D&D 5E How do you hope WotC treats the upcoming classic settings?

[GuyBoy]

Hiya!

Um, no. Any setting that sees a 5e version does NOT need to be "updated to modern sensibilities...etc". Why? Let me put it to you this way: would you be fine with ME making the decision as to what is "modern sensibilities, etc"? Is that cool with you?

What's that I hear your brain saying.. "Wait...". Yeah, that. That little pause of trepidation about allowing someone other than yourself to determine what is "sensible", "not sexist", "not racist", etc. Basically...morals and ethics I guess. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say... You don't "trust my sensibilities, etc", because you don't know me. Well... that's the EXACT SAME REASONING from my, and other's, points of view.

Who gets to decide what is "ok" and what is "not ok"? I'll tell you who: You do. You see/read something and think "Ok, cool", or you think "Wait, that seems unfair" or you think "OMG!? What the carp?!". Nobody can make that decision for you.

What's not ok in my view: Someone else deciding what I get to read, watch, or write about because they read something and think it's "bad". No thanks. I can make up my own mind and choices about what I find acceptable or not.

Greyhawk as been around for decades, almost a half century at this point. It's already written... WHY do so many people think it's a good idea to try and re-write history? I don't get it. Just write something new with what YOU want to write. Then others will read it and they will think "Ok, cool", "Wait, that seems unfair" or "OMG!? What the carp?!". That's when you know how close you are to "modern sensibilities"...at least as far as the target audience is concerned.

If you wan to write your own version of Greyhawk (or Dragonlance, Faerune, Cerilia, Athas, etc) with your own sense of morals/ethics/beliefs... go for it! Enjoy! PLEASE! Do that and spend the next 40 years playing and having fun with your friends. Just leave the original and official version alone... it doesn't need "updating" any more than Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew" or Dante's "Inferno", etc.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

I think this misses the point of updating to reflect modern sensibilities...and I use the word update, not rewrite, advisedly.
I love Greyhawk; for me, it perfectly answers the nostalgia of the 50th, is a tribute to the game’s history and is a wonderful opportunity to share that game’s history with the newer generation of players. It is the last point in particular that merits an update.
D&D and Greyhawk was written by middle-aged and slightly younger white guys in the USA of the mid 1970s. That’s ok. That’s history. It can’t be “re-written” as an event, but it can, and should, be updated as a product.
It reflected a culture which included significant male dominance, chainmail bikinis and where non-white, non-heterosexual characters were pretty limited (please note, I’m not saying completely non-existent, so don’t use rebuttal by singular example).

We can do better now, and if we can, we should.

As a non-D&D aside, the argument “we cannot rewrite history” is a pretty trite one. Certainly events happened, but interpretations of them are constantly being updated, and there have been lots of historians offering differing viewpoints for centuries. Herodotus, Gibbon, Taylor, William of Malmesbury, Fukuyama, Huntington etc all wrote and interpreted history. They didn’t all write the same thing.

 

[Dausuul]

Hiya!

Um, no. Any setting that sees a 5e version does NOT need to be "updated to modern sensibilities...etc". Why? Let me put it to you this way: would you be fine with ME making the decision as to what is "modern sensibilities, etc"? Is that cool with you?

This argument, followed to its logical conclusion, means never changing anything ever. It's a silly argument. It's like saying nobody should have surgery because would you want ME (no medical degree, no training, no experience) cutting into your body with a knife?

No, I'm not cool with you making those calls. Nobody should want me making them, either. But I'm fine with Wizards making them, because I think they do a fairly good job (at least in recent years).

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Um, no. Any setting that sees a 5e version does NOT need to be "updated to modern sensibilities...etc". Why? Let me put it to you this way: would you be fine with ME making the decision as to what is "modern sensibilities, etc"? Is that cool with you?

We live in the modern world (and we always have, modern is the present). Any setting being updated will always be reflecting some modern sensibilities, otherwise it will not succeed.

What's that I hear your brain saying.. "Wait...". Yeah, that. That little pause of trepidation about allowing someone other than yourself to determine what is "sensible", "not sexist", "not racist", etc. Basically...morals and ethics I guess. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say... You don't "trust my sensibilities, etc", because you don't know me. Well... that's the EXACT SAME REASONING from my, and other's, points of view.

Who gets to decide what is "ok" and what is "not ok"? I'll tell you who: You do. You see/read something and think "Ok, cool", or you think "Wait, that seems unfair" or you think "OMG!? What the carp?!". Nobody can make that decision for you.

No one decides for me what is sensible. If a new Batman movie gets made where he thinks killing is ok, I think it's bad and don't watch the sequels. Enough people do that, the movies don't make money and the studio who owns Batman puts the brand on hiatus and returns to the drawing board to devise new ideas that are commercially successful.

