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.

 

[M.L. Martin]

I find it challenging to believe that Weis & Hickman proposed a new trilogy that ended with the Chaos War and TSR brass took that as inspiration to plan the whole SAGA system, but I suppose it's possible.

It was. I followed the Fifth Age line from beginning to end and had contact with several designers, and they've all said the same thing. The bit about W&H proposing a trilogy with game tie-ins is true, but TSR had contracted them for one final Chronicles novel and held to that plan. The presales on DoSF gave the DL fans on the game side the impetus to revive DL (which had been cancelled as a game line in 1994), but TSR mandated 'not AD&D, card-based, set after DoSF.' This may have been an effort to help get the DL movie rights out from under the really bad Courtney Solomon deal, but that's speculation.

War Of Souls was clearly a means of "fixing" the SAGA misstep and returning Dragonlance to the D&D fold. Again, it's possible that the story idea came from Weis & Hickman and WotC brass fell in step, but I find that challenging to believe. Especially since Weis & Hickman were only ever "in control" of the stories during the DL Legends series AFAIK, which had no in-game tie in.

Something called the 'War of Souls' was planned by the Fifth Age team, but it changed radically after the buyout. Peter Adkison and Ryan Dancey have both said that getting W&H back on board DL was a priority, and while W&H worked with the 5A team on the initial outlines, the planned game support fell through and the novels, by all reports, went in a very different direction from the plan in some places.

 

[Ath-kethin]

It was. I followed the Fifth Age line from beginning to end and had contact with several designers, and they've all said the same thing. The bit about W&H proposing a trilogy with game tie-ins is true, but TSR had contracted them for one final Chronicles novel and held to that plan. The presales on DoSF gave the DL fans on the game side the impetus to revive DL (which had been cancelled as a game line in 1994), but TSR mandated 'not AD&D, card-based, set after DoSF.' This may have been an effort to help get the DL movie rights out from under the really bad Courtney Solomon deal, but that's speculation.

Huh. My understanding was that DoSF was originally planned as a trilogy and was scaled back to a single book for unknown reasons. The information here sheds some light on that situation.

Something called the 'War of Souls' was planned by the Fifth Age team, but it changed radically after the buyout. Peter Adkison and Ryan Dancey have both said that getting W&H back on board DL was a priority, and while W&H worked with the 5A team on the initial outlines, the planned game support fell through and the novels, by all reports, went in a very different direction from the plan in some places.

I found War of Souls to be a curious series; easily Weis & Hickman's best writing but such a weird and contrived plot.

Though it did follow exactly the same template that all W&H books/stories since the mid 80s have, which speaks to its genesis being their doing.

Again, it's a very clear pattern to just be coincidence, but I suppose sometimes that just happens.

 

[M.L. Martin]

Again, it's a very clear pattern to just be coincidence, but I suppose sometimes that just happens.

The pattern becomes clearer when you reverse the lenses--it's not that the games drive the novels, it's that the novels drive the games for DL, and for various reasons (timing, past failures), the games have tended to go with what's currently 'hot.'

 

[Ath-kethin]

The pattern becomes clearer when you reverse the lenses--it's not that the games drive the novels, it's that the novels drive the games for DL, and for various reasons (timing, past failures), the games have tended to go with what's currently 'hot.'

I know that the games absolutely drove the Chronicles until about midway through; it seems reasonable to assume they did afterwards as well.

Most companies don't like having the futures of their bestselling IPs dictated to them by outsiders, after all. But hey, the more you know, right?

 

[M.L. Martin]

'Driven by the novels' in the sense that 'best-selling novels get TSR/WotC to try to kick the gaming football again.' (Yes, 3E DL was successful … for Sovereign Press. But success for a small game company that doesn't have major competition for resources is different than success for a company where even Star Wars can be an also-ran that can't justify costs or taking resources away from Core D&D.)

Most companies don't like having the futures of their bestselling IPs dictated to them by outsiders, after all. But hey, the more you know, right?

This is the reason DL stalled in terms of timeline progression after W&H left TSR--they were leaving the future open for them if they ever came back. It's also why I don't think DL is as likely a revival as other people think, since you can't do the setting and have it be viewed as 'legitimate' without Weis & Hickman, and it's an open question as to whether they and WotC can come to a meeting of the minds.

 

[CleverNickName]

Depends. If they retcon the 2e retcons back out of the setting (like where they changed King Kol to be an elf since in 2e there was no RAW way for a kobold to cast wizard spells), I'd consider it. Especially if they used Mystara as a means of introducing epic levels and paths to Immortality/godhood.

If they leave the 2e goofiness on there, they can keep it.

Yeah, when I say "Mystara" I mean the pre-2E Mystara of the mid-1980s. The pre-Hollow World version.

I like to pretend that the even-numbered editions never happened.

 

[Ath-kethin]

Yeah, when I say "Mystara" I mean the pre-2E Mystara of the mid-1980s. The pre-Hollow World version.

I like to pretend that the even-numbered editions never happened.

I actually like the Hollow World setting so I have no issues with that part. But trying to sledgehammer the openness and flexibility of Basic's mechanics into a 2e straitjacket just gave me a headache.

For all that, I DO really like 2e (of course, I'm biased since that's the edition with which I started playing D&D). And I really think that the loss of focus in the "break whatever you want to make the game your own" ethos is the greatest downside to D&D in the WotC era.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Hollow world was pre 2e-Mystara reboot. It’s one of Mystara’s most distinctive features, IMO.

 

[CleverNickName]

Correct on both counts.
I should have written "Also the pre-Hollow world version," because I didn't care for Hollow World or 2nd Edition. I didn't mean to imply they were the same.

 

[Ath-kethin]

'Driven by the novels' in the sense that 'best-selling novels get TSR/WotC to try to kick the gaming football again.' (Yes, 3E DL was successful … for Sovereign Press. But success for a small game company that doesn't have major competition for resources is different than success for a company where even Star Wars can be an also-ran that can't justify costs or taking resources away from Core D&D.)

. . . This is the reason DL stalled in terms of timeline progression after W&H left TSR--they were leaving the future open for them if they ever came back. It's also why I don't think DL is as likely a revival as other people think, since you can't do the setting and have it be viewed as 'legitimate' without Weis & Hickman, and it's an open question as to whether they and WotC can come to a meeting of the minds.

It's a really weird relationship there. I had always assumed (as noted above) that the novels were following the game's mechanical developments and not vice versa. Though I suppose that novels sell better than games, so it makes sense to follow the cash there.

To be honest, it's also a little disappointing, since I would much prefer to blame the weirdness/relative weakness of the more recent novels on someone other than Weis & Hickman, whom I still have no choice but to idolize.