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.

 

[Nymrod]

Gnomes would be popular if they could pick a niche and stick to it, which is why the tinker gnome stereotype stuck so long. It gives gnomes their thing, their stereotype you can explore. Gnomes being unpopular is because for years they've been "All of the things that were left over from elves, dwarves and halflings" and the one time it attempted to do something different with it that had influence was either a somewhat little-known Mystera bit, or Tinker Gnomes, AKA, 'let's just make an entire race a bloody joke'

I mean there are always Eberron Gnomes. Those seem fairly popular and are clearly defined (with the Trust being a very unique take on a society that is actually non-evil)
And Warcraft gnomes ARE tinker gnomes that are mostly used for comic relief. Heck their devices malfunction most of the time too.

 

[Nymrod]

Gnomes are bearable in Golarion where they are chromatic-haired fey that risk their hair "bleaching" without new experiences. The fey gnomes in 4e were also a nice niche that moved them away from dwarves and halflings, though somewhat closer to elves.

The interesting part of 4e fey gnomes was their enslavement to the fomorians imo which gave them a very specific niche; that the Fomorians had also helped destroyed the elf empires of old was their only real link to the gnomes. The Feydark concept was imo brilliant and worth salvaging for other editions. The Giantkin in general are a brilliant design and 4E gave them a chance to shine.

 

[Aldarc]

The interesting part of 4e fey gnomes was their enslavement to the fomorians imo which gave them a very specific niche; that the Fomorians had also helped destroyed the elf empires of old was their only real link to the gnomes. The Feydark concept was imo brilliant and worth salvaging for other editions. The Giantkin in general are a brilliant design and 4E gave them a chance to shine.

Not to put too fine of a point on it, but the lore building of 4e was HIGHLY UNDERRATED. 4e sought to make the D&D universe into a coherent one. It even put a tremendous amount of thought into systematizing the undead and their origins.

 

[Nymrod]

On the Faction War possibly working, the thing is the narrative space for factions but outside of Sigil was already occupied by the Sects (several of which WERE factions that got exiled on the last time the Lady did a purge)

 

[Nymrod]

Not to put too fine of a point on it, but the lore building of 4e was HIGHLY UNDERRATED. 4e sought to make the D&D universe into a coherent one. It even put a tremendous amount of thought into systematizing the undead and their origins.

I like a lot of the 4E lore building. I am sure a lot of people do; it's just so hard to get past them senseless nuking any number of other things. Like what they did to FR. They treated Eberron with a lot more respect and when the time came to publish Dark Sun they probably had realized that they should focus on the best incarnation of a setting and rolled back part of Arthas' history.

On Dark Sun's post Prism Pentad era I would not say it has no merits at all, just that they are outweighed heavily. So much of the mystery of the setting is lost by them explaining everything instead of just hinting at possible reasons why things are so. And honestly I think that each of the cities plays very differently if you chose to make a campaign that is focused on one of them, it's not just the aesthetics.

 

[Mecheon]

And Warcraft gnomes ARE tinker gnomes that are mostly used for comic relief. Heck their devices malfunction most of the time too.

Warcraft gnomes also have the tragedy to them which is explored in a few places, albeit not much. But, there is more to them than just 'tinkering'

Also they're countered against the goblins, where its "When gnomish devices malfunction its not too bad, when goblin devices malfunction you just explode"

 

[Nymrod]

Warcraft gnomes also have the tragedy to them which is explored in a few places, albeit not much. But, there is more to them than just 'tinkering'

Also they're countered against the goblins, where its "When gnomish devices malfunction its not too bad, when goblin devices malfunction you just explode"

They are still mostly used for comic relief and the tragedy of Gnomeregan or the leper gnomes is barely explored. But honestly D&D settings are judged at a much higher bar than Warcraft.

 

[humble minion]

Not to put too fine of a point on it, but the lore building of 4e was HIGHLY UNDERRATED. 4e sought to make the D&D universe into a coherent one. It even put a tremendous amount of thought into systematizing the undead and their origins

I think that was both a plus and a minus, to be honest. There's things like gnomes and the fey that had been long-time neglected in terms of lore that got some much-needed attention in this process. But on the downside, the big 4e lore rewrite tended to homogenise things, and shoehorn generic 'D&D universe' concepts into settings where those concepts were completely inappropriate. The Raven Queen in FR, which already had at least 3 separate death gods, for instance, not even counting demon lords or nonhuman deities. Tieflings and the feywild in Athas. And so on. There were a lot of holes in D&D lore that 4e laudably attempted to fill, and often with really interesting ideas, but it hammered wrongly-shaped pegs into a few too many of them. But there's still an awful lot there that is worth mining for inspiration.

Which tbh sums up 4e in general in a lot of ways. Some great ideas. Didn't know when to stop.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I said it already in another thread, and I wasn't joking: gnomes should be a subspecies of halflings. Naturey gnomes are already basically halflings with a bit of magic, and tinker gnomes can be just halflings from a technologically focused culture.

 

[DnD Warlord]

I thought it contained a lot of ethnic essentialism or stereotyping.

So does game of thrones