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.

 

[Parmandur]

yeah, then I can see why you would say the same about Arthur

I can think of a good dozen completely different Arthurian adaptations from just the past century. Arthuriana is quite diverse in the 21st century.

 

[Reynard]

Did not pay $30 to find out


what was demonstrably added since say 1600 that is a recurring theme since?

Here: https://owlcation.com/humanities/arthurianlegendthroughouttheages

It points out how most of what you think of as medieval romance actually came from Victorian Arthurian popularity, among other interesting bits.

 

[Parmandur]

Here: https://owlcation.com/humanities/arthurianlegendthroughouttheages

It points out how most of what you think of as medieval romance actually came from Victorian Arthurian popularity, among other interesting bits.

Most people are going to be most familiar with T. H. White, who was actually quite creative in his presentation and themes.

 

[mamba]

I can think of a good dozen completely different Arthurian adaptations from just the past century. Arthuriana is quite diverse in the 21st century.

I can’t, guess I trust you on this since you looked into it more

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

If you are going to play Star Wars RPG then you choose what is canon or isn't, and even you could add elements from other franchises, for example xenomorphs(Alien) or necromorphs(Dead Space). At your home you cook the pizza in the way you want.

If there aren't changes but always the same then it is bad, but if there are changes then "the roots are lost". Not everybody can be happy. Then you only can try the most like your work.

If you start from zero then you enjoy total creative freedom, but the IP is totally unknown and needs to be promoted, and originality is increasingly difficult. Hasbro would rather to use old franchises to try recover that lost value.

* Robotix could become a WotC franchise, about magical constructs with "soulstones" (like the cortical stacks of "Altered Carbone" or Eclipse Phase RPG). A space colony (with a retrofuturistic 80's look) suffers a rebellion of the machines. Really this is a "false flag operation". The terrakors, the rebel robots are controlled by a secret elite group "the club of the inmortals". Then some victims become ghosts and these discover the way to controll special "contructs", the protectons. These have been created for civilian use, for building or police patrols, but modificied to fight against terrakors and other menaces style Resident Evil.

 

[mamba]

Here: https://owlcation.com/humanities/arthurianlegendthroughouttheages

It points out how most of what you think of as medieval romance actually came from Victorian Arthurian popularity, among other interesting bits.

reading through this it sounds like a lot was piled on rather than fundamentally changed, but point taken in that some of that is later than I said

 

[nevin]

Arthur , and any celtic myths are probably some of the worst ones to argue about.

the celts didn't write stuff down and the closest we have to original stories were written by the romans who at least didn't rewrite them to match thier own religions. But there have been some tid bits found over the years that indicate even the roman versions had been romanized dramatically from the original stories by the time they got written down. One tid bit i remember was that someone had found a piece of a manuscript that indicated Ceridwin and Arthur had a son called Mordrod and he was ugly as a beast and the most fierce of the knights. Also one theory that Merlin and Mordrod are the same person and in the original story the father was an Earth God with Ceridwen as the mother. But no proof just little tidbits here and there. Think about that. The original merlin could have been a Warrior Druid who fought with the knights. But all Celtic myths are like that. They got so mixed up by the people that conquered them, and then those stories were rewritten by monks, we'll probably never know what the original stories were.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So you can empathize when a company decides to eliminate a large portion of previous lore to more focus on the stuff they're currently making??

As I said, they didn't change the core of the setting, and none of the other stuff was ever officially canon. D&D did both. If you can't see a difference, then we have nothing more to talk about.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is demonstrably wrong. The course I linked does the demonstrating. The short version: most people build on stories, not rewind all the way to the "original" (quotes because even if they do, it is almost never the original). This is doubly true of Arthur, because those stories were not controlled by copyright or corporate lawyers.

There is an excluded middle there. moreover, this is actually a really good example because there are a couple different Tolkien licenses and some only allow sublicenses from the film licenses, while others are limited to the core trilogy, appendices and the Hobbit, while yet others are more expansive. Each of these licenses means that the derivative materials -- adaptations in other media as well as new material by new authors -- vary quite a lot. Thereby, Middle Earth and the Lord of the Rings are evolving and will continue to do so.

None of those different versions in different media are meant to replace the books, or each other. They are just different interpretations.

 

[Mecheon]

No domain was predicated on the idea that "wolfwere isn't a werewolf therefore its scary". The inanities that people always post about the pre-5E Ravenloft prove none of them even read any of it.

You know exactly what Darklord I'm talking about. Why was he one in the previous books? What great crime did he do to have the Dark Lords drag him in? Because frankly, Harkon was just put in there originally to have "Oh you came prepared for a werewolf but its not, I tricked you!" the domain

5E at least gives him a backstory that makes, y'know, sense with the other Darklords established and lets him stand on his own as a villain

If you have some references that are not a $30 paywall, I am interested.

Never cared much for Arthur, to me all versions I read / saw were broadly the same, similar to how three people telling you about the same event will not be identical either

You gotta scrounge online sources but there's some stuff. Before Twitter went to heck I found a good art tweet someone did with really good redesigns of a bunch of the Round Table. Not the whole lot of course, but some of the more noticable and less noticable ones.

what was demonstrably added since say 1600 that is a recurring theme since?

I mean how reoccurring do we define 'maybe girl' because I'd argue the most popular King Arthur at the moment is a certian Artoria from Fate, simply due to the sheer power of 'gacha mechanics'