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

Some guesses for new settings. Primal World they keep bringing up & Donains of Delight.
The First World is a device to explain why different worlds have "echoes" of similar beings and artifacts.

The domains of Delight actually got significantly expanded in the DMG, with a lot of oddly specific Fey Lore newly added. Would not be at all shocked to see that.

The Elemental Chaos, similarly, got a lot of attention and development...and since Planescape conspicuously focused on just the Upper Planes, a Lower Planes connector Setting based out, say, the City of Brass, would make a lot of sense.
 

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That's an interesting idea: the First World as a playable setting. it could even be a high level "First Age Middle Earth" style setting with the high in "high fantasy" turned up to 11.
Kinda "What if Exalted, but DnD". Could have potential, but I think the system would buckle under the demand of trying to do high end flashy fantasy.
 



If WotC does an honest to goodness new setting, I would like to see them do something radically different from other D&D settings. Give me a world of flying islands and airship pirates. give me a aquatic setting. Give me super far future science fantasy. give me a dyson sphere.
Well, you sort of have that already with 3pp making sci-fi 5e. One of them is even a WotC freelancer and a DM Guild Adept. However, I can tell you that for most D&D fans, such settings will fly like a lead balloon. In reaching out to promote such a setting, a press guy said, "I don't know if my readers will want a sci-fi setting."

I get you, all of my favorite D&D settings are the weirder ones. But I don't envy WotC when it comes to making a new setting when most D&D fans want "The same, but different."

 




I would be very happy to get a Manual of the Multiverse that was a tour of not just the planes, but which also covered a bunch of the lesser known or harder to redo settings, like Birthright, Mystara, Dark Sun and Jakandor. Obviously that would mean that none of them was covered in enormous detail, but I'd be okay with that, especially if those settings were then opened up on the DMsGuild. They managed to do a surprisingly decent job of capturing the essence of Greyhawk in 30-odd pages, so it can be done.
 

I would be very happy to get a Manual of the Multiverse that was a tour of not just the planes, but which also covered a bunch of the lesser known or harder to redo settings, like Birthright, Mystara, Dark Sun and Jakandor. Obviously that would mean that none of them was covered in enormous detail, but I'd be okay with that, especially if those settings were then opened up on the DMsGuild. They managed to do a surprisingly decent job of capturing the essence of Greyhawk in 30-odd pages, so it can be done.
I'd like that, too.
 

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