D&D 5E D&D's Classic Settings Are Not 'One Shots'

In an interview with ComicBook.com, WotC's Jeremy Crawford talked about the visits to Ravenloft, Eberron, Spelljammer, Dragonlance, and (the upcoming) Planescape we've seen over the last couple of years, and their intentions for the future.

He indicated that they plan to revisit some of these settings again in the future, noting that the setting books are among their most popular books.

We love [the campaign setting books], because they help highlight just how wonderfully rich D&D is. They highlight that D&D can be gothic horror. D&D can be fantasy in space. D&D can be trippy adventures in the afterlife, in terms of Planescape. D&D can be classic high fantasy, in the form of the Forgotten Realms. It can be sort of a steampunk-like fantasy, like in Eberron. We feel it's vital to visit these settings, to tell stories in them. And we look forward to returning to them. So we do not view these as one-shots.

- Jeremy Crawford​

The whole 'multiverse' concept that D&D is currently exploring plays into this, giving them opportunities to resist worlds.

When asked about the release schedule of these books, Crawford noted that the company plans its release schedule so that players get chance to play the material, not just read it, and they don't want to swamp people with too much content to use.

Our approach to how we design for the game and how we plan out the books for it is a play-first approach. At certain times in D&D's history, it's really been a read-first approach. Because we've had points in our history where we were producing so many books each year, there was no way anyone could play all of it. In some years it would be hard to play even a small percentage of the number of things that come out. Because we have a play-first approach, we want to make sure we're coming out with things at a pace where if you really wanted to, and even that would require a lot of weekends and evenings dedicated to D&D play, you could play a lot of it.

- Jeremy Crawford​

You can read more in the interview at ComicBook.com.

 

[Scribe]

Honestly, I think they simply decided to go to the Fizban's/Bigby's model. Volo's and Mordenkainen's were very superficial and unfocused when it came to what they covered.

I dont hate that, I like both Fizbans and Bigbys for the most part.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I dont hate that, I like both Fizbans and Bigbys for the most part.

I'm good with it too. It's far more helpful to have a book that says exactly what's in it.

 

[humble minion]

Can you provide some examples? It seemed to me that they overtly changed very little, and mostly just opted not to mention any inconvenient old lore, which allows veteran fans to mix it with the new setting if they want. (Unlike Ravenloft, which was pretty blatant and comprehensive with its setting changes, and isn't very compatible with the old stuff.) But some folks seem pretty upset with the book regardless, so I'm wondering what I missed.

There's plenty of examples. Most of them are in the history or background lore, or are just unspoken as the base assumptions of D&D have changed over time. And to be honest, most of them don't bother me very much, although everyone has a different annoyance threshold and different hot buttons when it comes to that sort of thing.

Off the top of my head, from a purely plot/lore standpoint:

• Soth caring at all about the War of the Lance before Kitiara shows up and piques his interest
• metallic dragons being up and about at the time of the Kingpriest
• female Solamnic knights being fairly routine rather than very rare exceptions (I understand WHY this change was made, and personally agree with it, but it 100% was a change)
• good clerics/paladins getting their powers back without the intervention of the Disks of Mishakal and/or Elistan (another one i agree with, but yeah, it didn't used to be like that). Furthermore, old-canonically Kalaman fell to the Dragonarmies before Goldmoon found the Disks, so the PCs are kinda taking away from the importance of Goldmoon's story a bit
• being able to take the Test of High Sorcery rather offhandedly in some wizard's cave, rather than having to go to Wayreth
• arcane casters being able to heal, at all

Then you've got the changes that have implicitly happened as a consequence of the D&D rules changing over time. Dwarf wizards, bards casting healing, not to mention all sorts of weird and specialised subclasses with no basis in Krynn lore like Four Elements monks, or fiend pact warlocks, or Rune Knight fighters.

However, Dragonlance lore is extraordinarily voluminous, and in the vast number of words - novel and sourcebook - that have been written on the setting. you can find precedent for almost anything. Dwarf Wizard? Well, there's Willim the Black. Kender sorcerer? Nightshade Pricklypear. Great Old One warlock? Sounds like a member of the Cult of the Worm from Zhakar. Fiend pacts? Well, abishai canonically exist in DLs Abyss. Hell, I'd enthusiastically play a half-elf undead pact warlock, whose patron is the potent, bitter ghost of her human-loathing elven grandmother. And of course - the canonical heroes of Dragonlance ARE special unique snowflakes. Goldmoon is the only good cleric in the world, Raistlin is a timelooped version of the most powerful evil wizard ever, Laurana is a princess and Gilthanas a prince (who falls in love with a dragon!), Tanis and Riverwind are half-elf and ranger in a setting an edition when both of those were vanishingly rare, and 18/xx strength is suspiciously common among the fighter types in an edition where everyone was supposed to be rolling 3d6 in order. DL is a big melodramatic setting with big melodramatic larger-than-life characters who are ALLOWED to be special and unique. If you're ever going to play The Only Archfey Pact Warlock Duergar In The World Who Happens To Be A Disinherited Heir To Nobility, then a dragonlance game would be the perfect place to do it. Special and unique is entirely in-genre.

