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]

I mean a Jackal is a canid.

Well there's Anubis on the far right, and he's purported to have the head of a jackal. I figured that since jackals are mammals of the genus caninae, same as wolves, dogs, and coyotes, he would count.

that guy is clearly set who has no known animal I mean look at the ears.

 

[CleverNickName]

that guy is clearly set who has no known animal I mean look at the ears.

I don't think those are ears; I think they are embellishments on the mantle he is wearing. Everyone in that whole cast of characters is wearing a very fancy hat.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I don't think those are ears; I think they are embellishments on the mantle he is wearing. Everyone in that whole cast of characters is wearing a very fancy hat.

look it is clearly set who is not a dog, set is a storm god with other stuff.

 

[CleverNickName]

look it is clearly set who is not a dog, set is a storm god with other stuff.

Point is: it's perfectly fine to have animal-headed races in the right D&D setting...even those with the heads of dogs, cats, birds, crocodiles, snakes, and bulls, all at the same time. Ancient Egyptian myth is just the first real-world analog that came to mind; I'm sure that there are others.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Point is: it's perfectly fine to have animal-headed races in the right D&D setting...even those with the heads of dogs, cats, birds, crocodiles, snakes, and bulls, all at the same time. Ancient Egyptian myth is just the first real-world analog that came to mind; I'm sure that there are others.

Mystara’s Savage Coast was great that way: lupin, rakasta, tortle, cayma, gurrash (crocodile), lizard folk, wallara (chameleon), manscorpion, aranea, enduk (winged minotaur)…

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm aware that Bruce Heard* offered to do 5e versions of Mystara when the edition came out and the answer was no. He decided to do his agnostic Calidar setting. No idea why WotC is not interested in Mystara. Maybe it's off limits because of the Goodman Games reprints of old B/X modules?

(*Princess Ark stories in the Dragon Magazine and editor of Mystara gazetteers)

I imagine that's part of it -- maybe only one entity gets the license to use Mystara stuff at a time -- but the next OAR release is Temple of Elemental Evil, which isn't set in Mystara at all. And WotC clearly is calling the shots here, not Goodman, hence no legal PDFs of the OAR modules, despite Goodman having a longer history of PDF releases than WotC.

But I also don't think there's a real commercial appetite for Mystara. The audience that loves Mystara isn't huge -- and I'm not dissing the setting; I've got plenty of my material in the Vaults of Pandius -- and I'm not sure how many of them have moved over to 5E. I think Bruce Heard's Mystara publications would have been as limited as the new Metamorphosis Alpha stuff: a few releases welcomed by a small, devoted following but not destined to be a big commercial hit.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm not a lawyer, and I don't really know how they deal with IP that they do allow DM's Guide writers to touch. But it might be one of those things where WotC doesn't want to let DMG writers have access because if then if WotC starts writing it again and they produce something that happens to be like something a DMG writer made, then the DMG writer might then claim that their IP was stolen. So then WotC would have to put a clause in the legal document saying that they either own all created IP or a DMG writer can't sue WotC if WotC happens to make something just like the DMG writer made, and nobody is going to like that.

Or I could be completely wrong. I mostly am just getting this from talking and listening to writers who say the will never look at fanworks based on their characters in case they accidentally let it influence something they later create and they got in trouble for it.

Stuff that's published on DMs Guild has some very strict guardrails and, as I recall, explicit agreement that, at the end of the day, the stuff you publish there is legally WotC's. So you'll see the same author put stuff there and at DriveThruRPG, putting only the stuff that uses WotC IP on DMs Guild. Not everyone, of course; there are plenty of DMs Guild creators who don't seem quite that sophisticated and it's likely that DMs Guild 5E stuff sells a lot better than the -- often a lot more interesting -- 5E stuff on DriveThruRPG.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Consider the problems that DS presents to the alignment grid.

How do you have Lawful Good if upholding the law, which sanctions chattel slavery, directly contradicts the furtherance of good, the autonomy and dignity of sentient beings?

That's not how LG works - LG characters have no obligation to uphold a law that is chaotic or unjust. "Lawful" in alignment terms simply means logical or orderly, not "always upholds the laws as written". Otherwise things could get interesting in places that, say, have Thelema-type law systems: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law". Could LG characters there be allowed to act as chaotically as they want since the law allows (and even encourages) it?

 

[humble minion]

The only bit of Mystara I'm familiar with is the Savage Coast/Red Steel, but I suspect WotC would want to do some very significant re-invention of that part of the setting before releasing it in the modern day. Non-human cultures who are fairly ham-fisted photocopies of, for example, indigenous Australian and Louisiana bayou people, from memory, with fairly minimal research or sensitivity - that wouldn't play now. As an Australian, the portrayal of the Wallara raised my eyebrows 20 years ago, it's certainly not going to fly in 2020. Not to say it was actually malicious or anything, but it was not sensitive, informed, or aware, and I don't think modern WotC would want to grasp that particular nettle when there's seemingly more popular settings still in their back catalogue.

 

[darjr]

I'm not a lawyer, and I don't really know how they deal with IP that they do allow DM's Guide writers to touch. But it might be one of those things where WotC doesn't want to let DMG writers have access because if then if WotC starts writing it again and they produce something that happens to be like something a DMG writer made, then the DMG writer might then claim that their IP was stolen. So then WotC would have to put a clause in the legal document saying that they either own all created IP or a DMG writer can't sue WotC if WotC happens to make something just like the DMG writer made, and nobody is going to like that.

Or I could be completely wrong. I mostly am just getting this from talking and listening to writers who say the will never look at fanworks based on their characters in case they accidentally let it influence something they later create and they got in trouble for it.

The big gorgeous Candlekeep book with Ed Greenwood was being developed while, or just after, Candlekeep Mysteries. So I think not? Maybe Ed’s participation made it different. But the doc you agree too to publish on DMsGuild seems pretty tight. Maybe?