What WotC hasnt done yet: Old Settings

[SSquirrel]

Yes they were. I believe it will see the light of day somewhere around the launch of the Heroes of the Elemental Chaos.

More specifically, in the book

 

[JoeGKushner]

My comment was meant to be a little tongue in cheeck as someone posted to the missing gnome that they were in the PHB2 when it felt to me, reading the comment that the PHB2 was replying to, that the intent of the question was why wasn't the gnome in the PHB1 to begin with as a core race.

The answer of course was to sell more PHBs as core books, just as the Frost Giant and other beasties were left ouf othe initial Monster Manual. a deliberate effort by the company to... enhance future purchasing options.

And in the gnome's place we got dragonborn and other bits. Which did not sit well with some.

I think in many ways the Essentials line did a better job of keeping the 'traditional' bits alive then the initial launch of 4e.

OR you could do like dms have always done and say, "Hey, we're not using races x and y from book z, but the gnome is fine!"

I mean, in 3.x a lot of us certainly banned spikers and silent-astral-big-hands guys and stuff. In 2e a lot of us said "No way!" to the complete book of humanoid nonsense. In 1e many dms said, "No pc drow/duergar/svirnfneblin in my campaign!"

Why is it any different now? Statements like that above lead me to wonder how clearly people see their own prejudices entering into their arguments. Honestly, it's kind of disingenuous.

You certainly do not have to say "Only PH1!!!!" to exclude wilden and shardminds. Nor do you have to say "I'll accept anything in the books!!!!" to allow gnomes into your campaign.

 

[Incenjucar]

The inclusion of tieflings and dragonborn was also to expand the range of the game and its fiction. Both are extremely popular races, now.

 

[JoeGKushner]

The inclusion of tieflings and dragonborn was also to expand the range of the game and its fiction. Both are extremely popular races, now.

Eh?

I'm not as big a consumer of the fiction lines as I used to be, but both dragonborn and tiefllings were no where to be found in the Blades of the Moonsea, which is a 4e timeline book. Do they make a big impact somewhere else?

I recall, that at the time of launch, with a brand new set of miniatures out, WoTC failed to capitilize on their miniature line with dragonborn making a 'core' race into rares every time it was released and then having to go back to a previous sculp to handle the demand in their failed non-random efforts.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Someone in this thread mentioned the popularity of Al-Qadim. I think a lot of the reason it was so popular back in the day was because it was launched at the same time that Aladdin came out. Plus, the products were gorgeous. I would love to play AQ someday.

It also de-emphasized alignment, race and religion as the defining characteristics of NPCs, in favor of a more nuanced approach. Contrast this to most of the 2E settings, which were pretty black and white in their approach to their NPCs.

 

[mudbunny]

From the online writer's guidelines: "We're also not looking for articles that update material from previous editions; it’s not that we’re opposed to them, but we’re selective about what we update and when."

I think any article like that would come from in-house or a request sent out to specific freelancers, rather than something considered in a submission.

Overall I appreciate the sentiment though

That being said, and I may be reading into that statement stuff that isn't there, but there is a difference between updating stuff from old editions, and creating *new* stuff for the campaign setting. I suspect that the latter will be much, much easier to get posted than the former.

 

[Desdichado]

The idea of supporting each setting may have caused big problems for TSR, but the settings themselves were immensely popular.

Well, that's relative. And I think you're strongly overstating their popularity. I think most settings only sold a fraction of the SKUs that other, more "generic" books could sell, with possible exceptions being Forgotten Realms, maybe Eberron at the peak of it's launch excitement, and maybe some Dragonlance too.

 

[havard]

Well, that's relative. And I think you're strongly overstating their popularity. I think most settings only sold a fraction of the SKUs that other, more "generic" books could sell, with possible exceptions being Forgotten Realms, maybe Eberron at the peak of it's launch excitement, and maybe some Dragonlance too.

Its difficult to say. I dont think the sales of settings should be seen in isolation. Once you have a setting you like, you will buy more generic books to use with that setting. Generic books have the advantage of appealing across the board, but not everyone want to use their Generic books with the FR.

-Havard