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

[JEB]

Yup, we saw with with Tieflings and Dragonborn in Ghosts of Saltmash.

Indeed. They even explicitly tried to make the one major tiefling NPC fit into the setting (by tying her to Iuz), and it still got some grumbling. Now imagine doing that on a setting-wide scale.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

About 80 pages of Bestiary. Ravnica has a lot of monsters, and a lot of reskining advice to spice up existing monsters.

A big bulk of the rest is Adventure material. The more I look at it, the more I see the seeds if the Spelljammer format.

Interesting. Sounds like that would be a much better candidate for this format than Planescape. I always considered it the poor man's Planescape, but then I am a snob.

Dark Sun is an interesting one to consider. I think the main problem is the "one and done" thing WotC does with settings. I mean, if you did a Dark Sun slipcase, you'd need to reprint all the psionic subclasses and probably a couple more, and the wild talents, and maybe some "weapon materials" and "alternate armour" and "desert survival" rules, and probably also defiling/preserving, and a new race or three (including a reprint of Thri-Kreen) and unfortunately that's probably like 40+ pages right there without even a Psion full class. It's easy to see how you could get a 64-page adventure (let's kill Kalak again - I honestly never get bored of killing Kalak!) and 64 pages of monsters for Athas, but trying to detail the setting in 20-odd pages? That would be challenging as hell. Otherwise this would be a great format for that.

Really, I think they need to look at upping the main book to 128 or more pages, that would solve so many potential problems.

Also if they weren't doing "one and done", they could have it be like "Dark Sun: The Fall of Kalak" or something and detail the other city-states later and maybe just manage to jam that all into that format.

 

[teitan]

Interesting. Sounds like that would be a much better candidate for this format than Planescape. I always considered it the poor man's Planescape, but then I am a snob.

Dark Sun is an interesting one to consider. I think the main problem is the "one and done" thing WotC does with settings. I mean, if you did a Dark Sun slipcase, you'd need to reprint all the psionic subclasses and probably a couple more, and the wild talents, and maybe some "weapon materials" and "alternate armour" and "desert survival" rules, and probably also defiling/preserving, and a new race or three (including a reprint of Thri-Kreen) and unfortunately that's probably like 40+ pages right there without even a Psion full class. It's easy to see how you could get a 64-page adventure (let's kill Kalak again - I honestly never get bored of killing Kalak!) and 64 pages of monsters for Athas, but trying to detail the setting in 20-odd pages? That would be challenging as hell. Otherwise this would be a great format for that.

Really, I think they need to look at upping the main book to 128 or more pages, that would solve so many potential problems.

Also if they weren't doing "one and done", they could have it be like "Dark Sun: The Fall of Kalak" or something and detail the other city-states later and maybe just manage to jam that all into that format.

All that is exactly why I think Dark Sun is 2025 after the revision and when they do the first expansion. If it ever happens.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

All that is exactly why I think Dark Sun is 2025 after the revision and when they do the first expansion. If it ever happens.

I mean, if they wanted to bring in a psion class, immediately after an edition revision would definitely be the right time if they were hoping it would become popular. I do think a well-done psion-type could easily eclipse the less-popular classes in popularity.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

To be honest, I feel the best thing is to not touch Al-Qadim, and bring in cultural consultants/writers to just make a new setting that is inspired by the Near East and Arabia. Maybe keep the old name if you really need to, but trying to reboot the old Al-Qadim seems like a lot of effort to "fix" something when they could just start over.

It's not broken, so you don't need to fix it, just bring in some folks to polish it. Doing a new Al Qadim when you could just up date the old one Wil just anger FR fans, and it would be less prestigious then doing an FR continient. Seriously it's really not that hard. It's an award winning setting. They have the man for the job now and the freelancers for it as well. They do it, no one is going to be able to complain about it.

 

[TwoSix]

Again, there’s a huge, huge difference between a few lines in the neogi description or the drow description that involve slavery and publishing a 200+ page book detailing an entire fantasy world that’s defined by rampant slavery.

I’m not seeing the difficulty. Either you leave in the slavery and have overthrowing the current order as a possible focus of play, or you gloss over it and make the lower class more of an “oppressed serf” type, leaving slavery mentions for gladiator types.

Anyone who says “It’s not really Dark Sun without rampant slavery” isn’t a part of the fan base worth worrying about.

 

[beancounter]

My guess is that they assess which of the releases generate the most interest/the highest sales, and focus on creating more content for for those releases.

 

[Bitbrain]

I’m not seeing the difficulty. Either you leave in the slavery and have overthrowing the current order as a possible focus of play, or you gloss over it and make the lower class more of an “oppressed serf” type, leaving slavery mentions for gladiator types.

Anyone who says “It’s not really Dark Sun without rampant slavery” isn’t a part of the fan base worth worrying about.

Agreed. My own Dark Sun campaign focuses less on slavery specifically and more on how the sorcerer-kings and their templars use violence and defiling magics to terrorize both their own subjects, rival city-states, and the independent tribes that live out in the desert.

I mean, when you think about it, slavery and serfdom are both systems of exploitation and oppression.

 

[DavyGreenwind]

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.

Thank you, I agree. Being of middle-eastern descent myself, I think its not enough to hand over Al-Qadim to someone of middle-eastern descent. Even if you were to remove the caricatures, Al-Qadim's problem is that it was still originally made by folks who only had a western pop-culture understanding of the culture they were presenting. (though in the 80's, I'm sure it was nice to see a fantasy Arabia at all).

If I worked for WOTC, I would not be satisfied with working within the parameters of Al-Qadim. My job would be just removing caricatures, reworking some things, and giving it a stamp of approval. If I was asked to present my culture as a D&D setting, I would want a blank slate to present how I think it should be presented, not just retconning something someone else made in a different time.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If I was asked to present my culture as a D&D setting, I would want a blank slate to present how I think it should be presented, not just retconning something someone else made in a different time.

It was the early '90s rather than the '80s, and I think there was stuff that was a bit more academic than pure pop-culture behind it (though still very much Western perceptions I'm sure), but yeah, that makes sense to me. Starting over rather than updating some other guy's outdated take on the culture (which might mean being locked into a lot of dodgy stuff).

The same would very much apply to OA, perhaps even more extremely, given it was so hyperfocused on Japanese mythology specifically (ironically it was the only RPG supplement which had actual cultural consultants for like, decades, though, which was probably why it was actually less "gross" than a lot of '90s stuff).