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.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Problem is once you leave the known area its all stuff like the pseudo mongol horde, the psuedo egyptian empire etc, etc, nithing WOTC is going to touch with a 10 ft pole

Other than potentially Calimshan to the south, it's a long distance before you get to anything remotely problematic from the area covered in the Sword Coast book. It's thousands of miles of standard fantasy lands to the east of the area in that book.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The reboot of Maztica could be easily explanaible thanks the Sundering effect. Let's remember it can be published in DMGuild as FR spin-off.

If 7th Sea has got nations based in no-Western cultures. Why not D&D?

Hasbro wants each D&D setting to be a brand, an cash-cow IP.

* Maybe the Athasian Tablelands were destroyed, this time almost ultimately. The survivor sorcerer-kings tried to created demiplanes to avoid this terrible fate, but this didn't work in the way they wanted. The enoughly pure souls of innocent citizens were "raptured" and sent to the "Land-within-the-Wind" thanks a cosmic power what tried to evacuated the sentient population and native species. But after too many mortals in this zone of the Athasian Feywild caused this became a new material plane, but this time without the tiranny of sorcerer-kings. This new land could allow the arrival of new species (and classes).

* We need coherente and clear rules about because something may be potentially problematic.

 

[humble minion]

I don't really agree that they wouldn't. The intentionally dealt with Chult, after all, which is significantly more problematic.

With faux-Egypt, there's nothing particularly problematic. It's a generic "ancient Egypt somehow in the 1600s-equivalent setting" trope which comes up in a lot of campaigns. This is not generally something that is a point of contention or upset.

The faux-Mongols can be largely ignored and talking about the Mongol horde etc. is not yet problematic, probably because people descended from that group either tend to be somewhat denial about it, or totally embrace it and the whole Mongol deal, and don't find the discussion of that history problematic.

Faux-Asia provides a bit more of a real problem, but again, it could be updated and sort of glossed over at the same.

Maztica is a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge problem and I dunno what WotC are going to do about that apart from a massive retcon and rewrite sometime in the future. Until then they'll probably just act like it doesn't exist - it is on another continent at least.

The reception of WotCs modernised Chult was ... not terribly enthusiastic, mind you. And WotC (and TSR before them) have largely ignored Maztica since, well, the Maztica line. Understandably. But you can very easily expand your coverage of the Realms without going near the place - or any of the other real culture ripoffs. I'm guessing a bit by the way that Dragonlance and Spelljammer managed their problematic bits, but it looks a lot to me like WotCs preferred means of addressing dodgy legacy setting stuff is to simply write around it and not address it at all (VRGtR and its wholesale retcons being the exception to this approach of course).

You could very easily expand the 5e Realms by focusing entirely on the area north of the Sea of Fallen Stars, just like SCAG and its zillion spin-off adventures focused on the Sword Coast. Cormyr, Sembia, the Dales, Anauroch, Myth Drannor, Aglarond, Vaasa, Thay, Rashemen, Impiltur, Narfell, Damara - there's some absolutely classic Realms locations, places, names, and themes going on there, and no transplanted Earth cultures. It's nice and rectangular which suits a big fold-out map and you've got convenient natural boundaries on all four sides - Anauroch in the west, Thay in the east, the sea to the south and the Great Glacier in the north.

Faerun is a big place. There's plenty of room for WotCs creatives to play there without stepping on any cultural landmines, should they choose to.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Poor WotC. So much content they're too scared to work with.

Not scared. They're exercising OSR style strategic caution.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Cormyr, Sembia, the Dales, Anauroch, Myth Drannor, Aglarond, Vaasa, Thay, Rashemen, Impiltur, Narfell, Damara

Jesus between this recitation of names of my childhood and teens and BG3 I feel like I'm going to have to run the Forgotten Realms again, though not sure with which edition or relation of D&D. Those are basically the best places in the realms (and the Sword Coast is too), and no coincidence that they're the Greenwood-created places whereas most of the copied cultures and so on were thrust upon him by TSR.

