Two New Settings For D&D This Year

Yaarel · Jun 6, 2018

Mouseferatu said:
It would be awesome to see a fantasy setting based on ancient Judaic legends and stories. It would be awesome to see a different Middle Eastern setting that included fictionalized variants of multiple cultures.

Yeah, if WotC is going to wade into those controversial waters of Arabian culture, I want to see a Mideast cultural ethnic diversity, including Israel.

Mouseferatu · Jun 6, 2018

Yaarel said:
I am saying mentioning one group of the reallife conflict while erasing the other group. Is politics, verging on propaganda.

Good thing they're doing no such thing, then. I mean, given that the real world conflict is a conflict between nations--nations that happen to be linked to, but do not represent the entirety of, two particular religions and two particular ethnic groups--it would be silly to say that any use of one or both of those cultures was automatically taking sides in the conflict.

I mean, I do hope you're not suggesting that any portrayals of Arabs or Arabic mythology or culture is automatically taking a side. (Just as I would hope you wouldn't suggest that any portrayal of Middle Eastern Jewry would be taking a side.)

Mercurius · Jun 6, 2018

Yaarel said:
Al Qadim can easily come across as Antisemitic. Jews and Samaritans are aborigines of the region (as are Phoenicians, Coptics, Chaldeans, and others), but the ‘Arabic’ flavor effectively genocides and erases all of them.

I noticed this already in Xanathars, where Christian (Greek, Roman, Celtic) names and Muslim (Arabic) names are present, while Jewish (Hebrew) names were noticeably absent.

Yaarel said:
I am saying mentioning one group of the reallife conflict while erasing the other group. Is politics, verging on propaganda.

No. Just, no.

Enevhar Aldarion · Jun 6, 2018

neogod22 said:
I already know what's coming out. I can't tell you because of legal reasons, and I'd like to continue being able to know things and play them. But I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, it's not Greyhawk.

That's nice and all, but to me you are just some random, anonymous person on a message board bragging about things they cannot possibly prove because they are supposedly not allowed to. So what is your name in the real world and is your name in the credits of any published WotC books? If you cannot even tell us that, then please stop posting about what you supposedly secretly do or do not know.

Sadras · Jun 6, 2018

Yaarel said:
I am saying mentioning one group of the reallife conflict while erasing the other group. Is politics, verging on propaganda.

Yaarel said:
Yeah, if WotC is going to wade into those controversial waters of Arabian culture, I want to see a Mideast cultural ethnic diversity, including Israel.

Wong. Arabian Culture started after the Kingdom of Israel and before the State of Israel.
Stop making this political when it was not meant to be - the goal was to inject cultural stories myths and legends of a people in a fantastical setting not an attempt to represent a RL political landscape in D&D.

dwayne · Jun 6, 2018

I remember them saying that spelljammer would be about the astral sea and sailing on it, but could see that then be a connection to planescape two with one stone. And the Darksun would be cool as it is so differant from other settings, but also a modernsetting/sci fi ish one would be cool to as starfinder is doing well would be a way to catch some of that fire.

Zeromaru X · Jun 6, 2018

I guess that, with all this emphasis about D&D being a multiverse, maybe we are going to get some sort of Spelljammer/Planescape crossover, like in 4e, but with Great Wheel instead of World Axis. I mean, I remember Mike Mearls saying that spelljammers can travel not only in space, but also across the planes (pretty much, as it was in 4e).

And I know Planescape and Spelljammer are different settings with different hooks and flavor. I'm talking here about the concept of traveling between worlds.

Now, I dunno if those two settings are really that irreconcilable and cannot be fused as some sort of Planejammer hybrid.

Aldarc · Jun 6, 2018

Ancalagon said:
All of these, AND FR's belief system, are a subset of Planescape' belief system.

I can't say that I agree with that, and it's also one of THE THINGS that I hate most about Planescape, namely its desire to subsume its ethos onto all other settings as an omni-setting. Destroy that disease of a thought with fire. Yuck. This is one of the biggest things that keeps me from liking this setting. (That and the sophist nihilism.)

Remathilis said:
I am baffled by what people would want from a "new setting" for Dungeons & Dragons. D&D has some obvious boxes they have to tick; elves, dragons, wizards, swords, etc. Any setting they are going to make is going to be compatible with the Core Rulebooks at the bare minimum; and probably as many supplements as possible in order to maximize profits. They aren't going to make settings that severely limits the material available to it, nor are they going to radically change classes, mechanics, and the like. At best, you'll get flavored D&D; heroic (Dragonlance), pulp-noir (Eberron), gothic horror (Ravenloft) or pulp (Dark Sun). You're not getting a human-only world, or a world with radically different magic, or set in the modern or far future, as a D&D setting.

Perhaps if it went further back in time rather than forward from the presumed pseudo-Renaissance level? Something more Ancient and Classical feeling? Maybe something more Greco-Roman and Ancient Near Eastern (Egypto-Mesopotamian)? You get this to an extent with Dark Sun, but it represents a post-apocalyptic setting that has "regressed," and the focus is also on the harsh alien environment that will kill you.

I kinda wish that we had something more akin to Dawnforge - one of the 3e contest settings and published by Fantasy Flight Games - that dealt with the sort of "era before" D&D's assumptions were born. When legends were being made. When kingdoms were born.

CapnZapp · Jun 6, 2018

Yaarel said:
I am saying the designers have already mentioned the possibility of a ‘social campaign’ that focuses more on politics and intrigue.

In the Forgotten Realms setting.

When using the Forgotten Realms setting − and focusing on mechanics for institutions, or organizations, or mass combat for that matter − it is still Forgotten Realms.

Now you make no sense whatsoever.

Who's talking about the Realms? That WotC likes to move everything over to the Realms is not up for debate; everyone realizes that.

Are you or are you not claiming Birthright is like a third, or seventh, Forgotten Realms setting?