Mike Mearls tweet: Is the Known World of Mystara coming to 5e? (What's Cool About Mystara?)

[Remathilis]

[MENTION=7635]Monks in DL is not unbalancing things. No Dragon riding Knight of Takisis will be impressed by a Monk.
Monks in DS unbalance everything, the survival vibe, the inferior weapon / armor System, all of that does not hamper the Monk the slightest but almost every other class / build (Same goes for barbarian in a way)

The "why not" is any use of arcane magic causes environmental damage. This is central to the setting, so full caster bards should be defilers.

Personally, I would rather throw out caster bards and introduce a non-caster bard as a rogue subclass.

See, this proves my point. Dark Sun, in order to be done justice, has to ban or re-write most of the PHB. Its elves are different, its halflings are different. It doesn't have gnomes, it doesn't have tieflings. You can't be a monk, a paladin, a (spellcasting) bard, or a barbarian (Seriously, the CLASS modeled after Conan is broken in the WORLD modeled after Conan! SMDH). You have to re-write druids, clerics, wizards, rangers, and warlocks, and ban huge swaths of subclasses. You have to ban spells, create a whole new equipment chapter, add harsher survival rules, weapon breakage, and defiling. And we haven't even touched psionics yet.

Besides the basic math, how is this even still a D&D setting? It has as much in common with D&D as Star Wars d20 did. Its almost on par with The One Ring 5e.

My point is that doing Dark Sun requires one of two choices: it needs to be its own game (separate but compatible with D&D 5e) where it can get its own player, GM and monster guides that fit its themes perfectly, or it needs to swallow its pride and accept that paladins, monks, warlocks, dragonborn, and such have a place in it. The latter has prescient; 3.5's Dragon conversion and 4e's conversions both found ways to incorporate these elements into DS. But the absolute worst of both worlds is a book that tries to kludge a system out of the PHB with a long list of "not alloweds" and "use X to represent Y" style stuff.

Anyway, I derailed this thread too long. Yay Mystara, a setting that requires 1/10th the amount of work to convert to 5e.

 

[Remathilis]

I can dig your view that it could/should be its own thing. That's fair.

But I do not go so far as to say Dark Sun is not D&D. It is D&D, modified for sure.


Semantics? Not on purpose, I don't feel it is important to draw a line on whats D&D and what isn't based on excluded classes or modified rules. Heck my campaign could be thrown out of the D&D category by some viewpoints. (No halfings, a necromancer cast a 10th level spell way back in history and genocided them.)

However, I assure, by common parlance, we are playing D&D.

Game on!

I don't concern myself with someone's homebrew D&D changes, because that is always tables preference. Change whatever you want about your home game. I'm more concerned about official settings published by Wizards of the Coast under the Dungeons & Dragons name. Official settings should augment the game, not re-write it. If a DM later wants to change things further (like ban the bard class from Athas or disallow spellcasting dwarves on Mystara) that is up to them, but the setting books should wield the banhammer as lightly as possible.

 

[Coroc]

[MENTION=7635]Remathilis[/MENTION] #111

<<Anyway, I derailed this thread too long. Yay Mystara, a setting that requires 1/10th the amount of work to convert to 5e. >>

Well on that one i agree with you, you can easily put giant space hamsters and ninja mutant Hobbit pirates into that setting and it won't break anything.

#111 and #112 Hm so you would be ok, if they published DS with its own brand, while still using 90% of the D&D math, but you are not ok if they publish it with the D&D logo on unless altering 90% of the original Setting to include every shenanigan from the PHB, and maybe Purple Dragon knisghts from scag too?

I try to understand your point of view, is it that you want D&D as a game that can be played like, e.g. some one joins a group the first time and he does not have to worry about any houserule the DM might have created because there are None, since all the rules in the PHB apply cast in iron as lets say the rules for chess?
And that has to go for any campaign world wich is officially supported?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

See, this proves my point. Dark Sun, in order to be done justice, has to ban or re-write most of the PHB. Its elves are different, its halflings are different. It doesn't have gnomes, it doesn't have tieflings. You can't be a monk, a paladin, a (spellcasting) bard, or a barbarian (Seriously, the CLASS modeled after Conan is broken in the WORLD modeled after Conan! SMDH). You have to re-write druids, clerics, wizards, rangers, and warlocks, and ban huge swaths of subclasses. You have to ban spells, create a whole new equipment chapter, add harsher survival rules, weapon breakage, and defiling. And we haven't even touched psionics yet.