The people who own D&D (WotC) decide what gets put out to the market, but we the consumers decide whether or not that successful. If enough consumers like it, they keep going down that path. If enough don't, they start over. If you're part of the minority that disagrees with the direction the commercially successful property is taking... well sorry, that's life in a capitalist society.

What's not ok in my view: Someone else deciding what I get to read, watch, or write about because they read something and think it's "bad". No thanks. I can make up my own mind and choices about what I find acceptable or not.

I'm surprised you didn't already know this, but WotC can't force you what to read/watch/write. You can still look at all media and pick and choose what you enjoy. A company making media you don't personally like, but that is successful because others do like it... that still doesn't force you personally to do anything.

Greyhawk as been around for decades, almost a half century at this point. It's already written... WHY do so many people think it's a good idea to try and re-write history? I don't get it. Just write something new with what YOU want to write. Then others will read it and they will think "Ok, cool", "Wait, that seems unfair" or "OMG!? What the carp?!". That's when you know how close you are to "modern sensibilities"...at least as far as the target audience is concerned.

I dunno, why do we get a new Pokemon game every few years when the first where probably some of the best, and the new ones are mostly derivative? Because they make money... and they make money because people buy them, and people buy them because they want them. And those games are going to release with a more diverse set of characters because the consumers themselves are more diverse, and more vocal about how diversity matters to them.

Again, this is how capitalism works.

If you wan to write your own version of Greyhawk (or Dragonlance, Faerune, Cerilia, Athas, etc) with your own sense of morals/ethics/beliefs... go for it! Enjoy! PLEASE! Do that and spend the next 40 years playing and having fun with your friends. Just leave the original and official version alone... it doesn't need "updating" any more than Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew" or Dante's "Inferno", etc.

Updating a new version of a property doesn't "ruin" the original. I mentioned Batman before... I don't like Batman v. Superman. I think it's an awful movie. Does it make the Dark Knight worse? Does it make Burton's Batman worse? Adam West's Batman less funny? No. That doesn't make any sense at all.

If Greyhawk gets released in 5e (and it already sort of has in Ghosts of Saltmarsh) it will have no impact on the original material published in previous editions. You can still pick them up and play them as you always have, WotC isn't going to kick down your door and make you play "Official 5E Grewhawk."

To conclude... I'm sorry you don't personally like the directly 5E has taken settings like Ravenloft. But the fact is, the rebooted Ravenloft has appeared commercially successful and well-reviewed, so the direction they took is one the 5E audience seems to like, and one the D&D team will probably continue with other settings. If it didn't, the company would be behaving illogically.

If 5E Greyhawk gets released and no one likes it... congrats, you were right! But there's no guarantee that it will automatically be a failure. I think it probably would be pretty good, with a nice mix of nostalgia to OSR gaming with some tweaks here and there where appropriate. I don't believe Old-School gaming is incompatible with today's social issues (it's a goddamn game). The D&D team is made up of folks who were both raised on and have written Greyhawk material, and if they're releasing it for 5E, want to do it justice.

Rant over. Maybe we can both take some deep breaths and turn down the hyperbole?

 

[Steampunkette]

How do I hope D&D treats classic settings, going forward... Hmm. I think I'd like to go setting by setting on this one, Phil, with a single caveat:

All of them get updated to more modern sensibilities. More diversity of characters, less chainmail bikinis.

1) Dragonlance.
War of the Lance is the definitive era of Dragonlance. Oppressive police state, divine magic all but gone, magic users carefully ordered by society with heavy presumptions based on robe color. Good and Evil tangible and real -effects- upon the world, with straight up Good and Evil dragons in a hilariously blatant dichotomy of color coordination. I think that's perfect for Dragonlance.

Because at it's heart, Dragonlance is a child's view of D&D. I'm not saying you have to be a child to enjoy it, or anything. I'm saying that it's literally right there on the cover of a 5th grader's idea of fantasy: Riding dragons into battle like horses and wearing gaudy and awesome armor, fighting against a clearly demarcated evil which has a cosmic stamp of Red Lasers means Bad Guy type of morality.

Good is here. Bad is there. Go get 'em, champ!

LEAN INTO THAT.

Don't try to make it more complicated than it already is. Make it the simplest version of D&D narratives with the only moral complexity being interpersonal relationships against the backdrop of this horrible situation. Where a criminal type character might help the good guys even though they are, themselves, "Evil" because it sticks it to the fascist cops.

And then -market- it like that. Sell it to the youngest players. Aim for 8-10 to be introduced to Dragonlance through kids storybooks and comic books. Make a story about a young girl who finds a wounded little dragon and who grows up with the dragon as her bestest best friend and who eventually gets to be a knight and ride her horse-sized dragon into battle to save the world!

