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.

 

[Rygar]

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.

Weiss and Hickman pitched a new trilogy to WOTC when 5th edition came out. Interestingly, Weiss has been very quiet since 2018 on her site. Make of that what you will.

 

[Pixelllance]

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.

Tracy made some cryptic statements on his DL FB Page in 2019 and 2020 one might conclude something is going on with the DL IP

 

[Remathilis]

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.)

To be fair, I think Dark Sun is a longshot for this exact reason. A lot of DS fans claim they don't want "Forgotten Realms in the desert" and will very heavily push back on perceived changes to the Lore. There was a big outcry about 4e's vision of Athas allowing too much magic and new options (like tieflings). I also don't think WotC would be to interested in or successful selling a book that reads like a DM's ban list, including much of the PHB, just to satisfy the hardcore fans.

 

[Rikka66]

I would not describe the negative reaction to 4e Dark Sun as "big" in any context besides "big among a few hardcore fans on some small forums."

Edit: Let me add that, as snarky as this comes across, I don't want to belittle those hardcore fans. 4e Dark Sun does make some big fundamental changes to the setting and concessions to the system it was made for. I understand someone not liking that. But I personally did, or found my own adjustments easy enough to fit in. Probably the biggest area I would agree with those hardcore fans was the treatment of the preserving and defiling system. Would definitely like a middle ground between 2e and 4e if they are porting to 5e.

 

[Aldarc]

I would not describe the negative reaction to 4e Dark Sun as "big" in any context besides "big among a few hardcore fans on some small forums."

Especially since 4e Dark Sun had the guts to remove all divine classes, including clerics.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

Especially since 4e Dark Sun had the guts to remove all divine classes, including clerics.

2e Dark Sun and 4e Dark Sun are both good settings. They're just different settings. Don't let the name confuse you.

 

[Gradine]

Dark Sun seems highly likely. Probably some meta-setting; either Planescape or Spelljammer or some mishmash of the two (but probably not both individually).

3rd one is probably going to be Groghawk, right? I can't imagine them passing up on it at this opportunity.

Would love to see an expanded, full-setting take on Ravenloft but I feel like Ravenloft has always been more popular in the fan consciousness as a module than a full-fledged setting anyway.

Dragonlance has some potential but I frankly don't see it coming on this round.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

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

You mean like the explosive popularity of 5E? That quote is from the beginning of 5E and very few people, if any, could have seen the way 5E has taken off.

 

[DEFCON 1]

To be fair, I think Dark Sun is a longshot for this exact reason. A lot of DS fans claim they don't want "Forgotten Realms in the desert" and will very heavily push back on perceived changes to the Lore. There was a big outcry about 4e's vision of Athas allowing too much magic and new options (like tieflings). I also don't think WotC would be to interested in or successful selling a book that reads like a DM's ban list, including much of the PHB, just to satisfy the hardcore fans.

You're assuming WotC would be releasing this book for all the old DS fans. They wouldn't be. They'd be releasing it for some of the old DS fans and all of the current D&D fans whom they'd hope would become DS fans.

They have no need or desire to write a book for all the old fans... because those people already own all the Dark Sun material from the previous editions. And the true die-hard Athas fans have probably already run 5E games in the setting, making all of their own adjustments to the 5E mechanics as necessary already.

Anyone who is a elder fan of Eberron (like myself) saw what WotC did in the two Eberron 4E books, and the 5E Rising of the Last War book. And I guarantee you that if any of those elder Eberron fans ran a campaign in it... they brought in a crap-ton of material from the dozen of Eberron 3.5 books that were written that they already owned, because there was just too much good detail in those books that obviously WotC wasn't going to be able to reprint in the 5E book. So it didn't really matter what was in the RofLW book as far as grognard service. Eberron grognards probably barely even needed the book and if they used it at all it was merely for the game mechanics for the few things that the setting needed and which they hadn't already found adequate replacements for elsewhere. I know I ran my two Eberron games using just the mechanics they created for the Wayfinder's Guide and then all my old books. I didn't even need Rising to start with.

Dark Sun will be the exact same thing. WotC will make a simplified setting book that hits all the big points, but which will be lacking in the deep dive of detail that we got back in the original setting box sets and accompanying material. And for those that feel like they need more than what that 5E book would give them? They can just go onto DMs Guild to buy all the old material like the DS grognards already own.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I really don't feel like a new version of the setting needs to exactly copy the old one. It can its own take on the same concept and people should stop worrying about any possible differences and inconsistencies.

Like no one is worrying how Christopher Nolan's and Tim Burton's Batman films fit together. They don't. They're different versions of the same concept. And that's fine. And it of course is also fine to prefer one of them (Burton's, obviously) but them being different is not a problem in itself. Same with the settings.