Besides the basic math, how is this even still a D&D setting? It has as much in common with D&D as Star Wars d20 did. Its almost on par with The One Ring 5e.

My point is that doing Dark Sun requires one of two choices: it needs to be its own game (separate but compatible with D&D 5e) where it can get its own player, GM and monster guides that fit its themes perfectly, or it needs to swallow its pride and accept that paladins, monks, warlocks, dragonborn, and such have a place in it. The latter has prescient; 3.5's Dragon conversion and 4e's conversions both found ways to incorporate these elements into DS. But the absolute worst of both worlds is a book that tries to kludge a system out of the PHB with a long list of "not alloweds" and "use X to represent Y" style stuff.

Anyway, I derailed this thread too long. Yay Mystara, a setting that requires 1/10th the amount of work to convert to 5e.

1. In order to be different, things have to be removed, not just added. Otherwise you are just throwning more junk into GenericFantasyLand(TM). The whole point of a new (revived) setting is it is different to the same old same old tired pseudo-medieval elves and dwarves.

2. D&D campaign settings have always removed stuff from the core rulebook. You have never been able to play a halfing in Dragonlance or a Paladin in Dark Sun, and no one had any problems calling them Dungeons and Dragons campaign settings apart from you (check their listings on Wikipedia). Indeed, according to your definition, you can't call 1st-3rd edition D&D D&D since they didn't allow Dragonborn as a playable race!

3. Dark Sun is based on Barsoom (John Carter of Mars), not Conan, but actually the Barbarian class fits the setting quite well. The only reason it didn't originally include them is that Barbarian didn't become a core class until 3rd edition - long after Dark Sun was first published.

4. Although not a full campaign setting two official Conan adventures where released by TSR in the 1980s - With Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in big letters on the cover. The only playable race permitted was human, and Conan himself was a Fighter/Thief.

 

[Remathilis]

1. In order to be different, things have to be removed, not just added. Otherwise you are just throwning more junk into GenericFantasyLand(TM). The whole point of a new (revived) setting is it is different to the same old same old tired pseudo-medieval elves and dwarves.

2. D&D campaign settings have always removed stuff from the core rulebook. You have never been able to play a halfing in Dragonlance or a Paladin in Dark Sun, and no one had any problems calling them Dungeons and Dragons campaign settings apart from you (check their listings on Wikipedia). Indeed, according to your definition, you can't call 1st-3rd edition D&D D&D since they didn't allow Dragonborn as a playable race!

3. Dark Sun is based on Barsoom (John Carter of Mars), not Conan, but actually the Barbarian class fits the setting quite well. The only reason it didn't originally include them is that Barbarian didn't become a core class until 3rd edition - long after Dark Sun was first published.

4. Although not a full campaign setting two official Conan adventures where released by TSR in the 1980s - With Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in big letters on the cover. The only playable race permitted was human, and Conan himself was a Fighter/Thief.

1. I'm sorry you feel Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Mystara, Eberron, Planescape, Spelljammer, even Ravenloft is "generic fantasyland" settings, since all of them use the PHB as written*.

2. Really? Assuming we use the last printed version of each setting...
Greyhawk. Hmm, the 3e version used everything in the 3e PHB, and since it was the default setting for 3.5, that means warlocks (Complete Arcane), dragonborn (Races if the Dragon) and tieflings (Monster Manual) have a legit claim there too.
Eberron. "If it exists in D&D, it exists in Eberron". The Player's Guide to Eberron in 3e and 4e go into greater detail about the stuff not in the 3e PHB.
Ravenloft. The 3e Arthaus version had all the classes, but did change/rename half-orcs to calibans. Still, they created a race that replaced, rather than simply ban half-orcs.
Dragonlance. The 3e version had all the PHB classes, replaced halflings with kender (ymmv on that change) and again banned half-orcs as there are no orcs, but gave us other races like minotaurs to replace them.
Mystara. Well, it's not been officially updated since 2e, but the 2e versions (including Red Steel/Savage Barronies) didn't ban the 2e PHB stuff, bards, rangers and all.

