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.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Neither of those is true. Planescape would need no more updating than any other setting. Spelljammer would need a ton of updating, though. Both are perfectly possible though.

Greyhawk would need to basically respecialize as a Sword & Sorcery setting in a pretty serious way, and probably need serious updates to boot. The Nentir Vale is awesome but I don't think a setting book about it would sell.

we would need a new manual of the planes before we get planescape as merging both would need lots of pages, are there any others left?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Harry Hamlin.View attachment 133232

YES THANK YOU OH MY GOD IT WAS BOTHERING ME! I feel much better now!

we would need a new manual of the planes before we get planescape as merging both would need lots of pages, are there any others left?

I think you can fit both in one book pretty well. Just reduce the focus on "boring as hell" planes (i.e. elemental planes and similar junk) and focus only on interesting ones and Sigil.

With Spelljammer instead of doing a zillion crystal spheres in ultra-low detail (as real Spelljammer did), just focus on one, original crystal sphere with a lot of stuff in it (a la "The Verse" in Firefly).

Of course you could do "Planejammer" and make Spelljammers just a way to traverse between planes and locations in them, as people have suggested before, and this would be congruent with the Nautiloid spelljammer shown in the recent and very official Baldur's Gate 3 game.

 

[Mind of tempest]

YES THANK YOU OH MY GOD IT WAS BOTHERING ME! I feel much better now!

I think you can fit both in one book pretty well. Just reduce the focus on "boring as hell" planes (i.e. elemental planes and similar junk) and focus only on interesting ones and Sigil.

With Spelljammer instead of doing a zillion crystal spheres in ultra-low detail (as real Spelljammer did), just focus on one, original crystal sphere with a lot of stuff in it (a la "The Verse" in Firefly).

Of course you could do "Planejammer" and make Spelljammers just a way to traverse between planes and locations in them, as people have suggested before, and this would be congruent with the Nautiloid spelljammer shown in the recent and very official Baldur's Gate 3 game.

planejammer is both the best and worst idea I ever heard.

I suspect they would not release two catch-all crossover settings near each other.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

planejammer is both the best and worst idea I ever heard.

I suspect they would not release two catch-all crossover settings near each other.

When I first heard Planejammer I thought it was the dumbest thing I ever heard. About fifteen minutes later I'd decided it was probably genius (I didn't come up with it, for reference, someone else here did). So I'm with you on both best and worst lol.

 

[Mind of tempest]

When I first heard Planejammer I thought it was the dumbest thing I ever heard. About fifteen minutes later I'd decided it was probably genius (I didn't come up with it, for reference, someone else here did). So I'm with you on both best and worst lol.

fans of Spelljammer and planescape might just chant how everything is terrible now or something, did not the factions all die?

 

[Aldarc]

For them to do Mystara to my satisfaction, they'd have to not produce a "Mystar Campaign Setting Book"; they'd have to produce at least 14 books (one for each Gazetteer). Then there is all of Thyatis/Alphatia ...another book or two. Then they'd likely have to tackle Hollow World stuff. It's all Mystara. Mystara is a HUGE a vastly diverse world...in fact, the core 'Known World' part is only a tiny fraction of the world itself (but that could be glossed over, much like Greyhawk is only part of the world of Oerth).

For fans of nearly every setting, there are those that think that it would be impossible to present a campaign setting in a single book - "at least 14 books," you say - but I don't see why WotC would need to cover the grand entirety in lavish detail. Eberron had its fair share of books, but it was released as a single book. Forgotten Realms had thousands upon thousands of pages dedicated to its lore, but it was nevertheless published in a highly celebrated single volume campaign setting book. In the case of Mystara, I imagine that all WotC would really need to do is focus on presenting a beloved region (e.g., Karameikos) and then provide a basic overview of lands outside of there.

Greyhawk would need to basically respecialize as a Sword & Sorcery setting in a pretty serious way, and probably need serious updates to boot.

I would not be surprised if they took notes from The Witcher for Greyhawk or frame Greyhawk in terms of being the setting most similar to the Witcher series.

The Nentir Vale is awesome but I don't think a setting book about it would sell.

The angle I would consider for the Vale is as a "blank slate" sandbox setting for GMs. Setting as GM toolkit, which is what it was in 4e. Though conceptually, the Nentir Vale is probably the most mythic-focused fantasy setting in D&D. (But don't let Mearls touch this setting. Bring back Rich Baker for this setting.)

I would also love to see Chris Perksins's Iomandra expanded to an official setting, but I'm not sure if Perkins would want to give it over to WotC.

 

[Parmandur]

we would need a new manual of the planes before we get planescape as merging both would need lots of pages, are there any others left?

No, not really: expanding the DMG treatment into a Manual of the Planes would fit well as Chapter 2 & 3 of a Planescape Campaign Setting (one for Sigil, the other for everything else), based on the page counts & content for the Ravnica, Everton, & Theros Setting books.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

fans of Spelljammer and planescape might just chant how everything is terrible now or something, did not the factions all die?

Monte Cook is responsible for murdering the Factions.

He did so in an elaborate-but-bad late-2E adventure (Faction War) where he systematically murdered or exiled the Factions, and replaced them with incredibly boring three-letter acronym organisations, which made Sigil seem like a down-at-heel American city in the Midwest, rather than the nexus of the multiverse*. This was made even worse because he also removed everything that made Sigil chaotic, interesting, exciting, and so on, most of which was driven by the Factions and their interactions, and replaced it with the Lady of Pain being far more directly in-charge than previously.

(Adding insult to injury, in an earlier and much better PS adventure Cook wrote, the PCs managed to stop the titular faction war, but Cook apparently decided it was too brilliant and idea to leave alone. Sigh.)

It was an incredibly bad take. It's like if someone got Star Wars, removed the Empire and the Rebels (and variants thereof), and removed the Force (and all associated traditions), as well as the Mandalorians and basically anyone who wasn't "standard" and said "Tadaa, I fixed Star Wars!". I know someone would like that, but that person is a person of bad taste.

Now, Monte Cook's defence is the classic "I was gonna put the money back, yer honour, honest, but see them police stopped me before I could!".

Specifically he claims he had another mega-adventure planned (he'd done at least two already), where the Factions (or the ones he hadn't wiped out entirely, anyway) would be brought back to Sigil, and everything would be restored the glorious chaos and complexity of the original Sigil setting (as immortalized in Planescape: Torment). But WotC buying TSR stopped this from happening. As far as I know, we only have his word for this.

Worse, in Dragon 315, we have a piece (not by Cook admittedly) outlining WotC's idea of the results of Faction War, none of which involves any Factions going back to Sigil. Instead, it basically has several of the Factions just becoming totally different and much less interesting things, and the ones that don't change are all basically massively reduced in numbers.

Then 4E doubles-down on Cook's dreadful vision, when it briefly goes over Sigil. Together these make me skeptical there was any actual plan to bring the Factions back.

But there's no reason 5E couldn't go "To hell with that nonsense!" and bring back the Factions. None of that is "canon" in any true sense. It's just what previous editions have gone with.

* = I can't remember if this happens in the adventure of was a 4E "addition", if so, he's still bad, but the real vandalism is on whoever wrote the 4E bit.

 

[Parmandur]

Hickman posted that at the beginning of this month. He later "clarified." As they say in politics, if you're explaining, you're losing.

He's not really helping the argument for bringing back Dragonlance.View attachment 133231

That Tweet makes me inutterably sad.

 

[Parmandur]

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