Spelljammer coming for 5e!!!!!!


4th Edition

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According to this article at EN World, Spelljammer "isn't at the front of the line, but it is in line."

That's all. If you need me I'll be in the corner doing my happy dance. :)


...

I may just pick that up.


So, instead of settings... we're getting "storylines" consisting of a player guide, a DM guide, and an adventure book... BLEAH. Didn't they learn sodding ANYTHING from the debacles of their 4th edition launches of Forgotten Realms and Dark Sun, which followed exactly this pattern?

Apparently not. Either you start new settings because you intend to support them, or you do it because you can squeeze a little more money out of a well known brand. Well, it makes the decision not to support the crap so much easier. *smirks*

Liberty's Edge

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The same posters doing the same edition warring. Surprise, surprise. As if you planned to even support 5E in any way shape or form in the first place.


I like the sound of tying adventures to sourcebooks - I was a big fan when paizo shifted to that approach and I hope WotC have similar success. I get much more value out of sourcebooks which tie in to other concurrent releases rather than just standalone books of options (which I tend to flip through and then put on the shelf).


If it gets released as a PDF I'll definitely pick it up.
If it is hardcopy only I'll have to wait for reviews.


Sissyl wrote:

So, instead of settings... we're getting "storylines" consisting of a player guide, a DM guide, and an adventure book... BLEAH. Didn't they learn sodding ANYTHING from the debacles of their 4th edition launches of Forgotten Realms and Dark Sun, which followed exactly this pattern?

Apparently not. Either you start new settings because you intend to support them, or you do it because you can squeeze a little more money out of a well known brand. Well, it makes the decision not to support the crap so much easier. *smirks*

See, from my point of view, I don't think that WOTC need to "start" the setting of Spelljammer. It was already started 20+ years ago. They just need to make the background stuff available online (which they largely have). To throw support behind it now they need to release a conversion guide (which they say they will), maybe have a small Spelljammer 5e guide, then release a players guide with some mechanical stuff and some fluff and an adventure showcasing the setting including some GM appropriate stuff.

As far as support after ( or before) that is concerned - modules ( either from WOTC or more likely 3p) and the sort of material that used to be in Dungeon & Dragon magazines (digital if that fits the economic model) would be what I would want.

Don't get me wrong if I was a big Spelljammer fan I would want them to produce lots of Spelljammer stuff ( that's what fans want). I am more a Greyhawk fan and I could start a classic Greyhawk campaign right now - without anything more from WOTC ( though I would like the DMG, more monster manuals and a conversion guide - but I don't need any more greyhawk setting stuff - it's out there).

They also don't need to start Darksun, Ravenloft Dragonlance or birthright either. ( let's face it hoard of the dragon queen could probably be adapted to dragonlance post war of the lance pretty easily.)

I have never played or owned Spelljammer in my life, but if a 5e adventure I was interested In came out I could fork out between $10 and $40 at rpgnow and get a chunk of it. Then I would know the setting and could run it.


But according to their plan, you would then not have more Spelljammer products at all. Would this affect your willingness to invest those 10-40$?

I did plan on getting their stuff. I have gotten the PHB, MM and HotDQ. But if they intend what seems to be the case here (wringing what money they can out of well-known brands with no intention of supporting them after the initial two or three books), they can do just fine without my money.


Sissyl wrote:

But according to their plan, you would then not have more Spelljammer products at all. Would this affect your willingness to invest those 10-40$?

I did plan on getting their stuff. I have gotten the PHB, MM and HotDQ. But if they intend what seems to be the case here (wringing what money they can out of well-known brands with no intention of supporting them after the initial two or three books), they can do just fine without my money.

I don't agree that that is their stated plan. Their plan as I understand it is to release 2 stories a year - with some support for each story. That doesn't mean once a story is released they will not touch the setting again, or that they will not allow 3pp to do so, or that there will be no other source of new adventures for that setting.

