What WotC hasnt done yet: Old Settings

[Almacov]

A generic adventure slots nicely into every campaign; it's a possible sell to 100% of groups.

While I don't have any stats to point to the idea that settings outsell adventures, and that's not an idea I'm interested in arguing, I do have to debate this quoted assertion.

I have never used, or been in a group that has used, a published adventure.
I have never purchased one, either.

I have, however, purchased campaign settings for the purposes of nabbing the game mechanics for use in my game, reading for pleasure, and maybe finding an interesting story idea or two.
I own many settings that I have never run games in, but that I've found worthwhile and useful purchases.

Adventures are the hard sells for me. (Though I've considered picking up Madness at Gardmore Abbey for the tokens, maps, and deck of many things.)

Again though, I and everyone I've played with may be anomalies;
It's entirely possible that adventures are more profitable than settings.
I find it quite likely they would be when purchased on a subscription basis a la Dungeon or Pathfinder.

 

[Tallifer]

My experience runs contrary to yours, Almacov. Even the dungeon masters whom I know to try to use their own world usually run about half or more of their sessions based on published adventures. It is much less work. On the other hand most of these dungeon masters of whom I speak would not shell out for an expensive adventure book. Any cheap pdf or thin booklet will do.

 

[Infernal Teddy]

I'm with Almacov here - I don't buy Adventures, and even the ones I get in other products might get read but never run.

 

[Incenjucar]

The only canned adventures I have ever used are during Encounters, or like three sessions of Keep on the Shadowfell, entirely because the books weren't out yet and I wanted to get in on the game as early as possible. Once the books came out, I never even looked at the thing again.

You could introduce me to the best adventure ever written for any RPG and I wouldn't purchase it unless I wanted to start writing adventures and wanted to do some research.

A Spelljammer book? I'd preorder that at my FLGS, and I never got involved in the setting back in 2E.

Materials are useful to me if they provide new information, ideas, and most importantly, balanced rules. Dark Sun introduces a new (to 4E) setting with tons of new rules and ideas on how to use them. It remains one of my best purchases of this edition.

 

[havard]

I'm the exact same way. Settings have much more of an appeal to me than any other product. Originally I would collect one or two, but lately I have been trying to get at least the core books for all of the D&D settings from TSR/WotC and the best ones from 3rd party publishers.

I think WotC was on the right track with the 1 setting/ year policy. It was just that the idea of 4E becoming a pigeon hole that the settings would have to be shoe horned into instead of allowing 4E to become a flexible system that could be played differently for each setting took much of the appeal away. This has nothing to do with 4E itself, but about the design phiosophy of the supplements. Do you really need Tieflings and Dragonborn in every setting? No you don't.

-Havard

 

[the Jester]

True. And if we go with everything in every PHB being core, that means we get the funk from PHB3 too. I'll gladly sacrifice the gnome to avert that thankyouverymuc.

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.

 

[the Jester]

While I don't have any stats to point to the idea that settings outsell adventures, and that's not an idea I'm interested in arguing, I do have to debate this quoted assertion.

I have never used, or been in a group that has used, a published adventure.
I have never purchased one, either.

I have, however, purchased campaign settings for the purposes of nabbing the game mechanics for use in my game, reading for pleasure, and maybe finding an interesting story idea or two.
I own many settings that I have never run games in, but that I've found worthwhile and useful purchases.

Adventures are the hard sells for me. (Though I've considered picking up Madness at Gardmore Abbey for the tokens, maps, and deck of many things.)

Again though, I and everyone I've played with may be anomalies;
It's entirely possible that adventures are more profitable than settings.
I find it quite likely they would be when purchased on a subscription basis a la Dungeon or Pathfinder.

Fair enough; however, I think my point stands- it's much easier to insert an adventure into an Eberron, Greyhawk, DarkSun or homebrewed campaign than it is to insert "Cormyr and its Culture" into one of those settings.

 

[SSquirrel]

I think WotC was on the right track with the 1 setting/ year policy. It was just that the idea of 4E becoming a pigeon hole that the settings would have to be shoe horned into instead of allowing 4E to become a flexible system that could be played differently for each setting took much of the appeal away. This has nothing to do with 4E itself, but about the design phiosophy of the supplements. Do you really need Tieflings and Dragonborn in every setting? No you don't.

Dragonborn just replaced the Dray from Dark Sun. Also, Dark Sun had no Divine classes. There was a sidebar reminding you the DM was allowed to overrule that and do what they wanted w/their game, which is why our Dark Sun game had a Cleric and Paladin of Pelor, as well as later a Monk who had multied into a Divine class who also worshiped Pelor. Amusingly enough, that group sat around the table so you could even split us into Team Pelor and Team Heathen

Look at the settings they released for 4E tho. You have FR (and it's Neverwinter subsidiary) that are both pretty all-inclusive settings, so having Dragonborn and Tieflings isn't really a big deal. You have Eberron, which from the start has been a "if it has a place in D&D, it can have a place in Eberron" setting. You had Dark Sun, which they did place restrictions to keep things closer to flavor. Replace Half Giants w/Goliaths to avoid the issues of having size Large players and to get rid of the old ever shifting alignment issue from the old Half Giants. In a game that has minimized the importance of alignment, it makes sense they would do something like that.

The last 2 to come out were Dark Sun and Neverwinter and you can tell the progress they have been making when it comes to releasing setting books in 4E. I think we'll see more soft restrictions like how they did it in Dark Sun (we don't have X, Y or Z here, but talk to your DM about it) in the future and hopefully we have a cool setting coming this year. Personally I'd like to see a new IP, but I doubt that happens.

 

[Incenjucar]

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.

There is a vast amount of really interesting social and psychological stuff going on that, frankly, is probably part of someone's thesis by now. There's a lot of this kind of stuff going on in the world right now, and very likely has always been going on - but we weren't watching it as closely.

Some people are simply misinformed.

Some people are confused and come to bad conclusions.

Some people are being intentionally deceptive, likely out of fear more often than malice.

Some people have the information, but read it differently.

Some people understand things, but have some drive that prevents them from acting on it (a need to conform to rules, a need to be official, etc., the need to make the "right" choice, etc).

It's deeply unfortunate and, in a somewhat sick way, very fascinating.

 

[Dragonhelm]

Now I know all about the idea of how the multiple campaign settings were bad for TSR, but they were also immensely popular. Supporting the settings with long product lines might be a bad idea, but the brands are out there, each with a fan base of its own. Why not feed us with a teaser every once in a while?

-Havard

Heya, Havard! Good to see you here.

I'm a huge setting fan myself and would love to see more support. The Kara-Tur month was a good start, and I could see other settings getting the Dragon/Dungeon touch.

Weren't they going to work up the Sha'ir at some point for 4E?

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


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.