D&D 5E 3 Classic Settings Coming To 5E?

On the D&D Celebration – Sunday, Inside the D&D Studio with Liz Schuh and Ray Winninger, Winninger said that WotC will be shifting to a greater emphasis on settings in the coming years.

This includes three classic settings getting active attention, including some that fans have been actively asking for. He was cagey about which ones, though.

The video below is an 11-hour video, but the information comes in the last hour for those who want to scrub through.



Additionally, Liz Schuh said there would be more anthologies, as well as more products to enhance game play that are not books.

Winninger mentioned more products aimed at the mainstream player who can't spend immense amount of time absorbing 3 tomes.

Ray and Liz confirmed there will be more Magic: The Gathering collaborations.

 

[Reynard]

I don't know who needs to hear this, but:

Spelljammer is dumb.

Obviously, I kid. But boy do I hope they give it a major makeover and tie it to planar travel rather than crystal spheres and phlogiston. Sail the Astral Sea, fighting off dreadnaughts and Githyanki pirates is so much more appealing to me than pseudo-Victorian "sci-fi" (in the loosest sense of the term).

But, weirldy, WotC has not been returning the angry voicemails I have been leaving, so they will probably keep it dumb just to spite me personally.

 

[Demetrios1453]

On the upside, I don't think any Spelljammer we see will bear much resemblance to 1989 Spelljammer. There's just no chance. So it'll be a modernized take on Dark Sun. I doubt we'll see complex systems of "Crystal Spheres" and the phlogiston and so on may well also be gone. No way will a helm require you to be a caster, let alone eat all your spells

A Spelljamming Helm appears in Dungeon of the Mad Mage, and it very much does require a spellcaster to attune to it to use it, although it didn't drain spells to use it (although the spellcaster can't cast spells while attuned).

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Dark Sun just isn't happening. Its just not profitable and to do it right, would require a lot of reworking of existing classes and mechanics, and monsters. Something that is not easily fit into a 300 page book.

No it doesn't they could fit all the different changes to classes and races for Dark Sun within 100 pages. I doubt the 2e boxed set actually exceeded 100 pages when referring to class and race changes.

 

[ersatzphil]

She did collaborate on the release of Curse of Strahd, so there is a good chance she'd do the same for Dragonlance. Still, Dragonlance is her baby and she seems a lot more protective of that property lately.

I suppose a relatively minor nitpick, but I believe only the Hickmans collaborated on 'Curse of Strahd'. Weiss may well have been involved for all I know, but she doesn't appear in the credits.

 

[Parmandur]

As far as I am aware its still owned by Margaret Weis. She acquired rights following TSR's bankruptcy. Wizards was publishing through Weis's company Sovereign Press until 2003 when the deal fell through. This is why we haven't seen a new Dragonlance supplement in 17 years and only a handful of novels. Fairly certain they need her approval. She did collaborate on the release of Curse of Strahd, so there is a good chance she'd do the same for Dragonlance. Still, Dragonlance is her baby and she seems a lot more protective of that property lately.

That is factually incorrect, WotC owns Dragonlance and Weis licensed it for a spell on the Aughts.

 

[Parmandur]

None of the modern monsters exist in Dark Sun. 2e required a separate Monster's Manual and even the 4e re-release required a separate Monster's Manual.

There is some very unique stuff in Dark Sun that would go beyond a 300 page book.
1. Bards are now assassins, which can be a sub-class.
2. Templars would require a rework of the Warlock.
3. New rules for magic: Defiler and Preserver magic.
4. Clerics are all Elemental based, which means at least 4 new domains, and some spells would need to be reworked.
5. Need to create the Gladiator class.
6. Druids would require a rework
7. All races would need to be redone
8. Add Thri-keen and Half Giants as playable.
9. You need a whole new weapons and armor table and rules on breakage.
10. Rules on travel
11. Biological-items
12. Far more expanded rules on psionics.

All of this would have to be done in a 300 page book and still have room for the history, factions, landscape, cityscapes, sorcerer kings and enough plot hooks to make it playable. All of this is before you even get to changing all the monsters.

I see nothing in this list that is both necessary (a Gladiator Class, for instance, is unnecessary) and not easily doable in a 320 page book. The Ravnica/Eberron/Theros model shows this is very doable. Ravnica had almost as many stat blocks as Volo's!

 

[bmfrosty]

I think the strongest thing we have to locks are Planescape and Dark Sun.

