D&D 5E Which Classic Settings do you think WotC will publish?

[Mercurius]

Core rules means "doesn't have setting-specific rules". Greyhawk has always used core rules. Gygax never excluded any races, for example.

Now, it would be possible to re-invent Greyhawk as a non-core rules setting. There is clearly a demand for a gritty low magic setting for 5e, and they could make Greyhawk that. But that would be a change from what Greyhawk was in the past, not a continuation. Anyway, GoS indicates WotC still consider Greyhawk core rules.

Dark Sun is not a core rules setting, never has been.

OK, so there's nothing official about "core rules settings." I hear your perspective about differing from the core rules would represent a change from Greyhawk in terms of the settings relationship to the D&D rules, but you could also say that adding newer elements that weren't present in the original presentation is also a "change from what Greyhawk was in the past." It depends upon how you want to look at it. Your perspective emphasizes the crunch, mine the fluff.

I personally like the idea of preserving "legacy settings" in the form in which they were originally presented, at least for the most part. That's why I suggested a Greyhawk product that presents the classic setting but with appendices about incorporating newer ideas as options (e.g. dragonborn). By updating every legacy setting to include every idea that has come after it was conceived ends up with a kind of homogenization and runs the risk of lessening what makes that setting unique.

 

[Sithlord]

Please explain the difference.

Boxed sets have to be stored carefully or they fall apart easily imho. Now i still have all my boxed sets from over 30 years ago. But I ice to watch them. Make sure no one stacks things on top of them. Make sure the contents are placed back of someone decides to reference them. It’s a hassle I don’t like. And books. I hate lull outs because I hate defacing a book. It bothers me if it is not intact as originally manufactured. That’s just me and my hang ups. If they sell maps. I want them sold separately.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I personally like the idea of preserving "legacy settings" in the form in which they were originally presented, at least for the most part. That's why I suggested a Greyhawk product that presents the classic setting but with appendices about incorporating newer ideas as options (e.g. dragonborn). By updating every legacy setting to include every idea that has come after it was conceived ends up with a kind of homogenization and runs the risk of lessening what makes that setting unique.

That game doesn't work like that. If you buy a setting book it is additive to the existing rulebooks. So if you want to have a setting without dragonborn you have to add a rule "In this setting players cannot choose to play as dragonborn".

The way it's worded in Mythic Odysseys of Theros is: "Aside from humans, the races in the Player’s Handbook are unknown on Theros, unless they’re visiting from other worlds."

 

[Nikosandros]

They don't. There are no dragonborn in Theros.

Greyhawk, unlike Theros, is a core rules setting. And dragonborn are core rules.

Indeed. There's also another thing: you are free to pick and choose what you like. I'm currently running a GH campaign (based on GoS) and I, together with my players, decided to have just the "AD&D" races, so there are no dragonborns in this specific campaign.

 

[Parmandur]

Somewhere about 67th. I think that's what they call "also ran". On that basis WotC would be well advised to create a Paddington Bear campaign setting!

If they owned the rights, I'm sure they would do Paddington Bear. 67th out of literally millions of contenders is "one of the best sell book series" in my book. Top 100 selling of all time is impressive in literature.

Just saying, the Dragonlance novels have sold somewhat better than anything related to Jakondor or Ghostwalk. I don't care for the Dragonlance novels, mind you (more of a Redwall man), I'm talking about commercial potential in the market that WotC will consider.

 

[Parmandur]

Their niche is millenials.

A fraction of Millenials, dude. The CW does not get a huge number of eyeballs, even Millenial eyeballs. Speaking as a Millenial who enjoys some CW shows, some more ironically than others.

 

[Parmandur]

That wiki also lists individual novel best sellers, and I can't see Salvatore's name up there - I looked.

So I'm pretty sure the answer to your question is: Weis & Hickman.

And therein lies my point: Forgotten Realms is D&D'Souza signature Setting, but Dragonlance is the signature literary subbrand.

 

[Parmandur]

Their niche is millenials.

For some context: there are over 72 million Millenials in the U.S., and CW struggles to get up to 2 million viewers for their relative hits. That's a fraction of the Millenials who play 5E, and that 2 million is not all Millenials.

It's a niche network, with niche appeal.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

In think dragonlance chronicles if they keep marketing it properly could be around a very long time marketed to the late teen and early twenty readers. Fantasy does not age as quickly as sci-fi.

If you look at people that age reading the core Dragonlance books, and how they react to them (on the fantasy book reddit and stuff), you'll quickly see that, whilst fantasy doesn't all age as quickly, DL absolutely has aged too much to work for people today. The characters and their attitudes really smack of a very specific era, a sort of late '70s vibe is extremely strong with it (even though it was written in the mid '80s it seems pre-'80s), and it doesn't have a lot of style. Nor does it come across as "classic" or "timeless" in the way Tolkien, for example does.

And from my own perspective, I'd say it's likely a lot of late teens and early twenties readers today would find the writing made them feel like it was targeted at a younger audience, and not in an okay Harry Potter kind of way. I certainly kind of felt uncomfortable with how almost-juvenile a lot of the stuff in them was when I was 14 even (in 1992). Not so much I wouldn't read them but if I'd been 20? After having read a lot of other fantasy? I'd definitely have dropped them partway through the first book.

Now that's the main books. The related novels and the books by other authors in the same universe vary widely. I absolutely loved some of the spin-off books, even ones by the main authors - they had much better energy (even if a couple were even more kid-aimed-feeling, Galen Beknighted for example, which I read when I was 12 or 13).

But essentially we're talking about books about a bunch of straight white people, with underlying morals that aren't entirely compatible with modern morality (a bit too judge-y on some things, not enough on others), at least a significant whiff of sexism, more than a whiff of racism, and a really vanilla setting that, if you've been reading fantasy up to age, say, 16 or 18, is going to stand out as shockingly vanilla.

I think what's weird is, if they'd been a series of movies in the 1980s, we'd forgive and revise all of this, and they'd be regarded really well, but books are different experience, and it's clear from people's reactions I've seen that younger people are not really liking them today. Nor would does it make sense to expect them to - your average half-decent YA fantasy is significantly better-written and exciting than the original DL books, welcomes a more diverse audience (so more likely kids see themselves in it), and even has more engaging fantasy ideas. Something like the Ember in the Ashes series by Sabaa Tahir, for example, which you might not even have heard of, but like, has been so influential in YA fantasy that other successful YA fantasy series exist because of it (according to their authors).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

For some context: there are over 72 million Millenials in the U.S., and CW struggles to get up to 2 million viewers for their relative hits. That's a fraction of the Millenials who play 5E, and that 2 million is not all Millenials.

It's a niche network, with niche appeal.

Not disagreeing per se but isn't this because Millennials don't watch things on network TV? They often watch the same shows but via streaming. Or is that factored in to the 2m views? I know in the UK things get pretty complicated by that. Like when the BBC has something that's a big hit with millennials, often actual viewers at the actual time is pretty low, then there'll be this long tail of streaming views, whereas if they do something which is also a hit with Boomers and Gen X, you have a hell of lot more people watching it at actual time of broadcast, but the streaming views are relatively lower.