D&D 5E Which Classic Settings do you think WotC will publish?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I guess I'm still stuck on the "but why?". You could do it. But you make Jakandor or Ghostwalk playable and appealing to a modern audience than DL, and I'm not even joking lol. Jakandor actually kind of has potential even, hilariously enough. Hell so does Ghostwalk, but I think Ravenloft takes too much of the same space. Seriously though with your approach I think it would be significantly more viable to make either of them work in 5E than DL.

I make a lot of Jakandor jokes, but if they were launching the setting today, it would be a solid base hit, as opposed to the weird failure that it was in our world. The clash of two cultures, with both of them portrayed sympathetically, fits an era where we've now had tons of prestige TV showing us that sort of complexity and empathy.

 

[Rikka66]

Citing a network with a small male audience aged 18-34 that specializes in superhero and paranormal fiction show surely doesn't really do much to counter the claim that sex appeal is for neckbeards.

The CW traditionally has a much heavier female leaning viewership. The Arrowverse has shook that up, of course, but stuff like Riverdale is very much with women viewers in mind.

 

[Parmandur]

The CW traditionally has a much heavier female leaning viewership. The Arrowverse has shook that up, of course, but stuff like Riverdale is very much with women viewers in mind.

They lost the female audience a bit in the midterms, or that's what they said when they tried to revitalize the brand with shows like Riverdale.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

One of the reasons I expect to see something out of Dragonlance eventually is how Ravenloft is now being presented, as not just a world but a toolset on how to run different forms of horror in fantasy. As enunciated in the DMG, Dragonlance is D&D’s epic/romantic fantasy setting, the sort of world whose story rules would apply to campaigning in a Round Table or Chansons de Roland campaign. Combine that with an avenue for finally presenting mass battle rules for 5e, and the actual world-specific plot and character widgets are gravy for designing a Dragonlance book à la Van Richten’s Guide.

Couldn't they do that with a Throne of Eldraine book, which has more of a recent audience than fantasy books that, again, don't appear in Amazon's top 100 fantasy sellers? I don't know that there's much player-facing content in Dragonlance that many people would get excited about.

In fact, putting kender, gully dwarves and tinker gnomes in a 5E Dragonlance book -- all of which seem guaranteed, and kender first appeared in the D&D Next playtest document -- would bring people out of the woodwork to say they don't want this book and that WotC shouldn't publish it.

The amount of work required to rehabilitate Krynn for 2021/2022 standards is substantial and there's the real risk that you'd lose whatever built-in audience it has, in favor of bringing in a potential audience -- maybe.

If I were looking for a romantic fantasy setting as a DM (and I've thought about it, based on one of my players), I would go with Blue Rose, which is politically almost the antithesis of Dragonlance, as those who remember the howls of outrage about it during the 3E era remember.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

And Joe Manganiello has said he has seen the Draconian playtest material for Dragonlance. So unless they have changed their minds, Dragonlance is one of the 3 Settings.

They had kender in the D&D Next playtest document. We have no way of knowing how old that Dragonlance playtest material was. WotC clearly changed their minds at some point, since there's no 5E kender running around at the moment. The real question is whether they've changed it back.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I mean, does this mean that dragonborn and tieflings will be in Dark Sun? Or is that not a "core rules setting?"

Given that turning into dragons is a THING in Dark Sun, it doesn't seem like it'd be hard to bring in dragonborn, with an alternate origin for them. (Maybe, like in 3E, player character dragonborns are some of the very first ones to exist.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It includes all 150 Dragonlance novels combined, of they did that with all the FR novels it would near the top of the list.

If you extend the publication period back far enough, you'll have people predicting a Pilgrim's Progress D&D book.

What someone was buying decades ago doesn't really shape what the publishing industry is doing now.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Given that turning into dragons is a THING in Dark Sun, it doesn't seem like it'd be hard to bring in dragonborn, with an alternate origin for them. (Maybe, like in 3E, player character dragonborns are some of the very first ones to exist.)

Were DBs and Ts in the 4e DS?

 

[Henadic Theologian]

They lost the female audience a bit in the midterms, or that's what they said when they tried to revitalize the brand with shows like Riverdale.

Either way Neckbeards aren't the target audience.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Given that turning into dragons is a THING in Dark Sun, it doesn't seem like it'd be hard to bring in dragonborn, with an alternate origin for them. (Maybe, like in 3E, player character dragonborns are some of the very first ones to exist.)

just make dray a sub type of dragon born and no one can really complain.