D&D 5E Revising Classic Settings

[Bayushi_seikuro]

Al-Qadim: I think this is another gem that could be resurrected that would be popular, especially if it was stripped from its relation to the Forgotten Realms and allowed to be its own thing, with its own unique races (and perhaps a home for genasi).

Kara-Tur: Honestly, I enjoy Rokugan better - but not with D&D rules. I’d love to see an Asiatic D&D campaign, but I think the old Karu-Tur would have to be razed to the ground and rebuilt from scratch, as well as divorced from the Forgotten Realms. Likely though, emotions may be too charged at the moment for bringing this land back at this time.

I'm a big fan of things in al-Qadim, definitely. It really had a non-typical setting that stuck with me. I liked the sahir, I think it was, that could cast any spell but it was that they sent a djinn out into the multiverse to find it - depending on things like type or level affected if they could bring it back.

I never did much with Kara-tur - most of my exposure to it came from Ishi Barasume in the old FR comics - but as far as Rokugan... I've always been a huge fan of that setting even before Wizards converted it to D&D. I would say that it was one of the few settings I started out with on the 'groundfloor' in first edition L5R and went along with for a long time.

 

[Helldritch]

I do not think we'll see Darksun. Too much sensitive thing such as slavery and cannibalistic halflings for our time period.

Dragon Lance would be a good candidate, especially with the new novel that is supposed to come up. I just hope that they do not do the Reboot syndrome of gender swapping.

Greyhawk would be my favourite. But it is too close to TSR era and a bit too grim and dark with Nations at each other's throats to see print. Also, a lot of the nations in Greyhawk are base on real life ethnicities, I am not sure that WotC can pull it off.

Planescape, I would love to see. My second best by a slight margin. And this one could be easy to pull off correctly.

Spelljammer could be nice to have but I am starting to believe that it might get mixed in with Planescape. Retcon the phlogiston into the Astral sea and with a bit of twisting it should work out well...

Mystery and Hollow World could be a nice possibility too. There is a lot of material, but it suffers the problem that Greyhawk does. A lot of its nations are very close to real life ethnicities...

Birthright will not see the light of day in 5ed. It was not that popular and though it's fans are die hard, they are too few to count to make a profit on...

What I would also like to see, is other areas of the FR to be released. We are long due something other than the Sword Coast...

I could be very wrong, but that is my take.

 

[Eltab]

I don't believe Dark Sun will come back without a massive overhaul. It's a setting with slavery and exploitation at the core of civilized living.

Agreed.
WotC would have to grow asbestos armor over its internet presence, announce Athas as "the world where Evil has already won ... except for one faint glimmer of hope" and brace themselves for the flamethrower blasts, coming from people who will not realize that you are supposed to be that last faint glimmer.

 

[humble minion]

I think Dark Sun will come back, slavery and all.

I'm seeing a lot of assumptions that there'd be outrage over the setting because of the fact that slavery exists there. I think a lot of these assumptions are coming from a flawed understanding of what people do and don't get upset about when it comes to RPG content. If slavery is portrayed as an evil to be fought, as it always was in Dark Sun, then I suspect there'll be very little argument over that.

What changes there might be could be to move the city-states a bit away from cribbing off identifiable real-world civilisations (it's a bit eye-rolly when the only identifiable Cambodian-inspired content in official WotC D&D, for instance, is an evil desert city-state...), and probably a rethinking about whether templars are playable as PCs, given their inextricable identification with a profoundly evil slavery-perpetuating regime. And yes I know, Kurn is a thing, but it's the exception that proves the rule.

 

[The Glen]

I do not think we'll see Darksun. Too much sensitive thing such as slavery and cannibalistic halflings for our time period.

Dragon Lance would be a good candidate, especially with the new novel that is supposed to come up. I just hope that they do not do the Reboot syndrome of gender swapping.

Greyhawk would be my favourite. But it is too close to TSR era and a bit too grim and dark with Nations at each other's throats to see print. Also, a lot of the nations in Greyhawk are base on real life ethnicities, I am not sure that WotC can pull it off.

Planescape, I would love to see. My second best by a slight margin. And this one could be easy to pull off correctly.

Spelljammer could be nice to have but I am starting to believe that it might get mixed in with Planescape. Retcon the phlogiston into the Astral sea and with a bit of twisting it should work out well...

Mystery and Hollow World could be a nice possibility too. There is a lot of material, but it suffers the problem that Greyhawk does. A lot of its nations are very close to real life ethnicities...

