Dungeons & Dragons’ Jeremy Crawford explains why there have not been extra marketing campaign setting-specific books.
Dungeons & Dragons doesn’t view the latest revivals of Spelljammer, Planescape, and different marketing campaign settings as “one-shots” and plans to revisit a minimum of a few of these worlds sooner or later. At Gen Con earlier this month, ComicBook.com had the prospect to talk with D&D lead guidelines designer Jeremy Crawford in a wide-ranging interview about the way forward for Dungeons & Dragons within the midst of planning for the 2024 guidelines revisions. During the interview, ComicBook.com requested about D&D’s plans for its marketing campaign settings, particularly as Wizards of the Coast “revisited” many basic settings comparable to Planescape, Spelljammer, and Ravenloft in recent times. “Our campaign setting books are very popular,” Crawford mentioned. “People love the setting books that we’ve done, whether they’re classic ones or new ones from Magic: the Gathering. And they’re often among our most popular books.”
Crawford additionally said that he did not have a look at the latest marketing campaign setting books as “one-shots,” and that there have been plans to return to lots of the marketing campaign settings sooner or later. “We love [the campaign setting books], because they help highlight just how wonderfully rich D&D is,” Crawford mentioned. “They highlight that D&D can be gothic horror. D&D can be fantasy in space. D&D can be trippy adventures in the afterlife, in terms of Planescape. D&D can be classic high fantasy, in the form of the Forgotten Realms. It can be sort of a steampunk-like fantasy, like in Eberron. We feel it’s vital to visit these settings, to tell stories in them. And we look forward to returning to them. So we do not view these as one-shots.”
In truth, Crawford famous that the upcoming 2024 guidelines revision gives extra alternatives to re-visit these worlds, partly as a result of the D&D design workforce would not should maintain going again to re-make sure guidelines methods or rulebooks transferring ahead. “This is another boon of the rules revision. It means we can just keep journeying in the multiverse,” Crawford mentioned. “Rather than sort of having to reset the clock, [the rules revisions] means then we can return and do different things the next time we visit a setting, look at it through a different angle, explore different parts of the setting, dig deeper in certain areas than we did before. If you imagine Fifth Edition as a D&D campaign, it means the campaign can keep going. So we are going to get to high level and see things that we haven’t seen before.”
ComicBook.com additionally requested in regards to the launch timing relating to a few of these marketing campaign setting books, as Eberron, Dragonlance, and Spelljammer have barely been revisited since their preliminary marketing campaign setting books have been launched in Fifth Edition. Crawford famous that a part of the problem is that the D&D design workforce needs gamers to really use the fabric they publish as a substitute of flooding the market with too many books. “
We’re also mindful of how much content can people actually use in any given year,” Crawford mentioned when requested why there wasn’t extra help for these marketing campaign settings. “Like many people, I love deep dives into various settings because I’m a D&D fan first. I’ve been a D&D fan since I was six years old. It’s so fun to get all of that detail. But we also know after years of looking at groups’ play patterns, if we give you too much information, really all we’ve done is given you a bunch of material you have no time to use. So our approach is to spread it out more, to give people time to actually play the adventures they bought, to actually visit the campaign setting that they just acquired.”
Crawford notes that the D&D launch schedule is structured in order that gamers can’t solely learn the fabric however play it, which differs from different durations in D&D historical past. “Our approach to how we design for the game and how we plan out the books for it is a play-first approach,” Crawford mentioned. “At certain times in D&D’s history, it’s really been a read-first approach. Because we’ve had points in our history where we were producing so many books each year, there was no way anyone could play all of it. In some years it would be hard to play even a small percentage of the number of things that come out. Because we have a play-first approach, we want to make sure we’re coming out with things at a pace where if you really wanted to, and even that would require a lot of weekends and evenings dedicated to D&D play, you could play a lot of it.”
The play-first strategy to the D&D launch schedule is crucial to the D&D workforce, as a result of they really feel the sport is strongest when it is really performed. “We feel that the real magic of D&D happens at the table,” Crawford mentioned. “As much as we love creating these books, we love reading them…we’re DMs. We also experience the joy of preparing for adventures and building campaign settings. As fun as all of that is, the real alchemy, the wonder that beats at the heart of D&D, happens when you’re playing it. Because that’s when those stories arise that no one imagined when they were preparing for the game. That’s when there are those moments that surprise even the Dungeon Master and make people gasp or cry or laugh, or shudder in terror if it’s a horror game. And so for us, that’s why play is so important. Because that is the heart of the entire game.”
Discussion about this post