2) Dark Sun
It's taken me a while to come around but... Revamp it entirely.

Dark Sun is Sword and Sorcery with Weird Science tied into it and an Ecological Horror plotline. Adapt it for the current climate crisis and political allegory and move forward from there. Sure, keep the Thri-Kreen and the Sorcerer-Kings, keep Psionics and Defiling. But turn Magic into the full on Oil and Coal that it is, narratively.

Rather than just having magic only destroy, have it objectively and narratively pollute and corrupt. Change the setting from "All Desert" to "Hellish Mix of Landscapes". Yeah, Magic can destroy the world by ripping away all the vital and life-giving elements of it through desertifaction, but how about it also turning beautiful lakes into mire-valleys of thick mud, obnoxious insects, and poisonous water that glistens under the red sun that cannot be consumed without killing you?

How about a whole "Underdarkish" area where a Githyanki Sorcerer-King keeps ancient horrors in check beneath the world and her subjects toil in blackness to try and find the remnants of the collapsed portal or crashed spelljammer that brought their ancestors to this world, so long ago?

How about creating a magic-fuel resource in the world that can be used to keep spellcasting from harming the world... but it's only found underground and the uncaring Sorcerer-Kings employ Strip Mining to try and get every ounce of it for themselves so they can cast spells without destroying their city state in the process?

Keep the Giant-Striding Silt Sea with Skiffs on Skis and giant wheels that reach the bottom, obviously. Keep the massive tracts of wasteland. Keep the red mountains under the Olive Tinged Sky... just do more -nasty- landscape variety.

And the Political Allegory? Why stop there?!

Instead of Tektuktitlay as an Aztec God-King stand-in whose hopes of conquest are kept in check by Hamanu the Lion we go for a contemporary allegory instead? A petty tyrant far too weak to be a challenge for any of the other Sorcerer-Kings who talks a big game and uses a strong army to protect himself while he starves his people who sometimes escape to a nearby city-state to tell tales of the misery and hardship they've left behind, but occasionally change their tune and return to their city-state for the sake of those they left behind... His Templars enforce a form of thought-policing on the populace where any sort of divisive speech results in your neighbors turning you over to the state for Punishment... or Re-education.

And then come up with a new Metaplot beyond Tyr. Set it up more like Conan than Frodo. You're not the hero who is here to save the world, that ship has sailed. You're the hero who saves the sacrificial victim from the altar, kicks the villain's Lieutenant into the firepit, and then flees the reprisal while the sacrificial victim swoons over your big muscles and lustrous hair while exploring his own backstory as the descendent of some important bloodline whose sacrifice would be particularly powerful. Then you fight the horrifically scarred Lieutenant you set on fire before killing the High Priest in a climactic battle. Finally you take your new companion and/or lover to a seedy tavern and wait for the next High Adventure.

Oh. And use regional maps that don't connect, obviously. Gives DMs space to add stuff and makes the world feel disjointed. Love it in Ravenloft.

Aggressively market it to late teens and young adults (16-25) with short-story compilations and novels written in a bold and prozaic style that is very evocative of details.

3) Spelljammer
Planesjammer. Seriously, just do it. Make Sigil into a cool place for getting between different Planes of Existence, make Spelljammers the way you travel across starscapes to planets and do your whole schtick. There's no reason the two can't share the same universe and honestly mixing the flavors can be really nice. Make Sigil how people get from place to place for diplomacy, espionage, adventure, have Spelljammers be how goods and stuff move from place to place in bulk, and then let Githyanki Pirates attack those trade vessels and explorers and stuff.

Make the Spelljammer stuff a bit more serious than it was, to play into a more teenager vibe, but with plenty of room for the quirky Saturday Morning Cartoon play. Then market it to 13-17 year olds, specifically. Young Adult novels and comics, crossovers with Magic: the Gathering, the whole shebang.

4) Birthright
Just ... uh... y'know... Make things less patriarchal and have at, I guess? There's really not a whole lot about this setting that warrants serious consideration for change. It's very simple and straightforward and it basically just works.

5) Greyhawk
Lean hard into the He-Man vibe with Iuz. Like Dragonlance, mostly market it towards kids and young teens. Have it kind of take over from where Dragonlance leaves off to introduce more D&D-centric concepts like Pantheons of Gods rather than dualism, Orcs and Owlbears, the classics that Dragonlance doesn't really "Do" as core conceits.

 

[Lanefan]

While keeping modern sensibilities etc. in mind is all well and good, my only hope is that doing so doesn't result in blandness; that the authors (and editors!) not be afraid to put a little edge on things here and there.

