D&D 5E D&D "Core" Settings

[Jester David]

One wrinkle to remember is trademark. If WotC wants to keep the trademarks for the various campaign settings, they'll need to do *something* with them or risk someone else being able to name their RPG product Spelljammer or Birthright.

 

[Echohawk]

One wrinkle to remember is trademark. If WotC wants to keep the trademarks for the various campaign settings, they'll need to do *something* with them or risk someone else being able to name their RPG product Spelljammer or Birthright.

I'm pretty sure that selling PDFs on DNDClassics counts as "something" for the purposes of maintaining those trademarks.

 

[pedr]

DnDClassics really helps there. By selling PDFs they are using those marks in the course of trade. It's hard to argue that a trademark should be revoked for non use if the company is selling products with that mark and logo prominently displayed.

(And the Spelljammer mark in particular isn't that attractive to others - even if the mark were unregistered, you couldn't create anything that was derivative of the content of published Spelljammer products due to copyright. I could see other RPG companies wanting to use 'Birthright' for a non-derivative product, though, which the TM registration prevents)

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I think there were major flaws in Birthright. A symptom I think in part that it was a basic fantasy setting with a low magic medieval European coat of paint on top of it and it doesn't quite synch together. The world building covered way too much of the overall world and as a result there was too much detail about the world as a whole, leaving no mystery, and at the same time there was too little detail about any specific area. It was very much a typical D&D campaign setting in that regard.

I've been spoiled by the A Song of Ice and Fire series and if they want to create a captivating setting, they really need to stand on the shoulders of giants when it comes to this type of setting.

I would even say Birthright has potential, but they would need to start from scratch on it. Reevaluate the high fantasy concepts like awnshegh and how bloodlines are done. It is the human (or humanoid) element that make this type of setting shine, not an overpowered external threat ruling a neighboring kingdom or the neat powers you can get from having a strong bloodline. A major supernatural threat is fine, but it is easy to let those types of things overshadow everything else and I think Birthright suffered just that problem.

It was also too much of a heavy burden on the system to have players run the actual kingdoms. I think that would be fine as some sort of additional module, but not as a core concept of a campaign setting.

I'm not trying to be dismissive of your analysis, but it sounds to me like your argument is essentially, "I don't like the Birthright setting." And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but I think it does do what it sets out to do, and many people enjoyed that, so I can't agree that the core elements of the setting are truly flaws, since those are what it is all about.

I'm getting really, really tired of hearing this nonsense. There is NO DEFAULT setting for Next. They are going back to the notion from AD&D, where there are no assumptions for the setting (other than perhaps Greyhawk names on a few spells). Realms is simply going to be released during the first year. Almost certainly Ebberon will follow shortly (maybe early 2015).

I actually agree with you. I don't think there will be a default setting, it's just that hearing statements to the effect that FR will be default rubs me the wrong way in several directions.

All the emphasis is mine. Assuming what he's describing is still the strategy after two full years of development, Shiroiken may be right. Possibly more right than he knew, depending on how good his memory is. In last weekend's seminar, Perkins referred to FR as the "flagship" setting of D&D5. Flagship can mean a lot of things, but one of those things is just "first out of the gate."

I agree, I think flagship means exactly that. I don't think they've ever called it the default, and I think that that is intentional.

And assuming that Mearls wasn't just picking that "six" out of the air,

I think he probably was pulling that number out of the air for the sake of argument, but I could easily be wrong.

I also figured I'd link that 01 July column, because I keep referencing it and it'd be handy to have the link in a recent thread. This is the December 2013 reprint: https://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/2013end1

Yep, definitely no default in the core rulebooks.

The depth of implication in that statement gets me every time. The article also specifically calls out Planescape as the "default assumption" for the core cosmology's outer planes.

What I wonder about is how many settings will use the default cosmology. I'd like to see it apply to all the traditional settings. Before 3E, the vast majority of settings used the same Planescape cosmology. That includes not only Greyhawk, but Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms (including Al-Qadim and Kara-Tur), Dark Sun, and Spelljammer. I'm not sure about the rest due to lack of personal familiarity.

The thing is, they didn't really need a new cosmology for each setting. The Planescape cosmology was extremely inclusive. They actually called out where Cyric's domain was in the Outer Planes, where the world of Greyhawk (Oerth) was in relation to the Abeir-Toril, etc.

But for "ground level" adventuring on any individual setting, it didn't really matter. If you only visited the planar realms known and recognized on your world, you'd probably never hear planar cant or see a flying ship. The reason it was good for them to place them into the same multiverse is that it allowed those who do want to play in multi-setting campaigns to do so. If you don't want to jump into the cosmological soup it will never come into your campaign, but if you do it is there. No different than the existence of, say, Maztica in a Faerunian campaign--except that you are even less likely to come into contact with Spelljamming or Planescape material without looking for it.

