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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So the issue with a new setting is threading the needle of having it be different enough to be distinct but broad enough to have enough appeal to sell. Smaller publishers don't have to sell thousands upon thousands of copies to consider an effort worth trying. I would love something out of left field that covered new ground, done with the production values that WotC can pull off, but you need to draw in more than magpie GMs like me who would buy a new setting just for some cool species and subclasses.
 

What would a new D&D setting need to have? Like Eberron, I think WotC would require that it allow almost any species and class without difficulty. And I don't think it'll be too crazy like Dark Sun or even Spelljammer. I'm thinking someone a little more fantastic than what we see in Forgotten Realms, but not crazily so.
 






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