D&D 5E (2024) WotC Should Make 5.5E Specific Setting

[Minigiant]

Wouldn't it be cool if there was a dragonborn Kingdom where each of the colors of Dragonborns were A noble house and common dragonborn wear a colored brown and would have random dragon ancestories.

So then you as a player could perhaps choose to be a brass dragon and in the world that would automatically prescribe you as a member of the nobility of this nation. Everybody would know it the entire world would know it because of you are blue and a dragonborn. And it could be plot points where dragonborns of opposing houses could use magic to color themselves and pretend to be common dragonborn or of the same house in order to trick and spy on each other.

Then you get to the bottom of the dungeon and bump bump bump it's a trap because Repyx was not Gold Dragonborn. He was Green. The entire quest was a trap to kill you. 5 mindflayers. Roll initiative.

 

[zakael19]

I personally would not call it a WotC setting though. It's also not exactly a "5e" setting in its worldbuilding, because that worldbuilding is actually built off of one specific prior setting, with a dash of another: specifically, it's built off of 4e's Points of Light setting, with a dollop of Golarion added in for spice (e.g. Sarenrae/"Raei" to avoid licensing issues). The entire pantheon is very specifically the 4e pantheon (excluding Sarenrae), and the whole "Prime Deities"/"Betrayer Gods" thing is quite clearly Mr. Mercer's rebuild of the Dawn War to suit his own interests and campaign ideas.

So...if Exandria is the closest thing to a "5e" setting, it's sort of admitting that 5e had to steal 4e's lunch and file off the serial numbers. Again.

It's a WOTC published setting, especially where the Wildemount book has been added on to and fleshed out for publication. Mercer may have started that, but there's a lot more contributing authors on it.

Yes, the pantheon comes from 4e (this is good?), but the world itself as you'll play in it is an excellent refreshing of classic fantasy tropes for modern table culture and sensibilities.

It's certainly a lot more purpose designed for the current iteration then FR or what have you is.

 

[CreamCloud0]

It’s been part of the game since 1st edition. Gygax actually discusses what fraction of the population have class levels. I think the figure he came up with was one in ten thousand. Third edition went so far as to add simpler and weaker classes for NPCs.

but the things i mentioned didn't come from neither class nor levels, species and background are things i would fundamentally expect every 0th level character to have(barring perhaps background for very young children), you can't exist and not have a species, how can you live your life and not have ANY sort of background life experience?

 

[TiQuinn]

I look forward to playing a Xarfell fyrepriest on Gnimbkedoon in 6e.

Not gonna lie - a Xarfell Fyrepriest just on name alone sounds kinda awesome!

 

[Parmandur]

You look at the Adventure Path modules from WOTC and things like Tieflings and Dragonborn and artificers and various other elements might as well not exist.

A setting which actually addresses directly the PHB is not exactly an outlandish concept. I mean, good grief, that's what we got in 3e and 4e. Over ten years into 5e and we still barely see dragonborn or tiefling NPC's in modules. Is there a dragonborn town anywhere on the Sword Coast? Village? Pueblo? Anything?

There are Tiefling and Dragonborn NPCs all the time in the Campaign books? Some people loudly complained about that with Saltmarsh, for example, but it goes all the way back to Hoard of the Dragon Queen.

 

[Remathilis]

It was the rules. Gary would have disallowed it because he didn’t like non-human PCs. He wasn’t much interested in world building and settings. Greyhawk was just the generic fantasy setting where his game happened. It wasn’t until Gary stepped back from the day to day that settings that differed from core rules started to appear (Dragonlance was the first).

Right. IMHO there are two different types of settings in D&D: kitchen sink and curated. Greyhawk, Realms, Eberron, Spelljammer, Planescape, and most versions of Ravenloft are kitchen sink and reflect what was in the rules at the time. Dragonlance and Dark Sun are curated and intentionally excluded elements of the Core game. That said, there are exactly two curated settings, but people argue in bad faith that all settings are curated based on what the core rules chose to curate. Since Gary, Ed, or Keith didn't have crystal balls to predict decades later that the PHB would have Dragonborn, Oerth, Faerun, and Eberron cannot either. Ludicrously absurd.

 

[Remathilis]

Err… no, I believe the suggestion is for one setting designed with 5e’s worldbuilding implications in mind, not for all settings to be replaced with ones that have more species.

I'm responding to the notion older settings cannot be used if changes to them have to be made to make them compatible with the current edition. IE Greyhawk can never have Dragonborn because Dragonborn didn't exist in 1983.

 

[Yaarel]

That said, there are exactly two curated settings, but people argue in bad faith that all settings are curated based on what the core rules chose to curate.

I dont think there is bad faith. It is more about nostalgia.

If they were playing 1e Greyhawk, their experience of the setting was Grey Elves, High Elves, and Grugach. They werent encountering the later Astral Elves and Eladrin Elves, even tho they are potentially present because Greyhawk is intentionally a kitchensink setting. (And because both the Astral Plane and Plane of Faerie exist in Greyhawk. So these planes explain where these other elven cultures come from.)

 

[Parmandur]

Right. IMHO there are two different types of settings in D&D: kitchen sink and curated. Greyhawk, Realms, Eberron, Spelljammer, Planescape, and most versions of Ravenloft are kitchen sink and reflect what was in the rules at the time. Dragonlance and Dark Sun are curated and intentionally excluded elements of the Core game. That said, there are exactly two curated settings, but people argue in bad faith that all settings are curated based on what the core rules chose to curate. Since Gary, Ed, or Keith didn't have crystal balls to predict decades later that the PHB would have Dragonborn, Oerth, Faerun, and Eberron cannot either. Ludicrously absurd.

I like Rising from the Last War's explanation for the sudden proliferation of Dragonborn: most Humans still think they are Lizardfolk, cuz all them reptiles look the same. Handy, elegant, complete explanation.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

That said, there are exactly two curated settings, but people argue in bad faith that all settings are curated based on what the core rules chose to curate. Since Gary, Ed, or Keith didn't have crystal balls to predict decades later that the PHB would have Dragonborn, Oerth, Faerun, and Eberron cannot either. Ludicrously absurd.

What's funny is there is an explicit mention of there being "half-dragon lizard folk" of Q'barra in the 3e Eberron book, but some people acted like it was beyond the pale to say, "yeah, those are Dragonborn, here's some more information about them."