History, mainly. The corporate need to sell more core books because that seems to be the real cash cow. 1977-1989. 1989-2000. 2000-2008. 2008-2014. There is a very established pattern here, and too many gaming companies seem to follow it. I desperately hope I am wrong and that every setting gets a treatment. Goodness knows I'd love to pick up a few of these myself, even though I have no interest in playing 5th edition.

Quote from: Voros;972269Jeff Grubb just posted an interesting story about the attempt to bring the Known World into 2e and renaming it Mystara.

This makes younger me very sad. Known world (through the Hollow World box set) was my entry to D&D, and I loved the 2nd edition rule set at the time. Makes me wonder how things would of turned out if Grubb's Mystara would of come out.

Quote from: Harlock;973325History, mainly. The corporate need to sell more core books because that seems to be the real cash cow. 1977-1989. 1989-2000. 2000-2008. 2008-2014. There is a very established pattern here, and too many gaming companies seem to follow it. I desperately hope I am wrong and that every setting gets a treatment. Goodness knows I'd love to pick up a few of these myself, even though I have no interest in playing 5th edition.

I think Hasbro has lost interest in the relatively teeny tiny profits of selling RPG books. They're more interested in maintaining the brand for video games and movies and at least for now allowing the system to be sustained by those who give a shit about it.

Quote from: Voros;973416I think Hasbro has lost interest in the relatively teeny tiny profits of selling RPG books. They're more interested in maintaining the brand for video games and movies and at least for now allowing the system to be sustained by those who give a shit about it.

I sure hope you are right. They seem to have brought back many fans, which is great for them and I think gaming as a whole. I have no skin in this game, however, as 4th edition soured me and 5th edition wasn't as much as return to D&D's roots as I'd have liked, so I didn't even buy it.

At any rate, the healthier the brand and the longer they can keep a consistent ruleset out there without a severe revision, the better for just about any D&D fan, even ones like me not playing 5th. I do like source material, and seeing Mystara, Hollow World and Blackmoor get a setting book with bestiary would tickle me pink.

Quote from: Voros;973416I think Hasbro has lost interest in the relatively teeny tiny profits of selling RPG books. They're more interested in maintaining the brand for video games and movies and at least for now allowing the system to be sustained by those who give a shit about it.

This makes no sense.

You can only maintain the brand by doing things that the core hobby membership continues to embrace over time. That core membership in turn gets non-gamers interested to a lesser or greater degree.

Now a Mystara book / project of some kind may or may not be a key component of that maintenance, but producing books (in general) absolutely is.

Quote from: Motorskills;973566This makes no sense.

You can only maintain the brand by doing things that the core hobby membership continues to embrace over time. That core membership in turn gets non-gamers interested to a lesser or greater degree.

Now a Mystara book / project of some kind may or may not be a key component of that maintenance, but producing books (in general) absolutely is.

There are many theories on this, both in terms of the right course of action and what WotC will do and their motivations. There is a theory that each edition has died when too much publication has caused too much bloat, making the final product of all the purchases move too far from the entry level game. WotC's stated goal is to keep 5e evergreen. They claim that this is the reason for their very slow and selective official product release schedule.

A side issue is that a lot of people seem to believe that the 2e/TSR act of releasing a whole lot of different campaign settings did not in fact increase player purchases or number of players, but instead merely fragmented the base, each buying the same number of books, split between a greater number of separate material for each separate setting (each one expensive to produce, garnering TSR no more revenue, but higher production cost).

So it may well be that WotC is attempting to release as little as possible, and branching out into differing game worlds only as much as they need to so as to keep people on the line.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;973575There are many theories on this, both in terms of the right course of action and what WotC will do and their motivations. There is a theory that each edition has died when too much publication has caused too much bloat, making the final product of all the purchases move too far from the entry level game. WotC's stated goal is to keep 5e evergreen. They claim that this is the reason for their very slow and selective official product release schedule.

A side issue is that a lot of people seem to believe that the 2e/TSR act of releasing a whole lot of different campaign settings did not in fact increase player purchases or number of players, but instead merely fragmented the base, each buying the same number of books, split between a greater number of separate material for each separate setting (each one expensive to produce, garnering TSR now more revenue, but higher production cost).

