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.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Mearls description of Mystara is quite inaccurate, the theme was Cold War with a focus on exploration on top of that. You've got two massive empires (Thyatis vs. Alphatia) that are evenly matched with a lot of smaller nations stuck in the middle if they decide to settle things once and for all. Both empires are evenly matched, so any war would be a meat grinder. Then you've got two economic powerhouses fighting for international market share (Darokin and Minrothad), Minrothad controls the sea trade and plays dirty, while Darokin runs the ground commerce and plays nice, though is also playing the long game for maximum profits. All over the map you've got rivals evenly matched looking for an advantage. Cue players being given land grants and similar for helping tame the lands, as most of the nations have large chunks unexplored.

Throw in a hollow world with a huge collection of bronze age civilizations crammed together in a poorly conceived plan to save them, and the thrice-cursed Red Coast and it's three settings in one. It's an expansive setting, with a lot of unique races thrown in, though it doesn't have the need for a lot of newer races. There's 5 different humanoid reptilian races, making Dragonborn a bit redundant for example.

I don't want to step on any toes (I know you are a huge Mystara fan, and are working on an incredible setting book for the setting), but this is not a cohesive theme. Most of the 5E settings (with the notable exception of Forgotten Realms) can be boiled down to a one-or-two sentence explanation of "What adventures you would run here."

I'm not sure the same can be said for Mystara, at least not without overlapping with settings like Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk, which polls suggest are generally more popular than Mystara. I find it pretty unlikely that WotC has any clear idea of how to publish Mystara for 5E unless they try to fixate it on a theme, or will even try.

And although Mearls description of Mystara is not accurate (it's far too broad a setting for such a generalization), I think there is a perception that this is what Mystara was like. The most popular iteration of Mystara is probably the arcade game, which definitely leans in to a very colorful, almost JRPG style of fantasy.

And I do think there is a niche of nostalgia for '90s fantasy. These arcade games of the era, and games like Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, and Dragon Quest, share a lot in common for artistic style. I do think a rebrand of Mystara might be able to capture that essence in the bottle, even though it wouldn't really be the same as its original conception.

 

[teitan]

IMO, if you won't stat out the Abrahamic god, then you shouldn't stat out Vishnu or Ganesh either.

Agreed.

 

[The Glen]

I don't want to step on any toes (I know you are a huge Mystara fan, and are working on an incredible setting book for the setting), but this is not a cohesive theme. Most of the 5E settings (with the notable exception of Forgotten Realms) can be boiled down to a one-or-two sentence explanation of "What adventures you would run here."

I am very familiar with the settings flaws and they are legion. I would be lying to myself if I expected Wizards to ever touch the setting because I don't think there's any interest in it on their end. It's historical mishmash and there's a few people to get angry when you use real world proxies. I just want to see The Guild opened up for the settings they aren't going to use.

I call it for the exploration setting because if you follow the suggested path line set out in the various books, it almost always ends up carve out a section of land and get a title of nobility. Then almost every nation has large amounts of unsettled and Untamed lands conveniently located for the players.

You're going to have to address certain books because they have aged badly for a variety of reasons. The continuity is an Unholy Mess. And Mystara got hit by the TSR nuke phase harder than most with the end of the Cold War vibe after wrath getting a lot of well-deserved criticism. After they switched at the second edition they didn't know what to do with it.

But I do think that they are under estimating the popularity. It is well-known because of the video game is also well-known abroad because of the foreign language translations which were much more numerous than first edition books. TSR seriously mismanaged it in its dying days and the setting has never truly recovered

 

[Kobold Avenger]

It's weird that nobody here sees things controversial about some of the factions in Planescape, they're clubs that the players can join, and there's extremes like the Authoritarian Harmonium on one end that has issues with genocide from their homeworld and racially motivated police violence, and on the other extreme end their opposite the Anarcho-Communist Revolutionary League which certainly engages in terrorism and political violence as a means to and end.

Granted most people do take a step back and realize that there are extremists in just about all factions, but the setting' post-modernism has the thing that neither of them are wrong (or right).

