D&D 5E What's Next for D&D's Campaign Settings? (And an idea/suggestion for WotC!)

[tuxgeo]

The Golarion thread got me thinking about campaign settings for D&D 5E. By way of full disclosure, I never use pre-published settings but I do buy them. I like to collect, brown, and idea-mine setting books, but love the process of world design and would never give that up. < snip >

And I'm going to cut off the quote there and reply to a couple of things:
(1) In the phrase, "collect, brown, and idea-mine setting books," I don't think I would do much more than the collecting -- I'm afraid of damaging the books by browning them, and I wouldn't know how to start: in a frying pan with olive oil, or in an oven? At 250 degrees F. or at 350 degrees? (Things like that.)
(2) More important than the settings is the shared experience; so I'm more hopeful of an Internet-enabled, ad-hoc facility for generating one-time playing-groups than for much of anything related to setting. (This based on the theory that you can become friends with complete strangers by playing games with them.)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

We don't need another Eberron or Dark Sun book as the flavour text will not have changed. We just need a few races, some subclasses, and the like. A few other worlds (Dragonlance and Ravenloft) were updated recently and could do with the same treatment. Other settings (Spelljammer and Planescape) don't have as much in the way of setting lore and could be fully updated in a magazine.
Pair these with PDFs of older edition setting material and you're good.

I think there is a core wisdom here.

Make a new worldbook and/or box set for each of the major settings for D&D*: zero mechanics; all history & geography; NPCs described in broadest terms. Maps. Make them high quality, built to last. That means they would be evergreen- usable with any edition of the game, past, present, future. They never need to out of print, and that's a money saver for WotC AND customers. It takes certain material off of the "edition treadmill". If WotC wanted to, they could even do supplemental releases that depict the settings in different eras.

I'd buy that. It would let me use their settings much like I use those fabulous old Judge's Guild products...

Leave the mechanics to other books.




* FR (the entirety of it), Greyhawk, Eberron, Planescape, Spelljammer, Dark*Sun, Krynn...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

My words were so nice, ENWorld posted them twice.

 

[Plaguescarred]

I'd like to think that Dark Sun sold well in 4th edition and that we could see more revival of older campaign settings such as Greyhawk and Dragonlance in D&D Next. I'd be more than happy to spend gold on these!

 

[Sadras]

I'm of the opinion the core rule books should follow in the same vein as the playests (definitely the first one), where they referenced deities, locations and people from all settings, even ones that had been "abandoned" long ago. It felt friendly and all encompassing. They are all part of the D&D family and their inclusion in one way or another felt like WoTC was really reaching out to the entire fragmented community and saying - this is for you.

So core rulebooks will have a splatter of deities, locations and people from every setting...but what about adventures?
Well, firstly they need to improve their adventure design team and then I think they can cherry pick locations from everywhere, from every D&D setting in history. As DMs we can make adventures fit into any setting so what does it matter. What matters is great adventures. Bonus, if they are from your setting - but lets not alienate anyone by selecting a specific setting or creating a new one. There's too much bad blood it seems and no one can agree

Give me a great adventure set in Greyhawk or wherever and I will make it fit in my Mystara Campaign. Give me a great adventure set in Mystara and bonus for me. Let designers/creators go wild on any setting (of course try balance somewhat over the settings) but deliver us great adventures and we will make it fit or mine it for ideas!

Would work for me just fine...and if they take off - well then a call could be made to the fans to see if they wanted a Campaign Setting Book. But that is later...get the basics right first.

 

[Li Shenron]

I still believe there is no need for a "default" setting. It actually depends what it means, because if they say "FR is the new default" but then core books don't contain any FR-specific material that should be ignored when playing in other settings, then it really doesn't cause any harm.

3.0 had Greyhawk as default, and yet this only meant two things: Greyhawk deities in the PHB, and spell names containing Greyhawk NPC (notice how 3.5 cleverly messed up by having a prestige class in core taken from another setting...). The 5e domains system currently doesn't need any mention of deities in the PHB. Spell names could remain for tradition's sake, or they could make neutral names, it's not that big deal for me. Thus I don't see any reason for really having a "default" setting. There can be just generic books, and setting-specific books, no need to mess up the two things together.

