D&D 5E WotC's Nathan Stewart Teases New D&D Setting Book in 2019

No real details, other than denying that it will be Spelljammer, but in the latest Spoilers & Swag episode Stewart stated straight up that another hardcover setting book is coming in 2019:

"Nathan Stewart, the senior director of Dungeons & Dragons and Avalon Hill, made the announcement on his monthly "Spoilers & Swag" Twitchcast yesterday. 'Next year for our annual releases I can confirm there will be a setting book,' he said. 'A new setting book. A book that we have not created that is for a D&D setting.'"

I'd speculate, given the Settings mentioned in the recent marketing survey and what is listed in the DMsGuild, that the likely options are from the following, given we got Magic this year and Stewart has previously said they are not working on a new setting right now:

- Dark Sun
- Dragonlance
- Eberron
- Greyhawk
- Planescape
- Ravenloft

https://comicbook.com/gaming/2018/11/03/dungeons-and-dragons-new-campaign-setting-book-2019/

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That's the thing, there isn't really a great deal of difference between Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms. I've heard it argued that Greyhawk has a grittier, lower magic tone, but frankly, how do you write "tone" into a campaign setting? The tone of an adventure stems from the interaction of the DM and the players. Any setting can be grim and gritty, any setting can be comic parody.

 

[epithet]

That's the thing, there isn't really a great deal of difference between Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms. I've heard it argued that Greyhawk has a grittier, lower magic tone, but frankly, how do you write "tone" into a campaign setting? The tone of an adventure stems from the interaction of the DM and the players. Any setting can be grim and gritty, any setting can be comic parody.

The Forgotten Realms and the World of Greyhawk have different equilibrium states. On Toril, the forces of "good" ultimately triumph. On Oerth, the balance between good and evil, law and chaos, weal and woe teeters precariously but is maintained (for now.) On Oerth, heroes can win battles. On Toril, they can win the war (and then another war is written to give everyone something to do.)

 

[Dausuul]

That's the thing, there isn't really a great deal of difference between Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms. I've heard it argued that Greyhawk has a grittier, lower magic tone, but frankly, how do you write "tone" into a campaign setting? The tone of an adventure stems from the interaction of the DM and the players. Any setting can be grim and gritty, any setting can be comic parody.

You write "tone" by deciding what sorts of things to include and what to leave out. FR has lots of unambiguously heroic, high-level NPCs. Even the "edgy" heroes, like Drizzt, are clearly good guys--they're just good guys with psychological issues. It's a world that breaks down pretty cleanly into white hats and black hats. Greyhawk's high-level NPCs are fewer, and far fewer of them are clearly Good. Mordenkainen and the Circle of Eight, in particular, are committed to a vision of neutrality that can easily put them on the opposite side from the PCs.

Obviously, a DM who wants to have shades of gray and moral ambiguity in FR can do that, and a DM who wants to have Tolkien-style clashes of good versus evil in Greyhawk can do that. But it's more work to make that happen.

(The other big difference is simply the level of content. FR has been exhaustively detailed over countless supplements and novels. Greyhawk's history and even, to some extent, its present day are shrouded in mystery; it's more of a "here are the broad strokes of the world, DM fills in the details" setting.)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The Forgotten Realms and the World of Greyhawk have different equilibrium states. On Toril, the forces of "good" ultimately triumph. On Oerth, the balance between good and evil, law and chaos, weal and woe teeters precariously but is maintained (for now.) On Oerth, heroes can win battles. On Toril, they can win the war (and then another war is written to give everyone something to do.)

NONE of this is written into either setting at any point! Not in setting-specific rules (like Dark Sun), Not explicitly (like Wayfarers Guide to Eberron), and not set by the writing style of a single author (like Dragonlance) - because both settings have many authors.

What you are recounting are impressions gained from games set in those settings - simply the product of how your DM envisioned them.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You write "tone" by deciding what sorts of things to include and what to leave out. FR has lots of unambiguously heroic, high-level NPCs. Even the "edgy" heroes, like Drizzt, are clearly good guys--they're just good guys with psychological issues. It's a world that breaks down pretty cleanly into white hats and black hats. Greyhawk's high-level NPCs are fewer, and far fewer of them are clearly Good. Mordenkainen and the Circle of Eight, in particular, are committed to a vision of neutrality that can easily put them on the opposite side from the PCs.