But, hypothetically, if they released a Spelljammer story - with the support they have referred to and only that - nothing more & all 3pp support or future module support for that setting prohibited into the future. I would be less interested than if they produced a swathe of new material. But if it was a good enough story & I wanted to run it I might buy the background stuff. It's pretty good value.

But that wasn't my point - my point was in response to you saying they are planning to "start" a setting then abandon it. They ain't starting any of those settings, they are adding stories to settings that already exist, the settings already have stories. If you liked the old ones you can convert them to 5e and here are some new stories - some new support for an old setting.

During the time of 4e iirc the old settings weren't available online. Now they are. That makes a difference as to what WOTC need to do with a setting. Then they needed to entirely explain and support the setting. Now they just need to add to a setting. It's already there.


Sissyl wrote:
But if they intend what seems to be the case here (wringing what money they can out of well-known brands with no intention of supporting them after the initial two or three books)...

I didnt read it the same way (although I actually think it would make sense to take this approach with the less popular settings).

I thought they were speaking about the adventure theme being supported by a sourcebook for players and a sourcebook for DMs - so as the stories you were interested in came out, you could gradually build up a library of those sourcebooks/splatbooks which interested you.

I thought the comment about settings was a separate strand of the conversation, rather than being an example of the kind of story they're talking about.

It remains to be seen though - they may well follow their 4E approach (of limited hardcopy releases with digital support going forward), which would be annoying. I suspect they dont really have the staff levels for that though.


I'd LOVE this approach if the campaigns were more sandboxy. I'd much rather "learn" a setting through a particular adventure than through "reading the encyclopedia" of a setting book, but the adventures have to be good. Like how (what later became known as) Mystara was gradually revealed through modules. I don't want a "story line", I want a populated map and random tables. I love the Lost Mine of Phandelver for example.

Liberty's Edge

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Why then assume the worst. I can understand being unhappy if they dropped the ball on 5E settings. The 5E DMG is not even out. How about we actually wait and see what they do first.

If they release too many books posters will cry "bloat" as we have seen on these forums. Too little and the same may happen. Wotc can't win sometimes. I would be surprised to see say Forgotten Realms get little support. The more popular and profitable settings shoud get more support imo. Less popular the least.


Now that is just disingenious. Nobody complained, ever, about adventure bloat. What I am asking for is just that they find some number of settings and make interesting stuff for them, not just splurge out massive numbers of feats, prestige classes and races and then close the book on that edition. And no, nobody else is going to get to play in their settings through anything less than a licensing deal, we know this or can at least very safely assume so based on previous business practices. As for "digital support", I will believe it when I see it.


memorax wrote:
I would be surprised to see say Forgotten Realms get little support. The more popular and profitable settings shoud get more support imo. Less popular the least.

I agree. It's pretty clear that FR will continue to receive the bulk of the setting support, but I do hope that future published campaign arcs will dip into different classic settings over time. If they can keep up with their goal of two arcs per year, I would be happy to see one story per year set in the Realms, with the other in a new setting, like Eberron, Dragonlance, Planescape, Dark Sun, etc.

Mearls has said in interviews that Hasbro has become very interested in the D&D intellectual property, but that the brand recognition for the game itself is much higher than the brand awareness for the individual settings, including FR. So as long as the core IP (the D&D name, iconic monsters) are front and center, I could see the suits not being too concerned about detours into other settings if that's what the D&D team wants to do (and I think they do).

Shadow Lodge

The TSR settings that I'd love to see get some type of support under 5e are:

Greyhawk
Eberron
Mystara
Ravenloft


Southeast Jerome wrote:
memorax wrote:
I would be surprised to see say Forgotten Realms get little support. The more popular and profitable settings shoud get more support imo. Less popular the least.

I agree. It's pretty clear that FR will continue to receive the bulk of the setting support, but I do hope that future published campaign arcs will dip into different classic settings over time. If they can keep up with their goal of two arcs per year, I would be happy to see one story per year set in the Realms, with the other in a new setting, like Eberron, Dragonlance, Planescape, Dark Sun, etc.