I don't know that Spelljammer has enough interest to be it's own book, but I could see it and Planescape being conjoined into a single setting book.

Kara Tur and Al Qadim have too much stereotype baggage to do, unless they are developed in and for east asia and the middle east respectively and then localized for a western audience. If they're developed by westerners, then it's probably going to be a problem.

Dragonlance and Mystara feel like they could be described in terms of Forgotten Realms fairly well.

I think Greyhawk has a chance though, but only if it's really subtractive. If it's developed as a setting with a bunch of rules changes to ramp up the difficulty and centered around Gygax era dungeon crawls, then it could be really interesting. What it doesn't need is to be a move forward from that point in time.

For any of these, I think an oversized CoS style book is probably the best way to take it. For Greyhawk I'd say make it a refresh of what's in the 1983 World of Greyhawk book with a players guide (free on dmsguild and also wrapped into the book), and an adventure from levels 1-10 all wrapped into a single book.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Greyhawk just isn't happening. Like Eberron, Greyhawk is a mostly static setting. It doesn't have the evolving history that Forgotten Realms does, so there is no need to update it from the Greyhawk Gazetteer. Unlike Eberron, Greyhawk has no unique mechanics that would need to be updated to 5e. You can play Greyhawk right now by going to the DMsguild.com and downloading the 3e Gazetteer. Nothing in that book has changed with 5e.

Dark Sun just isn't happening. Its just not profitable and to do it right, would require a lot of reworking of existing classes and mechanics, and monsters. Something that is not easily fit into a 300 page book.

And your list was...

-Ravenloft
-SpellJammer
-Forgotten Realms

Well, let see... first off the Forgotten Realms isn't a "classic setting". It's a CURRENT setting. It's the setting almost every book is set in. If they were going to update it... which they aren't... feel free to read the 350 other threads here on EN World over the past 4 years explaining why they aren't going to make a new Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting guide. (Long story short, because WotC no longer cares about Realms canon and thus has absolutely no desire to write 300 pages of " new history" for the 30 different nations across Faerun that no one except like 15 people care about. If they were going to write one, they would have done it already.)

And secondly... while I can kind of see a reason to suggest the Domains of Dread... the simple fact is we've already had a gothic horror mini-setting book (Curse of Strahd), and we are about to get another horror book released next month (Rime of the Frost Maiden). Couple this with the strong possibility that Innistrad is a candidate for one of the next Magic The Gathering setting books... I seriously doubt they are going to bother with a full Domains of Dread because that's trodding over similar ground repeatedly. Not when Dark Sun is a whole new type of adventure setting that they haven't touched upon yet.

You may think they can't do Dark Sun because there's just "too much stuff" they would have to do to make it fit in a 5E book... but I guarantee you the designers of WotC are nowhere near as beholden to ALL the crap that has been made for Dark Sun in the past and will be more than willing to "dumb it down" for a more casual audience. They will not see the need to create a whole Dark Sun Monster Manual... they will be perfectly happy to just write a book that has probably 50 to 70 new monsters in it (like they did for Theros, Frost Maiden, and all the rest.)

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You may think they can't do Dark Sun because there's just "too much stuff" they would have to do to make it fit in a 5E book... but I guarantee you the designers of WotC are nowhere near as beholden to ALL the crap that has been made for Dark Sun in the past and will be more than willing to "dumb it down" for a more casual audience. They will not see the need to create a whole Dark Sun Monster Manual... they will be perfectly happy to just write a book that has probably 50 to 70 new monsters in it (like they did for Theros, Frost Maiden, and all the rest.)

And that sounds perfectly fine to me.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Since it keeps coming up, on the subject of who owns Dragonlance, from the mouth of Tracy Hickman in 2014:

"The bottom line was that in order to create Dragonlance, Laura, Margaret and I had to sign away any rights or copyrights to our creations....There have been recent successful challenges to ‘Work for Hire’ agreements where creatives have managed to get the rights back on their properties but for now Wizards of the Coast is the final word in Dragonlance property rights.

So, while Laura and I have a fantastic idea for a new Dragonlance trilogy that we would like to write as a reboot … we cannot do so without permission of Wizards of the Coast. I would like to write Sojourner Tales modules set in the Dragonlance world; the IP manager for Dragonlance has told me that the company would not be licensing even those limited rights to me at this time. We would love to see a live-action movie made … but you have to talk to Wizards of the Coast to get those rights."

Source.

It's entirely possible something has changed since then, but it seems unlikely as it would certainly have been noted somewhere.