won't touch on the ongoing big events in any way. At which point it again is not game content but tangentially related spinoff fiction.

 

[Parmandur]

Eberron is feeling personally attacked lol.

It's a particularly egregious example of a trend with published Settings trying too hard to be distinct, even if the world building is good overall. Exandria doesn't have that: it feels like a generic labor of love made for a group of friends to play some standard D&D.