D&D 5E Further Future D&D Product Speculation

[Urriak Uruk]

5e already slavery in it.

DMG page 19: "The cities of High port and Suderham in the Greyhawk campaign setting are satrapies controlled by agents of a vicious gang of marauders known as the Slave Lords."

DMG page 54: "The largest cavern beneath the mountains, called the Great Dismal Delve or the Sevenfold Mazework, is home to the capital city of the dao, the City of Jewels. The dao take great pride in their wealth and send teams of slaves across the plane in search of new veins of ore and gemstones to exploit."

DMG page 56: "The heart of the city is the towering Charcoal Palace, where the tyrannical sultan of the efreet reigns supreme, surrounded by efreet nobles and a host of slaves, guardians, and sycophants."

DMG page 100: "...and slave pens might be common features in a vault built by drow..."

DMG page 113: "Hidden slavers' den"

PHB page 24: "Drow grow up believing that surface-dwelling races are inferior, worthless except as slaves."

PHB page 40: "Other scars, though, mark an orc or half-orc as a former slave or a disgraced exile."

PHB page 94: "A human lurks in the shadows of an alley while his accomplice prepares for her part in the ambush. When their target-a notorious slaver-passes the alleyway, the accomplice cries out, the slaver comes to investigate, and the assassin's blade cuts his throat before he can make a sound."

Eberron Rising page 24: "When humans first came to Khorvaire, they enslaved many goblins and built their cities on the foundations of Dhakaani ruins."

Eberron Rising page 112: "Most of the Cyran population fled the goblin uprising, and those who remained were killed or enslaved." and " Others despise non-goblins. Lhesh Haruuc has abolished slavery in Rhukaan Draal, but some of clan lords continue this practice."

I could go on and on. 5e need not avoid and seems very willing to include slavery in its products. Dark Sun wouldn't need to be redone.

I literally gave Out of the Abyss as the example for how 5E has slavery. I know it does.

Still, slavery is such an overwhelming, constant presence in DS that there should be at minimum an option for DMs to write it out. There should explicitly be a "warning DMs" section, much like how Ravenloft does, that gives pointers on how to handle the topic or cut it out if necessary.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Not to mention that they could always throw older versions under the bus of an unreliable narrator.

Agreed there.

And, of all the FR sub-settings, Al-Qadim was probably the least problematic. I mean, it was by no means perfect, but it definitely didn't have a lot of issues seen in Kara-Tur and (especially) Maztica. The DM's Guild Zakhara product updated it with more modern sensibilities, but didn't really do much in the way of a major overhaul otherwise.

 

[Demetrios1453]

In the space they have, it can't be much or many and it won't be highly detailed as they don't have the space for that.

They'll probably give Realmspace a few pages as a "more detailed" system, then dedicate a few pages to mid-tier overviews (between detailed and quick overviews - lists of planetary bodies with brief descriptions and other things of note) to say half a dozen more (Greyspace, Krynnspace, Clusterspace, etc.), and then have a page or two of just paragraph descriptions like the "other domains" in the Ravenloft Book. Could do that all in 10 pages or so (say, 4 pages for Realmspace, 4 pages for other important systems, 2 pages of short descriptions). I broke down how to do a Spelljammer campaign guide in 50 - 60 pages (back when we thought it would all be in one book) in one of the speculation threads, and this was part of it.

 

[Maxperson]

I literally gave Out of the Abyss as the example for how 5E has slavery. I know it does.

Still, slavery is such an overwhelming, constant presence in DS that there should be at minimum an option for DMs to write it out. There should explicitly be a "warning DMs" section, much like how Ravenloft does, that gives pointers on how to handle the topic or cut it out if necessary.

That I agree with.

 

[teitan]

Yeah, I don't think WotC wants to redeem all of their IP. The popular stuff, sure. But I don't think Al-Qadim is exactly a powerful brand (it's just "The Old" in Arabic) and I would prefer to see some of these writers just get to start over with a blank slate.

If you just take the name (and I think the name's a little silly) and have the team try to keep some stuff, remove the other stuff, fill in stuff they actually want to do... it's obviously going to look very different than OG Al-Qadim. Which means anyone who actually cared about that brand will probably not like it, and the folks who will like the new stuff probably don't care much about OG Al-Qadim.

So at that point, why bother rebooting Al-Qadim after all? Gives the writers a lot more freedom to make their own material, and Radiant Citadel is already proof of how writers can kept cool worldbuilding made when they get a blank slate.

Btw if anyone looks at the above and thinks its a criticisms of 5E Ravenloft... it's not, I think 5E Ravenloft pulls a lot of stuff from older iterations. Plus, I actually think Ravenloft has a strong popular brand, which I don't feel about Al-Qadim.

I don't know, Al Qadim was meant to be a limited run, a select set of products, and was so popular they continued it for a little while longer. It had a longer shelf life than Spelljammer.

