Why does a published setting need "support"?

[Ourph]

The alternative is to put out a setting book, your limited support books, and leave it forever. Walk away and be glad you created something fans like. Some will keep with the setting for a long time, others will wander away when the new flavor of the day (probably very well supported) catches their fancy.

Honestly, this is probably the best approach for quality settings. Keeping a setting on "artificial life support" past it's useful lifespan is just going to lead to a lot of wonky, extraneous stuff that ends up detracting rather than enhancing the original material (e.g. - Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms). Once the question stops being "How much of this great material can we fit into our next book?" and starts being "Can anyone think of something we can stick into this next book so we don't have a hole in our release schedule?" it's probably time to move on to something else.

 

[Odhanan]

Why does a published setting need "support"?

"Need"? To... what? To be played? No, it does not need support.

 

[ShadowX]

OK, you create a setting. It's popular. You would likely release all the books you've mentioned within a year and a half (it could easily be done in a year). How are you going to support the setting just on adventures?

Adventures aren't likely to be profitable enough to keep going. Even if they are, what are you going to do 3 or 4 years down the line? New players who find the setting will want a setting book. Producing a print run of a setting book just for new players isn't going to be profitable. Wait, you say, I'll just create enough for many years of new players.

Oops, now you have to worry about storing those extra books your print. Storing books costs money, which most consumers don't consider. The money you save by creating a large print run is eaten up by having to pay for storage space for the ones you don't need immediately. Remember Ryan Dancey's tales of walking through TSR's warehouse filled with boxes and boxes of basically worthless old product that hadn't sold?

So what you need to do to get that new setting out is find a way to get the longtime fans of the setting to want to buy the new book. Which will lead some to accuse you of being only in it for the money.

The alternative is to put out a setting book, your limited support books, and leave it forever. Walk away and be glad you created something fans like. Some will keep with the setting for a long time, others will wander away when the new flavor of the day (probably very well supported) catches their fancy.

Are setting books really selling far beyond adventures that if the latter can't support the line the former can? Both seem to appeal only to DMs, though I guess if they have enough "crunch" players might buy them, though only in extremely popular settings like FR.

Personally, I find most settings become far too developed. I don't need a history textbook of the setting or detailed sociology of its citizens. I want plot hooks and a broad panorama of the notable features of the different regions. The setting beyond these shallow details is mostly irrelevant to the players and the actual game. This is the reason a good adventure that takes advantage of the peculiarities of the setting is a far more effective sourcebook because it imparts the texture of the setting at the most important place: the game table.

 

[Scribe Ineti]

Published settings (and games in general, for that matter) need support in the form of new stuff to buy on a regular basis, otherwise some vocal gamers start screaming about how the game is 'dead' and that they don't play 'dead' games.

And I guess some gamers need their fix, i.e., new stuff to buy for their favorite setting or game. Without that regular fix, they have to buy something else, and some gamers are loyal like dogs to their favorite game line and/or game company and would rather give that game or company their money before giving it to the 'enemy.'

Or something. Gamers are a strange lot.

 

[Glyfair]

Are setting books really selling far beyond adventures that if the latter can't support the line the former can? Both seem to appeal only to DMs, though I guess if they have enough "crunch" players might buy them, though only in extremely popular settings like FR.

You'd have to ask a publisher, but I expect they do. The exception might be someone like Paizo where the "world" is just there to support the adventures. Even there, adventures are so specific in taste and need that I would think the market is too narrow.

As for "players might buy them," how often have you encountered or heard about players who have read the setting book back and forth and know the setting inside & out? There are a lot of them. A large percentage of those that don't are those that don't buy any RPG products beyond the core book (if that).

 

[Treebore]

DCC 35 by Goodman games, all 50+ DCC's are set in that world. It adds a LOT of depth as far as I am concerned. Not necessarily to the history fo the world, but I think it gives the DM something to fuel the fires, so to speak.

I have essentially been doing the same thing for every campaign world I have ever used, got the most detailed with Faerun. Meaning I went through all my Dungeon mags, and all the modules I bought, and decided where they were located.

Greyhawk is where i got started with doing this, since TSR always had a location for their modules in GH, and then again with FR, those modules had their specific locations.

I didn't do it nearly as extensively with Wilderlands (was using 3E, leveled so fast there was no need to have that many).

