Quote from: Armchair Gamer;838483You missed Mearls' declaration this spring: "D&D product BAD!"

  All right, so that's a bit of an overstatement, but he did say that "the high volume release schedule for 3E and 4E turned out to be bad for D&D". And apparently the response to that is to do virtually no product beyond adventure paths.

  However, this might just be making a virtue of necessity--it's unclear if they have the resources to do more than an Adventure Path every 6 months or so.

It worked for Paizo before they made Pathfinder, in fact, I daresay it still does.  The only difference is that Paizo piecemeal's their adventures.  Giving you twenty dollar chunks at a decently fast clip.

Quote from: Opaopajr;838155They did fuck up the Forgotten Realms but good in 4e.

And if wiping the slate clean for the Forgotten Realms and wiping out most of the overly leveled NPCs and silly setting bloat is a 'bad thing' for FR, give me more of it.  I do not buy setting books to play a themepark, where the big NPC's give my players little 'safe' chunks of the setting.  My players are the stars, not some novel's main protagonist.

Especially not a self-insertion male fantasy who shags every female apprentice he's ever had, and has the Goddess of Magic herself on speed dial, thank you.

Quote from: Sommerjon;838485The talk about modularity for 5e was a way to get more people interested into the playtest.  They never had any intentions of actually implementing modularity.

The best quote from that link kobayashi posted.

But it doesn't have to be?

You could publish a low magic S&S setting for D&D using some of the guidance from the DMG. Likewise a high magic "faey" campaign or epic fantasy or whatever.

Do we really need to rehash the same old Greyhawk, FR, blah blah... especially when those two in particualr are pretty much interchangeable generic D&D space.

Currently popular fantasy seems to be
High Fantasy (LotR)
Grimdark low magic (GoT)
Young Adult (Twilight and imitators)
Sword and Sandals (Clash of the Titans, 300, etc)
Harry Potter

The attempt at Plantary stuff failed with John Carter and the Sword and Sorcery reviving of Conan might just have failed cos it was a bit crap.

D&D out of the box with it's races and high magic really only covers the High Fantasy option. Yes you can play it in other ways but you probably need some RPG mileage under your belt to knwo what to tweak.

I would look to introduce a new setting every six months. I would do it through a book with a foldout map or a box set with much the same content + an adventure path.
If it takes off grow it if it withers then move on.

Alternatively allow 3rd party publishers to generate settings and eliminate the risk.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;838998And if wiping the slate clean for the Forgotten Realms and wiping out most of the overly leveled NPCs and silly setting bloat is a 'bad thing' for FR, give me more of it.  I do not buy setting books to play a themepark, where the big NPC's give my players little 'safe' chunks of the setting.  My players are the stars, not some novel's main protagonist.

Especially not a self-insertion male fantasy who shags every female apprentice he's ever had, and has the Goddess of Magic herself on speed dial, thank you.

As if high level NPCs are glued to the running of any FR campaign. What's next, you were forced to run metaplot? 4e wiped out geography, let alone nations, gods, and name-level characters.

I put those in order of my priority: geography>nations>gods>NPCs. When creating my campaigns they are ordered in accordance to how much work they save me. Scribbling up new NPCs is about the quickest thing you can do in game prep; wiping out land, with its connected geopolitical resources, landmarks, populations, and cultural histories, one of the longest.

Quote from: jibbajibba;839016But it doesn't have to be?

You could publish a low magic S&S setting for D&D using some of the guidance from the DMG. Likewise a high magic "faey" campaign or epic fantasy or whatever.

Do we really need to rehash the same old Greyhawk, FR, blah blah... especially when those two in particualr are pretty much interchangeable generic D&D space.

Currently popular fantasy seems to be
High Fantasy (LotR)
Grimdark low magic (GoT)
Young Adult (Twilight and imitators)
Sword and Sandals (Clash of the Titans, 300, etc)
Harry Potter

The attempt at Plantary stuff failed with John Carter and the Sword and Sorcery reviving of Conan might just have failed cos it was a bit crap.

D&D out of the box with it's races and high magic really only covers the High Fantasy option. Yes you can play it in other ways but you probably need some RPG mileage under your belt to knwo what to tweak.

I would look to introduce a new setting every six months. I would do it through a book with a foldout map or a box set with much the same content + an adventure path.
If it takes off grow it if it withers then move on.

Alternatively allow 3rd party publishers to generate settings and eliminate the risk.

5e can't do low magic.  How many classes have access to spells?

Quote from: Opaopajr;839024As if high level NPCs are glued to the running of any FR campaign. What's next, you were forced to run metaplot? 4e wiped out geography, let alone nations, gods, and name-level characters.

The metaplot was written INTO the source books, so yes, you WERE forced to run it, whether or not you wanted to, or apparently, even realized you were.  Unless of course, you only ever bought one book, and made everything else up, then that's fine.