Mearls has said in interviews that Hasbro has become very interested in the D&D intellectual property, but that the brand recognition for the game itself is much higher than the brand awareness for the individual settings, including FR. So as long as the core IP (the D&D name, iconic monsters) are front and center, I could see the suits not being too concerned about detours into other settings if that's what the D&D team wants to do (and I think they do).

complete disagreement here. If WotC wants to see any of my cash, they're going to have to put fr down for a few minutes and put something out for...say...Spelljammer which is, yknow, THE TOPIC OF THIS THREAD. FR heads and their tunnel vision...ugh.

Liberty's Edge

Freehold DM wrote:


complete disagreement here. If WotC wants to see any of my cash, they're going to have to put fr down for a few minutes and put something out for...say...Spelljammer which is, yknow, THE TOPIC OF THIS THREAD. FR heads and their tunnel vision...ugh.

It makes no sense to publish support for settings that will not sell very well. Do I wish they would yes. Should they as a company not at all. I don't want to see what we had with second edition where they released too many books for everything. Even if it sold poorly or had little fan support. Wotc has to balance releasing material for the more popular setting against the ones that are less popular imo.

Or to put it another way. If I had a place that sold donuts and I had four flavors that sold well. I add a fifth flavor and it sells poorly. I could keep selling the fifth flavor except I would be losing money by doing so.


I liked Spelljammer. It was pretty goofy, but the concept was neat.


You do realize this is a thread for spelljammer?

You are coming into a thread for spelljammer, talking about how it shouldn't be supported.

Not sure what you're trying to do here other than start a fight.

Liberty's Edge

Freehold DM wrote:

You do realize this is a thread for spelljammer?

You are coming into a thread for spelljammer, talking about how it shouldn't be supported.

Not sure what you're trying to do here other than start a fight.

I liked Spelljammer when it came out for second edition. I want to see support for it. If they re-release it for 5E and it does not sell well they may very well stop supporting it. Supporting a setting does not mean a company should lose money doing so. If I'm wrong and I want to be proven wrong and it sells well then it's a win situation.


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Guys...can we lay off the hostility?

What Mike Mearl proposes is almost exactly the same thing Paizo has done in the past. Release a AP, build products around supporting that AP. The mention of Psionics makes that pretty clear. I don't see anything saying that once they do a Spelljammer book, they will never touch it again.

Although to be fair, Spelljammer is probably niche enough that I don't see it getting heavily supported, regardless of what the 5E people did.

the ending comments from Mearls do support the idea that 5E overall will receive less material than 4E/3E did, since they are super concerned with bloat. I would also argue that simplified rulesets are harder to produce bloat, as mechanics are less laid down in stone. Although to be fair, I suspect there will be people yelling bloat at the Adventurers Handbook, since everyone has a different idea on what bloat is.


I think its cool that they plan to revisit many of the old 2e settings. Even if its just for a brief visit.

And of course, if they do return to one of these and it proves to be a huge success, then that would no doubt encourage them to produce even more product for it in the future.

By reintroducing some of these settings in small bites, they can test the waters and see how much enthusiasm they generate.

In the end, its the fans who will decide what they produce, as sales spikes in one area should lead to more product.

Liberty's Edge

I can see why they would want to be careful with the amount of releases. A reduced rate of releases if the quality is good I don't mind at all. I wonder if they will release Dragonlance as well.

Paizo Glitterati Robot

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Removed some back and forth argumentative posts. Please focus on discussing the topic here and be civil to each other.


This is definitely intersting to me as I'm currently running a 5th edition Spelljammer game. I'm not completely sold on the nature of the couple of releases before moving on, but it they lingered more on each setting, they would never end up getting to stuff like Spelljammer or they would be putting to way too much product for me to try to keep up with.


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I can see where Sissyl is coming from. It would be fantastic to see a return to 2e days where D&D supported lots and lots of settings with a steady stream of product for each.

Unfortunately D&D has contracted quite a bit since then and they don't appear to have the resources to produce on that scale. But that could always change if sales exceed their expectations (either in general or for specific relaunched settings).