I haven't done it with my "new world" or Erde yet, but I will since levelling is significantly slower in C&C. It was cool to use the Dungeon and WOTC maps for Istivin when I ran the "Against the Giants" series for my family, though. Plus, since they advanced so slowly, I got to use a lot of elements from the Dungeon adventure while they were there. So not only did they have to deal with the Giants and the drow, they dealt with something else that was going on, but seemed to dissappear once they "disjunctioned" the sphere created by Lolth. (yes, I chnged some story elements). Little do they know it is coming back in another level or two.

But as far as the support issue brought up by the OP.The only reason I loke it is because it gives me new ideas, Fresh story ideas. Which I can, and do, draw from many other sources, but it can be cool to use setting specific stuff.

Like with FR, I ignored 80 to 90% of the canon material published, but I still used a lot of it, twisted to fit ideas I came up with from reading it all.

thats why I liked to read Dragon and Dungeon, tons of new ideas and twists to apply to old ones.

Its why even though I have my own MegaTraveller setting I still bought stuff created for other editions and versions, just to get fresh ideas and inspiration.

I don't know how many others do the same as I do, though. Most seem to need and want the material to run as is. Not much fun for me. I pretty much have to tweak and twist and switch things around to make it "mine".

 

[rounser]

Adventures aren't likely to be profitable enough to keep going. Even if they are, what are you going to do 3 or 4 years down the line? New players who find the setting will want a setting book. Producing a print run of a setting book just for new players isn't going to be profitable. Wait, you say, I'll just create enough for many years of new players.

A paradigm shift from selling products based around settings to selling products based around adventure paths might prevent this.

Consider all the support material in Dragon for paizo's three adventure paths, and you have an idea of what I'm talking about. Given an entire campaign, why wouldn't you want expansion books associated with it for the compleatist or collector? You're devoting maybe the better part of a year to it.

For what it's worth, IMO the sooner the "setting first" culture takes a few direct hits, the better for D&D (and potentially WOTC's wallet) I think it will be.

 

[AllisterH]

I would like to see more Al-Qadim type campaigns.

What a lot of people don't know is that Al-Qadim was the only setting that was DESIGNED with a limited release. TSR always intended for it to only exist for 2 years (fan demand extended it by one) and I consider it a complete setting.

I would love to see more settings get that kind of treatment.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

I don't know how many others do the same as I do, though. Most seem to need and want the material to run as is. Not much fun for me. I pretty much have to tweak and twist and switch things around to make it "mine".

Yup that's pretty much how I do it. My take is this: no two tables are going to be exactly the same, nor should they be. Whatever goes on in "your version" of Greyhawk has no bearing on what goes on in "my version" of Greyhawk. I also have a buttload of adventures from Dungeon, Goodman Games and now Paizo's Gamemastery Line to be placed in the world at large. As long as I'm able to keep my players interested and busy, that's all that matters to me.

 

[WayneLigon]

Published settings (and games in general, for that matter) need support in the form of new stuff to buy on a regular basis, otherwise some vocal gamers start screaming about how the game is 'dead' and that they don't play 'dead' games.

And I guess some gamers need their fix, i.e., new stuff to buy for their favorite setting or game.

I've encountered both of those attitudes.

Support - and it is support, supplemental material that aids the detail of the setting - is something you'll always see. I don't think you can do justice to most settings with just the one book, and there is always significant room for expansion.

Lots of gamers like detail. Lots of crunchy detail, even if it's not rules. I'd be willing to lay money that for every gamer that hates detail, three more like it - it might not be rules detail, but you can be a rules-lite guy and still love details.

Let's look at the Eberron line. The main campaign book is large and very well done. Yes, you could probably run Eberron for five years just off that book, depending on exactly what you did.

Dragonmarked is a support book for that campaign. It offers more details, personalities, and not all that much crunch; it tells you how the various Houses interact with the world and each other, what their plans and goals are, etc. If you're running a game with a lot of House intrugue, it moves from 'nice to have' to 'required' unless you've had a tremendous burst of inspiration.

Sharn might as well be 'Campaign Book II' for Eberron. It's a city so large that it deserves it's own book. Frankly, unless I've had a lot of time and a tremendous clear vision of where I was going with it, I'd never be able to write something as interesting, detailed, and cool as that. I probably could for some worlds I've done, but it's unlikely I could for this.