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.

 

[JEB]

A setting that had not had official material since 2e, virtually none of which anyone actually played. We know that because Ravenloft didn't sell very well at all.

According to Ben Riggs' stats, Ravenloft was the best-selling 2E campaign setting after the big three (Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and the Realms). It's also one of the few settings to continue getting active support after Wizards took over TSR, and White Wolf wouldn't have licensed it during 3E and kept the line running for years if they didn't think it was worth it.

The number of people who actually know anything about previous Ravenloft lore is vanishingly small. Are we really going to be beholden to the three people who actually care about this?

Communities such as the Fraternity of Shadows date back to the 2E era, and remain active to this day. r/ravenloft was created back in 2011. Suffice to say that more than three people cared about Ravenloft, even before Curse of Strahd.

Spelljammer doesn't really contradict any existing Spelljammer material (mostly becuase it lacks so much information) and does manage to present the framework, if only in a very minimal way.

It does contradict the older Spelljammer setting in one big way - the cosmology has been changed (from crystal spheres and phlogiston, to the Astral Sea). That certainly impacts older modules and sourcebooks that assumed the old cosmology. But beyond that, yes, the changes appear to be pretty minimal - though as you say, that might be down to how little setting information it provides in general.

 

[JEB]

One other interesting thing about 5E Ravenloft. Some Easter eggs suggest that the classic Ravenloft setting did canonically exist at one point (the domain of Klorr being the most obvious, but also bits like Dominic d'Honaire's appearance in an insane asylum). And the designer of the new Valachan said they wrote it as "a continuation, not a retcon". Makes one wonder if in an earlier design stage, it was designed to be an update and advancement of the setting (akin to the Realms and Eberron updates), rather than a reboot... but Wizards changed their minds. Oh well.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Fair enough. But, then again, Soth's been retconned fifteen ways from Sunday anyway. Let's be honest here, the ship sailed a LONG time ago on complaining about changes to Dragonlance continuity.

Ravenloft? Fair enough. And...? I mean that's one setting. A setting that had not had official material since 2e, virtually none of which anyone actually played. We know that because Ravenloft didn't sell very well at all. The number of people who actually know anything about previous Ravenloft lore is vanishingly small. Are we really going to be beholden to the three people who actually care about this?

But, ok, I'll grant Ravenloft. OTOH, we've had several adventures in FOrgotten Realms that have done a pretty decent job in keeping in line with lore. A Greyhawk adventure that, other than a couple of updates like adding Tieflings, is virtually identical to the original adventures as in word for word identical. Spelljammer doesn't really contradict any existing Spelljammer material (mostly becuase it lacks so much information) and does manage to present the framework, if only in a very minimal way.

Yet, funnily enough, I head over to DM's Guild and see The Harvesters of Worlds - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild Harvester of Worlds, which presents all sorts of Spelljammer lore in a very interesting adventure. If Spelljammer had completely changed the setting, how come I can run modules in 5e Spelljammer that dovetail very nicely with existing lore?

Yes, we get it. Some people don't like the new Ravenloft material. But, it's not like WOtC has done that to every setting. WotC's actually been taking a very light touch about lore.

I'm not a fan of the Astral Sea thing, but the rest of it seems similar, mostly because as you say there's so little of it. That's why I didn't buy it. I don't hate it (like I hate 5e Ravenloft), I just didn't see any value in what they were offering. And I came up with a work-around to bring the Phlogiston back anyway.

Dragonlance was similar, in that they actively avoided areas they didn't want to talk about, and what they did change was only a little rough for the most part (and I admit I was MUCH more concerned about it at the time). Ultimately though I didn't buy it either, because again it didn't provide any value to me, although I'm very happy its existence put the setting on the Guild.

But the Ravenloft thing was a deal breaker for me with WotC. It was my favorite setting, and I don't even have words for what they did to it. It actively makes me not want them to touch any their own settings.

And for the record the licensed material made in 3e by Arthas, which I loved, was official at the time. They just ignored it after they took the license back.

 

[Micah Sweet]

One other interesting thing about 5E Ravenloft. Some Easter eggs suggest that the classic Ravenloft setting did exist (the domain of Klorr being the most obvious, but also bits like Dominic d'Honaire's appearance in an insane asylum). And the designer of the new Valachan said they wrote it as "a continuation, not a retcon". Makes one wonder if in an earlier design stage, it was designed to be an update and advancement of the setting (akin to the Realms and Eberron updates), rather than a reboot... but Wizards changed their minds. Oh well.

At least it got it on the Guild, so some good came out of this. Lots of great stuff there (probably written by @Hussar 's three old school fans

 

[Hussar]

Shrug. What can I say? Being the "best selling 2e setting after the big three" is damning with faint praise. And, remember, that's the best selling product for the line. Which the 5e Raveloft stuff actually doesn't contradict all that much. All the later stuff - most of the domains, and certainly all the Arthas stuff was really, really niche. As in DM's Guild level niche.