Would be even worse for me if the default setting was going to be a new setting, because this means it would either be very fantasy generic (which we already have many that can be reused, and at least they would carry over some tradition with them) or stray away from classic D&D which guarantees troubles.

That said, 5e already has a default setting and it is Forgotten Realms, so there's nothing to advocate. But once again this means nothing if the actual character material in core and non-setting supplements doesn't contain FR-specific stuff.

---

As for supporting other settings is additional books, the more the better!

My preference would be to focus on the main campaign setting sourcebooks, rather than the supplements. I would prefer they give precedence to one large FR campaign setting book containing all you need to play for a long time (compared to 3e FR books, I'd prefer one that would merge the FRCS, Manual of Faerun and Magic of Faerun, although not the entire of content of them is needed, so a 500-pages limit could be a good target), and then do the same for several more settings.

 

[delericho]

I don't think this analogy works at all because the "LotR" and "Silmarillion" of Greyhawk already exists in that there is a ton of material out already. I think a more accurate analogy would be, after the Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends were published, asking "why more?" The More became an endless stream of novels and short stories, and then later books revisiting the characters from the original series...and the whole thing got over-saturated and, quite frankly, beaten to death.

We see this time and time again. Rather than a new science fiction franchise, we get a re-hashing of Star Trek, but this time for Gen Texters. A lot of the original vitality is lost - especially when you try to re-create things like the chemistry between Kirk, Spock, and Bones, or the classic villainy of Khan. I would have rather seem them start with an Enterprise after the Next Generation - with a clean(er) slate. The death of Kirk scene in the recent Star Trek movie ended up being almost comical in comparison to the epic drama of Wrath of Khan.

That's all nice in theory, but there's a big problem: those names sell. That's why we keep seeing sequels, prequels, reboots, and rehashes (plus star vehicles for the likes of Pitt, Cruise, Tarantino, Spielberg...) That's why Disney just bought Lucasfilm, why we're getting a new trilogy of "Star Wars" films, and why we'll all go trooping off to see them in the cinema, even after the epic disappointment that was the prequel trilogy.

When it comes to settings, WotC could try out a new setting, and they might manage to catch lightning in a bottle and hit on something that becomes as big as the Forgotten Realms. But, much more likely, they'd get something as big as Spelljammer, or Birthright, or... something that does well enough for a while, but isn't really a huge seller long-term.

Or, they can put out a new version of FR, and be guaranteed big sales. Probably not as big as last time, and it probably won't be as well received as last time (well, okay... the time before last), but probably better than "the next Birthright" would do.

And given that it costs the same to do the one as to do the other, they choose the safe option.

(And, of course, that's why 4e was "Dungeons & Dragons", and not just some new fantasy RPG, and why 5e is going to be "Dungeons & Dragons". And 3e, for that matter.)

 

[Li Shenron]

I also agree with those who are skeptic about getting even new settings...

How many "classic fantasy" settings we already have? Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Mystara, Kingdoms of Kalamar, Golarion, "Points of Light"...? (sorry if some of these don't qualify as "classic" for you)

I don't really the reason to create new classic fantasy setting, rather than instead provide support to some of the old ones for the new edition, and then count on the individual DMs to create their own homebrew when it comes to classic fantasy.

If I see a new setting announced, it'd better have a key concept that strongly influences gameplay and disinguishes the new setting from all the existing ones, opening up a new possible play experience. Ravenloft focus on fear and horror themes, Rokugan with its Japanese theme, Al-Qadim with arabian theme, Planescape with planar travel are some good examples for me of something that is significantly "different", and in fact they all succeeded to remain in people's hearts.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

I think they should do a big focus on Blackmoor. I thought the setting sounded really cool but it never really took off.

 

[TerraDave]

... spell names containing Greyhawk NPC (notice how 3.5 cleverly messed up by having a prestige class in core taken from another setting...). ....

I think its worth clarifying: those where the names of some of the first PCs (including henchmen and secondary characters) who happened to be in what would become Greyhawk.

I think its an important difference.