 

[humble minion]

To be fair, the Dales in particular are not unproblematic from a design perspective. Not because of any cultural insensitivity issues, but because you're still stuck with Elminster and Storm Silverhand and the usual suspects there - the old FR problem that people have been complaining about for decades about the uberpowerful NPCs who could/should have solved the problem the PCs are working on. Greenwood did a lot of great work designing that part of the Realms, but when it comes to the whole Chosen of Mystra thing someone badly needs to rein him in. YMMV of course, but I always found the whole 'whole 'hail fellow well met' and 'all the hot magic women want crumbly old randy goat Elminster' Dalelands shtick pretty twee and annoying, and the way the WotC toned down of the centrality of Elminster and co to the setting is one thing about 5e FR that I've actually liked. But that's the 'avoid talking about stuff which is too hard to fix' WotC philosophy of legacy settings in action again. If you're covering this part of the world, you can't just ignore the guy.

Annoyingly, the Spellplague left Storm Silverhand (a good-aligned proactive adventurer in direct competition with PCs for the limelight) alive, but killed off the Simbul (who was actually a useful game character, being a preoccupied ruler of a small nation constantly at loggerheads with a much-larger Thay, and being considerably more dangerous, capricious, and morally ambiguous than the usual Shadowdale faces in the bargain).

Of course, there's more to the North than just the Dalelands. I'd probably find a way to bring back the Simbul though. Aglarond was cooler with her in it.

 

[Hussar]

Poor WotC. So much content they're too scared to work with.

Too ashamed would be a better description for good reason.

I, for one, am very happy to leave a lot of these legacy settings in the past where they belong - cautionary tales.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Too ashamed would be a better description for good reason.

I, for one, am very happy to leave a lot of these legacy settings in the past where they belong - cautionary tales.

Sure, provided they replace them with actually new settings and not knock-off versions of their old ones.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

To be fair, the Dales in particular are not unproblematic from a design perspective. Not because of any cultural insensitivity issues, but because you're still stuck with Elminster and Storm Silverhand and the usual suspects there - the old FR problem that people have been complaining about for decades about the uberpowerful NPCs who could/should have solved the problem the PCs are working on. Greenwood did a lot of great work designing that part of the Realms, but when it comes to the whole Chosen of Mystra thing someone badly needs to rein him in. YMMV of course, but I always found the whole 'whole 'hail fellow well met' and 'all the hot magic women want crumbly old randy goat Elminster' Dalelands shtick pretty twee and annoying, and the way the WotC toned down of the centrality of Elminster and co to the setting is one thing about 5e FR that I've actually liked. But that's the 'avoid talking about stuff which is too hard to fix' WotC philosophy of legacy settings in action again. If you're covering this part of the world, you can't just ignore the guy.

Annoyingly, the Spellplague left Storm Silverhand (a good-aligned proactive adventurer in direct competition with PCs for the limelight) alive, but killed off the Simbul (who was actually a useful game character, being a preoccupied ruler of a small nation constantly at loggerheads with a much-larger Thay, and being considerably more dangerous, capricious, and morally ambiguous than the usual Shadowdale faces in the bargain).

Of course, there's more to the North than just the Dalelands. I'd probably find a way to bring back the Simbul though. Aglarond was cooler with her in it.

Elminster travels the whole world, and is normally up to something. Just cause you go to his home region does not mean he will be involved in the plot there.

 

[humble minion]

The "Elminster is unable to respond to your sending right now because he's busy dealing with something MUCH more cosmically important than your trifling quest, please leave a message after the beep" solution isn't really any more satisfying now than it was 20 years ago, IMHO. And you can't really do a sourcebook that covers the Dales and completely bypass him. He's iconic, but intrusive.

I do wish they'd killed Elminster off. I know they'd never do it, and Ed Greenwood and a lot of FR fans would be furious if they did, but he's a lot more intrusive to FR being an actually playable setting than more politically-focused NPCs like Khelben and the Simbul, or the lower-level types like Dove Falconhand etc were, and WotC cheerfully killed them. Or at least reduce him to a sage, like he was waaay back in the day, than the archwizard he became later. I loathe what 4e did to the Realms generally, but nobbling Elminster so he was not actually able to intervene much was one of its better ideas. Keep him around as someone the PCs can talk to or seek advice from, and even grant him some degree of Mystra's protection so casual assailants can't just off him, but saving the world should be PC business.