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

I mean...Radiant Citadel is a new setting that expresses the 5e ethos...though it's a little thin. Hopefully they explore it more

Charlaquin said:

In theory, but Eberron was designed the other way around, and it’s one of the most beloved D&D settings ever.

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I do not think that is why it is beloved and if it were just that the setting would not have survived the change in edition. I think it is beloved because it is not a slight riff on generic D&D. It has a bold concept, what with the magiteck, post WWi vibe.

UngainlyTitan said:

I do not think that is why it is beloved and if it were just that the setting would not have survived the change in edition. I think it is beloved because it is not a slight riff on generic D&D. It has a bold concept, what with the magiteck, post WWi vibe.

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The fact that "if it exists in [3.5] D&D, it exists in Eberron" was a major aspect of the setting and certainly contributed to its success. But like the other settings, it has experienced some tension with both 4E and 5E in how to blend in contradictory elements. A hypothetical Eberron conceived of for 5.5E would look significantly different.

I actually think 5e has its own setting. Kind of. It’s just an extremely broad meta-setting, in which all the various D&D (and some MTG) worlds are subsettings within. WotC calls it “the multiverse,” and many fans have observed that its metaphysics and cosmological rules are kind of a hybrid of Planescape and Spelljammer. But over the course of 5e’s lifecycle, some unique details of this setting have emerged. The idea of the First World is the most obvious of these, but there’s also, like, the origin story behind the Deck of Many Things with Asteria and Euryale. The whole Radiant Citadel, etc.

SkidAce said:

I understand what you are saying. But in actuality that's exactly how gods work in my setting...all three options...i.e. they could all be true, neither of the three sides can prove their point.

Generally settings do kinda nail things like that down however.

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In my setting different people have different beliefs and traditions. I have a main pantheon I cobbled together over the years that I use for my primary setting, but not everyone agrees what the gods even are. In other regions, the religious beliefs are different, based on ancestor worship, religions based on philosophy, animism or simple reverence for the elements of nature.

It doesn't really matter who's right, all that matters is what the people believe. If you come from a polytheistic background, you believe specific gods are granting power and the worshippers with different beliefs just have a different way of worshipping specific gods or goddesses.

Reynard said:

I don't think that is a compelling argument or has any real examples to back it up.

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I can think of innumerable examples, actually, from Chaosium taking Runequest rules and making them work for superheros and Call of Cthulu down to the recent Plotweaver designs coming from Brotherwise.

Reynard said:

I did not realize that Midgard was a home campaign. Cool.

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Midgard is extremely cool, and worth a read through. It has an evil Ottoman style empire ruled by dragons, it has a Regency England where the aristocracy are vampires and the gentry are dhampires, it has viking dwarf Switzerland, it has a blasted out wasteland where goblin tribes support themselves by eating meat cut from Kaiju who are under massive Slow spells cast by Vance style decadent wizards. It is wild stuff, it really feels like the TSR cutting room floor that it is.

Reynard said:

But we all know that GH is the OG setting (or other OG setting, I guess) and you are going to have to do some real work to make it make sense in the milieu as presented in the core rule books.

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By "we" I would not include the teenagers the DMG is written for.

Reynard said:

That is interesting. I do not own either of those books. Can you tell me a little bit about them? (I am familiar with the setting via Vox Machina and that is about the extent of it, btw.)

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The key book is probavly the Wildemount Guide, since that is published by WotC and edited by Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford from Mercer's text, and Wildemount is a serious contender for one of the best official 5E books. It is the background and setting for the new Mighty Nein show, establishing the status quo just before the Mighty Nein start blowing things up (ao tables can integrate their shenanigans or fork their own alternate timeline, as explicitly set out in the text). Wildemount integrates the 4E Dawn War pantheon and mythology with classic D&D tropes filled with plot hooks for players to work off of (most of which are never explored in the show). It is great.

Reynard said:

The fact that "if it exists in [3.5] D&D, it exists in Eberron" was a major aspect of the setting and certainly contributed to its success. But like the other settings, it has experienced some tension with both 4E and 5E in how to blend in contradictory elements. A hypothetical Eberron conceived of for 5.5E would look significantly different.

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See, it was the brief but the successful and well received 4E and 5E integrations show that the mechanics were not the part that matter led, they were just expressions of the Setting the writers made. We are lookong at the next few weeks seeing the fourth mechanical expression of Dragonmarked houses, none of them being more valid than the others.

Reynard said:

The fact that "if it exists in [3.5] D&D, it exists in Eberron" was a major aspect of the setting and certainly contributed to its success. But like the other settings, it has experienced some tension with both 4E and 5E in how to blend in contradictory elements. A hypothetical Eberron conceived of for 5.5E would look significantly different.

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The "If it exists in D&D it exists in the setting" is the minimum needed to get it out the door at Wizards given the lessons learned from the TSR days. And in general I agree, it is needed for consumer acceptance, since DMs do not like to deny players options, more so in the modern era.
A third party might be able to market a setting with a stripped back ruleset.

I agree that it would looke different, but I am not sure about "completely". I think that depends on the distance one is looking at the setting from. From where I am, not ever having used Ebberon, the core identifying elements of Ebberon are; Magic teck, post WWI vibe, big multinational organisations, organised international travel. I am not sure how any of this would be different under a 5e launch.
The difference, I would see, would probably races, the mechanical expression of Dragonmarks and the like.

On the other hand, a new setting that added to the mechanics of 5e would be worth seeing.

UngainlyTitan said:

I do not think that is why it is beloved and if it were just that the setting would not have survived the change in edition. I think it is beloved because it is not a slight riff on generic D&D. It has a bold concept, what with the magiteck, post WWi vibe.

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But those things arose out of the design constraint of including everything that exists in 3e. Like, the magitech wasn’t just a whim Keith Baker had, it was arrived at as the natural conclusion of taking the way magic works in D&D seriously.

TiQuinn said:

I’d kill for a 5e Modern setting and sourcebook.

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An updated version of 3e's Urban Arcana for 5e?

Reynard said:

Here is an interesting question I had not thought of: does either LevelUp or ToV have a bespoke setting mae for those 5E games? I know Kobold has their Midgard setting, but I believe that setting was originally created for Pathfinder or 3.5 (I think).

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AFAIK, A5e is a world neutral RPG. And since it's backwards compatible, its' game mechanics can be applied to any 5e setting.

SkidAce said:

I understand what you are saying. But in actuality that's exactly how gods work in my setting...all three options...i.e. they could all be true, neither of the three sides can prove their point.

Generally settings do kinda nail things like that down however.

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I'd say that proves his point by supplying a secret fourth possibility not dictated by the mechanics.