I was asked to do a map for the Birthright setting and as I did some initial research to see if I wanted to be involved or not, I found this piece of text:
"At the time of this writing, Wizards of the Coast is not publishing new Birthright products. However, a version of Birthright is being constructed for use with the Revised Third Edition of Dungeons and Dragons rules (also known as D&D 3.5e) and hosted at Birthright.net. This group project is collaboratively structured over the Internet, and recognised as the official updated version of the setting by Wizards of the Coast. Several downloads of the updated setting are available for free on that site as are other campaign materials and an extensive message board."
That was sort of a bone WotC threw at the fans of settings that wouldn't be updated for 3rd edition circa 2000. Ryan Dancy contacted the various mailing lists and had everyone vote on an "official site" for each of the cancelled settings - I think Mystara, Dark Sun, Planescape, Spelljammer, Al-Qadim, Ravenloft, Dragonlance, and Birthright all got official sites. Greyhawk didn't, because it got an official update in the form of the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer. Ravenloft and Dragonlance would ultimately get updates too, and Spelljammer and Dark Sun got updates in Dragon and Dungeon Magazine (and Dark Sun got its own hardcovers in 4th edition), but that was all later.
It seems very unlikely that anything similar will ever be offered today (since Ryan Dancey is long gone and completely different people are in charge), and honestly the "official site" title doesn't mean much. It just means that WotC linked to the sites from their web page, and the various sites got to brag about being official. But I've never seen WotC ever use content generated on those sites anywhere else, so "official recognition" really just amounted to a pat on the back.
Well ... I guess it depends on how much one believes that someone has to win the lottery, so to speak.
When the "official page" thing was going on, it was aimed at more than one setting, as Rasgon mentioned. The one that I most remember getting a lot of love was Dark Sun. Athas.org certainly had a lot of popularity even before it was "official" but, when it got that distinction, it led to a lot of 3rd edition stuff, and even (in 2010) new published material for the setting.
I mean, that's just my personal thoughts on the whole thing, that because there was such a hugely active site that the fans were actually putting out fairly significant material on their own in a published form, WotC realized that there was a market for it, and so ... it continues to be published.
I think it's a peculiarity of the Dark Sun setting, and I am not certain that the phenomenon would ever be repeated ... as Rasgon said, the people that were there affecting things at the time are no longer there. (He's now the engineer on the Paizo/Goblinworks hew video game "Pathfinder Online".) _________________ Owner and Lead Admin: https://greyhawkonline.com<div>Editor-in-Chief of the Oerth Journal: https://greyhawkonline.com/oerthjournal</div><div>Visit my professional art gallery: https://wkristophnolen.daportfolio.com</div>
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