D&D 5E restart or rewrite or new?

[John R Davis]

To old to be arsed with anything to new.
I like what GG have done with the reincarnated stuff

 

[Gnosistika]

I voted "make new" but I'm both lying and a hypocrite; lying because I don't really care since I don't need a new setting and a hypocrite because I wrote the 5th Edition Zakhara Campaign Guide, updating Al-Qadim, and I would love for everyone to buy it.

I'm most interested in pulpy, weird fantasy settings, so I am a huge Spelljammer fan and have been for over 25 years but have no real use for any of the other legacy TSR settings. I love Eberron because it plays right into my interests, but they've done that one for 5e. I'd be down with a Mystara book, but honestly there isn't much that book could do that I haven't done myself already, and frankly I'm coming to like my approach to these updates more than I like WotC's. I'd buy it, but I don't need it and likely wouldn't get much actual use out of it.

The Zakhara Campaign Guide is a superb piece of work. Thank you for that.

 

[cbwjm]

The way I've seen it explained is that WotC is publishing settings, but they aren't publishing setting lines like they did in 2E. They don't put out a setting core and then 10 other modules or books specific to that setting.

Now, they're operating on the assumption that most groups run games from 6-18 months long and then swap over to the next new thing, rather than just being an "Eberron" player or a "Forgotten Realms" player.

I think part of the change is that for every/most adventure they release which is set in the realms, they also include notes that help DMs place the adventures in other settings, which I feel is a great model.

 

[Ath-kethin]

The Zakhara Campaign Guide is a superb piece of work. Thank you for that.

Hey, thanks! I appreciate it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Concurring with the others who have said this... there is absolutely no point in reprinting the old settings the exact same way as they were. It is a waste of time, money, and energy. If you want the old settings exactly as they are... just buy the old stuff-- if you don't already own the material which you probably already do. Just use it. Having WotC just rewrite the books exactly as they were with only mechanical changes to follow 5E guidelines is completely pointless.

Unless of course, you actually want mechanical updates to old settings.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I honestly don't care if or how republished settings match up with their previous versions. If I choose to use one now, it is because what it is now matches what I want to do now. How that relates to the past is not material to my current use.

I value the settings for the stories they tell in the products as much as for any use on the table. Most of them I primarily experienced as reading material. That's why I don't want them changed.

New ideas and modern sensibilities should be catered to by new settings.

 

[Azzy]

I really don't need settings. I'd like some of the races/monsters/spells/etc. of some of the old settings, but I don't need any more settings than what we already have.

 

[Hussar]

The way I've seen it explained is that WotC is publishing settings, but they aren't publishing setting lines like they did in 2E. They don't put out a setting core and then 10 other modules or books specific to that setting.

Now, they're operating on the assumption that most groups run games from 6-18 months long and then swap over to the next new thing, rather than just being an "Eberron" player or a "Forgotten Realms" player.

I think this is a point that can't be stressed enough.

WotC isn't publishing settings. Not at least the way that was meant previously where you had a setting guide, a player's guide, a monster book, a handful of adventures (sometimes a double handful), a novel line, and probably a bunch of other books I'm forgetting.

For every single setting. :yikes:

That's why the settings were cannibalizing each other. But, in the new paradigm, WotC doesn't even really produce a setting guide. They bang out a mega-module which doubles as setting guide, monster guide, and everything else in between. You're expected to play out that module, finish it and then move on to the next setting. Other than Forgotten Realms, and I guess Ravenloft, they don't revisit anything. And even the FR stuff was still mostly self contained with nothing but a couple of Easter Eggs between them. There's no reason to expect that a group will own any other Forgotten Realms 5e stuff than whatever Campaign in a Can they are running at the time. I don't need to own Princes of the Apocalypse to run Rime of the Frostmaiden. I'm not expected to own any other 5e books than Rime of the Frostmaiden and the core 3 to run the adventure.

It's a very large shift from what came before where the assumption was that if I was going to run a campaign in, say, Forgotten Realms, I'd need the FRCS, at the very least, and probably half a dozen other books before I even started.

 

[Hussar]

Unless of course, you actually want mechanical updates to old settings.

I value the settings for the stories they tell in the products as much as for any use on the table. Most of them I primarily experienced as reading material. That's why I don't want them changed.

New ideas and modern sensibilities should be catered to by new settings.

But, how do I see things to you then? You want settings as reading material, which means the mechanics don't really matter, that's not why you're buying the books, but, you also want the mechanics updated, without changing the setting despite the fact that the original setting material was based on very different mechanics that don't really work in 5e.

That's a pretty difficult thing to satisfy. I mean, if that's true, then I cannot have a lot of stuff in the earlier settings since it didn't exist in the game at the time - no dwarven magic-users, heck, most races can't be most classes - for example. If we're going by that metric, what's the cutoff? Should Greyhawk only draw on material published before the boxed set? So, no PC drow allowed - since PC drow didn't appear until the Unearthed Arcana 1e? What should Vecna be? A lich? A demi-god? A major deity? Never minding the rather large number of deities that have been added to the setting since the boxed set was released. Should they be excised as well?

Any update to a setting is going to have to make any number of decisions. Where you draw that cut off line is never going to make everyone happy. It's impossible to update a setting to new mechanics without changing the sensibilities of the setting.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But, how do I see things to you then? You want settings as reading material, which means the mechanics don't really matter, that's not why you're buying the books, but, you also want the mechanics updated, without changing the setting despite the fact that the original setting material was based on very different mechanics that don't really work in 5e.

That's a pretty difficult thing to satisfy. I mean, if that's true, then I cannot have a lot of stuff in the earlier settings since it didn't exist in the game at the time - no dwarven magic-users, heck, most races can't be most classes - for example. If we're going by that metric, what's the cutoff? Should Greyhawk only draw on material published before the boxed set? So, no PC drow allowed - since PC drow didn't appear until the Unearthed Arcana 1e? What should Vecna be? A lich? A demi-god? A major deity? Never minding the rather large number of deities that have been added to the setting since the boxed set was released. Should they be excised as well?

Any update to a setting is going to have to make any number of decisions. Where you draw that cut off line is never going to make everyone happy. It's impossible to update a setting to new mechanics without changing the sensibilities of the setting.

The Dragonlance Nexus more or less managed it with Tasslehoff's Pockets of Everything.