I found this at ENWorld an thought you guys would be intrigued to say the least. I can’t wait to see what other setting fanboys like myself (hint...Cameron) feel about this, especially after the discussion of the possible failing of DDI. http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=224516
The Gamer Dome has a Forgotten Realms scoop from the GAMA trade show:
Forgotten Realms 4e is three books, period, done, end of line: Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, Player’s Guide to FR, and DM’s Guide to FR. All settings will be done like that, one per year, until they run out of settings. They mentioned Greyhawk, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, and Spelljammer as settings on their list! Eberron, of course, is the ‘09 setting release (same three books), but it will also get DDI updates starting in June.
WotC’s Chris Sims comments here on The Gamer Dome’s information:
... the news bite is wrong. The three books are: Campaign Guide (DM), Player’s Guide (players, and DM for good measure), and Adventure (everyone). Check the 2008 Wizards D&D Product Release Schedule for FR game product.
And the fact that a setting is “on the list” shouldn’t be taken as “Wizards is definitely publishing this setting.” It just means the setting is on the list for possible future use.
From a player’s perspective, there is only one book...ever, per campaign setting. The DM will be in for a greater burden at 3 per setting. It sounds like 4e might mean less books in general for players, but about the same for DMs...although, I could be wrong.
Here’s the problem: support for released campaigns will suffer as they devote resources used to develop those campaigns to new campaigns.
I guess it’s a matter of perspective: do you prefer a few campaigns covered in depth, or several campaigns covered lightly.
I think the guys at Athas.org have been doing a great job with the Dark Sun campaign. I wonder if WotC will take that work and package it, or throw it away in a bout of “not invented here”.
I have mixed feelings about this. On one side I really like this because it lets me buy into all of my favorite classic settings like Dark Sun, Mystara and Planescape without having to keep up with a lot of splat books. The downside is that for settings that I really love, I want some new books to come out once in a while. I guess, we’ll have to wait and see.
I’m not sold that those will be the only three books for settings ever. There’s nothing to convince me otherwise given D&D’s long history with numerous splat books per setting.
That said - with all the good things that have come out for Eberron (all like 10 books), I’d be miffed to lose even a bit of that information for that setting. That said - the initial intro to a setting being three books is interesting. I’m not sure I’ll need that third book (Adventure). I have both FRCS and PGtF as I felt they were both necessary for DMing in FR. I’m an Eberron fanboy, though, and have all of those.
The DDI updates and add ons will probably be much more plentiful than now to keep subscriptions growing and not stagnant. I anticipate/hope that the bulk of setting material will be online.
As for the player needing only one book, I am sure they will have campaign players guides as one of those three, no?
The DDI updates and addons will probably be much more plentiful than now to keep subscriptions growing and not stagnant. I anticipate/hope that the bulk of setting material will be online.
Could you please point me to the source of your optimism?
Because I haven’t seen or heard anything that indicates there will be anything exclusive to DDI or more plentiful than what we saw with v3.x.