But if it comes down to a choice between quality and quantity, I would prefer they go slow and concentrate on quality. In the end a couple of top-notch books are worth more than a slew of not-so-good hurriedly rushed ones.

Liberty's Edge

One of the reasons that TSR went under was because they came out with too many books. Even if a setting did poorly the devs were told to keep cranking out support no matter what. I rather not see that happen again. As more often than not the books were not that good. I prefer a slower release schedule that hopefully produces better quality books.


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The problem today is that every book must be 150+ hardbound pages of full colour to be published. Yes, even adventures. Paizo shows every month that while you keep to full colour, you can actually do with far smaller books. By comparison, TSR made 32-pages of black and white that worked fine. For good examples of it, try the various Volo's Guides.

Grand Lodge

Sissyl wrote:
TSR made 32-pages of black and white that worked fine.

I agree, and I would not have any problem had D&D and by extension, Pathfinder, kept to that model; in fact, several of the other games I play keep things simple as far as the art is concerned (like Chaosium's "Call of Cthulhu" for example).

That being said, TSR did publish the Monstrous Manual and all of the various Monstrous "supplements" afterward, in full color.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

The thing with Black and White is, people seemed to be spoiled and find B&W to equal an inferior product. I remember those 2nd edition books, with the old B&W pages. Even WotC put out B&W books at the start of 3rd edition, before they revised it (the old class books like Masters of the Wild, Arms and Equipment Guide, Stronghold Builder's Guidebook). People want full color books. I admit to preferring full color in many ways, but it increases production costs, which increases the prices of the books themselves.

The 3 core books, and any other monster books, I would rather them be in full color (though there were a number of monstrous compendiums from 2nd edition that weren't in full color), and possibly any campaign setting books; but adventures or class supplements, or other such, give them to me in black and white. Hell, give me smaller soft-back books like the old Masters of the Wild, in black and white, for cheap. I would prefer those over the hardback giant (page count-wise) books in full color.

Liberty's Edge

I think that's the problem with the hobby. Up until around 2000 rpg companies released full color or Black and white hardcovers for core rulebooks or sourcebooks that saw a lot of use. The rest were in softcover and black and white. Then it seemed like everyone say Wotc and White wolf releasing hardcovers in color or Black and white for every release and jumped on the bandwagon. I'm a fan of New World of Darkness and not all of their releases need to be in hardcover.

The problem is Wotc and White wolf can get away with it because of fanbase and having the money to do so. The lesser know rpgs began to suffer because of it. Rpg publishers forget that it costs more to publish and reprint a hardcover color sourcebook then it is a similar one in softcover. A good example is Hero Games who are a shadow of their former selves. 6E Hero System are two beautiful big hardcover rulebooks with glossy paper and in full color. They ended up being very expensive to produce. Made getting into the game more expensive as well as it went from one core rulebook in 5E to two in 6E. Not to mention the complexity of the system remained intact.

Here the thing about black and white. The production values have to be really high quality imo. To compete with the full color material. Palladium books is one of the cheapest publishers of rpgs. At the cost of their books looking like they are something fans saw published in the early to mid 1980s.


GreyWolfLord wrote:
memorax wrote:
One of the reasons that TSR went under was because they came out with too many books. Even if a setting did poorly the devs were told to keep cranking out support no matter what. I rather not see that happen again. As more often than not the books were not that good. I prefer a slower release schedule that hopefully produces better quality books.

I believe that's a partial fallacy promoted by those who had a certain agenda.

Truthfully, it wasn't the output per se, it was the cost vs. profit...

As long as they made a profit that was greater than the cost to create it, that would have probably been fine, the problem is when one doesn't pay attention to cost and sinks more into making something then they will charge. It makes little sense to spend 20,000 on development, and then create a price that will only bring in 1000 when sold.

