I want to expand on this a bit with a couple of questions:
To me, "more fleshed out" means more details. I'm not sure that Radiant Citadel, from what we've seen, is actually more "fleshed out" than what we've seen of Spelljammer except that Radiant Citadel has more mini-settings and so needs more details for each of them. I suspect that these details will be less than some are thinking - about a page of "gazetteer" information - since there will be an adventure right there to show you the setting rather than tell you about it, but we'll see when it gets published.
By contrast it looks like Spelljammer is getting a monster book, a short setting book, and an adventure book (ignoring any digital releases and just looking at what's coming in the box). Somewhere in there will be a brief description of the Rock of Bral (I suspect in the adventure book) and the intent of the adventure book will probably be to show the setting rather than telling about it in the same way that Radiant Citadel will. 12 episodes to introduce folks to the setting along with a book of character options and info about the setting directly.
To me from what we've heard so far these both have the potential to be similarly "fleshed out" as settings so long as you don't view setting details as solely the province of the GM information about the setting that the players aren't supposed to see, and as long as you see the adventures as setting information, rather than as something separate.
And that's where I come back to the second point above - why is it automatically assumed that it's a good thing for a setting to be more "fleshed out"? I've been re-reading a lot of Spelljammer and Planescape stuff recently for a game I'm running for a couple of my players and ... there's a lot of stuff in those books that only the GM will ever know. Pages and pages of stuff that just will never matter to any game. The adventures are often the worst offenders on this point too - I'd forgotten how many adventures will just have pages of GM background in them that just ... doesn't ever matter to the game. Sure it's kind of interesting to read as a setting junkie, but only some of it is ever even going to help me present the setting at the table and a lot of it feels like it was written to make page count (Dungeon magazine adventures are the worst offenders in this regard IMO, but some of the 2e official products are up there).
- What does it mean to be "more fleshed out"?
- Why is it automatically a good thing for a setting to be "more fleshed out"?
To me, "more fleshed out" means more details. I'm not sure that Radiant Citadel, from what we've seen, is actually more "fleshed out" than what we've seen of Spelljammer except that Radiant Citadel has more mini-settings and so needs more details for each of them. I suspect that these details will be less than some are thinking - about a page of "gazetteer" information - since there will be an adventure right there to show you the setting rather than tell you about it, but we'll see when it gets published.
By contrast it looks like Spelljammer is getting a monster book, a short setting book, and an adventure book (ignoring any digital releases and just looking at what's coming in the box). Somewhere in there will be a brief description of the Rock of Bral (I suspect in the adventure book) and the intent of the adventure book will probably be to show the setting rather than telling about it in the same way that Radiant Citadel will. 12 episodes to introduce folks to the setting along with a book of character options and info about the setting directly.
To me from what we've heard so far these both have the potential to be similarly "fleshed out" as settings so long as you don't view setting details as solely the province of the GM information about the setting that the players aren't supposed to see, and as long as you see the adventures as setting information, rather than as something separate.
And that's where I come back to the second point above - why is it automatically assumed that it's a good thing for a setting to be more "fleshed out"? I've been re-reading a lot of Spelljammer and Planescape stuff recently for a game I'm running for a couple of my players and ... there's a lot of stuff in those books that only the GM will ever know. Pages and pages of stuff that just will never matter to any game. The adventures are often the worst offenders on this point too - I'd forgotten how many adventures will just have pages of GM background in them that just ... doesn't ever matter to the game. Sure it's kind of interesting to read as a setting junkie, but only some of it is ever even going to help me present the setting at the table and a lot of it feels like it was written to make page count (Dungeon magazine adventures are the worst offenders in this regard IMO, but some of the 2e official products are up there).
