D&D 5E DMG Preview: The Multiverse

[I'm A Banana]

I'm kind of interested in the "rules fobs" that might get associated with each setting.

In Greyhawk, you have support for "morally grey" campaigns, perhaps a more "dungeon-crawl" feel.

In Dragonlance, you maybe take a more "narrative" perspective on the game, with the PC's being explicit protagonists in the story of the Lance.

In Birthright, you'll get robust domain management rules.

In Mystara, we're likely to see PC ascension to Immortal status as part of the rules (probably a good place for the Epic rules!).

Makes me wonder about other places and their associated rules.

Planescape is a good bet for organizations, guilds, politics, and reputation.

Ravenloft of course has horror, fear, madness, terror, corruption...

Spelljammer would be good with Mind Flayer/Githyanki/Githzerai plot and Psionics!

Dark Sun gives brutal wilderness survival support and a low-magic vibe.

Lots of potential!

 

[Dire Bare]

I was just referring to what you said about this being the first time you've heard the word "torus", sorry...

Without resorting to arguments bordering towards the off-topic, let's say that the main differences between walking on a torus and on a ring are similar to the ones that differentiate walking on a log and on a plank, with the due differences in scale.

No, I'm sorry. Got a bit snippy with ya and you are just trying to help.

Folks keep explaining what the difference is between a torus and a ring, and in each post I've (tried to) made clear I get the difference. It's that I don't see the technical difference as all that important in my fantasy game.

Most folks have never heard of a torus, but everyone knows what a ring is. The word "torus" is jargon, only necessary in certain circumstances. When I'm describing Sigil to players and/or characters, I could lecture them on the true nature of a torus, or I could more simply, quickly, and evocatively (IMO) describe the city as a ring. In my campaign, Sigil IS a torus, not a ring. But most descriptions describe it as a ring since that is the easier and more commonly understood concept. I'll have the party wizard, or educated NPC, get all academic on their asses at some point and point out, "Well you know, technically, Sigil is not on the inside of a ring, but rather a torus." But, not at first.

In my D&D books, if Sigil is described as on the inside of a ring in a paragraph description in the DMG, I'm totally cool with that. However, if someday we get a 5E campaign book for Planescape, I fully expect a sidebar clearly defining the difference between torus and ring, and that Sigil is a torus.

 

[Dire Bare]

So Sigil is an inner tube.

So with this preview, what do you guys think is the future of the various campaign settings? It sounds to me like we might get a couple of adventure books and then a adventure companion book to cover them.

Thoughts?

I'm kind of interested in the "rules fobs" that might get associated with each setting.

In Greyhawk, you have support for "morally grey" campaigns, perhaps a more "dungeon-crawl" feel.

In Dragonlance, you maybe take a more "narrative" perspective on the game, with the PC's being explicit protagonists in the story of the Lance.

In Birthright, you'll get robust domain management rules.

In Mystara, we're likely to see PC ascension to Immortal status as part of the rules (probably a good place for the Epic rules!).

Makes me wonder about other places and their associated rules.

Planescape is a good bet for organizations, guilds, politics, and reputation.

Ravenloft of course has horror, fear, madness, terror, corruption...

Spelljammer would be good with Mind Flayer/Githyanki/Githzerai plot and Psionics!

Dark Sun gives brutal wilderness survival support and a low-magic vibe.

Lots of potential!

WotC seems to have loose plans to someday address all of the classic campaigns in some way. When, how soon, and in what way we have not heard.

I like Kamikaze's thoughts on how things should go down. I would love to see a nasty thick, full-color, hardcover that gives a good overview of each setting, and highlighting rules modules that can help evoke the theme or feel of the setting and be easily ported into our own campaigns. Give me new races, classes, and other crunchy bits, sure, but a rules module for fear/madness, domain management, psionics, etc would make yet another redo of each setting worthwhile.

What I don't want is an encyclopedic tome that simply collects existing info without really bringing it forward into the new edition, and I'm not talking timelines!

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'd also add that what I don't want is "It's just like your normal D&D game with a new coat of paint!"

5e Ravenloft shouldn't worry about support for, I dunno, tieflings and dragonborn and drow. 5e Eberron shouldn't have to fit Xoriat somewhere in the Great Wheel. 5e Dragonlance shouldn't worry about contradicting the 5e fluff for the minotaur. 5e Greyhawk should be easier to die in than core 5e; 5e Dragonlance should be tougher!

