You're in charge of D&D's setting! (here's the catch...)

[MoogleEmpMog]

Premise problem - that at a successful company you worry about what you are going to make first, and worry about what the customers are going to think of it afterward, and just lump it as "marketing". If they aren't considering the customer first, you don't want the position.

The exec said not to worry about the fans - which is different from not worrying about the customers. My take is that the exec is a ruthless but practical SOB who knows that internet forums and self-selecting surveys will tell his new hire exactly squat about the actual CUSTOMERS, that the existing fanbase is aging like a low-level character fighting a 1e mummy, and that bold moves may be needed to address the customer base, even if it means angering the fanbase.

Or he could just be a twit with a bad business model.

Anyway, my reaction would be to explain to the exec that WotC doesn't have the two settings he describes (he probably saw it on one of those godforsaken forums ); D&D is committed to supporting the Forgotten Realms, which is a major cash cow due to novels and video games (which produce numbers worthy of a Hasbro exec's time), and Eberron, which is a new setting which will hopefully attract new customers. Greyhawk is a setting from a previous edition under previous ownership, but has no meaningful impact on the modern game. That's the current state of things, and barring a sudden upswing in Gord the Rogue novel and video game sales, it's the practical one.

 

[00Machado]

Melding Eberron and Greyhawk, however, might yield something more interesting....

I'm intrigued. Care to elaborate?

 

[Keldryn]

Flawed premise. I don't think Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk are really competing settings. Greyhawk is a building blocks kind of world, where DMs get a framework and flesh things out there. Forgotten Realms is a world where the lines are colored in, with hefty amounts of detail in most of the major regions. You can't really combine the two -- filling in too much of Greyhawk would ruin that setting's appeal, and stripping down the Realms would kill the draw of Faerun.

I disagree that stripping down the Realms would kill its draw. I found the setting a lot more compelling when it was just the Grey Box back in 1987. It had just enough detail to get my creative juices going without dragging all of that extra baggage in. I think the old boxed set was just as good as any other setting out there -- but it fell victim to the "too many cooks" syndrome, and it's very difficult to dissociate all of the stuff that came after and just go back to the Grey Box and nothing else.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

And don't worry about the fans

So they obviously try to get me killed by an angry mob. They found me out, then. Well, I'll go for broke at this point: First, I kill them all quickly and dispose of their bodies (someone's got a pig farm nearby?).

I then set up myself as the bigwig, killing everyone who questions me (those lucky pigs shall never go hungry again), fire some people I don't like (you know who you are!) and start raking in the money.

 

[howandwhy99]

Maybe the reason Deities and Demi-Gods was designed as it was is now forgotten?

It's not like every campaign world used every God. Far from it. They are the best from myth and history.

Same design as the Monster Manual. Not every world needs every monster.

And weapons, and spells, and magic items, and classes, and races, and...

"You can call me Sir, whippersnapper. Get rid of both of those settings. They are someone else's homebrewed setting.
What you need to do is give the kids a way to build their own homebrew."

Publishers: "All well and fine. But content is king. This is the entertainment business. Wall-to-wall shows about acting lessons don't sell."

 

[Wik]

Same here. If I keep a setting, it's Eberron, but even better is giving the GM a much better means of creating his own homebrewed world. I'm not sure the shape this would take, but something better than the old Worldbuilder's Guide or whatever that was called for 2E.

Say what!? The Worldbuilder's Guidebook (I think that's what it was called) is probably my all-time favourite TSR release - I still drag it out from time to time when making one-shots. There are a lot of ideas in there, and the random tables can create some very interesting campaigns - Arabic Knights in a Jungle! A volcanic coral island where the main power groups are pirate elves, renaissance dwarves, and psionic humans!

It's a great resource.

 

[MavrickWeirdo]

Flawed premise. I don't think Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk are really competing settings. Greyhawk is a building blocks kind of world, where DMs get a framework and flesh things out there. Forgotten Realms is a world where the lines are colored in, with hefty amounts of detail in most of the major regions. You can't really combine the two -- filling in too much of Greyhawk would ruin that setting's appeal, and stripping down the Realms would kill the draw of Faerun.

Just because it is a flawed premise does not prevent a Hasbro exec from saying it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It seems ENWorld is largely unaware of the term "hypothetical question."

Or "mental exercise"

Much more fun to dismantle the assumption than to just play along. After all, we play D&D, we're far too clever to cleave to someone else's rules.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

The first thing I think I would do is say that we're going to use the Forgotten Realms' nations and geography, but the Greyhawk attitude and flavour.

I'm not prepared to publish a world where names like Verbobonc and Geoff are acceptable, but neither am I prepared to support fluffy-bunny crap like the Harpers.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

It seems ENWorld is largely unaware of the term "hypothetical question."

Or "mental exercise"

Much more fun to dismantle the assumption than to just play along. After all, we play D&D, we're far too clever to cleave to someone else's rules.

Just dispose with the weird window dressing and get to the point:

"What is your personal preference for a standard vanilla D&D campaign setting - FR or GH?"

There! Perfectly good question where you don't have pretend something unlikely or roleplay a failed business manager