Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 1169990" data-attributes="member: 151">Wheel of Time was a license, and never intended to have more than a single supplement, which is exactly what happened.  Comparing Eberron to it is a little bit of apples and oranges.  Eberron was the product of an intense search, culminating in a lot of work and eventually in an expenditure of, what, $130,000?  Not a lot to Hasbro, but still a large amount of money for any RPG company, let alone a single setting. All of the settings previously mentioned, including FR, are settings from a previous edition, carrying all the baggage that comes with that.  All of them are dependent on outside sources to some extent, such as novels.  The 3e FRCS maks it clear that this is an updated source of information, and to someone who wasn't already a Realms fan, it felt very much like you were expected, at some levels, to understand where FR had been.  Plus, all of these settings come with pre-existing expectations of what they are, something Eberron will not have. Greyhawk never really had a demise because it never really had a life.  Up until the release of the first Greyhawk setting box set, all Greyhawk consisted of was some references in some modules and in The Dragon magazine.  It wasn't a full-fledged campaign setting as we think of them, today.   One of the reasons that FR was such a success is that it was a fully realized campaign setting from day one, while Greyhawk is more of a patchwork, stitched together over time.  The very idea of a consistent game world didn't even exist when Greyhawk was first formulated.  FR also was very detailed, whereas Greyhawk is, by design, very inspecific.  FR's detail is of great attraction to a novice DM, as it saves him a lot of work and presents him with many great ideas, right out of the gate.    GH requires tooling and work.  Further, FR had an excellent multimedia campaign to back it up: books and comics chief among them. The point I'm trying to make is that Greyhawk is oldest, but it never had the widespread popularity of the Realms because it was just never there.  Many folks played in Greyhawk without knowing it.  How many folks can tell if Bone Hill was in Greyhawk, Mystara or elsewhere?  Everyone knows that the Temple of Elemental Evil was near Hommlett and Nulb...but what country in Greyhawk does it take place in?  I'll wager most gamers didn't know or care, at the time.  It wasn't important to the module at hand, per se.  We thought in terms of Modules, back then, not campaigns or settings.  The Barrier Peaks was just some imaginary place...not a specific location.  How many people remember where they are on the Greyhawk map?  Where the Hidden Shrine of Tamochan is, the town of Salt Marsh or the Lost Caverns of Tsocjanth can be found?  In large part, it didn't matter.  The modules were fairly disassociated with the campaign.  Compare that with the Time of Troubles, for example, a story that was integrally tied to the FR setting. Greyhawk did receive some actual campaign support in the form of From the Ashes and subsequent materials...but most fans I know who have an opinion on the matter (which isn't that many) feel that it was ill-served at that time, with TSR's slush-publishing strategy doing more harm than good.  Which isn't to say that good material wasn't published during that time, as some of it was good...but some was very bad.  And since all settings were receiving this flood of publishing, it was proportionate.  TSR was flailing wildly, and publishing what they couldn't necessarily sell.  WotC's best use of the Greyhawk license (other than excellent material in the LGG and LGJ) has been 'Scourge of Worlds', so far. So, in essence, Greyhawk support hasn't evaporated, as it was never that strong of a contender to begin with.  Eberron is being envisioned with a solid strategy from day one, unless WotC has lost all sense of business perspective.  More than likely, that will mean a setting book released at the same time as (or very closely followed by) an official D&D minis expansion ("Cool!  I got the Lightning Rail Conductor!"), a gazeeter, a set of modules or large module book (such as RttToEE or Wot's adventure book), some novels, a comic mini-series, a magic book, a monsters book, an SRD releasal of some sort and more. If Eberron falls completely flat, then it would be foolish to expect continued support of the setting.  That's simply just good business sense.  WotC wouldn't have released The Unapproachable East if The Silver Marches hadn't made it's numbers.  WotC has learned the lessons of TSR well (if they didn't know already)...and the first rule is not to try an prop up a commercially unviable setting purely because it has a vocal fan base.</blockquote>

Verification