 

[Urriak Uruk]

I am very familiar with the settings flaws and they are legion. I would be lying to myself if I expected Wizards to ever touch the setting because I don't think there's any interest in it on their end. It's historical mishmash and there's a few people to get angry when you use real world proxies. I just want to see The Guild opened up for the settings they aren't going to use.

I call it for the exploration setting because if you follow the suggested path line set out in the various books, it almost always ends up carve out a section of land and get a title of nobility. Then almost every nation has large amounts of unsettled and Untamed lands conveniently located for the players.

You're going to have to address certain books because they have aged badly for a variety of reasons. The continuity is an Unholy Mess. And Mystara got hit by the TSR nuke phase harder than most with the end of the Cold War vibe after wrath getting a lot of well-deserved criticism. After they switched at the second edition they didn't know what to do with it.

But I do think that they are under estimating the popularity. It is well-known because of the video game is also well-known abroad because of the foreign language translations which were much more numerous than first edition books. TSR seriously mismanaged it in its dying days and the setting has never truly recovered

I agree, the DMsGuild not opening to other settings is extremely annoying. And I'll add, I think I big component of why Mystara is not as popular than other settings is due to not having published material since... 2E? 3E? I'm not even sure anymore, but I think the more material a setting gets, the more likely it is to be popular (looking at you, Forgotten Realms!)

 

[The Glen]

I agree, the DMsGuild not opening to other settings is extremely annoying. And I'll add, I think I big component of why Mystara is not as popular than other settings is due to not having published material since... 2E? 3E? I'm not even sure anymore, but I think the more material a setting gets, the more likely it is to be popular (looking at you, Forgotten Realms!)

That is very true. If something stays out of the public eye it tends to be forgotten. The last time something was officially printed for mystara was 1995. Grayhawk was almost twenty years ago until salt marsh. I couldn't tell you Birthright or planescape. But that means all the settings are new to younger players. You can reintroduce them like the ink was still fresh. The older players don't just want reprints they want new adventures in the same setting. There's room for growth in all these worlds

 

[Mind of tempest]

all the settings will be fresh so they will have that advantage.

 

[Faolyn]

It's weird that nobody here sees things controversial about some of the factions in Planescape, they're clubs that the players can join, and there's extremes like the Authoritarian Harmonium on one end that has issues with genocide from their homeworld and racially motivated police violence, and on the other extreme end their opposite the Anarcho-Communist Revolutionary League which certainly engages in terrorism and political violence as a means to and end.

Granted most people do take a step back and realize that there are extremists in just about all factions, but the setting' post-modernism has the thing that neither of them are wrong (or right).

There was a huge thread on RPGnet about fixing the factions for pretty much just those reasons, with a big emphasis on the Harmonium's police brutality and how they targeted Indeps.

 

[Remathilis]

It's weird that nobody here sees things controversial about some of the factions in Planescape, they're clubs that the players can join, and there's extremes like the Authoritarian Harmonium on one end that has issues with genocide from their homeworld and racially motivated police violence, and on the other extreme end their opposite the Anarcho-Communist Revolutionary League which certainly engages in terrorism and political violence as a means to and end.

Granted most people do take a step back and realize that there are extremists in just about all factions, but the setting' post-modernism has the thing that neither of them are wrong (or right).

The fact the factions aren't depicted as good or evil (merely lawful and chaotic) helps because their can be good harmonium and evil ones, just like their are good cops and bad ones.

That said, I hope we don't shy away from every possible thing that could be seen as remotely controversial. Planescapes is about belief and to see that watered down would return the planes to "place where the high CR monsters live"

 

[JEB]

However, considering how WotC just recently flip-flopped on the publishing of new Dragonlance novels, I'd be surprised if they're plan was "Block the release of the new novels, but release a new DL setting book for 5E." That seems pretty wonky.

Last I heard, Wizards and the authors had come to an agreement and the first new Dragonlance novel was supposed to be out this summer. Did that change?