Obviously, a DM who wants to have shades of gray and moral ambiguity in FR can do that, and a DM who wants to have Tolkien-style clashes of good versus evil in Greyhawk can do that. But it's more work to make that happen.

(The other big difference is simply the level of content. FR has been exhaustively detailed over countless supplements and novels. Greyhawk's history and even, to some extent, its present day are shrouded in mystery; it's more of a "here are the broad strokes of the world, DM fills in the details" setting.)

FR has lots of high level NPCs because it has lots of novels in that setting, and most of them are the heroes of those novels. Greyhawk has far fewer novels, and therefore has far fewer high level heroes.

 

[Jester David]

I imagine we'll see soon enough.

They tested Ravnica subclasses in January and April and the first races in May then August. If they're doing a campaign setting for the November release (or an extra book) and they're doing subclasses, we might be able to guess based on what they release in the next month.

 

[Aldarc]

NONE of this is written into either setting at any point! Not in setting-specific rules (like Dark Sun), Not explicitly (like Wayfarers Guide to Eberron), and not set by the writing style of a single author (like Dragonlance) - because both settings have many authors.

What you are recounting are impressions gained from games set in those settings - simply the product of how your DM envisioned them.

And? How does that disprove differences in tone?

That's the thing, there isn't really a great deal of difference between Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms. I've heard it argued that Greyhawk has a grittier, lower magic tone, but frankly, how do you write "tone" into a campaign setting? The tone of an adventure stems from the interaction of the DM and the players. Any setting can be grim and gritty, any setting can be comic parody.

Saying that the "tone of an adventure stems from the interaction of the DM and the players" is a bit of a truism. Well, duh. Participants shape the tone of any played adventure.

The tone of an adventure and the tone of the setting are different things, and it is not helpful to conflate the two as you appear to do here. The tone of adventures generally are varied for the sake of increasing replay value. The tone of a setting is typically more consistent for the sake of developing a brand or intellectual property.

When talking about "tone" of a setting, we are generally discussing the tone of the respective worlds as pieces of fiction without that particular human element. All things being equal, how are they different? It does not necessarily matter how many writers or adventures are represented as our sample size, as we are indeed talking about our collage of impressions across their respective available media. They developed differently. They had different sets of writers. They had different iconic adventures. They had different stories, narratives, and histories. Collectively, this invariably shapes our impression of the settings' tones, which in turn shapes how they are written.

FR has lots of high level NPCs because it has lots of novels in that setting, and most of them are the heroes of those novels. Greyhawk has far fewer novels, and therefore has far fewer high level heroes.

This reasoning does not seem sound.

 

[Parmandur]

I imagine we'll see soon enough.

They tested Ravnica subclasses in January and April and the first races in May then August. If they're doing a campaign setting for the November release (or an extra book) and they're doing subclasses, we might be able to guess based on what they release in the next month.

If only there was a setting they had released four UA articles for recently, and have at least one more in development, that they had discussed doing a hardcover book for...

 

[Jester David]

If only there was a setting they had released four UA articles for recently, and have at least one more in development, that they had discussed doing a hardcover book for...

Yeah, but they've already released that one. I have it already. They just need to tweak some mechanics and turn on Print on Demand.

And, again, they're not going to do that without the artificer that is apparently so problematic, it's not ready for a public playtest. Despite being first planned for August and again November.
Given they've delayed the artificer by four months (at least... if it releases later today) I doubt very much they're banking on being able to test the full class and 3-5 subclasses in time for a November deadline.

Plus, Nathan Stewart teased that it was one they haven't done yet. Which pretty much just rules out Eberron as it's literally the only one they've *really* done.
So, either he's lying to us, or there's another product planned. The question is whether it will be a physical book that we'll see playtests for in 1-4 months, or if it'll be another digital book that we'll see playtests for after the fact.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, but they've already released that one. I have it already. They just need to tweak some mechanics and turn on Print on Demand.

And, again, they're not going to do that without the artificer that is apparently so problematic, it's not ready for a public playtest. Despite being first planned for August and again November.
Given they've delayed the artificer by four months (at least... if it releases later today) I doubt very much they're banking on being able to test the full class and 3-5 subclasses in time for a November deadline.

Plus, Nathan Stewart teased that it was one they haven't done yet. Which pretty much just rules out Eberron as it's literally the only one they've *really* done.
So, either he's lying to us, or there's another product planned. The question is whether it will be a physical book that we'll see playtests for in 1-4 months, or if it'll be another digital book that we'll see playtests for after the fact.

Time will tell.