As to the specific settings, the only one I'd really care if they re-did (os Mystara/Known World and that doesn't seem to be on their radar at the moment. I have little to no opinion about the rest, though I'll doubtless at least have a look at whatever gets put out.

 

[overgeeked]

The settings have already been written and published, so I'm not really that interested in seeing an update. Sure, a mechanical update to the new edition is neat, but most of the setting fluff . . . you could just read the old books.

I want adventure.

I want someone to pitch a really cool sandbox-epic quest hybrid around the Great Wheel, to show us all the funky philosophical weirdness Planescape was known for.

I want the party to be slaves on an expedition sent to a land less ravaged by defiling, so that when the party escapes, they can play in Dark Sun and legitimately be tempted to destroy the environment in order to keep a dragon king from taking over their paradise.

I want a boots on the ground, blood in the dirt style campaign during the War of the Lance, where the party play in a different theater from the big 'Heroes of the Lance,' but still go up against an army of the dragon high lords and play their part in liberating Ansalon.

Yeah, it would be great if they went back to the 4E style of making various settings and planes explicitly for adventuring.

 

[Scribe]

And then -market- it like that. Sell it to the youngest players. Aim for 8-10 to be introduced to Dragonlance through kids storybooks and comic books. Make a story about a young girl who finds a wounded little dragon and who grows up with the dragon as her bestest best friend and who eventually gets to be a knight and ride her horse-sized dragon into battle to save the world!

You had me in the first half...but no please. There was (or in my memory) a lot of adult type stuff going on in the original DL books (the first 6?) and thats the tone that should be strived for to me.

Dark Sun is Sword and Sorcery with Weird Science tied into it and an Ecological Horror plotline. Adapt it for the current climate crisis and political allegory and move forward from there. Sure, keep the Thri-Kreen and the Sorcerer-Kings, keep Psionics and Defiling. But turn Magic into the full on Oil and Coal that it is, narratively.

Yesssssssssssssssss.

Make the Spelljammer stuff a bit more serious than it was, to play into a more teenager vibe, but with plenty of room for the quirky Saturday Morning Cartoon play. Then market it to 13-17 year olds, specifically. Young Adult novels and comics, crossovers with Magic: the Gathering, the whole shebang.

Nooooooooooooo. lol

Planescape needs to be, as was noted yesterday by someone else who is clearly wise, "90's Sandman style Fantasy." No MTG cross over please. I hate it, deeply.

 

[overgeeked]

Who gets to decide what is "ok" and what is "not ok"?

Whoever owns the IP gets to decide what's okay and not okay for that IP. That's how IP works.

I'll tell you who: You do. You see/read something and think "Ok, cool", or you think "Wait, that seems unfair" or you think "OMG!? What the carp?!". Nobody can make that decision for you.

Yeah, of course. But that doesn't translate into getting to decide what an IP holder does with their IP. Never has, never will. Who gets to make the decision for D&D? Wizards and Hasbro. The only decision we get to make is whether we buy their products or not.

What's not ok in my view: Someone else deciding what I get to read, watch, or write about because they read something and think it's "bad". No thanks. I can make up my own mind and choices about what I find acceptable or not.

That's a huge leap. From IP holder deciding what to do with their IP to censorship. Huge, huge leap. A publisher deciding what to publish is not deciding for you what is good or bad, nor is it deciding what you get to read or write. Don't be ridiculous.

If you wan to write your own version of Greyhawk (or Dragonlance, Faerune, Cerilia, Athas, etc) with your own sense of morals/ethics/beliefs... go for it! Enjoy! PLEASE! Do that and spend the next 40 years playing and having fun with your friends. Just leave the original and official version alone... it doesn't need "updating" any more than Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew" or Dante's "Inferno", etc.

Jesus. D&D settings are not classics of literature. Greyhawk is a quirky style of elfgame...not Shakespeare. You're literally comparing D&D settings to Shakespeare. Ludicrous.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

While keeping modern sensibilities etc. in mind is all well and good, my only hope is that doing so doesn't result in blandness; that the authors (and editors!) not be afraid to put a little edge on things here and there.

Edge can be done without that edge including the old garbage that makes bigots and sexists feel comfortable playing RPGs, and that includes the setting material. And the more some people protest cleaning that stuff up and removing it, the more we know they are probably anti-inclusive in real life too.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Ya know I am not very excited about the revival of setting classic or other wise or generic setting books like those published in past editions. What I would really like, is that if my party rolls in the Luskan or Yartar or wherever I could go on DMsGuild, or D&DBeyond and spend a modest sum to get a map and some gazetteer type information about the locality that I could hang plot hooks on.