Where you get into knots of course is that Dragonlance lore has been reinvented and the setting exploded so many times - Chaos War, War of Souls, Age of Mortals, etc etc etc, often in very poorly-received ways - that what consititutes 'canon' is more than a bit up for debate. Almost everyone mentally edits some of that stuff out when it comes to their personal canon. If you say 'only Weis and Hickman is canon' then you're stuck with the generally disliked Chaos War, and lose most of Soth's generally well-received backstory, for instance. If you stick to the modules, then you probably lose a bunch of the most memorable personal interaction and events (Sturm's death, Raistlin's taking the Black, etc) from the novels, which define DL for a lot of people. Like always I guess, around your table, canon is what you choose it to be, even in a setting like DL where canon already exists in vast amounts.

 

[JEB]

Off the top of my head, from a purely plot/lore standpoint:

• Soth caring at all about the War of the Lance before Kitiara shows up and piques his interest
• metallic dragons being up and about at the time of the Kingpriest
• female Solamnic knights being fairly routine rather than very rare exceptions (I understand WHY this change was made, and personally agree with it, but it 100% was a change)
• good clerics/paladins getting their powers back without the intervention of the Disks of Mishakal and/or Elistan (another one i agree with, but yeah, it didn't used to be like that). Furthermore, old-canonically Kalaman fell to the Dragonarmies before Goldmoon found the Disks, so the PCs are kinda taking away from the importance of Goldmoon's story a bit
• being able to take the Test of High Sorcery rather offhandedly in some wizard's cave, rather than having to go to Wayreth
• arcane casters being able to heal, at all

Interesting, thanks for the summary! But - IMHO, at least - none of those changes seem to remotely be at the level of Ravenloft (which is basically a new setting with some familiar names and Easter eggs) or even Spelljammer (which significantly changed the cosmology, but largely minor stuff beyond that). These changes all seem like things that work perfectly fine as retcons or reinterpretations or "secret history", without requiring you to disregard the original Dragonlance story. About the worst I can see is how these changes reduce the significance of the actions of the Heroes of the Lance... yet they still seem like they'd be pretty damn significant figures. But maybe, like you, this just doesn't reach my annoyance threshold?

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Now the lore is "subjetive", you choose if the cat within Schöringer's box is alive, dead or undead...or reincarnated into a displacer beast.

Dragonlance 5e is a good example of how coherence with the previous lore is sacrificied in the name of a more flexible gameplay.

Greyhawk should allow more space and freedom to create stories about conflicts and war among kingdoms. In FR frontiers aren't altered for centuries.

Regions of Mystara based in no-Western cultures isn't really so wrong, but today the things are done in other way, more worried about the right respect for other communities. If it is done in the right way, it could help to promote interest into those other cultures.

I wonder how would be incarnum soulborns and incarnates working as agents of immortals in Mystara.

I guess WotC has to create before the "crunch", the new classes and species, and after these to be included in the rebooted settings.

Some times I try to imagine a tensei(reborn/reincarnation) version of Dragonlance. Let's imagine a native from Eldraine who love the Dragonlance novels (a planewalker wanted to make money selling sagas about event happened in other worlds or planes) and she lost her life for the Phyrexian invasion. Then in the new life she is one of the characters of Dragonlance, but not the original timeline, but a "clone world" based in the imagined realms created in the fiction. Then she enjoys total freedom to alter the future. Maybe she is reborn as Kitiara's twin sister.

* The Athasian Tablelands could suffer a second cataclysm because that doomed world was the easier option to be used as a "firewall" in a cosmic conflict. This would be the end of the rest of sorcerer-kings (at least in the material plane, but the Athasian afterlife may be radically different) and the arrival of new creatures and sentient species from other post-apocaliptic "wildspaces".

 

[humble minion]

Interesting, thanks for the summary! But - IMHO, at least - none of those changes seem to remotely be at the level of Ravenloft (which is basically a new setting with some familiar names and Easter eggs) or even Spelljammer (which significantly changed the cosmology, but largely minor stuff beyond that). These changes all seem like things that work perfectly fine as retcons or reinterpretations or "secret history", without requiring you to disregard the original Dragonlance story. About the worst I can see is how these changes reduce the significance of the actions of the Heroes of the Lance... yet they still seem like they'd be pretty damn significant figures. But maybe, like you, this just doesn't reach my annoyance threshold?

Yeah, Ravenloft was turned inside out and upside down much more comprehensively than Krynn in the 5e reinvention. Other than bits of Barovia, pretty much the only identifiable bits of old Ravenloft are some of the names. Krynn was handled with a much lighter touch - although the decision to just plain avoid touching on areas like gully dwarves, or slavery in the minotaur empire, etc etc I suppose maybe made WotC think that less retconning was necessary. Mind you, CoS tied RL canon into a pretzel long before the setting book came out.

