Community

The thing is...i am trying to see if there is a big interest on settings book around the net recently...and is not.  I have a weird way to research interest of people...and it is by magnitude of piracy...There is no piracy of Menzoberranzan City of Intrigue at all...and there is only like 2 people in the internet asking for PDF of that book...nobody cares about those books, and i think the same will happend to the new Ed's Forgotten Realms book, nobody seem to care.

Sorry to inform you...but interest for pure flavor/fluff/settings content and low or non existent crunch is a extremly gimmick market, even if it's edition neutral.  Most players don't want to play somebody else settings and world, they prefer to make their own world, the ratio of interest on playing on a published world/settings is getting smaller and smaller over the years, because people prefer to frankenstein a homebrew world filling it with tropes from all kind of sources.

Oct 24, 2012 -- 7:53PM, mexrage wrote:

The thing is...i am trying to see if there is a big interest on settings book around the net recently...and is not.  I have a weird way to research interest of people...and it is by magnitude of piracy...There is no piracy of Menzoberranzan City of Intrigue at all...and there is only like 2 people in the internet asking for PDF of that book...nobody cares about those books, and i think the same will happend to the new Ed's Forgotten Realms book, nobody seem to care.

Sorry to inform you...but interest for pure flavor/fluff/settings content and low or non existent crunch is a extremly gimmick market, even if it's edition neutral.  Most players don't want to play somebody else settings and world, they prefer to make their own world, the ratio of interest on playing on a published world/settings is getting smaller and smaller over the years, because people prefer to frankenstein a homebrew world filling it with tropes from all kind of sources.

Damn. That's disappointing.

I'd much rather play in a published world; most of the time.

I've done homebrew, and I'm far more interested in Ravenloft and Forgotten Realms and Planescape, And if there was a decent book for it I would also play Lorwyn. I don't mind Golarion either, and Golarion is getting tons of sales.

I don't think its a matter of people don't like settings, I think it's a matter of many people having stopped following Forgotten Realms products after the 4e version came out. It's no secret how poorly the setting went over with fans of the setting. Wizards lost many customers with the 4e version.

Points of Light is most definitely not a complete setting.

Out of all the people around the circles I know in my city (which includes a large gaming club), I only know of one 4e group, and I know well over a hundred RPG Gamers in my city.

You do see a lot of homebrew settings. They've always been the most common choice. The "spend less money" choice. Nobody uses the "partly finished settings" that I have met, though. If they aren't using a published setting overall, they don't use a published setting period. The next most common thing I've seen is people using Pathfinder's Golarion setting.

I haven't seen anyone use Forgotten Realms besides myself since before 2008.

But gaming circles in different cities can be quite different, so my city *may* not be indicative of the general trend.

I really don't care if you think I'm a grognard. I started playing D&D in Highschool, and I'm 24 and just finished University. That means I now have more of a disposable income than the highschool students who play it, and I'm willing to buy more books. I don't *only* like some old edition of D&D. I have several other games as well: Mutants and Masterminds, RuneQuest 6, Mongoose' Legend, World of Darkness Classic, new World of Darkness, Song of Ice and Fire, Dresden Files, Ghosts of Albion, Buffy/Angel, and All Flesh Must Be Eaten. I didn't care for 4e, I don't like Savage Worlds, and I'm not a big fan of (but would play it if the group was good) the system used in the Smallville RPG (and Marvel Heroic Roleplaying) 

I can understand that some people feel they need a skeleton of a setting but don't need a full setting. The people I know who don't use a published setting generally design the skeleton framework themselves too. Most of the skeletons those GMs come up with are quite different than "PoL".

The DM and Players can add their own stories into a published setting, but yes, the players generally don't have the handwaving power to make up the culture for a country. That consistency, and the ability for all the players to be familiar with the setting in advance is another strength.

Published settings are generally used by GMs who want a very detailed setting that don't want to have to sit down and build a very detailed setting.

I really don't believe that having a detailed setting, and therefore not making it up on the fly is a weakness. It's just a different way to play the game. Calling it a weakness is just as annoying as someone saying you're RPing wrong when you do things your way. Having tried it, I did not enjoy Points of Light. I've played in other homebrew games where the GM was making things up on the fly, and sometimes I have enjoyed it. I found the skeleton of Points of Light rather bland, and I didn't like the sort of world it produced.

As for the people who never use published settings? Many of them don't buy more than the core books to the game either - Often because of insufficient spending money, but not always. They skim or borrow rulebooks from the other players in the group. Those players are likely not the ones who will be buying various splat books.

Additionally, the people who only buy books with player options likely never GM - and they're not so likely to buy any of the books geared toward GMs. They probably don't buy most of the Monster Manuals either.