I think there were a lot of factors, but fractionation was certainly one of the key ones.

QuoteSo it may well be that WotC is attempting to release as little as possible, and branching out into differing game worlds only as much as they need to so as to keep people on the line.

But the issue I have with this is that you are equating the first part of this sentence with the second.

I think WOTC will be very careful about releasing books for new worlds, I envisage maybe one only every eighteen months or so, and likely not for another couple of years yet.
And the format of those books will be carefully designed, I envisage a Yawning Portal kind of thing, allowing people to step their characters in and out of these worlds, as well as run campaigns set solely there.

But those are total guesses on my part.


However none of that equates to WOTC releasing as little as possible. There's been no evidence of that to date, and I doubt we will see evidence of that in the future.

Quote from: Motorskills;973616However none of that equates to WOTC releasing as little as possible. There's been no evidence of that to date, and I doubt we will see evidence of that in the future.

There's been no evidence of WotC releasing as little as possible? Then what the heck have people been complaining about for the past 3 years regarding the slow release schedule?

Quote from: Willie the Duck;973625There's been no evidence of WotC releasing as little as possible? Then what the heck have people been complaining about for the past 3 years regarding the slow release schedule?

People have been complaining, I don't disagree. Their desire for WOTC to release four books a month, rather than four books a year, doesn't mean WOTC have been releasing "as slow as possible". They have been very clear about their measured and controlled release strategy.

That makes the sorta-announcement of other world books in the future a welcome development, if not necessarily a complete surprise. The discussion will focus on how this will be executed.

Quote from: Voros;972230I never allowed multiclassing or dual classing after 1e convinced me they only existed to satisfy powergamers. Flying cities, different cosmology, etc is no further away from default 5e than Dark Sun or Birthright.

A tangent, but a few years ago I came to the realization that multi classing exists so that non-human PCs advancement is slowed. Essentially, if you use the level caps, your elves and dwarves will cap out while the human PCs keep going. By multi classing, the nonhumans advancement is slowed significantly, as their XP is split among their classes. So they're still advancing and getting new abilities along with the human PCs.

Quote from: Herne's Son;973648A tangent, but a few years ago I came to the realization that multi classing exists so that non-human PCs advancement is slowed. Essentially, if you use the level caps, your elves and dwarves will cap out while the human PCs keep going. By multi classing, the nonhumans advancement is slowed significantly, as their XP is split among their classes. So they're still advancing and getting new abilities along with the human PCs.

I always assumed that was the original reason for multiclasses and level limits on hobbits, etc. Was that not so in the beginning? I haven't looked at my D&D stuff in a couple of years.

Quote from: Dumarest;973795I always assumed that was the original reason for multiclasses and level limits on hobbits, etc. Was that not so in the beginning? I haven't looked at my D&D stuff in a couple of years.

Level limits were indeed originally designed as a way of making D&D a humanocentric game. That (I believe) was confirmed by EGG. Multiclassing in OD&D was only formalized for elves (although theoretically anyone could). Whether the point of multiclassing (especially vs. dual classing) was to specifically to slow demihuman advancement or just a continuation of earlier concepts (the first multiclassing happened with demihumans and the first dual classing with human characters), is probably speculation on our parts.

I think it really depends on how much you believe 1e AD&D was designed with such principles in mind, and how much was just "this works."

Quote from: Harlock;973092I was a big fan of Mike's from the 3e days and the work he did on d20 projects. I just don't think 5e is going to last long enough for that to happen. Sorry if I am pessimistic about Hasbro's intentions with D&D. They haven't impressed me so far.

Compare where 3e was, in terms of products, at this point in their history vs. 5e.  The main detail of 5e is that they've managed to successfully resist Rules Bloat. They haven't added 50 billion new classes and feats or even spells.  Their focus for books beyond the core has been entirely on campaign/adventure material.

So this is what gives me hope that 3e can potentially be a much more evergreen product than the previous WoTC edition.  Of course, none of that precludes the possible disaster of some corporate overlord with no understanding of RPGs deciding from on high that they should release a totally new edition with some hip new ideas or whatever.