Oh, and just to prove my point about personal canon - I'd forgotten (or mentally edited out) the fact that Krynn had an in-universe event that created the first sorcerers, and this event happened significantly AFTER the War of the Lance. So canonically, there should be no sorcerers in the War of the Lance, but of course there's nothing about this in SotDQ and in fact the lone new subclass that the book provides is for sorcerers. Now personally my personal DL headcanon just flat-out excludes most of the post-WotL material because I think it's largely rubbish, but canon is canon, right? If I ran DL, I'd run it in the WotL era and I'd just have sorcerers having always been members of the Orders of High Sorcery just like wizards (and bards, too). I think that's eminently sensible and provides space for flexibility in PC concepts while keeping true to the spirit of Krynn - but consistent with canon, it ain't.

 

[JEB]

Mind you, CoS tied RL canon into a pretzel long before the setting book came out.

Eh, certainly YMMV, but I'd say the CoS changes were even more minor than the Dragonlance changes. They aren't hard to reconcile with earlier lore as additions, reinterpretations, updates, or even simply a "point of view". I do recall some complaining, mind... but nothing on the scale of what I saw after VRGTR came out.

Oh, and just to prove my point about personal canon - I'd forgotten (or mentally edited out) the fact that Krynn had an in-universe event that created the first sorcerers, and this event happened significantly AFTER the War of the Lance. So canonically, there should be no sorcerers in the War of the Lance, but of course there's nothing about this in SotDQ and in fact the lone new subclass that the book provides is for sorcerers. Now personally my personal DL headcanon just flat-out excludes most of the post-WotL material because I think it's largely rubbish, but canon is canon, right?

Fair point, but I still think such things can be reconciled. For example, perhaps that in-universe event made sorcerers much more common, but there had also been "special snowflake" sorcerers before that, hiding their true nature. Maybe even able to pass as wizards and join the High Sorcery orders.

(Of course, there's also a question as to how much the game rules are the reality of a setting, and how much the rules are just a lens through which we interpret the setting. For example, do the 1E and 2E rules not permitting dwarf wizards mean that dwarf wizards didn't exist at all in Greyhawk, until some cosmic change in 3E... or were they always a possibility and it wasn't "revealed" until the 3E rules came out?)

 

[humble minion]

Fair point, but I still think such things can be reconciled. For example, perhaps that in-universe event made sorcerers much more common, but there had also been "special snowflake" sorcerers before that, hiding their true nature. Maybe even able to pass as wizards and join the High Sorcery orders.

(Of course, there's also a question as to how much the game rules are the reality of a setting, and how much the rules are just a lens through which we interpret the setting. For example, do the 1E and 2E rules not permitting dwarf wizards mean that dwarf wizards didn't exist at all in Greyhawk, until some cosmic change in 3E... or were they always a possibility and it wasn't "revealed" until the 3E rules came out?)

All very true.

There's fundamentally three ways of dealing with the situation when you have a legacy setting that doesn't line up with modern D&Ds class availability assumptions etc. All of them have downsides.

First is you can lean hard into the old canon. Classes X and Y are banned, class Z is unavailable to races A, B, C, etc etc. Downside of this is that it cuts down on player choice (obviously) but also hands much more work to to writers. I mean, I'd allow a champion or battlemaster fighter in any DL game I ran with no question, or a samurai (hi Sturm!) or cavalier or whatever - but a Rune Knight? Similarly, an open hand monk would be fine, but Astral Self? Do you go so far as limiting specific subclasses, or limiting certain subclasses to certain races? You start getting a lot of pedantic fiddly rules text very quickly, at dubious gameability value.

Second is that you just plain retcon it. It's always been that way, the gnome paladins and dwarf warlocks were just well hidden or keeping themselves secret or hanging out with the Entwives. Which solves your player choice problem. but at the cost of a certain degree of setting verisimilitude in places. If dwarves had wizards, dwarf history would have been different in several ways which would have affected the current-day setting. Also, you kinda lose book-compatibility, and the novels have always been right at the heart of what makes Dragonlance Dragonlance for many, many people.

Third is that you write an in-world event that lets bards cast healing spells (or whatever), but this ties you to a point in history - no healing bards before day X of year Y. And in a world like Krynn where EVERYTHING has already been novelised in the manner of late-80s and early-90s Star Wars books (Tales from Mos Eisley Cantina, I'm looking at you...) you absolutely are going to step on some established lore somewhere, especially if you try to insert your bard-healing-origin event early in the timeline like ... before the War of the Lance so your SotDQ bard can heal. OR you can stick it in later in the timeline in some of the weird later-generation DL stuff but then nobody will care about it.

There's not really a perfect answer that's going to work for everyone. And personally I can see how I'd take all three approaches at times, to different bits of canon, if I was running 5e DL.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I get what you're saying, but I'm long past having any expectations of WotC.

And again you are responding to the comments of another and making it about you. I know your position, was the response above necessary? does it advance any conversation in any interesting or illuminating way?

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Did Wizards or anyone actually point out what was so flawed with the lore of MtoF that it had to be nuked? I get why they wanted to move on from Volo's but I dont remember anything in ToF that was of issue, other than 'exists as canon'.

I do not recall, I think it was obsoleted because they were revising the methods by which they built monsters, and were publishing a new book of that.