And yes, individual campaign settings could and did have unique planar and magical features, while still being able to fit into the overarching multiverse.

I very much hope to see that again.

 

[DMZ2112]

I think he probably was pulling that number out of the air for the sake of argument, but I could easily be wrong.

You are probably right, but the human subconscious being what it is, I'd bet "six" meant /something/ relevant at the time. It is also a good ballpark number. There have only ever have been nine major D&D settings; 5 to 7 revisited in D&D5 would be a slightly higher return than 50-75%, which seems right given their promise to see to the "key" settings.

Given an edition lifespan of about a decade, 5 to 7 settings means more than 17 months but less than 25 for each. Any less time than that and I can't see them even proposing to outdo previous iterations of the settings.

But for "ground level" adventuring on any individual setting, it didn't really matter. If you only visited the planar realms known and recognized on your world, you'd probably never hear planar cant or see a flying ship.

I am mostly in agreement with you -- I think the Great Wheel is broadly sufficient for most applications -- but where I disagree is that the planes don't matter for "ground level" adventuring. Planescape's biggest and most glaring flaw as a cosmology is that it has nothing to do with any of the worlds it supports. It is generically applicable precisely because it has no back relevance to "ground level" adventuring.

This is going to go off topic, so I'm not going to delve into detail, but while I do agree that the D&D settings should share a cosmology, I feel like that is because that cosmology should, in turn, celebrate and enhance the other shared elements between those settings. Neither Planescape nor the AD&D1 Manual of the Planes ever even made that attempt. I hope the D&D5 cosmology softens the weird a little and draws in some cross-setting relevance from the World Axis of D&D4.

 

[variant]

I'm not trying to be dismissive of your analysis, but it sounds to me like your argument is essentially, "I don't like the Birthright setting." And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but I think it does do what it sets out to do, and many people enjoyed that, so I can't agree that the core elements of the setting are truly flaws, since those are what it is all about.

I am critiquing it, that doesn't mean I didn't like it. However, it's been almost twenty years and it was very much a 2nd edition campaign setting on how it was written and the content it had. It's why something like the unbalanced bloodline system was able to exist. It's also more Lord of the Rings than A Song of Ice and Fire in many aspects despite the game trying to focus on things you normally wouldn't expect in LotR such as politics.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I just wanna point out, because it's my bag, that "no default" would mean that things like the lore about, say, jackalweres being created by Grazz'zt would not be the assumption of the game, but rather a specific option. And that your cosmology wouldn't be Planescape "by default." And other things. I'd love if they did that.

But from most of the talk out of Wyatt and Mearls especially, it seems like WotC isn't quite going that far. It sounds like they're implying a default setting a la 4e's Nentir Vale or 3e's Greyhawk but its own new, different thing (I'm calling it "Defaultsylvania" for now). It also seems like this is designed to be a light touch, easily modified. But it'll still be around.

 

[Salamandyr]

But from most of the talk out of Wyatt and Mearls especially, it seems like WotC isn't quite going that far. It sounds like they're implying a default setting a la 4e's Nentir Vale or 3e's Greyhawk but its own new, different thing (I'm calling it "Defaultsylvania" for now). It also seems like this is designed to be a light touch, easily modified. But it'll still be around.

That's not too bad. It's pretty much how the Known World was in BECMI, until it went headlong into Gazetteers and got renamed "Mystara" (man, I hate that name).

 

[I'm A Banana]

That's not too bad. It's pretty much how the Known World was in BECMI, until it went headlong into Gazetteers and got renamed "Mystara" (man, I hate that name).

I'm a fundamentalist about this stuff, so I'm still not a fan (I think it could be a lot better and more interesting if they dropped the idea of "generic" entirely), but I am encouraged by the eye they have toward settings and the knowledge that they have about the fact that the specific setting fiction shouldn't be dictating the mechanics for everyone.

So at the moment, the existence of Defaultsylvania is getting about three grumps on my 10-point grumpometer. Could be a lot better! But definitely not as bad as it otherwise could have been, either.

...presuming my impression is accurate, anyway.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

I want D&D to have a default setting and a default cosmos. The more you leave the "default" away from the game, the more the game loses it's identity and the more players you have walking away from the game. D&D used to be identified by it's default setting and flavor. Now it's like they are trying to be identified by it's mechanics first. Some people don't want to build their own world and cosmos, they want to jump right in and play from the get go.