See, there's the issue. When people start going on and on about "contradictions" what they typically mean is "contradicting the stuff that came out some time after the initial release". So, it gets a bit disingenuous to point to Ravenloft sales, unless you want to start talking about the sales of later setting books.

I remember @Erik Mona talking about Dungeon magazine and putting setting specific material on the cover. He said that putting any setting specific adventure in a magazine cut sales in half.

Judge the new books on their own. Spelljammer very much deserves the criticism it gets. It's positively emaciated. Adventure isn't bad, but the rest is very, very thin on the ground. OTOH, Ravenloft? Best module for 5e, at least for my money. Fantastic stuff.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Shrug. What can I say? Being the "best selling 2e setting after the big three" is damning with faint praise. And, remember, that's the best selling product for the line. Which the 5e Raveloft stuff actually doesn't contradict all that much. All the later stuff - most of the domains, and certainly all the Arthas stuff was really, really niche. As in DM's Guild level niche.

See, there's the issue. When people start going on and on about "contradictions" what they typically mean is "contradicting the stuff that came out some time after the initial release". So, it gets a bit disingenuous to point to Ravenloft sales, unless you want to start talking about the sales of later setting books.

I remember @Erik Mona talking about Dungeon magazine and putting setting specific material on the cover. He said that putting any setting specific adventure in a magazine cut sales in half.

Judge the new books on their own. Spelljammer very much deserves the criticism it gets. It's positively emaciated. Adventure isn't bad, but the rest is very, very thin on the ground. OTOH, Ravenloft? Best module for 5e, at least for my money. Fantastic stuff.

I have never used sales of any product as a metric for value.

 

[Echohawk]

The franchises I respect have largely done so. D&D has not.

See you keep repeating this like it’s true. 5e has contradicted very little of previous lore.

I'm going to merrily disagree with both of you!

Yes, 5e has some examples of major changes to canon (Ravenloft, Spelljammer cosmology). However, in most products, 5e has tended to stay consistent to D&D lore at a high-level. When it comes to the details, 5e has revised quite a lot. I notice this particularly with monster lore, where many 5e critters have a different spin on their 1e/2e/3e/4e ancestors. I think my stance would be: "5e has revised a fair amount of D&D lore. Most (but not all) of the changes have been minor".

That said, I struggle to understand Micah's position. It's not that I don't understand someone being averse to changes to canon. It's more that I'm surprised it has taken until 5e to get upset about it. I don't think 5e's approach to canon is less respectful than previous editions' approaches. Obviously, 4e made substantially more changes to D&D multiverse than 5e. But even 3e and 2e were not as great about respecting past lore as many people seem to remember. The more closely you examine how anything has changed over D&D's history, the more you notice how often there are difference between all of the editions.

What has definitely changed is WotC's honesty about their approach. For 1e/2e/3e there was a largely unspoken commitment (or at least an expectation from fans) that some sort of overall continuity would be maintained and contradictions would be avoided. There are, of course, plenty of examples where continuity was not respected: novels declared retroactively to be non-canonical; video games with different versions of cities from printed products; game products flatly contradicting earlier articles in Dragon. But when this happened, it was generally considered to have been a mistake and not because TSR/WotC wasn't trying to maintain continuity.

Then we reached 4e. WotC's approach to 4e was to put out a lot of completely new lore and try to convince fans to accept it as a replacement by implying that previous editions weren't as good as this new one. This was not an approach respectful of D&D lore, and it cost 4e a lot of fans. In response, a lot of early 5e (rather, D&D Next) marketing pushed how much more respectful 5e was going to be of the past. There were even early (unrealized) promises that 5e would be a modular system where different components could be slotted in to give a range of play styles matching past editions of the game. Read carefully, the Monster Manual is a master class in presenting versions of monsters that someone who played 1e, 2e, 3e or even 4e would find comfortingly familiar even if not quite the same.

For a few years now, WotC's stated position has been that they don't oblige their game designers to worry about anything outside of a few core books as being canonical. I appreciate this honestly about the approach. For me this means that changes to D&D lore have moved into a third phase. Phase one was "changes to lore/canon are mistakes" (1e/2e/3e). Phase two was "changes to lore/canon are deliberate" (4e). The current phase three is "changes to lore/canon happen if it gets in the way".

 

[Echohawk]

It does contradict the older Spelljammer setting in one big way - the cosmology has been changed (from crystal spheres and phlogiston, to the Astral Sea). That certainly impacts older modules and sourcebooks that assumed the old cosmology. But beyond that, yes, the changes appear to be pretty minimal - though as you say, that might be down to how little setting information it provides in general.

I wasn't bothered by the 5e changes to Spelljammer's cosmology until I started my current Spelljammer campaign. I've been discovering that more 2e lore than I expected has links to the phlogiston or to the existence of crystal spheres

I've also discovered that I don't like the Astral Sea as the connecting tissue. More specifically, I don't like the apparently trivial process of navigating from one Wild Space system to another.