 

[teitan]

Because, well, you don't need Greyhawk for any of that. Knightly orders? FR and Dragonlance have you covered, and I haven't seen anything from Greyhawk suggesting its ones will be particularly different or needing to be specified differently. Valley Elves are just Wood Elves.

Now, I could drag some uniquely Greyhawk stuff out but, that's just gonna be Barrier Mountains. Frankly the problem we have is that eternal thread that no one can agree what Greyhawk's actual Thing is.

SUre, Knightly orders, I didn't say Knightly Orders. I said Knightly Orders of Greyhawk. The argument was not much unique or what did Greyhawk have to offer, I offered up the Knightly Orders. Examples like Knights of the Hart. A Paladin Oath of dedicated to Rao could be a very cool subclass and not played generically considering the rich hierarchy of the Church of Rao in Veluna.

The problem is everyone wants to think Greyhawk is generic fantasy and it isn't generic fantasy. It's D&D 1e fantasy. As FR was 2e era AD&D fantasy. As Eberron was 3.5 era fantasy. Each of those amplified the system for which they most excelled in. While FR was in 1e, it was very late 1e and in a very experimental stage of the game as it transitioned to 2e. FR got all the goodies but Greyhawk stayed very much in that 1e vein even with the Carl Sargent years and the 98-3.x period. It's just raw, old school D&D and D&D isn't generic fantasy, modern fantasy owes more to D&D for the tropes that have been heavily borrowed from D&D from the mid 80s on in games like Wizardry and A Bard's Tale, to World of Warcraft and any game that has a divine/arcane split, features party based adventuring, etc. Those early PC games were heavily D&D based like Wizardry and A Bard's Tale, the classes and abilities lifted almost directly. So Greyhawk is the grand daddy of modern fantasy, and FR is it's flashy offspring and Dragonlance is it's moody, angry melodramatic oldest child. Eberron is the grand child trying to live up to the legacy of all three.

 

[teitan]

Different in play at the table.

Nah, it's two books, one is just broken up into smaller books with a higher price tag. I think WOTC is taking a hit on that format though.

 

[Parmandur]

Nah, it's two books, one is just broken up into smaller books with a higher price tag. I think WOTC is taking a hit on that format though.

They've probably been taking a hit on the $50 hardcovers: their prices hasn't changed for 8 years, but their costs likely haven't been steady.

 

[teitan]

Your example options are, in fact, what I'd cite in saying that Greyhawk doesn't lend itself to new player options. They're all the sort of thing a writer comes up with when faced with "Okay, it's been assigned that we're doing this setting, how do we fill these pages assigned to player options?" They are not the sort of thing that are suggested when a writer goes "What should players be able to play in this setting that the game does not already adequately support?" And certainly not from a product planner's "What player options highly characteristic of this setting are compelling enough they would sell copies of this setting book to people not planning on playing in this setting, just so they could play that kind of character?"

I mean, you tell me you want to play a Knight of the Hart (or any of the other Greyhawk orders) in D&D 5, and as a starting point I can already direct you the Noble background (Knight variant), the Knight of the Order background, the Banneret [Purple Dragon Knight] fighter subclass, the Cavalier fighter subclass, the Samurai fighter subclass, the Oath of the Crown paladin subclass, and now the Krynn UA material. I'm sure that a Knight of the Hart can be differentiated from them, but it would sure look like differentiation for the sake of filling word count.

Agent of the Circle of Eight background? Looks like you're straining to differentiate from the existing "Faction Agent" background.

Multiple Horned Society subclasses might make sense, if I thought WotC was actually burning to do Player's Option: Evil Characters material, particularly for the same-year release as the 50th Anniversary edition.

Cleric domains are easy to proliferate, but that holds for any setting with multiple gods.

And the game doesn't differentiate warlocks who have demons patrons from warlocks who have devil patrons, but "Warlock tied to Iuz" is different enough that the Fiend patron doesn't already cover it?

And yet... they've done all that now. Knights of Solamnia for example, variant abilities for classes (warlocks of specific patrons). You don't want to see it but its all there and you're just knocking out excuses because you have some blinder maybe. Why do more races when you can just use Tasha's rules now? There is a counter argument to everything so you don't really have an argument. I gave ideas, you gave circular arguments that don't hold water based on already released products that show different ways they can do exactly what I said to make Greyhawk interesting and they have nothing to stop them from doing it and it would 100% work and be cool. If they can make Spelljammer cool, then Greyhawk is easier than 1+1=2.

 

[teitan]

They've probably been taking a hit on the $50 hardcovers: their prices hasn't changed for 8 years, but their costs likely haven't been steady.

Possibly. Most of the D&D dollars are licensing aren't they? I think the slip case format for Spelljammer though is a bigger loss than one $50 192 page book. Same page count, same signature count, slip case isn't cheap, the hardcover binding isn't cheap either. Money is they're banking on digital sells on DDB and VTT sales.