Unfortunately, you sometimes get players (Like I did) that love the setting and the NPC and don't want the GM to change anything.  Bear in mind this isn't the player being over bearing, but having certain expectations.  Which most players have no matter what the setting.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;839062The metaplot was written INTO the source books, so yes, you WERE forced to run it, whether or not you wanted to, or apparently, even realized you were.  Unless of course, you only ever bought one book, and made everything else up, then that's fine.

Unfortunately, you sometimes get players (Like I did) that love the setting and the NPC and don't want the GM to change anything.  Bear in mind this isn't the player being over bearing, but having certain expectations.  Which most players have no matter what the setting.

I am currently reading the sourcebooks. The NPCs are in blurbs of the History chapter, and then show up as holders of power. And that's as easy to edit out as every other single NPC. You are in no way forced to run it.

(Unless you're talking about published modules/adventures. But I put about as much stock into published RPG adventures as I do wet toilet paper. Most of the ones I've seen, for just about every system, blow chunks. More blowing of chunks for oft bad products does little to worry me.)

As for getting players who want to run your setting for you, that's everywhere. You get that habit showing up during chargen, with elaborate backgrounds conveniently fleshing out their space. Canon masters are just another variant on the same "I wanna run your campaign" player. You tamp down on that shit like everything else: NIMBY. Your PC is in my house (campaign), keep your background simple and throw out your canon expectations, like it or walk.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;839062Unfortunately, you sometimes get players (Like I did) that love the setting and the NPC and don't want the GM to change anything.  Bear in mind this isn't the player being over bearing, but having certain expectations.  Which most players have no matter what the setting.

Nothing wrong with having expectations, on either side. If the player and the DM don't agree, no game, no harm, no foul.

Quote from: jibbajibba;838309I have mentioned before Licensed settings from novels movies etc would be far more interesting and with rule tweaks could give us some of that modularity that 5e talked about a lot at the start.

I've never felt licensed settings were a good direction for D&D. D&D is fun, but it has its own particular reality that doesn't match well with almost anything else. I can just accept D&Ds quirks when I play it in a setting of its own. When you try and use it for some book or movie setting though, it calls attention to D&Ds eccentricities and makes them feel like flaws.

Quote from: Omega;838440I'd have loved to have seen a new setting, or at least something other than Forgotten Realms again. But they seem to infatuated with the setting and particularly Drizzt. Someone quipped that 6th ed will be called "Dungeons & Drizzt"...

You really think they would place Drizzt second in that formulation?

Quote from: RPGPundit;838995I think that what's really bad for D&D is rules bloat.  After books totally dedicated to rules bloat (like the class splatbooks, etc.), setting books tend to be the biggest source of rules bloat, since for some damn reason these books in later editions of D&D seem to feel obliged to provide dozens of new spells, powers, classes, etc./whatever, in every release.

I think setting books that DIDN'T do that would be good.

To be more specific, they need to stay the hell away from player facing bloat, which all the things you mentioned ("new spells, powers, classes") are.

Player bloat is biggest game killer. Players get hit with buyer's remorse about the character they made when every month provides some new option they would have taken if it had been available then. Making new characters becomes a chore even for experienced players, and a turn-off for new players. Then the GM has to keep up with all of this stuff.

If they really need to add new stuff, then monsters and magic items are a little better. They can actually serve as creative boosts to a GM, and they are easy to take or leave.

Quote from: RPGPundit;838995I think setting books that DIDN'T do that would be good.

Yeah, that is what I'd really like to see. As a long-time Rifts fan I am all too familiar with the plague that is power creep.

Quote from: RPGPundit;838995I think that what's really bad for D&D is rules bloat.  After books totally dedicated to rules bloat (like the class splatbooks, etc.), setting books tend to be the biggest source of rules bloat, since for some damn reason these books in later editions of D&D seem to feel obliged to provide dozens of new spells, powers, classes, etc./whatever, in every release.

I think setting books that DIDN'T do that would be good.

Got to say that the 1e Greyhawk book which had the spells for Bigby, Tenser, Rary etc was excellent and those are probably my favourite spells in the D&D system.

Quote from: Sommerjon;8390405e can't do low magic.  How many classes have access to spells?

You don't think you could run 5e with just Champions, Assassins, Thieves, Barbarians and  BattleMasters. I think you could easily.

I aslo think you could produce non-magical Bard, Monk, Paladin and Ranger subclasses for that setting as well (well actually subclasses of Rogue/Fighter/Barbarian that mapped to these character types) . If you wanted to.

July survey asked about campaign settings players would like to see come back, so the topic is at least on their minds.

Quote from: FaerieGodfather;839153July survey asked about campaign settings players would like to see come back, so the topic is at least on their minds.

Thanks for the reminder! Went there and took the survey. I want almost all the settings back. But I wasn't interested in new races or characters. If they can supply the majority of all that through setting backgrounds and equipment all the better.

Go take the survey people!

The campaign settings are in your imagination, man!


Or the OSR.  There's a lot of them in the OSR, lately.

Sometimes the blank canvas needs a model to fire the imagination.