This is boring: "To get to Greyspace from anywhere, think about Greyspace".

I'd prefer: "The shortest route to Greyspace is through Clusterspace which is dangerous, so you might want to take the longer but safer route through Realmspace. Or if you are in good standing with the elves, you could take a short cut though Xaryxispace..."

But the Ravenloft thing was a deal breaker for me with WotC. It was my favorite setting, and I don't even have words for what they did to it. It actively makes me not want them to touch any their own settings.

Your views on WotC's approach definitely make more sense to me viewed through an understanding that Ravenloft was your favorite setting. I can sympathize, since I am a fan of the licensed 3e setting material for Ravenloft.

 

[JEB]

Read carefully, the Monster Manual is a master class in presenting versions of monsters that someone who played 1e, 2e, 3e or even 4e would find comfortingly familiar yet not quite the same.

Want to call this out in particular as a take I very much agree with.

In early 5E they definitely gave the impression that they were trying to make a version of D&D for everybody, and this included an attempt to overtly respect the game's past (even, as you note, 4E) while still bringing in new, fresh spins. Nearly all of the new ideas in the Monster Manual were compatible with some past portrayal, unless you really got into specifics - at which point you were at the level of similar retcons between and even during past editions.

Of course, this philosophy apparently changed by the time of Ravenloft and Monsters of the Multiverse (where even 5E's own lore was subject to revision). It may have changed again since, based on their handling of Spelljammer and especially Dragonlance... but as @Hussar suggested upthread, that may have more to do with cutting lore generally than an actual shift in policy.

(A sidenote: changes to monster lore don't seem to trouble people to the same degree that campaign setting changes do. Unless it changes the fundamental "feel" of the monster, as happened sometimes in 4E. Maybe it's OK for monsters to have multiple-choice pseudo-mythological origins, but the fans of campaign settings are more attached to the particulars?)

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm going to merrily disagree with both of you!

Yes, 5e has some examples of major changes to canon (Ravenloft, Spelljammer cosmology). However, in most products, 5e has tended to stay consistent to D&D lore at a high-level. When it comes to the details, 5e has revised quite a lot. I notice this particularly with monster lore, where many 5e critters have a different spin on their 1e/2e/3e/4e ancestors. I think my stance would be: "5e has revised a fair amount of D&D lore. Most (but not all) of the changes have been minor".

That said, I struggle to understand Micah's position. It's not that I don't understand someone being averse to changes to canon. It's more that I'm surprised it has taken until 5e to get upset about it. I don't think 5e's approach to canon is less respectful than previous editions' approaches. Obviously, 4e made substantially more changes to D&D multiverse than 5e. But even 3e and 2e were not as great about respecting past lore as many people seem to remember. The more closely you examine how anything has changed over D&D's history, the more you notice how often there are difference between all of the editions.

What has definitely changed is WotC's honesty about their approach. For 1e/2e/3e there was a largely unspoken commitment (or at least an expectation from fans) that some sort of overall continuity would be maintained and contradictions would be avoided. There are, of course, plenty of examples where continuity was not respected: novels declared retroactively to be non-canonical; video games with different versions of cities from printed products; game products flatly contradicting earlier articles in Dragon. But when this happened, it was generally considered to have been a mistake and not because TSR/WotC wasn't trying to maintain continuity.

Then we reached 4e. WotC's approach to 4e was to put out a lot of completely new lore and try to convince fans to accept it as a replacement by implying that previous editions weren't as good as this new one. This was not an approach respectful of D&D lore, and it cost 4e a lot of fans. In response, a lot of early 5e (rather, D&D Next) marketing pushed how much more respectful 5e was going to be of the past. There were even early (unrealized) promises that 5e would be a modular system where different components could be slotted in to give a range of play styles matching past editions of the game. Read carefully, the Monster Manual is a master class in presenting versions of monsters that someone who played 1e, 2e, 3e or even 4e would find comfortingly familiar even if not quite the same.

For a few years now, WotC's stated position has been that they don't oblige their game designers to worry about anything outside of a few core books as being canonical. I appreciate this honestly about the approach. For me this means that changes to D&D lore have moved into a third phase. Phase one was "changes to lore/canon are mistakes" (1e/2e/3e). Phase two was "changes to lore/canon are deliberate" (4e). The current phase three is "changes to lore/canon will made if it gets in the way".

I ran 4e for a year, didn't like it, and ignored it thereafter.

Shame on me then for believing 5e was an attempt to backpeddle from the deliberate lore changes in 4e. I never liked the monster lore changes in 5e, but it was easy to ignore; all I needed were the statblocks. I never particularly cared about FR, or Eberron either.

As I've said, Ravenloft is what blew me up, and Spelljammer and Dragonlance, while not nearly as bad, didn't exactly change my mind regarding WotC's sense of respect for it's own IP. So for me, the outrage started with VRGtR.