In regards to the number of settings and output, Paizo has as many settings in one world (Golarion) as TSR ever really had. Just because they say it's the same world, doesn't really make it so that it's all the same setting. The way they've handled the different nations, is more akin to different settings (they have their horror setting (ravenloft), their typical setting (Greyhawk), their sci-fi/fantasy setting (Numeria in Paizo, no real equivalent in TSR days that I remember, though perhaps Gamma World?), their Arabian setting (Al-Qadim), tgeir oriental adventures setting (Tian Xia), their Spelljammer setting (Distant Worlds) etc....as my parenthesis shows the comparison to the TSR days.

If anything, they would be fact that it isn't necessarily the number of settings, but HOW you approach it.

That is if you think Paizo is successful.

IMO.

Grand Lodge

GreyWolfLord wrote:
Truthfully, it wasn't the output per se, it was the cost vs. profit...

Yeah...

Lisa Stevens (and Vic Wertz) have explained why TSR went out of business:

In 2011, The CEO of Paizo wrote:
the splitting of the customer base is the #1 reason why TSR went out of business. It would take me a couple of hours to explain why this was the case, but as the person responsible at WotC for taking the old TSR data and analyzing it to see why they went belly up, the biggest cause that I found was splitting the customer base into segments. Whether it was D&D vs. AD&D. Or Forgotten Realms vs. Ravenloft vs. Greyhawk vs. Dragonlance vs. Birthright vs. Dark Sun vs. Planescape vs. Mystara vs. Al-Qadim vs. Spelljammer vs. Lanhkmar vs. any other setting book that they produced. Splitting the customer base means lower sales on any particular product which means lower profit margins which eventually means going belly up.

Two years later (in 2013), Vic Wertz added:

Vic Wertz wrote:
Some of you might be aware that Lisa was the person tasked at dissecting TSR's business, and she figured out that some of those boxed sets actually cost more to produce than TSR was selling them to distribution for, so sold or unsold, every copy printed lost money. The unsold copies just lost *more* money. The copies that lost the most were the ones that were shipped to the book trade, didn't sell, and were then returned to TSR—which, in addition to extra shipping costs, also generated return fees from the distributor.

Liberty's Edge

Good to know. I'm just surprised a few years back when a handful of rpg companies experimented with publishing boxed sets. You think they would have learned from previous mistakes.


It isn't necessarily still a problem, though. The market is always changing. Paizo managed pretty well with the Beginner Box, as I understand it. In any case, even though I think it was a priority to get new players into the hobby, I don't see Paizo doing something that only generates a loss, sold or unsold.


Digitalelf wrote:
GreyWolfLord wrote:
Truthfully, it wasn't the output per se, it was the cost vs. profit...

Yeah...

Lisa Stevens (and Vic Wertz) have explained why TSR went out of business:

In 2011, The CEO of Paizo wrote:
the splitting of the customer base is the #1 reason why TSR went out of business. It would take me a couple of hours to explain why this was the case, but as the person responsible at WotC for taking the old TSR data and analyzing it to see why they went belly up, the biggest cause that I found was splitting the customer base into segments. Whether it was D&D vs. AD&D. Or Forgotten Realms vs. Ravenloft vs. Greyhawk vs. Dragonlance vs. Birthright vs. Dark Sun vs. Planescape vs. Mystara vs. Al-Qadim vs. Spelljammer vs. Lanhkmar vs. any other setting book that they produced. Splitting the customer base means lower sales on any particular product which means lower profit margins which eventually means going belly up.

Two years later (in 2013), Vic Wertz added:

Vic Wertz wrote:
Some of you might be aware that Lisa was the person tasked at dissecting TSR's business, and she figured out that some of those boxed sets actually cost more to produce than TSR was selling them to distribution for, so sold or unsold, every copy printed lost money. The unsold copies just lost *more* money. The copies that lost the most were the ones that were shipped to the book trade, didn't sell, and were then returned to TSR—which, in addition to extra shipping costs, also generated return fees from the distributor.

I am fully aware of what they stated. I don't fully agree with the first part (partially agree, I'll expand on what I don't agree with below) I agree with the second part.