The bulk of those settings seem to absorb and use the PHB options of the given edition.

3. I was responding to the other quote which assumed that a barbarian's unarmored defense breaks Dark Sun. Same with monk. If the setting cannot handle classes not deficient without gear, something is amiss.

4. There have been plenty of one off mini settings that break the rules; they got a supplement or two and faded into obscurity. If that's the bar, then I demand my Masque of the Red Death support right now. However, I'm looking at the worlds of D&D as listed in the 5e DMG where Conan is not listed. The ones that the DMG lists as the Official settings should be held to a higher level of compatibility with the game in 2018 than a 64 page supplement in the 1980s. The game has evolved. Nearly every setting has evolved with it. If Dark Sun can't evolve too, then it needs to be left behind.

*At the time of it's last publication.

 

[Winterthorn]

I actually like seeing differences in choices for races and classes between campaign worlds - but the trick is to *not* be heavy-handed with all kinds of bans, because that really won't sell well for a published D&D setting. In the case of Mystara, we see the old setting was designed to accommodate old rules - IIRC nothing was banned, in fact, the gazetteers and Princess Arc stories went out their way to add to the diversity to the setting! Fast forward to today and the D&D rules themselves offer races, subraces, and classes that weren't available before. IMO player options in 5E Mystara should, for all practical purposes of keeping with the times to sell a product, have to account for the changes to the game. To me updating is expected - how that is handled is a measure of the creative skill of the publisher knowing their audience.

Edit: I am working on my own campaign setting, and if it looks good I may publish it. In this setting I justify through a detailed mythology and history why humans cannot be sorcerers. This is not because I dislike human sorcerers, but a desire to make things interesting - it doesn't prevent human sorcerers visiting from another world from functioning, just the native born humans "lack the spark" after a great magical apocalypse. Of course there are other things going on, but I just want illustrate a setting needs to justify restrictions in player options.

 

[CleverNickName]

I actually like seeing differences in choices for races and classes between campaign worlds - but the trick is to not be heavy-handed with all kinds of bans, because that really won't sell well for a published D&D setting. In the case of Mystara, we see the old setting was designed to accommodate old rules - IIRC nothing was banned, in fact, the gazetteers and Princess Arc stories went out their way to add to the diversity to the setting! Fast forward to today and the D&D rules themselves offer races, subraces, and classes that weren't available before. IMO player options in 5E Mystara should, for all practical purposes of keeping with the times to sell a product, have to account for the changes to the game. To me updating is expected - how that is handled is a measure of the creative skill of the publisher knowing their audience.

Precisely. The audience in 2022 will not be the same audience from 1986. There is a certain expectation now among consumers, regarding the way that people and places are represented in the game. Mystara borrows a lot from real-world cultures and mythologies, and this will be problematic in future products if it is not carefully and fully addressed.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

There is a certain expectation now among consumers, regarding the way that people and places are represented in the game. Mystara borrows a lot from real-world cultures and mythologies, and this will be problematic in future products if it is not carefully and fully addressed.

Just highlighting that important part…

The fact that Mystara’s heavy use real world cultures and mythologies does not mean showing those cultures is not worth tackling. I think there are good reasons for showing off real world cultures in a fantasy D&D setting, such as simple representation beyond the heavy dose of Western European-flavored ones that have been prominent since D&D’s origination.

That it would take great care to present cultures respectfully is sad that sometimes needing to do things with that extra care is waved off as why presenting those cultures must be avoided.

 

[Charlaquin]

Huh. This is a weird necro. Usually it’s a new user.

 

[CleverNickName]

Huh. This is a weird necro. Usually it’s a new user.

I'll disentomb a thread if it's relevant to current discussion.
I ain't 'fraid of no ghosts.