So I listened to the Chris Perkins audio... and my takeaway is that D&D is simply too big to dedicate to all of its flavored settings.

I personally, do not like the adventure-as-content delivery system. Simply because I don't use pre-generated adventures in D&D. But give me a big regional splat and I'm happy.

The problem of course is that we all like different settings for different reasons but with such a small production team - even though they're outsourcing a lot of that work, it's been pretty painfully slow. So my question here is -

Is it possible to unify the settings in D&D to justify some of them getting some content (like Dark Sun, Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim)? Or is it even possible? Spelljammer served that need in 2e, but in doing so it created its own setting that exacerbated the setting-bloat issue. Is it necessary? Is it possible? How would you do it? Or are you against the idea?

Outside of Spelljammer, and prime material planes hopping a la Planescape, I just don't see it.

I mean FR and Mystara did a decent job globbing FR, KT, AQ, MZ, and Horde for Abeir-Toril and Known WorldGazeteers, Hollow World, Savage Coast (Red Steel), and Blackmoor for Mystara. And other settings fleshed out a bit with tie-ins, but not at the same product line entwining scale. But overall there was not so much "potentially all-unifying" settings aside from those two above.

Not really for the idea of another one either, unless they were fleshing out Alternity (but then I'd fear Star Trek Invades the Dark Ages game devolution). I'm not so hot on adventure-as-setting-delivery as well, so I am in your same boat. I like setting exposition with tantalizing gaps and adventure leads, and really like settings that remix the rules into different power dynamics too. Not really seeing that in 5e, but perhaps they are relying on the 1e and 2e cornucopia to carry that slack.

Quote from: tenbones;868946Is it possible to unify the settings in D&D to justify some of them getting some content (like Dark Sun, Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim)? Or is it even possible? Spelljammer served that need in 2e, but in doing so it created its own setting that exacerbated the setting-bloat issue. Is it necessary? Is it possible? How would you do it? Or are you against the idea?

If the goal is more content then go with a open license for third parties. Let them take the risk at figuring who is interested in what?

The ultimate problem that D&D is a brand owned by multi-national corporations. As big as they are they beholden to the shareholder and have to justify every $1 they spend. Legally and morally they have to put that $1 where it will bring the most return.

What this means for D&D is that whatever project the core team pursue has to be the one that give the most return for what is invested. This means settings with specialized interests like Spelljammer, Planscape, etc will get the short end.

Due to how the product lifecycle work for RPGs, they can justify the occasional release of something offbeat. For example they are now possibly doing Ravenloft now they have a few more traditional adventures/settings/sourcebooks released. If it proves a major selling then they will follow that up then at some point release another off-beat product to see how it does.

But non-publicly owned business are free to pursue passion projects. And support them even if they are marginally profitable. This is why SJ Games still has a regular supply of GURPS supplements despite Munchkin and boardgames dwarfing the income that GURPS brings in. Because GURPS is profitable they can keep supporting it for the foreseeable future.

The answer to any question on how to get more support for X D&D niche is to get people who are interested making a profitable passion project out of X. Otherwise it is going to languish subject to the whims of scheduling and mass interest. One way of doing that is to make available for third party licensing for reasonable rates or even open content.

A Spelljammer reboot could do it.

Personally I hated seeing BX Known world folded into Forgotten Realms.

Quote from: Omega;868964Personally I hated seeing BX Known world folded into Forgotten Realms.

:confused:

I don't recall that ever happening.

Quote from: Opaopajr;868956Outside of Spelljammer, and prime material planes hopping a la Planescape, I just don't see it.

I prefer the Planescape model over the Spelljammer one. (It was never clear to me how they were supposed to work together.)

Quote from: Akrasia;868965:confused:

I don't recall that ever happening.

They might have meant with spelljamer or planescape. Both of which I kinda resented for trying to make my fully formed favorite world "merely" a subset of a larger one.

Btw, can we get a link for Chris Perkins audio?

I think it creates a lot of problems. For one thing, it diminishes every setting. A great world-shaking threat in one setting has much lower stakes when you can just hop to new setting.

There is also the question of interaction between settings. If you have elements of one setting crossing over with another, you upset fans of a single setting because you are diluting it. On the other hand, if you link all the settings, yet don't have any crossover effects, the whole idea feels empty.

That's without even getting into cosmology and religion.

I also agree with your concern that adding a linking setting is just creating one more setting that needs to take up space in the production queue.

Yeah in many ways it reminds me of the issues comics have with their myriad of realities of varying popularity and isolated gems that justify the existence of their otherwise barren worlds.

That's where the similarities end.

I'm a Spelljammer fan - I think the issue is better solved via Planescape, but again, it's creating new settings.

I agree that parsing things out to third-parties is a great idea, but it's clear based on the audio, they're never going to do that. At least not for a long time. None of these settings is getting a full development team. I think that's a mistake, unless they're trying to get people to be extraordinarily hungry for meatier content.

But doing that will insure that the less popular settings will ever get a chance.

Quote from: tenbones;868946So I listened to the Chris Perkins audio... and my takeaway is that D&D is simply too big to dedicate to all of its flavored settings.

Could you imagine if Marvel said "well, we can't make a Captain America movie because that would distract us from Iron Man; and we definitely can't make a Daredevil netflix show because that would dilute the brand"?

Quote from: RPGPundit;868984Could you imagine if Marvel said "well, we can't make a Captain America movie because that would distract us from Iron Man; and we definitely can't make a Daredevil netflix show because that would dilute the brand"?

Yeah those all happen in the same universe and cross over all the time. Each character adds to the overall setting, promoting all of the others.

So I could totally see WotC absorbing Dark Sun, Ravenloft etc... into the monolith that is the Forgotten Realms. Why not?

I would be a bit sad, but I still have all of my old AD&D 2e books.

Necrozius nails it. That's exactly why the Marvel Cinematic Universe *IS* a syncretic amalgamation of all their two most popular universes - the 616 and Ultimate Universe, with sprinklings of elements from others and outright removal of others.

Why not combine Spelljammer and Planescape into a single cosmology? Merge outer space/Phlogiston with the transitive planes and make the other planes synonymous with planets/crystal spheres. Then place all the other settings as planes/planets within it.

Want to visit the inner or outer planes? Walk through a gate or sail an airship.

What's sad is that publishing costs have dropped a lot since AD&D 2E when we had the largest number of supported settings. I'm also not a fan of using the adventures as system delivery....systems.

It's also a little weird to think that D&D is so large that we cannot support all of the settings. I think if they used settings as a single book campaign setting, and made each of them different enough in content/rule systems you could get cross over. Include mass combat rules in Birthright and so on.

Quote from: RPGPundit;868984Could you imagine if Marvel said "well, we can't make a Captain America movie because that would distract us from Iron Man; and we definitely can't make a Daredevil netflix show because that would dilute the brand"?

Thats about what does happen sometimes. The networks impose some pretty crazy limitations on Marvel and DC. Its why you dont see some major characters in one movie because it would "dilute" another proposed movie. Or because Marvel and DC have sold off the rights to competing studios.