D&D 5E Your one hope for D&D?

[Guest 6801328]

Also the Netherese had flying cities (yes, multiple), and magical toys for all the children (think like an ipad, but better). Their magic was so magic, that they changed the rules of how magic worked in controlled areas. When featured in an adventure, the central plot point devolves into not letting people use the Netheril magic because it is too world-breaking.

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about: I had no idea about any of that. You don't feel it in any of the adventures. I assume some writer thought this up as a plot-line and tacked it onto the setting at some point, but it's not part of what makes a FR adventure an FR adventure.

Contrast that with Tolkien's stories, and the excellent adventures for The One Ring, where the sense of lost greatness permeates every page. The stories can't even be told without a reference to the past. I like that.

I gather Dragonlance has...or is supposed to have...some sense of this, but the setting is so unspeakably awful in other ways that I can't count it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Another new campaign search like started Eberron. It was a huge buzz that garnered a lot of attention and effort and just helped everyone get their creative juices flowing. And gave us something new instead of a retread. I have several settings to play faux-European-medieval-fantasy, and there are plenty of untapped ideas out there to add to our options outside that.

Ya know...as long as we also got some mechanics update of Eberron, DL, DS, and I don't know if Mystara or Greyhawk need anything, but also Planescape/Spelljammer, then I would love for your hope to come true.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I would wish for a new campaign setting. Basically what I want is Middle-earth, but with a clean slate in terms of lore:
- Low-fantasy. A world where it's perfectly reasonable to not believe in giants and dragons.
- RPG Noir. Dark and gritty. Large cities are few and far between, and travel and trade are limited because it's dangerous out there.
- A long and rich history, but now the world is in decline. The accomplishments of the past are beyond the ability of today's artisans.

This setting would have its own set of classes, and its own monster manual.

So, yeah, it sounds like I'm describing C7's The One Ring but, again, I want a brand new world. (At least partly so that creativity isn't constrained by lawyers.)

I think you and I have different idea of what "dark and gritty" means, if The One Ring fits that term to you.

but yeah, that sounds a LOT like the Nentir Vale setting.

and the norm in modern storytelling.

And the base assumptions of 5e.

I'd much rather see a DnD setting that actually and finally breaks with that set of tropes entirely. Especially the world in decline thing.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I think you and I have different idea of what "dark and gritty" means, if The One Ring fits that term to you.

Ok, Middle-earth maybe isn't as "gritty" as I'm envisioning, but M-e should be plenty dark, if played as I think it should be. I love CoS for it's feel, and would love a whole campaign setting like that (without the micro-plane mumbo jumbo of the original Ravenloft setting.)

One of the main things I want to get away from is the high-fantasy "exotic-ness" of most campaign settings and adventures. It's my main beef with most of the WotC stuff. Too much magic, too much inter-planar crap, too many gods and demons and strange races and the like.

EDIT: Another contest for a new setting gets my vote, too, even though I'm fairly sure that the winner wouldn't be what I'm looking for.

 

[Lanliss]

I would say, a "Complete Guide to Building". a DM book entirely focused on the creation of Things. Classes, Spells, Races. Descriptions of various abilities, discussion on the design budget of current races/classes, and tables of abilities and traits with attached prices to help make your own races that come balanced against pre-existing options. A blend of some of the stuff in the DMG, that one UA with the spell-less ranger, and any off-the-books stuff that they didn't put in those things, all taken to the next level of depth, so as to help an inexperienced DM like myself actually know the inner workings of the things I am making, and how they might clash or synergize with the current offerings.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Ok, Middle-earth maybe isn't as "gritty" as I'm envisioning, but M-e should be plenty dark, if played as I think it should be. I love CoS for it's feel, and would love a whole campaign setting like that (without the micro-plane mumbo jumbo of the original Ravenloft setting.)

One of the main things I want to get away from is the high-fantasy "exotic-ness" of most campaign settings and adventures. It's my main beef with most of the WotC stuff. Too much magic, too much inter-planar crap, too many gods and demons and strange races and the like.

EDIT: Another contest for a new setting gets my vote, too, even though I'm fairly sure that the winner wouldn't be what I'm looking for.

Well, nothing wrong with interpreting art differently than one another.

To me, Middle Earth is less dark, in terms of how I generally see the term used to describe stories, than most speculative fiction. The world is dangerous, but it's quite full of good people, and hope, and the good guys may not always win, but they don't always lose, either.

But I also just don't like dark and gritty stories anymore, because so many of my favorite media has been either rebooted that way, or been turned into it over time, and it seems like 90% of new spec fic media is dark and gritty, or "grimdark", like Game of Thrones.

So, biases, as always, play a part here.

But D.C. Rebirth has turned toward optimistic stories about heroism, the last Star Trek was about strength through unity, and creating and protecting an optimistic future, and stuff like Adventure Time is popular, so it's getting better. Maybe I'll get less grumpy about grimdark if it becomes less ubiquitous.

 

[L R Ballard]

D&D succeeds at making a video game on par with Skyrim. The game has a turn-based setting so it can run traditional tabletop-style games. The creators release a creation kit, offer IP rights to both the gaming assets and the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, and allow mod creators to create and sell mods. Boom!

 

[Gradine]

Hmm. You may have a point there. I do think the magic item values and cost by rarity would need to be reworked for Eberron, though.

What would you be changing about Eberron, then?

For me, it seems vastly preferable to use variant rules in 5e than to change the setting, but I'm curious what about the setting you'd see changed.

I think the biggest thing, for me, is changing the way Dragonmarks work. I don't think they've worked great in any edition, to be honest; even in 3.5 they over-emphasized the SLA's when the main point was, at least according to KB, the skill buffs that allowed the Dragonmarked Houses to establish their economic monopolies (and the ability to use Siberys shard magic items, which further allowed them to monopolize certain industries). I have a sneaking suspicion that the SLA's were added to make them worth the feat.

Since I wouldn't want to use feats to express Dragonmarks I'd instead use the Blessings system and indeed focus more on the skill boosts and ability to attune to/use Siberys shard items. I might add a cantrip and then some ritual casting as the mark grows. I'd leave the actual spell-casting to Aberrant marks, to further emphasize how different those are from true marks.

Other than that? I'd tone the "magical war economy" aspects somewhat; rather than concrete mathematical bonuses the mass-produced magical weapons/armor would come with other benefits that would extremely useful for an army at war without providing straight to-hit/damage buffs (like self-repairing armor, blades that never dull, etc.) Any kind of magic artillery (such as eternal wands, or as 5e calls them, wands) would have been rare and powerful; probably what kept Aundair and Cyre in the war in spite of their circumstances. The 5e Treaty of Galifar would likely have included a fairly strict "wand control" policy that would have seen most such items destroyed in light of the Mourning.

There's undoubtedly going to be clamoring for an Artificer class and magic item creation rules, but I'd personally axe that class and have most magic item creation monopolized by House Cannith; schemas for even the most basic magic items are closely guarded house secrets, and again anything that would be regarded as a magical weapon of any kind would be strictly forbidden by the treaty. That's probably not a popular idea so that's more my personal Eberron than anything I'd actually like to see in official support. I mean... I'd be pleasantly surprised if that were the case, but I'd also understand the outcries of heresy that would spark.

 

[alienux]

I wouldn't ask for much. Just a series of shorter, old-style modules. I like the Adventure Paths, I'd just like to see more traditional module based adventures as well.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

A D&D tv series in the same mode as Table Titans.