D&D 5E (2024) I think we are on the cusp of a sea change.

[Paul Farquhar]

I suspect Marvel is seething that their main Aquaman-type's central personality trait is "He's a tremendous jerk" so Namor is probably not getting his own movie lol

It worked for Deadpool!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It worked for Deadpool!

Deadpool is the good kind of jerk though! Whereas Namor is just a jerk. Then again, they did manage to make that work with Cable (also "just a jerk" most of the time) by having him play off Deadpool.

Honestly I think the best way Namor is actually fun enough to make a movie about if you make him maybe just a tremendous catty b-in-apartment-23, making horrifically catty/cutting comments to just everyone, and just being the shadiest dude out there.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think if we are honest, its about presentation of the setting, way way more than about the setting actually being restrictive.

I think there's some truth in this, for sure, especially re: inclusiveness.

But I think beyond presentation there are come actual underlaying changes in what people want. Albeit most had happened by the 1990s.

Like:

1) The 1980s in fantasy settings was utterly dominated by "basically an Earth society but renamed and with some tweaks" (if even that), from Mystara to the Forgotten Realms, to Dangerous Journeys, to Greyhawk and so on. From the 1990s onwards, this is no longer popular or and indeed is seen as a negative unless the setting intentionally apes the real world (7th Sea etc.). I don't think mere presentation can fix that (though it is arguable with Greyhawk at least).

2) A lot of 1980s fantasy also focuses on "hatreds" between groups. Not "evil plans" so much - those still fly fine (hi Zhentarim!), but when you have these settings where there's a lot of "kill on sight" or "angry villagers will murder you" or "if you're from X, you can't go to Y". I don't think this works for a lot of people now as well, and this change is even impacting stuff like video games (World of Warcraft has been considering dropping the central, well, war, and allowing cross-faction stuff for years, it's so built-in that it's hard to do though). In many cases I don't think presentation can eliminate this issue, and can conflict with inclusiveness. I know there are some DMs/groups who totally love the idea that being a Tiefling gets you lynched, or Dragonborn will be run out of town, but that's definitely not mainstream stuff anymore, if it ever was. (Also I think some of it is just passive-aggression from DMs who are still stuck in an early 3E or earlier mindset re: races, but that's a whole other discussion). I think distrust/dislike which can be overcome tends to be acceptable, though. Just not like "oh we gotta deal with people hating half the party 24-7, that's fun...". It's not like there won't be enough legit reasons to hate most parties...

3) I think players now are a lot more interested in big complex cities, urban and semi-urban environments, and so on, than people in the 1980s and even 1990s were. Wilderness fantasy doesn't seem to attract the same level of interest it once did. This is partly possible to do with presentation and just focusing on cities, but, if your setting is mostly villages and trackless wilderness, it's going to be harder to pull off, especially if you don't even have any really wild cities. And I don't think Waterdeep, say, cuts it.

4) Level of magic. With 1980s settings, there is often powerful magic that has happened or that is linked to an artifact or whatever, but things tend to be fairly or extremely low-magic generally, and even when Eberron came along in 2004 some people groused about it being "too magical". I don't think the mass market would agree now. I think, being raised on all sorts of very high-fantasy video games, that people want to see stuff that's more magical. And yeah, again this is a long-term trend. Spelljammer and Planescape I already mentioned. I feel like presentation can modify this but only so much.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

3) I think players now are a lot more interested in big complex cities, urban and semi-urban environments, and so o

I can't say as I've seen any evidence for that, or much evidence for the opposite, wilderness vs urban seems much the same as it ever was. As evidence, I cite City State of the Invincible Overlord (1976).

There might be a British vs American bias going on with this one, we don't exactly have much true wilderness in the UK!

4) Level of magic.

I think this is more down to mechanics. Magic is a way of having a bunch of interesting things to do in a fight. It's a way to give PCs superpowers without officially being a superhero game.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think this is more down to mechanics. Magic is a way of having a bunch of interesting things to do in a fight. It's a way to give PCs superpowers without officially being a superhero game.

I'm talking about in the setting. Not necessarily in terms of the PCs at all. Eberron's magitech for example.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm talking about in the setting. Not necessarily in terms of the PCs at all. Eberron's magitech for example.

I don't think you can really separate them. It's very hard to fit high magic PCs in a low magic world, ergo the world the PCs occupy has to be high magic. Eberron was largely designed around (3e) game mechanics.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I don't think you can really separate them. It's very hard to fit high magic PCs in a low magic world, ergo the world the PCs occupy has to be high magic. Eberron was largely designed around (3e) game mechanics.

You say "ergo" but that's certainly not really how worlds used to be designed, despite PCs potentially being very "high magic". So if there is an ergo, it's one that's developed in the 1990s and later.

I think there's a pretty clear difference between worlds were massive magic is a day-to-day thing (at least in a certain locations in those worlds), like Eberron, Spelljammer and Planescape, and worlds like the Greyhawk or the FR, where if there massively magical places, they're far from civilization and haunted ruins and so on, for the most part.

 

[TheSword]

You say "ergo" but that's certainly not really how worlds used to be designed, despite PCs potentially being very "high magic". So if there is an ergo, it's one that's developed in the 1990s and later.

I think there's a pretty clear difference between worlds were massive magic is a day-to-day thing (at least in a certain locations in those worlds), like Eberron, Spelljammer and Planescape, and worlds like the Greyhawk or the FR, where if there massively magical places, they're far from civilization and haunted ruins and so on, for the most part.

What like Waterdeep? Built on a massive magical dungeon, surrounded by a mythal, ruled by an archmage chosen of the goddess of magic. Policed by a wizards guild, defended my magic walking statues… etc etc.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You say "ergo" but that's certainly not really how worlds used to be designed, despite PCs potentially being very "high magic". So if there is an ergo, it's one that's developed in the 1990s and later.

Yeah, high magic PCs (and NPCs) had a big impact on the development of FR, and was at the core of Eberron design. And somewhat impacted Dragonlance in the 80s. If you view it as a change, it's a change that happened a very long time ago now.

I think there's a pretty clear difference between worlds were massive magic is a day-to-day thing (at least in a certain locations in those worlds), like Eberron, Spelljammer and Planescape, and worlds like the Greyhawk or the FR, where if there massively magical places, they're far from civilization and haunted ruins and so on, for the most part.

Greyhawk is about the last setting designed without high magic as a basic assumption. Pretty much every population centre in FR is ruled by high level spellcasters.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Just listing traits as a bullet point for 2021:

Setting is inclusive/diverse (little in the way of sexism/racism/homophobia etc. - D&D has always avoided the latter for the most part).
Setting is "High Magic" - i.e. like strongly magical things can and do regularly happen.
Setting is "High Fantasy" - or "Epic Fantasy", as opposed to "Dark Fantasy" or "Low Fantasy".
Setting allows kitchen-sink-ish usage of elements like class/race, isn't about narrowing options

Probably some of the popular newer races would have a larger role in the world lore, with some of the less popular old races still present, but on the margins.