The link below takes you to an interesting article about the future marketing plans for D&D. I think it's a fascinating read, especially as it reveals how WotC plan to make D&D popular once more, and it's _not_ to do with coming up with an awesome game system:

Exclusive Interview on D&D

Some key quotes:

Quote"Wizards of the Coast is launching Dungeons & Dragons:  The Sundering, a transmedia gaming event that spans game and fiction products, aggressively integrates organized play and mobile gaming into product development, and incorporates a licensing stream tied to the event.  The Sundering was first announced almost a year ago at Gen Con as a storyline for Forgotten Realms that would include six novels by different authors and two game products.  But as the full scale of the event unfolds, it's clear that those are only two aspects of a much bigger program leading to the Next edition of Dungeons and Dragons."

Quote"One of the things that's really exciting about this campaign is  players are going to have the opportunity to impact and shape the future of The Forgotten Realms and make their stories legend.  And so the way that these products all interact, the players, through their play at D&D Encounters will be able to go in and play and then report back the outcome of their play.  We're going to be collecting that data over the course of the campaign. "

Quote"This is the first campaign that we're aware of that is announced as being compatible with 3.5E, 4E and Next rules.  Can you explain why you expanded the types of rules that can be used with the Encounters program, and are those all in the book or are those in separate materials?

Schuh:  We really wanted to make sure that all D&D players could engage with this great adventure story and so we know that some people are playing with the playtest rules, some are diehard 4th Edition players, and we also wanted to open it up to people who may still be using 3.5 rules.  We think it really expands out the audience and lets all D&D players enjoy the fun.

A big part of this is shifting our emphasis away from the rules we're delivering to the great stories that we're delivering.  This is a great Sundering adventure; it lets people participate in the future of the Forgotten Realms; and for us, whatever rule set is their favorite rule set, that's great and we don't want to get in the way of that decision.  We want them to participate in this great story."

So...Living Greyhawk 2.0?

From stressing the rules to stressing organized play. Given the declining number of  game stores, I can't really see organized play as a way bring D&D to the masses.

Of course, my opinion may be colored by the fact that  I dislike organized play even more than I dislike the rules of the published WOTC editions of D&D.

Quote from: RandallS;678303From stressing the rules to stressing organized play. Given the declining number of  game stores, I can't really see organized play as a way bring D&D to the masses.

Of course, my opinion may be colored by the fact that  I dislike organized play even more than I dislike the rules of the published WOTC editions of D&D.

I would never do it. Sitting in a shop roleplaying competitively with a bunch of strangers? No thank you. I've seen the sorts of people who hang out in those shops.

Being very familiar with the example of the Legend of the Five Rings franchise, I wish WotC good luck in a strategy that will commit them to orchestrate an epic world-chundering interactive participatory cosmic crisis every 2 years or so.

Whenever there are these 'interactive' events that dictate a story in something, usually a TV series, I always cringe. It's like asking, "What is the worst possible idea that we could implement?"

I never gave a crap about FR, so all this article does is make me wonder what if anything they're doing with/about Greyhawk.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;678353I never gave a crap about FR, so all this article does is make me wonder what if anything they're doing with/about Greyhawk.

Yeah, pretty much.

My dream setting would be one like AD&D Greyhawk, where you can take any published adventure and just plop it down anywhere in the world, or even in your own homebrew world.  I was not a fan of having to read hundreds (or thousands) of pages of text just to play the game in FR and not risk major continuity issues.

Greyhawk easily allowed you to just use the map and maybe a few outline style references without needing to actually read up on Gary's personal way he populated the world.  Fighting the giants in G1-3?  Ok, these mountains over here look like a good place to do it.

If WOTC has no plans for Greyhawk I wish they would license it out and let a company who cares produce material for it.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;678364Greyhawk easily allowed you to just use the map and maybe a few outline style references without needing to actually read up on Gary's personal way he populated the world.  Fighting the giants in G1-3?  Ok, these mountains over here look like a good place to do it.

It helps that it's an awesome map.

This is a failure of a role playing game design. It's all about the franchise, not about the game, and it is likely to generate some revenue for Assbro. I'm just glad to have AD&D 1e to play with.

It's sad to see the Forgotten Realms tail wagging the D&D dog. However, from what I've seen WotC did show with Nentir Vale that they're capable of creating a decent, unlicensed default setting. I hope they do something similar with Next - a small-scale region to place some published adventures in with enough support material to work with to flesh out with your own material.

As for shifting emphasis away from rules, Mearls has stated on several occasion that Next is moving away from the rules-crunch model, and that future material will be more about supporting stories and adventures. This, of course, caused the system-wanks and char op contingent to go nuts and claim that it just proves WotC doesn't care about design.

One of the things that interested me was that this will allow players to use 3.5, 4E and Next for their games. That's a lot of extra design work, so no wonder the development of Next is taking so long.

It also makes me wonder what they will do *after* Next is launched. Will events and/or modules be designed just for Next, or as multi-system supplements? Perhaps post-Next products will have a similar approach, but instead of proving information for several different rules sets, they will provide information of several different modular rules options?

Quote from: thedungeondelver;678353I never gave a crap about FR, so all this article does is make me wonder what if anything they're doing with/about Greyhawk.

I think the sad thing is that the initial release of 3e made Greyhawk integrate into the D&D system itself, therefore blurring it's identity as a campaign world all its own.

We might see an original boxed set reprint or they'll do something to keep the trademark, but I suspect we won't see Greyhawk as an active campaign setting.

I just hope FR doesn't suffer the same fate.

Greyhawk was integrated in the rules (as fluff, anyway) as far back as AD&D: spell names, magic items, magic artifacts, (and this persisted into 2e when GH had been defenestrated) and most of the modules concerned themselves with Greyhawk locations.

All I saw as a "default integration" of GH into 3e was the campaign setting getting some love and GH deities and worship thereof being the focus of clerical matters, so it wasn't that much more integration.

To my mind the worst thing about that was that for some reason WotC felt compelled to try and make all post-Gygax Greyhawk material work also, instead of rightly ignoring it and picking up at '85 and moving forward.  So we wound up with a lot of (for example) Carl Sargent's work.

Being fair to him and others they were working against the best efforts of early post-Gygax TSR's attempts to wreck the GH campaign setting and trying to build a world-mythology that was as attractively rich as Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance.  I can't fault them for at least trying.  Regarding 3rd edition, to my mind, Paizo's heart was always in the right place even though there was some wonky stuff here and again.  I'm no "Greyhawk - regardless of edition!" guy, but Paizo working with Rob & Gary (more Rob, tho) to try and get some Greyhawk goodness out there was always a welcome effort...