Birthright will not see the light of day in 5ed. It was not that popular and though it's fans are die hard, they are too few to count to make a profit on...

What I would also like to see, is other areas of the FR to be released. We are long due something other than the Sword Coast...

I could be very wrong, but that is my take.

One of the major attractions to Mystara was the fact it used real world nationalities. It was very popular abroad for that very reason. Many of the nations weren't your usual selections for nations usually represented. Serbia, Byzantium, Chile, Portugal, NW Native American Tribes, Maori, Flemish, Iceland, Melanesia, and a lot more got fantasy versions of themselves. That's a selling point. Most people are thrilled when their culture gets a shout out, which is also why the Mystara setting sold so well outside the US. That and it was one of the most translated settings in D&D in the TSR days.

 

[Mecheon]

Yeah, folks will absolutely love Dark Sun. Its going to come back with slavery as this thing that your characters are specifically out there to stop. Folks thinking mentions of it are going to stop things are dramatically misreading what people are complaining about. Some of the nations will need reworking, absolutely, but, honestly? Taking the 4E approach to it and going from there is fairly safe. "Here's one place that's broken away from the yoke of an evil tyrant sorcerer king. The rest of the world is still in their grip. What do you do?"

Now, Dragonlance on the other hand may be a bit much of a setting to come back. They're certainly going to try, but I reckon Dragonlance's isuses are going to bubble to the surface because bow howdy does Dragonlance have issues. "Mormonism but D&D" and "Dramatically bad handling of alignment" are only the start of its problems. Dragonlance I honestly reckon is going to be far more trouble than its worth, especially because you're not going to get much out of it.

Greyhawk I reckon isn't going to have much traction to it because, ultimately, just doesn't have the pull today it used to. Humancentric's falling out of fashion and other works do what most people sell it on better. Greyhawk hasn't moved with the times and if we get something on it, I either don't expect much, or Greyhawk fans to complain about whatever we get.

Speaking of issues and unlikely to show up ever again, Al-Qadim, Kara-Tur and Maztica. Sure they have some gems in them, but its buried under a mountain. I think I can fairly confidently say unlikely they'll show up again

 

[Staffan]

If you change something too far from its original base, you lose what made it popular. That's a problem with a lot of remakes in other mediums. The factions are an integral part of planescape. Greyhawk has to have it racial tensions and International rivalries. Mystara needs It's Cold War. You start changing these that people aren't going to like them because you've changed What drew them to it in the first place.

I agree that having factions is core to Planescape. I'm not certain that those factions have to be the same ones.

 

[Scribe]

Well... it's not 1984 anymore. You can't have a group of 12 heroes and only have three of them be women and all of them effectively white.

Then make new Hero's. You don't go and fundamentally change what existed.

 

[teitan]

Considering they limited race selections I. Theros what makes you think they won’t for Dragonlance?

 

[teitan]

.

Greyhawk would be my favourite. But it is too close to TSR era and a bit too grim and dark with Nations at each other's throats to see print. Also, a lot of the nations in Greyhawk are base on real life ethnicities, I am not sure that WotC can pull it off.

People loved a game of Thrones aaand the Witcher, both of which are very much about nations at each other’s throats. Wildemount is about a continent actively at war. The idea of the different ethnicities in Greyhawk does not portray them as necessarily evil but they are factions within these nations and to think and simplify the world to nations and cultures can’t be evil is naive as historically, in the last 100 years alone, we’ve had Nazi Germany, Mussolini Italy, Franco Spain and Stalinist/Soviet Russia and the Communist Party of China committing horrifying atrocities. Even in modern times we’ve had the eradication of homosexuals in Eastern Europe. Nothing in Greyhawk comes close to these evils except maybe the Horned Society and Iuz whom have no real world counterparts. The Scarlet Brotherhood is easy to divorce from any racial connotations and portray as a fantasy equivalent of nazis while still being accurate to the original intent.

here is the thing, it really doesn’t matter if it appeals to old school fans. D&D is almost entirely composed of new fans and a much younger crowd. You put Greyhawk out there with these changes and give them a setting that reminds them of Game of Thrones or the Witcher, and it very much does, you have a license for money. Let people fight slavers, face down racist religious zealots, confront Raoist priests. Fight Ivid and his Holy Roman Empire. Battle the machinations of the Scarlet Brotherhood. I don’t think it will offend people nearly as much as people think. I also think that once you start looking at something and saying “that will offend people” you are looking at the wrong side of the movement.