Dungeons & Dragons Teases New Campaign Settings

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Dungeons & Dragons seems to be preparing to explore brand new campaign settings. Last week, EN World had the opportunity to visit Wizards of the Coast headquarters and get new details about D&D's 2025 slate. While much of the focus was on the newly announced Eberron: Forge of the Artificer book or the upcoming pair of Forgotten Realms book, the D&D design team is also looking at expanding their official multiverse to include brand new worlds.

When asked about the decision to return to Eberron in 2025, the D&D design team noted that keeping the Fifth Edition ruleset allowed them to grow the game instead of rehash it. "One of the opportunities that we have by revising the game, as opposed blowing it up and starting over, is we can actually move forward," said Jeremy Crawford, game director . "And I can't wait until we can tell you about 2026 and 2027."

"With Jeremy Crawford taking on the game director role and then Chris Perkins taking on the creative director role is that we were able to really reestablish a world building environment," added Jess Lanzillo, VP of D&D Franchise at Wizards of the Coast. "What does that mean? We can really establish our worlds and settings like the Forgotten Realms and also look to creating new ones again. That's something that we are working on and we don't have anything to really discuss today other than to tell you like we are re-establishing everything that we have and we are going to make some new stuff too."

While Wizards of the Coast has integrated Magic: The Gathering worlds and Critical Role's Exandria as campaign settings for 5th Edition, D&D's last truly new campaign setting was Nentir Vale, a 'points of light' setting that established small bastions of civilization in an otherwise dark world. In 2023, D&D introduced the Radiant Citadel, a new city within the Ethereal Plane that was connected to numerous new civilizations and worlds briefly touched on in anthology books.
 

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Christian Hoffer

Christian Hoffer


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In all seriousness, while I have no connection to Birthright itself, a new setting and gameline that goes beyond the bastion system to include running an entire country and integrating it into player power could be really interesting, and it could also be backported into other settings (Especially since we're getting a rebooted Keep on the Borderlands, for instance).
Why reinvent the wheel?
 

Why reinvent the wheel?
Birthright's lore limited its country rulership system to a select number of nobles and races. The setting would need a massive rework to begin with to make room for lots of the class and flavor options that have been added since 2e, but plenty of players would love to rule a country but not necessarily be a noble. The lore changes to the setting to make it playable with the expectations of the contemporary audience would practically necessitate a new setting anyway, so why use the name and lore when there's a lot more potential for baggage?

Reboot an extremely obscure setting from the TSR days, you'll only really appeal to the small handful of people who remember that gameline and have a big risk of pissing them off. Whereas if you make a setting from scratch you can probably have lots of mainstream outlets carry a story about "D&D introduces its first new world since 2008!" or however they want to phrase it, and because it's a fresh world you can make sure to jam it packed with elements more relevant to the consumers of today (whose tastes may not align particularly with you and I, the kind of people enthusiastic enough and with enough free time to discuss this on a weekday).

EDIT: To elaborate; Birthright restricts the player to one system of government. Fresh lore could allow players to run republics, theocracies, military dictatorships, anarcho-syndicalist communes, whatever.
 

Birthright's lore limited its country rulership system to a select number of nobles and races. The setting would need a massive rework to begin with to make room for lots of the class and flavor options that have been added since 2e, but plenty of players would love to rule a country but not necessarily be a noble. The lore changes to the setting to make it playable with the expectations of the contemporary audience would practically necessitate a new setting anyway, so why use the name and lore when there's a lot more potential for baggage?

Reboot an extremely obscure setting from the TSR days, you'll only really appeal to the small handful of people who remember that gameline and have a big risk of pissing them off. Whereas if you make a setting from scratch you can probably have lots of mainstream outlets carry a story about "D&D introduces its first new world since 2008!" or however they want to phrase it, and because it's a fresh world you can make sure to jam it packed with elements more relevant to the consumers of today (whose tastes may not align particularly with you and I, the kind of people enthusiastic enough and with enough free time to discuss this on a weekday).
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Reboot and update?
 




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