D&D 5E 3 Classic Settings Coming To 5E?

On the D&D Celebration – Sunday, Inside the D&D Studio with Liz Schuh and Ray Winninger, Winninger said that WotC will be shifting to a greater emphasis on settings in the coming years.

This includes three classic settings getting active attention, including some that fans have been actively asking for. He was cagey about which ones, though.

The video below is an 11-hour video, but the information comes in the last hour for those who want to scrub through.



Additionally, Liz Schuh said there would be more anthologies, as well as more products to enhance game play that are not books.

Winninger mentioned more products aimed at the mainstream player who can't spend immense amount of time absorbing 3 tomes.

Ray and Liz confirmed there will be more Magic: The Gathering collaborations.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

1. WotC has to open Dark Sun to DMsGuild to do that, which they could do but have chosen not to.

Their decision to not open up settings they are clearly never going to revisit -- Thunder Rift, Jakandor, Mystara, etc. -- is a baffler. There's no real downside to having people getting excited about old IP that's otherwise just sitting there, especially if the DMs Guild writers update it to work with 5E.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It is really surprising that D&D hasn't had a core canid race.

Especially since it's not hard to dig up some examples from Mystara and Dragon magazine.

Of course, Tasha's pretty much throws the doors open to doing just that and I imagine plenty of groups will have all sorts of talking animals and animal-based humanoids as a result.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

How do you have Lawful Good if upholding the law, which sanctions chattel slavery, directly contradicts the furtherance of good, the autonomy and dignity of sentient beings? In theory, a Lawful Neutral character would willingly turn a blind eye to the plight of a slave while a Neutral Good character may help a king, who has a large number of slaves, retrieve some McGuffin.

Advance/reboot the timeline to where slavery is only practiced in explicitly evil societies. Then you basically have the Slavers of Oerth, where they're there to get stabbed, not supported.

 

[Faolyn]

Especially since it's not hard to dig up some examples from Mystara and Dragon magazine.

Of course, Tasha's pretty much throws the doors open to doing just that and I imagine plenty of groups will have all sorts of talking animals and animal-based humanoids as a result.

Heck, I want just really want hengeyokai. Even if they never touch any other part of OA. Shifters aren't the same.

 

[Faolyn]

Consider the problems that DS presents to the alignment grid.

How do you have Lawful Good if upholding the law, which sanctions chattel slavery, directly contradicts the furtherance of good, the autonomy and dignity of sentient beings? In theory, a Lawful Neutral character would willingly turn a blind eye to the plight of a slave while a Neutral Good character may help a king, who has a large number of slaves, retrieve some McGuffin.

Also, kill on sight in Dark Sun is almost always easier said than done.

And, of course, there will always be an edgelord who wants to play an evil character or run an evil campaign.

There's a whole lot of heavy lifting to be done.

No, you're right. There's definitely a lot of problems that would be difficult to address in Dark Sun. I personally wouldn't have a problem with including slavery in DS, since it fits with the genre and both my players and I are fine with painting slavers as Always Evil, but I know that there are lots of others who wouldn't be fine, even if the books went out of their way to say that it was EvilEvilEvil and not just one of those things, whaddaya gonna do?

I will say, though, that alignments were even more important in 2e than in 5e and I honestly can't remember if they ever addressed the idea of good-aligned PCs dealing with slavers or owning slaves.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Heck, I want just really want hengeyokai. Even if they never touch any other part of OA. Shifters aren't the same.

The new Ravenloft book is actually a sign of hope for people who want a 5E Oriental Asian Adventures setting/sourcebook, since WotC seems to be actually walking the walk about who they get to write non-White/Western European stuff now.

Of course, one needn't wait around for WotC on that score. Asian gamers are already creating settings and sourcebooks like that on their own. Makenzie De Armas, now an associate designer at WotC, wrote Islands of Sina Una, a setting based on Philippine mythology.

 

[Faolyn]

Their decision to not open up settings they are clearly never going to revisit -- Thunder Rift, Jakandor, Mystara, etc. -- is a baffler. There's no real downside to having people getting excited about old IP that's otherwise just sitting there, especially if the DMs Guild writers update it to work with 5E.

I'm not a lawyer, and I don't really know how they deal with IP that they do allow DM's Guide writers to touch. But it might be one of those things where WotC doesn't want to let DMG writers have access because if then if WotC starts writing it again and they produce something that happens to be like something a DMG writer made, then the DMG writer might then claim that their IP was stolen. So then WotC would have to put a clause in the legal document saying that they either own all created IP or a DMG writer can't sue WotC if WotC happens to make something just like the DMG writer made, and nobody is going to like that.

Or I could be completely wrong. I mostly am just getting this from talking and listening to writers who say the will never look at fanworks based on their characters in case they accidentally let it influence something they later create and they got in trouble for it.

 

[Faolyn]

Of course, one needn't wait around for WotC on that score. Asian gamers are already creating settings and sourcebooks like that on their own. Makenzie De Armas, now an associate designer at WotC, wrote Islands of Sina Una, a setting based on Philippine mythology.

Neat! I hadn't seen this one before! It definitely looks like something I'd want to get at some point.

 

[Rikka66]

Consider the problems that DS presents to the alignment grid.

How do you have Lawful Good if upholding the law, which sanctions chattel slavery, directly contradicts the furtherance of good, the autonomy and dignity of sentient beings? In theory, a Lawful Neutral character would willingly turn a blind eye to the plight of a slave while a Neutral Good character may help a king, who has a large number of slaves, retrieve some McGuffin.

Also, kill on sight in Dark Sun is almost always easier said than done.

And, of course, there will always be an edgelord who wants to play an evil character or run an evil campaign.

There's a whole lot of heavy lifting to be done.

Considering WoTC is downplaying alignment even more in the future (after already heavily doing so from the start of 5e) I don't think they are too worried about how DS affects the alignment grid. And they've been pretty clear that Lawful Good includes opposing unjust laws.

A lot of the problems you've talked about were dealt with by the 4e adaptation of Dark Sun. That's not to say there aren't going to be people who are upset by any depiction of societal accepted slavery, of course. If they decide to do Dark Sun the heavy lifting will be to get ahead with the messaging of it.

"Yes, their is a lot of evil in the world. Yes, it's harsh. But the point is that you guys are the heroes who can change it." Which is going to offend purists who think the setting should just be a misery train of characters dropping like flies, but again this is already the approach they used for the 4e version.

 

[Marc_C]

Their decision to not open up settings they are clearly never going to revisit -- Thunder Rift, Jakandor, Mystara, etc. -- is a baffler. There's no real downside to having people getting excited about old IP that's otherwise just sitting there, especially if the DMs Guild writers update it to work with 5E.

I'm aware that Bruce Heard* offered to do 5e versions of Mystara when the edition came out and the answer was no. He decided to do his agnostic Calidar setting. No idea why WotC is not interested in Mystara. Maybe it's off limits because of the Goodman Games reprints of old B/X modules?

(*Princess Ark stories in the Dragon Magazine and editor of Mystara gazetteers)