D&D 5E What's coming out for D&D in 2017?

[DeanP]

I happen to like conversion notes. If Wizards is sticking with Forgotten Realms, but has a section or chapter on conversions to other settings, I can live with that.

 

[Staffan]

I think the reason they are focusing on the Realms, is because it's the most complete world. Most of the other campaign settings kind of died off once the big crisis was taken care of. Forgotten Realms is literally the only campaign settings they can sell. If they are clever, they can make a new campaign in Ravenloft for every dark lord that breaches the mists, and build the demi-plane one campaign at a time, but they will have to make it interesting, because Curse of Strahd was too dark and depressing for some people. Like I said before about Planescape, it should be an epic tier only campaign. I've never played Ebboron so I have no opinion on it.

Eberron went the other way: they "froze" canon to a particular year instead of having a metaplot happening that shakes the setting up on a regular basis. Instead, the stage is set for any number of Big Things that can happen if you want them to - or not, if you'd rather they didn't. Perhaps you'd rather focus on small-scale adventuring as Xen'drik treasure hunters instead of preventing a rakshasa Overlord from escaping its fetters deep in Khyber, or having Darguun go to war with Breland, or something. As a DM, I greatly favor this approach, because then I won't see something in the core book that looks cool, buy the associated product, and learn that they made a novel trilogy that completely changed the thing I found interesting about that part of the setting (No, I still haven't completely forgiven TSR for Lands of Intrigue).

 

[Henry]

You know why Middle-earth is such an amazing fictional setting?

Now imagine that the Tolkien Estate took all that in-depth history, and added characters in a new novel from Patrick Rothfuss' Name of the Wind to it; then, they came up with a second new novel where Legolas has to team up with Aslan to stop Jadis the White Witch, and in the third they meet up with Girl Genius Agatha Heterodyne in Europa, which it was discovered is just across the sea all along.

That's what it feels like is going on with the Realms right now - I didn't care for DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths from the 80s and it's doing just as little for me here.

My guess is that your contempt for the Realms colors your whole perspective on this.

For me, it's not so much contempt as getting tired of treading the same ground for going on three years now. I personally enjoy the Realms and have been running a 5e campaign in it for two years now, but it's time for WotC to flex their muscles, grab the scissors and golden shovel, and snip the ribbon and break ground on another lot.

 

[wheelercub]

Outside of Wizards of the Coast official content and the recently amazing weekly Unearthed Arcanas, there are a few other alternative 5e resources that I've been checking out.

* Adventures in Middle Earth Players Handbook: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/192261/Adventures-in-Middleearth-Players-Guide

* Loremaster's Guide: http://cubicle7.co.uk/adventures-in-middle-earth-loremasters-guide-cover-revealed/

* Then there's Hyperlanes which uses D&D 5e ruleset in deep space adventures: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/235742298/hyperlanes-cinematic-scifi-for-dnd-5e