In regards to splitting the customer base by splitting the different line with different settings...you'd expect someone who believed that to have ONE setting and Only one setting...such as a Horror setting...or vanilla fantasy setting, or desert setting (this doesn't mean a world with ALL different settings in it, which is also splitting the line per se...as per Kara Tur, Forgotten Realms, Al Qadim, etc)...but ONE setting. You'd think that would be the wisdom IF that were the true idea....

But then they've done the EXACT same thing with PF and Golarion...which speaks volumes about what they REALLY think happened. It has dozens of different campaign settings in it (though they've only truly developed 10-12 of them).

The entire D&D and AD&D thing actually holds the LEAST water. AD&D and D&D were split and led to one of the greatest growth periods of TSR during the 80s.

Furthermore, if I remember correctly, the D&D line was stopped prior to TSR's MAJOR downfalling financial problems, and wasn't even splitting the base by the time WotC got it, as they had been combined into one line of AD&D.

Paizo, more than most other companies, has already split it's lines. It's in the HOW you split the line rather then IF you split the line. If it were truly simply splitting the base by different settings, Paizo has done that at least 10-12 times already in it's Golarion (which itself is a mash of split lines with different settings from Horror to Sci-fi Fantasy). Splitting the customer base isn't something that's done so much, and it isn't really splitting the line so much as it is HOW it is utilized. In many instances the customer base isn't actually split, but overlapped. It's how much of their money you can get them to spend. Using Paizo as it's own example, just because someone gets a horror setting and campaign (Carrion Crown) does not restrict them from buying the epic destroy the evil ancient darklord campaign (RotRL) or vice versa. It's all in how you develop, market, and sell the product.

I've explained it previously from someone who also had seen some financials and disagreed that it was specifically splitting the base...and had other assumptions (one of which showed that Paizo was actually following the financial trail of TSR and WotC and PF could possibly hit problems in a few years financially if it continued in that way. That's dependant on Paizo's course, obviously, and if they make changes from what TSR or WotC did with the brands. If not, it should be obvious in a few years what has happened.

It was more the second paragraph, then the first. In my opinion. I'm one that will state that the actual products of AD&D were good, and could have been profitable, as many of the rest of it's lines, if it had been approached and marketed in a better manner.

Right now, they (PAIZO) have been passing through the hot spell of their company, as TSR and WotC both did around the same timeframe. What happens next, however, is CRITICAL in whether they repeat the same mistakes TSR and WotC did when they were at the top of the game/sales heap...or whether Paizo changes from the trends of history.

But I digress, this thread is more about Spelljammer for 5e than the financial history of TSR/WotC D&D compared to PF.

I apologize.

I was never much of a Spelljammer fan myself. I loved Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms...would love to see more development (I know, people feel FR gets all the love already) on those lines prior to Spelljammer.


It's derails like this that make me happy the realms were gutted in 4th ed. I can only hope worse things happen to it in 5th.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I honestly don't care if ANY campaign setting gets any "love". I always preferred homebrew over a pre-made setting churned out by the publisher. The only good thing about them are the things I can yoink into my own setting.

Spelljammer was always too sci-fi for my fantasy desires. "D&D. In. SPAAAAAAAACE." That's how I always heard it described. But I know there are people who like that. The only published setting I liked was Dragonlance, and that's only because of the books. I prefer to play in homebrew worlds.


Spelljammer had its good points and its bad points.

The bad was that they completely threw all science out of the window. So every solar system was contained in a giant crystal sphere surrounded by whirling multicolored mists, and planetary environments were pretty nonsensical, e.g. a planet's distance from the sun had no bearing.

What I liked was that it was a purely fantasy setting (set in space and on alien worlds) without any high-tech stuff. So all the vessels were magical ships, from sailing galleys with a magical air bubble to giant, magical hollowed insects; and all the planets were fantasy locations but with an exotic alien world backdrop.

Liberty's Edge

Not to mention they started getting a little strange with Spelljammer as time went on. It's bad enough to have one Tarrasque. Apprently from what I remember there was a planet full of them in the SJ universe. Still I look forward to see what setting(s) they do release.

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