D&D 5E Campaign settings in 5e

[Tormyr]

I am wary of them releasing too much too fast. If we end up with a book a month club, there may not be enough demand to keep standards high or make it worth the money from WotC's standpoint. I would like to see refreshes of major campaign settings, but I would like them more focused on the story information, like the guides that came with Murder in Baldur's Gate and Legacy of the Crystal Shard. For stuff like Spelljammer (which I think a future campaign of mine will be loosely based on), I would like to see the extra mechanics/crunchy bits rolled into the core rules as much as possible. If that had been done in 2e, I think it would have made a 5e home conversion more feasible using the 2e setting books.

I guess I am saying that I would like my campaign setting books as rules agnostic as possible. I want to know about the people and places and stuff necessary to make this a living, breathing world.

Obviously, you cannot do that with everything. Setting specific creatures, magic items, etc. need stats. Spaceships need movement rules, but if there are already ship based movement rules in the PHB or DMG, they would need less adaptation for 3 dimensional movement than if everything had to be spelled out.

 

[mips42]

I'm probably in the minority here but I'd rather they take their time to do good quality stuff than be worried about 'what can we throw out this month'.
So, I'd like sort of a Setting Sourcebook that has the history and flavor of the setting, tells you how its different, gives info on the races and classes (and how they're different), gives setting specific optional variant rules, setting-specific monsters and ideas for how to build adventures / campaigns that fit in that setting. Get original authors if you can and, if not, whoever is an authority on that setting. Also, if at all possible, one consistent art style that evokes the feeling of that setting.
How often? I'd be worried if I saw one more often than every 6 to 9 months and one a year would be fine.

Play on.

 

[Mouseferatu]

My main concern, however many settings we end up with, is this:

Let different campaign settings be different!

Athas doesn't have all the same classes and races available. Eberron has 13 moons and its own cosmology, and its drow have nothing whatsoever to do with Lolth. The Bane of Forgotten Realms is a very different god than the Bane of the world of Nerath and the Nentir Vale. And so forth.

Some editions have had an unfortunate tendency to try to homogenize. Don't. Different settings are effective or popular because of their differences. Don't sacrifice that.

 

[Jester David]

I'd like to see a few settings handled via Dragon.
Eberron, Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravenloft, and a few other settings could be handled in a single issue of the online magazine.
Update the races, some backgrounds, a couple feats, and provide a few absolutely necessary subclasses. And let the PDFs serve for the sourcebooks and setting information.

The tricky worlds are the ones with little unique content.

 

[Tormyr]

I'd like to see a few settings handled via Dragon.
Eberron, Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravenloft, and a few other settings could be handled in a single issue of the online magazine.
Update the races, some backgrounds, a couple feats, and provide a few absolutely necessary subclasses. And let the PDFs serve for the sourcebooks and setting information.

The tricky worlds are the ones with little unique content.

I mostly DM so I usually think of things from that perspective. I would think that a proper campaign setting would be much too big for a magazine. It would contain nations, cities, polititical organizations, holidays, etc., etc., etc. I could see Greyhawk being a couple hundred pages as the Flanaess is a big place, but Spelljammer could be a lot smaller as it is about the space side of things and you incorporate other campaign settings for the planets.

I was given a 4e Dark Sun Campagin Setting and Creature Catalog from a friend. The Campagin Setting is 220 pages of places, changes to races, new powers an story. The creature catalog gives 140 pages of creatures and NPCs that make Athas unique. The Campaign Setting was $40 and the Creature Catalog was $20. The Campaign Setting is needed by players and the DM, whereas only the DM needs the creature catalog. If they followed a siimilar model in 5e, I would be pretty happy. If they made the campaign setting rules agnostic, and separated out the crunchy bits that the players needed into a player's guide and made all three books $20 each, I think that could really work. I think the lower price point for players would lower the barrier for entry and sell more books in the end.

Unless I am misunderstanding you, and you were saying that just with the player's stuff in a magazine instead of a $20 book. But I think there probably would be more content than a magazine issue could hold unless it was the only thing in the issue.

 

[Jester David]

Unless I am misunderstanding you, and you were saying that just with the player's stuff in a magazine instead of a $20 book. But I think there probably would be more content than a magazine issue could hold unless it was the only thing in the issue.

The player stuff is all we need.
There are a half-dozen Greyhawk products available here:
DnDClassics
Most major Greyhawk fans already have all the setting books they need. More are superfluous and would just cause debates from people who liked the setting before the Greyhawk Wars, those who liked the changes, the people who liked the lore changes for Living Greyhawk, and the people who hated LG.

All fans need is the unique setting crunch. Full setting books only accommodate new players, and those will likely find the Realms useful enough.
If WotC starts promising new settings people will hold off getting FR books to instead wait to see if their setting gets some love. And that's bad for sales.

 

[Tormyr]

I could go with that. Although I would definitely want updated monsters as well.

 

[AmmiPierce]

With the leaked list of the next round of books, it seems like they intend to alternate adventure paths with splatbooks (and maybe setting books). I'd like it if they'd put out a splat or setting book and then directly support it in the following adventure path. It'd be great if they'd put out a Dark Sun or a Dragonlance setting book, for example, and then have the next adventure path be a world-spanning story set there. Psionics followed by something with mindflayers and githyanki. Directly connecting the supplement with the following AP would give immediate use of the material and would be an incentive for players to buy, assuming their DMs keep up with the APs.

 

[Mercurius]

What I don't want to see is another round of re-hashing all the same old settings. I speak as someone who enjoys buying and reading setting books, not running games in them - so I understand that diehards of different settings want an update. I think this can be handled in a single product and/or a PDF conversion guide. I don't think we need yet another cycle of all the same old settings.

I also like the idea of licensing settings out, ala Dragonlance in 3E. You might not get the same kind of production value but you will get someone who loves the setting tending to it.

My hope is to see a new setting or two developed. Then I'd like to see something akin to the Golarion treatment. I think having a living campaign world to focus things on really brings a game alive, as it has done with Pathfinder. Now of course WotC has a bunch of settings to draw from, but I would love to see them develop a new setting for which adventures are set in, and then with guidelines on how to adapt them to other settings.

 

[transmission89]

What I don't want to see is another round of re-hashing all the same old settings. I speak as someone who enjoys buying and reading setting books, not running games in them - so I understand that diehards of different settings want an update. I think this can be handled in a single product and/or a PDF conversion guide. I don't think we need yet another cycle of all the same old settings.

I also like the idea of licensing settings out, ala Dragonlance in 3E. You might not get the same kind of production value but you will get someone who loves the setting tending to it.

My hope is to see a new setting or two developed. Then I'd like to see something akin to the Golarion treatment. I think having a living campaign world to focus things on really brings a game alive, as it has done with Pathfinder. Now of course WotC has a bunch of settings to draw from, but I would love to see them develop a new setting for which adventures are set in, and then with guidelines on how to adapt them to other settings.

The problem with that is you're assuming will already have access to those old settings book Whilst this is kind of true with dndclassics, some people want dead tree format and some people would also like a setting to be brought up to date in presentation as well as rules and such. That said, I would also like to see a new setting as well!