Planescape Planescape to languish in purgatory?

[twofalls]

If there is another thread that discusses this which anyone knows of, I'd be grateful for a link.

There are a lot of treasured past tense D&D campaign worlds that are being (as far as I am able to see) ignored by WotC. They have come out with several other settings, Ravnica, Wildermont, Theros, and even updated others (Eberron) but the settings we remember and love atrophy. Certainly we can take the 2e lore and import it into the 5e ruleset, but wouldn't it be wonderful to have 5e material in these universes? I thought that perhaps someone in the community here might have an inside view, or just a generally more educated understanding on these old settings (Planescape, Hollow World, Darksun, Spelljammer, Greyhawk, etc) and the plans for them in WotC, if any? Why invent new settings when the old ones are so beloved and playable if updated?

I titled the thread Planescape only because it was my favorite next to FR.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Why invent new settings when the old ones are so beloved and playable if updated?

HA! Invent new settings?

Your evil overlord, Hasbro, has determined that D&D is best used as a conduit for other IP.

Start by recycling the M:TG.

Pretty soon, we will see a Monopoly Setting.

"Ooh ooh! I wanna play the thimble class!"

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

Flipping through Tasha's Cauldron of Everything I was surprised to see art depicting Rhys given that Tasha is from Greyhawk and a lot of the fluff of the book revolves around her. If I had a more conspiratorial spirit I might think that this is a hint that Planescape is coming soon, but really I think that this is just an easter egg reference.

 

[demonsquidgod]

I'm not sure what you would want from a 5e planescape. You've got almost everything you need mechanically and the 2e setting material is easily available.

 

[ninjayeti]

Wizards has said that three classic settings are getting active attention in this stream so I think there is reason to be optimistic at least some of the old settings will see the light of day.

Personally, I would love to see some of the old settings revived. Not for me - I can convert my old stuff to 5E easily enough. But it would be cool for a younger generation of gamers to experience these settings. Wizards has talked a lot about the "shared experience" of D&D as the reason for rebooting old adventures in 5e and I think that applies equally to the old settings. It would be cool for Planescape, or Greyhawk or Dark Sun to be the "hot new thing" rather than "that settings the grognards are fanboys of."

 

[Burnside]

In the past, Mearls - I THINK it was Mearls, but might have been Crawford has said that they eventually plan to revisit "all" the old settings.

The 5E publication schedule has been conservative, and it has served them pretty well. And I think - and please take this with a grain of salt because I am forgetting my source for this - that their marketing research showed them that the majority of players and DMs used homebrew settings. So by that logic, setting books would be the least profitable book to publish. And the first few years of 5E official publications reflect that philosophy. The ONLY setting book was SCAG, and it was the worst seller of the first three years of books. The conclusion was that the majority of the buyers wanted splat books first, adventures second, settings last.

More recently, three things happened to change this:

• Hasbro had them try the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica book, which is a setting book, to cross-market Magic: The Gathering. It sold very well. Theros followed.
• WotC tried Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron as an experimental digital-only product on Dungeon Master's Guild (as a PDF) and on DNDBeyond. It sold so well that they followed with the hardcover Eberron: Rising from the Last War setting book
• Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, the Critical Role setting book, was published earlier this year and blew away the sales of ANY 5E book in the past few years

So I think that by now it's been proven that the mantra "settings don't sell" is pretty false. The right settings will sell.

Now - this board is almost entirely dudes in their 40s and 50s for whom publishing 5E versions of Planescape, Dragonlance, Greyhawk, etc looks like a no brainer and Magic: The Gathering and Exandria look like shallow cash grabs. That's a very biased assessment, however. Not just because the Ravnica, Theros, and Exandria books are all quite good (which they are) but because from a certain Gen X point of view - which is not the point of view of the D&D fanbase writ large - Planescape is this huge deal that everyone is clamoring for.

In reality, Exandria is a way, way more popular, successful, and smarter setting to develop right now than Planescape. And I'm saying this as somebody who regards Planescape as the best 2E setting: despite how awesome it was, it was always niche, and it was never particularly financially successful. It is a fragment of a niche product from almost 30 years ago. Critical Role's fanbase, which is young, diverse, and rabid, rivals the size of the D&D fanbase itself, has a million viewers every week, had one of the most successful Kickstarters in the history of Kickstarter, and is about to have a cartoon on Amazon Prime.

If I'm WotC, my attitude would be "I'll get to Planescape when I get to it". And I would do it the way the did Eberron: get Zeb Cook to be the lead designer on a digital product on DNDBeyond and DMsGuild, open it up to DMsGuild creators to support, and see where it goes from there.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I trust the return of Planescape and there is a good reason. The videogame Tormet. If after Baldur's Gate 3 there is a new videogame, the next will be other, not necesarially with the same (main) characters.

 

[Burnside]

I trust the return of Planescape and there is a good reason. The videogame Tormet. If after Baldur's Gate 3 there is a new videogame, the next will be other, not necesarially with the same (main) characters.

While a cult classic and the best Infinity Engine game in my opinion, unlike Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II, Planescape: Torment was a financial disaster. Far, far fewer people played it than played the Baldur's Gate or even the Icewind Dale games.

 

[ph0rk]

Yeah, we’ll see another icewind dale game before another torment game, based on sales at least.

 

[Istbor]

I'd be down for a revisit of Darksun. Spelljammer I could also get behind just because it is cool. And while I cut my teeth in Greyhawk, I can't think of much that sticks out enough to really grab attention with as much as the other two I stated above.