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D&D 5E Mearls on other settings

I started with 4e. All you needed was the core 3, or the Essentials core 3. Just like with Pathfinder or any other D&D. Sounds like you needed way more for DS.

Just core 4E was very bare boned though, missing races, missing classes, missing powers and wonky math. Technically you can play it but it is missing a lot.

You could play for years with 2E DS with 3 books.
 

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Just core 4E was very bare boned though, missing races, missing classes, missing powers and wonky math. Technically you can play it but it is missing a lot.

You could play for years with 2E DS with 3 books.

DDI subscription helped, but I could play just fine. I own all the Pathfinder books and have barely used anything outside of Core. But then I'm pretty simple to please. I don't like being overwhelmed with options. I'm a slow enough character creator as is.
 

DDI subscription helped, but I could play just fine. I own all the Pathfinder books and have barely used anything outside of Core. But then I'm pretty simple to please. I don't like being overwhelmed with options. I'm a slow enough character creator as is.

Pretty much every fan of 4E seems to mention the MM3/Monsters vault and DDI for some reason, the 4E core books (not the everything is core rubbish) is very very sparse.
 

FR rules have always been the same as the base rules when it comes to Spelljamming and Ravenloft. As for the planes, during 3e, they did attempt to give the setting a unique planar set-up, but as FR had previously used the Great Wheel as its planar default in 1e and 2e, the planes they came up with were either exactly the same as the normal 3e Great Wheel ones, or thinly-veiled rip-offs ("We don't have a River Styx that flows through the lower planes, but a suspiciously similar 'River of Blood' that flows through our suspiciously similar lower planes!") that took literally minutes to reverse-engineer back to the Great Wheel if you wanted. Basically, from a planar viewpoint, it was simply stupid Primes from Faerun simply trying to make sense of the planes from their limited viewpoint and making a right mess of it. It's no surprise that for 5e they went right back to the old Great Wheel set up...

There were many that were based on deity domains, but expanded into whole unique planes, such as Brightwater, Gates of the Moon, The House of Knowledge, Deep Caverns, Fury's Heart, Heliopolis, Ziggaraxus, Dragon's Eyrie, Juntuni (misspelled that). The one missed opportunity in 3e was not giving FR it's own manual of the planes, because some of those planes we're very unique compared to the Great Wheel.

A plane of Dragons! A plane for the Mulhorandi Pantheon, Brightwater, a Planar party city of delights, both sublime and depraved, Fury's Heart, a evil fiendish plane of natural disasters and blood thirsty predators, the House of Nature a plane of libraries, set in a back drop of a rustic settings, Dweamerheart a plane of magical wonders and strange magics.
 

Below you can see three very interesting tweets by Mike Mearls regarding the non-published dnd settings (even Spelljammer).

View attachment 85799

Although he doesn't mention how it supposed to support these settings, it seems to me that it will gonna be a holistic approach.

I think what they plan is to have the different settings more interconnected then before, like they have, already done with Ravenloft and FR, so you could start you adventure in FR, get pulled into Ravenloft by the Mists, that deposit you in Athas, where you take a Spelljammer to Krynn and when your done their usa planeshift spell to go to Sigil and from Sigil exit a portal to Oerth, and after some fun their, get the Wizard Mordkiedien to take you back to the Forgotten Realms, in Kara Tur, where you sail to Zakhara, land of Al Qadim, where you adventure till you set sail again to Faerun, where you started.
 

I think what they plan is to have the different settings more interconnected then before, like they have, already done with Ravenloft and FR, so you could start you adventure in FR, get pulled into Ravenloft by the Mists, that deposit you in Athas, where you take a Spelljammer to Krynn and when your done their usa planeshift spell to go to Sigil and from Sigil exit a portal to Oerth, and after some fun their, get the Wizard Mordkiedien to take you back to the Forgotten Realms, in Kara Tur, where you sail to Zakhara, land of Al Qadim, where you adventure till you set sail again to Faerun, where you started.

So everything *and* the kitchen sink then? ;)

Sometimes less is more...
 

I suppose they could create a Campaign Guide for Player's and a Campaign Guide for DM's and include all the relevant material in those two books.

With the Player's CG providing various races, backgrounds, classes and subclasses of the various settings.
So the Mystaran section could include Shadow Elves, Hin power in the Five Shires, Merchant Prince and Secret Magic Traditions of the Principalities of Glantri, Northern Reaches Rune Magic;​

The Dragonlance section could include Minotaurs, Kender, Gully Dwarves, Knight of Solamnia and Takhisis..etc

and so forth.

In the DM's CG each section would provide an extremely brief overview of the settings as well as the thematic and mechanical adjustments/limitations of each setting with possible variations and suggestions on the latter.

1) That way setting lore could be obtained from previous editions which was already detailed enough and still available in pdf format, with no reason for WotC to repeat it and for hobbyists to spend money on the same information, while the mechanics of each setting would be updated for 5e purposes;

2) This also wouldn't split the playerbase as all the necessary materials would be provided in two books for all settings (Players and DMs);

3) Future adventures/modules/AP would include how to run the material in the various now published settings.
 
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I think what they plan is to have the different settings more interconnected then before, like they have, already done with Ravenloft and FR, so you could start you adventure in FR, get pulled into Ravenloft by the Mists, that deposit you in Athas, where you take a Spelljammer to Krynn and when your done their usa planeshift spell to go to Sigil and from Sigil exit a portal to Oerth, and after some fun their, get the Wizard Mordkiedien to take you back to the Forgotten Realms, in Kara Tur, where you sail to Zakhara, land of Al Qadim, where you adventure till you set sail again to Faerun, where you started.

Sounds like a win to me.
 

With a little reflavoring almost everything from the players handbook can be fit into any setting.

Teiflings and the planes being severed, they're humans from a tribe from the deep desert where they have been warped by the harsh environment. We have giants with snake heads, some horns on a human aren't too hard to believe.
Oath of the crown makes a good templar along with a new warlock pact. A theme doesn't have to be just one class. Vengeance works. Ancients could be re-flavored as being sworn to some of the few remaining spirits of the world.
A fiendish warlock could be a warlock that's gained his power from the element of fire or even simply be a different type of defiler.
GOO warlocks could be reflavored as a warlock that gained their power after standing in the sun for days and caught a glimpse of something in their heat induced delirium. Who knows what that is, but it's not some extra planar entity.
Clerics would do better a new elemental domain, but some of the current ones would work.
Warforged don't need to eat, breath, etc. But they could be modified to require a certain amount of water every day in order to keep their plant parts working. They won't drown or suffocate but can't just walk around willy-nilly either.
Drow are just another tribe of elves once you remove all the spider fluff. But really, most of the races are re-flavored in Dark Sun anyway.
Heck, with the right reskinning, half-orcs could even fill in for Mul. That wouldn't be my preferred method, but it could work.
Gnomes, well, since they are story wise extinct I would be ok dropping them. But I could also see the gnome's stats used as a non-cannibal halfling offshoot.
Dragonborn would be rare, but DS already provided us with a good out in the Dray. They used Goliaths as half giants so why not Dragonborn as Dray.

The biggest piece to maintaining a settings feel is, to me, the magic. I'd be fine if certain spells weren't available in some settings or even modified. In dark sun, any healing could require using water in order to make that happen. Since water is a precious commodity, that would go a long way towards limiting those spells. Planar magic should be curtailed or reflavored as appropriate.

You still get a good portion of the PHB mechanically, but with a new skin.
 


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