D&D 5E WotC: 5 D&D Settings In Development?

WotC's Ray Winninger spoke a little about some upcoming D&D settings -- two classic settings are coming in 2022 in formats we haven't seen before, and two brand new (not Magic: the Gathering) settings are also in development, as well as return to a setting they've already covered in 5E. He does note, however, that of the last three, there's a chance of one or more not making it to release, as they develop more than they use.

Two classic settings? What could they be?​

So that's:

• 2 classic settings in 2022 (in a brand new format)
• 2 brand new settings
• 1 returning setting

So the big questions -- what are the two classic settings, and what do they mean by a format we haven't seen before? Winninger has clarified on Twitter that "Each of these products is pursuing a different format you've never seen before. And neither is "digital only;" these are new print formats."

As I've mentioned on a couple of occasions, there are two more products that revive "classic" settings in production right now.

The manuscript for the first, overseen by [Chris Perkins], is nearly complete. Work on the second, led by [F. Wesley Schneider] with an assist from [Ari Levitch], is just ramping up in earnest. Both are targeting 2022 and formats you've never seen before.

In addition to these two titles, we have two brand new [D&D] settings in early development, as well as a return to a setting we've already covered. (No, these are not M:tG worlds.)

As I mentioned in the dev blog, we develop more material than we publish, so it's possible one or more of these last three won't reach production. But as of right now, they're all looking great.

Of course the phrase "two more products that revive 'classic' settings" could be interpreted in different ways. It might not be two individual setting books.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I never liked the concept of Crystal Spheres and the Phlogiston, even if it's based on Ptolemy's ideas back in Ancient Greece.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Dungeon of the Mad Mage has an actual Spelljammer piloted by a Mindflayer pirate and a crew that doubles as snacks in a pinch, and one of the possible outcomes of the Adventure is the party flying off into the Phlostigon (including Spelljamming rules)

Interesting - I had assumed it was a Nautiloid, because he was a Mindflayer (I don't have the adventure), is it not? And when you say rules, how detailed are you talking? Last I heard people were claiming 5E had "no official spelljamming rules" and fighting over homebrew attempts at them.

 

[overgeeked]

I never liked the concept of Crystal Spheres and the Phlogiston, even if it's based on Ptolemy's ideas back in Ancient Greece.

The only change I'd make to either is that the Phlogiston pushes against your air bubble and thus moves the ship rather than you're literally sitting in the rainbow phlo. This minimizes the changes to the setting while also allowing cannons. Because come on, they really missed a trick there. If you can't do ship-to-ship combat in space without cannons...why bother.

 

[Mind of tempest]

The only change I'd make to either is that the Phlogiston pushes against your air bubble and thus moves the ship rather than you're literally sitting in the rainbow phlo. This minimizes the changes to the setting while also allowing cannons. Because come on, they really missed a trick there. If you can't do ship-to-ship combat in space without cannons...why bother.

the lack of gun in spelljammer is just odd, people would love a setting with guns.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

The only change I'd make to either is that the Phlogiston pushes against your air bubble and thus moves the ship rather than you're literally sitting in the rainbow phlo. This minimizes the changes to the setting while also allowing cannons. Because come on, they really missed a trick there. If you can't do ship-to-ship combat in space without cannons...why bother.

Another reason why I didn't like the Phlogiston, though I'd think that with the invention of percussion cap technology someone would figure out how to compress a bit of Phlogiston inside a metal cap and use it as a propellant.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I really, really like the Spelljammer setting.

I don't doubt your sincerity for a heartbeat but there is no setting so bad, none, that somebody doesn't "really like it". Hell, I know I'm going to get rocks thrown at me, but Greyhawk is pretty mediocre (I've believe this since I was 11, note, and first read stuff for it), yet it so inspired love in people that multiple times TSR tried to force it to come back to life, despite other settings selling well, and Greyhawk failing miserably every time. And the same applied with WotC, who were so into it that they made it the default setting, in the hope of inspiring people to be into it, but even that failed. I don't doubt this was motivated by love though - if it was just about $$$ they'd have gone with the FR back in 2000, as it was already very clear that was the "winning" setting back then.

 

[grimslade]

I love Spelljammer. I love the guano-loco nature of Ptolemaic space, the bizarre gravity, and air rules. The fact that the Elven Navy is a spent empire trying to hold onto past glory. The setting holds a special place in my heart.
In the end, I could lose all of it to have my ship combat and illithid pirates fighting Giff mercenaries. Put it in the Astral sea. Put it in space without Crystal Spheres and the Phlo. I just want my Star Wars cantina of aliens and shady dealings setting. I want the truly fantastical ship design of Nautiloids, Neogi Mindspiders, Hammerheads, and Dwarven forge-powered asteroids.

