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]

I'm going to have to disagree about Dragonlance being a lock. And it is for the same reason TSR never was able to sustain it much after 1st edition. Once the novels by Weis and Hickman came out and shot into the stratosphere they quickly eclipsed everything else. Witness how many people here seem to think the setting was created by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis.

It wasn't.

The initial concept was dreamed up by Tracy and Laura Hickman, and then Douglas Niles, Harold Johnson, Larry Elmore, Jeff Easley and a whole lot of other TSR staffers that most have forgotten. Weis was an editor who was given the job of getting someone to adapt the modules into novels and then when she couldn't find a suitable author, did it her self. She was not an RPG designer but succeeded as a novelist beyond what anyone would have envisioned at the start of the project. (And Hickman himself rapidly transitioned to novelist more than designer)

I don't disagree with the rest of your point, that the novels eclipsed the D&D setting, but I do think you're splitting straws here about "Who made Dragonlance." Yes it is true that Weiss wasn't involved in the initial concept, and I think uninformed people confuse Weis with Tracy's wife Laura in the famous "We came up with the idea on the drive to TSR."

But the Hickman's have always been at the center of Dragonlance, just like Ravenloft (though WotC does not need them to publish in 5e). And when Curse of Strahd was being made, the Hickman's were brought on to advise, so it's not impossible that this could happen.

That said, I definitely don't think it's a lock for one of these 3. Makes more sense as an adventure compilation a-la Ghosts of Saltmarsh IMO.

 

[Nymrod]

Al Qadim wasn't particularly bad, it's just kind of pretty basic orientalism. It made an effort to do a good job, and has a sort of Islam-equivalent, acknowledging how fundamental that is to a lot of the cultures it is drawing from, but it's still a pretty Westernized take on this. I don't think it would be very difficult to find people to write a good modern take on the same material, which was still broadly appealing.

OA was weird because it's at least kind of a respectful treatment of Japanese mythology and history, but instead of being just applied to some "Mythic Japan"-equivalent, it's suggested to apply to all these East Asian-equivalent cultures, which was bizarre and not cool.

Yeah OA (+Hordelands) would need a lot of work but at the same time I think they'd be fairly worthwhile because asian mythologies are quite popular.

On Monotheism in D&D especially back in AD&D when there was a focus to have all the settings be united, it would be quite weird to have a monotheistic culture surrounded by pantheons of many gods in a world where you can readily interact with the divine. It could make sense in a place like Eberron or Ravenloft.

 

[ersatzphil]

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.

I've seen this brought up a couple times on the forums - I suspect that this has less to do with WotC being interested or uninterested in working with Weiss and Hickman, and more to do with them not being interested in publishing novels anymore. In his Between The Sheets Interview, Perkins specifically says that one of the things WotC has learned as a company is that they're just not that great at publishing novels: Ed Greenwood seems to be the one exception, but I believe they're under contract for that.

 

[Azzy]

It seems to me that Dark Sun is pretty much a given at this point.

Considering Mordenkain's, Tasha's, and Ghosts of Saltmarsh, Greyhawk seems likely, too.

Now, here's the thing. In the current AL guide, SCAG is not allowed as a source for races, subclasses, or spells and is not even mentioned as far as I could see. This is particularly odd. Perhaps this means that a full Forgotten Realms setting may be in the works.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

One thing I'm sure they'll do about Bards in Dark Sun, is just say that certain Bards allowed in Dark Sun (like the College of Whispers) are using Psionics, that way they can step around the whole preserver or defiler thing.

 

[Nymrod]

A Dark Sun bard is a rogue, likely an assassin, who is trained to perform. You don't really need any new class. 5E doesn't seem to care about printing new rules just so that they can directly correspond to what is in the world; it's more about "here are some ways to play, skin them however you like"

 

[Reynard]

In all seriousness I would love to see a version of Dragonlance that makes it a more open Chivalric High fantasy Setting rather than just the place where the books happened. I had a lot of fun running DL games back in high school, but even then it felt like a one trick pony. But there is potential there for romance, heroism and deep internal struggles.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Concerning Kara-Tur and Al-Qadim, there has been a century of disasters and little contact between them and the rest of the Forgotten Realms. All we know in 5e is the vague knowledge that they still both exist in some form. With that much time having passed, and with several planet-wide cataclysms having occurred, it wouldn't really be an issue lore-wise to redesign them to jettison the less appropriate material and rework them to be more culturally nuanced, and chalk up the changes to time passing...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yeah OA (+Hordelands) would need a lot of work but at the same time I think they'd be fairly worthwhile because asian mythologies are quite popular.

On Monotheism in D&D especially back in AD&D when there was a focus to have all the settings be united, it would be quite weird to have a monotheistic culture surrounded by pantheons of many gods in a world where you can readily interact with the divine. It could make sense in a place like Eberron or Ravenloft.

I think if you re-did Al Qadim you'd want to make it clearly it's own thing, rather than an adjunct setting of the FR, which is a slightly insulting position to be in for any setting! Make Zakhara an optional thing you could use the AQ rules for (which it kinda was but also kinda wasn't), rather than the default assumption, which should be a whole world a la Theros.

I'm not sure "asian mythology" is even really a thing any more. It was huge in, say, 1985 and through the 1990s, with first the whole ninja/samurai obsession, then the rise in popularity of HK cinema of all kinds (which was deeply influential on Hollywood action, and still is, eh, John Wick? No John Wick or the Matrix or what-have-you without John Woo), and the rise of anime, but at this point, there's no clear dividing line between "asian mythology" and Western mythology. I'm not sure there ever really was.

 

[Azzy]

I think if you re-did Al Qadim you'd want to make it clearly it's own thing, rather than an adjunct setting of the FR, which is a slightly insulting position to be in for any setting! Make Zakhara an optional thing you could use the AQ rules for (which it kinda was but also kinda wasn't), rather than the default assumption, which should be a whole world a la Theros.

This could work as Zakhara was already so remote from Faerun. Heck, they could put in a side note that Zakhara could be easily placed in the FR if one wanted, but otherwise just make it its own setting.