I don't want a repeat of my experience with Dark Sun and FR in 4e: "It's the 4e you know with a coat of paint and some new nouns!" When I play Dark Sun in 5e, I should know right away that this is not really the same game, at the level of mechanical and character details.

I hope the idea of hooking settings into adventures and mechanical fobs, along with the idea of customizing and tailoring the game to fit the story you're telling, ensures that the settings are distinct. Different kinds of settings ask for different kinds of characters and different kinds of heroes (and different cosmologies) and I should feel that in the rules themselves.

Which has me pretty exicted! Overall, I think I'd be a big fan if they went in that direction. Execution would matter a lot, but I'd be pretty into the basic idea behind that plan.

 

[Lord Blackstone]

crap... see below

 

[Lord Blackstone]

View attachment 65144

errr If I wasn't a Planescape fan before... I would be now. Its an amazing pic. Says all you need to say about the setting.

 

[Dire Bare]

I don't want a repeat of my experience with Dark Sun and FR in 4e: "It's the 4e you know with a coat of paint and some new nouns!" When I play Dark Sun in 5e, I should know right away that this is not really the same game, at the level of mechanical and character details.

Agree. It happened in both 3E and 4E, the need to "fit" a setting into the standard D&D mileu, adapt races and classes from the core line into the setting that really did not add, but rather subtracted.

I remember the 3E psionic races from the Expanded Psionics Handbook made it into the Dragon magazine 3E adaptation of Dark Sun. Did not like. The 4E Dark Sun hardcover did the same sort of thing, and the only part I remember liking was making dray equivalent to dragonborn.

 

[AmerginLiath]

The War of Souls and 3.5 run of Dragonlance books were meant to bring a split fanbase back together, while offering something new. I think, overall, a good job was done. The one thing I disagree with is that the novels seemed to focus on empire-building rather than focusing on a group (or a few groups) of companions who were like family to each other. What makes Chronicles so great is that sense of family.

Of course, in my mind, the 3.5 run of Dragonlance books under MWP is the golden age of Dragonlance gaming. I may be biased, of course!

Trampas, the irony is that my group never saw a huge gap in our play (or really our enjoyment) of Fourth Age versus Fifth Age. Of course, we ended up having a sprawling soap opera-style campaign that spanned close to a century with dozens of characters in the parts of Ansalon not covered in the books (we used a lot of Northern Ergoth and later Pyrothraxus). The 'stealing the world' storyline was fortuitous, given how we switched to 3e with a timejump into the Fifth Age (including folks playing children of other players' characters from the Chaos War – it IS Dragonlance, after all!) and the change in the "physics" of the game made more sense after we learned what had surreptitiously occurred!

While all the 3.5 MWP DL stuff was awesome – and it made for great resources when we were playing through the sidelines of the War of Souls to close things off (for then – nothing EVER truly ends...) in the campaign, I still never felt that the 3.x system worked as well for Dragonlance as I would have liked it to. I actually have REALLY high hopes for 5e working with the architecture of that setting (between the power levels, along with the focus on mechanics of Social and Exploration portions, as well as a return to work on Mass Combat material) and am hopeful with all the mentions that DL is getting that our favorite "epic fantasy" has something percolating.

But don't think that we're not all going to be converting your MWP work to 5e to use with whatever gets published, as well as use it as a base for working on 5e DL campaign material until then!

 

[pemerton]

The CS describes Sigil as a "tire" (no hubcap or wheel rim, lying on its side). It mentions that if you try to go "outside" the city, you probably just get hurled to a random plane. It's closer to a torus than a ring, but it's not exactly either.

Ya torus is not the same thing as a ring, I get it. Still don't see why describing Sigil as a ring is that big of a deal.

<snip>

Sigil is on the inside of a cosmic tire. A torus, not a ring. This thread has pretty much convinced me to drop the word "torus" when describing Sigil and stick with "ring". I think me and my players will be okay.

Actually, mathematically speaking (or, at least, topologically speaking) the open tyre is more like a ring than a torus. The distinguishing feature of a torus is that you whichever direction you move in, you will never come to an edge - you will just keep circling around the interior of the donut.

Whereas Sigil, like a ring, has edges. The only difference from a ring is that it is curved rather than flat.

Personally I find the torus much more interesting, and if I were ever to use Sigil in a game I would go with the genuine torus rather than the (apparently canonical) curved ring version.

 

[Zhaleskra]

View attachment 65144

Wait? Isn't that Hagrid?

I knew Knockturn Alley was part of Sigil. In the Hive Ward, obviously.