 

[OblivionDrive]

I see where you're coming from, totally but Spelljammer is the wrong kind of silly.

Like "kids today" do indeed like a lot of stuff that's kind of superficially "silly" (as did my generation, really), most of it represented by various somewhat-actually-edgy cartoons like Rick & Morty or Infinity Train (I'm sorry, it is, based on what I've seen of it), or, especially for a slightly older generation, now in their later twenties mostly seriously fluffy/secretly kind cartoons with a slight edge of self-knowing-ness like the previous gen of MLP (I dunno if there's a new gen yet I haven't been following - I've literally watched six episodes of MLP in my life, well, over the age of 10 anyway) or Steven Universe or w/e (actually SU is extremely serious at times, but that's part of the whole deal).

Spelljammer belongs, very firmly, to an older breed of much less self-aware or totally un-self-aware, much less secretly-edgy (or equally, secretly kind - Spelljammer is neither) silliness, that is silly more for the sake of being silly, doesn't feature references or much in the way of "meta" commentary or the like. It has a relationship to the LOL SO RANDOM era of the internet (a long-ago time), which whilst later, featured a lot of the same sort of stuff that didn't really have a meta component, it was literally just silly to be silly.

So I think it would take a lot of work to reshape that into a modern-friendly kind of silly.

And I guess the big issue is, there ain't much to work with. You have a very bland and rather featureless space setting. Even Realmspace, Krynnspace etc. which probably won't feature due to potential IP damage, don't actually help much because they're also pretty bland. I hate to say it, but based on the decent amount of Spelljammer stuff on the shelf behind me, this was not TSR's greatest work. This was not something they were really doing a great job with. This setting was not written at the same level as Taladas, Dark Sun, or Planescape, all of which had a hell of a lot of energy. It feels like an artifact from the mid-80s, but not like, compellingly '80s, just... old. Like a boardgame you find from back then in an attic, and give a go, and turns out, it wasn't actually very good!

And it's whole age of sail, empires rock! deal would need re-working.

So where Dark Sun and Planescape are really solid settings that you could re-work, Spelljammer is more like the idea for a setting, which you'd have to rebuild from the ground up. Doesn't mean it shouldn't be done, does mean it would be a lot more work than something like Dark Sun, Ravenloft, or Planescape.

See, where you say “bland, not much to work with, wrong kind of silly” I see “totally open for total revamp without anyone being too upset, blank canvas, sky’s the limit.”

The draw to me of Spelljammer is “sailing ships in fantasy outer space” and doing something weird and different than you would with a planet-bound campaign. It’s campy and you can dial that level of camp up or down at will. Nobody is forcing you to use giant space hamsters. Likewise, nobody was saying the overall meta plot or underlying narrative of SJ was as compelling as Dark Sun or Planescape. I’m definitely not making that argument and I love both of those settings to death. Planescape is my all time favorite.

I just don’t think that the setting itself is “dumb” on its face any more so than anything else really. We’re playing a pretend fantasy dragon game here so neither of us has room to high horse anything. I’m just seeing a canvas that is ripe for repainting that didn’t get to live up to its full potential when it originally came out for a number of reasons where you see forgettable trash. We can obviously agree to disagree on that.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I love Spelljammer. I love the guano-loco nature of Ptolemaic space, the bizarre gravity, and air rules. The fact that the Elven Navy is a spent empire trying to hold onto past glory. The setting holds a special place in my heart.
In the end, I could lose all of it to have my ship combat and illithid pirates fighting Giff mercenaries. Put it in the Astral sea. Put it in space without Crystal Spheres and the Phlo. I just want my Star Wars cantina of aliens and shady dealings setting. I want the truly fantastical ship design of Nautiloids, Neogi Mindspiders, Hammerheads, and Dwarven forge-powered asteroids.

that seems workable how crazy can we go?

 

[Steampunkette]

Interesting - I had assumed it was a Nautiloid, because he was a Mindflayer (I don't have the adventure), is it not? And when you say rules, how detailed are you talking? Last I heard people were claiming 5E had "no official spelljamming rules" and fighting over homebrew attempts at them.

It is a Nautiloid in particular, not just a spelljammer.

The book doesn't actually include all the rules for Spelljamming exactly. It includes all the information on the ship's structure, includes a Stardock accessible from level 16, and has the Helm taken to level 23. If you get the helm and put it on a boat, any boat under 100 tons, you can make the ship you're on function as a spelljammer with a speed of miles per hour equal to your highest unexpended spell slot level.

No information about interplanetary travel, nothing about Phlogiston or the Spheres. Just "Your boat now flies at a speed based on your spell slots, has an atmosphere at 70F at all times, and has gravity".