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.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Jakandor and Thunder Rift.

WotC is going to lean into really upsetting fans waiting for Planescape and Dark Sun.

You jest, but I wouldn't be completely surprised.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Greyhawk if just a reskinned reprint would not.

That's the challenge of all this, of course. WotC has to both provide a version of these older settings that long-term fans approve of while also providing something new that doesn't piss them off. Based on the very little we know of 5E Ravenloft, there are already people upset.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Spelljammer also needs a decent bestiary and setting mechanics. As a genre resource, space opera works.

They could roll Spelljammer and Planescape into a single book on adventuring in alien realms. Neither group of fans would be thrilled, but it'd be a quick way to cover the planes and the phlogiston, along with enhanced vehicle rules, new lineages and subclasses, and lots of interesting magic and monsters.

Dragonlance has the upcoming books in its favor, but cleaves close to a baseline D&D experience and has little enough crunch needed that it could be released in a pamphlet. It has little to offer as a genre resource.

Give it the Ghosts of Saltmarsh treatment, with a one-book version of the War of the Lance, with the Kender subrace and other player-facing content in the front of the book.

I honestly think bringing these back in forms other than big setting books is most likely, because three setting books in a single year seems like a lot for the market. But a Mordenkainen's-style book featuring the planes and space isn't that, nor is a big adventure compilation.

Mystara's patchwork quilt is an odd one, and given we have Eberron, I think being "pulp fantasy" isn't going to be strong enough for genre appeal. They could however do something completely innovative with it and end up picking it.

Where do you get Mystara being pulp fantasy? It's a hodgepodge of different tones and settings, but outside of the Hollow World or arguably the Voyages of the Princess Ark, it's a lot happier and shinier than pulp. Ierendi has Fantasy Magnum, PI, and Fantasy Fantasy Island, for instance. Karameikos is as close to D&D baseline as anything set outside of the City of Greyhawk suburbs can be. And Glantri, the other major center of Mystara play, is scheming wizards in a canal city -- again, not exactly Conan.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You jest, but I wouldn't be completely surprised.

If WotC wasn't so committed to the Forgotten Realms being the on-ramp to 5E, a Thunder Rift starter set box would be a great idea, although its niche is probably taken by the Essentials Set now.

 

[CleverNickName]

I can't speculate on what WotC will do, or should do, or can't do, with the D&D product line. And I can't speak for anyone else.

All I'm saying is, I would buy a Mystara 5E book. I wouldn't buy a Dark Sun 5E, Planescape 5E, or Spelljammer 5E book.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm sure there are plenty of grognards just waiting to bitch about MtG in D&D like they will be forced to include it.

I have no attachment to MTG -- never even owned a single card -- but I'd love to get Strixhaven (WotC's Hogwarts) or Eldraine (Arthurian knights plus fairy tails) as settings in future. I'd either strip them for parts or run them whole.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

All I'm saying is, I would buy a Mystara 5E book. I wouldn't buy a Dark Sun 5E, Planescape 5E, or Spelljammer 5E book.

Would you want a Mystara book that covered the Known World, the Known World plus the Hollow World, the Hollow World, the Savage Coast, or an individual nation?

It's a big world, with wildly different tones, and I think it'd be hard to please many people with whatever geographic focus they chose.

It'd be amazing to get all those BXCM monsters into 5E, though.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

They could also give us "Planescape" with a big adventure book tied into Baldur's Gate III. Similar to Ghosts of Saltmarsh, it could combine planar adventures focusing on the war between the gith, the other gith and the illithid, along with spelljamming rules.

Another way for WotC to get around dropping full-sized setting manuals one after another and adhering to a more traditional publishing schedule of offering a variety of different products throughout the year.

 

[CleverNickName]

Would you want a Mystara book that covered the Known World, the Known World plus the Hollow World, the Hollow World, the Savage Coast, or an individual nation?

It's a big world, with wildly different tones, and I think it'd be hard to please many people with whatever geographic focus they chose.

It'd be amazing to get all those BXCM monsters into 5E, though.

The bigger the better, if it were up to me. I wouldn't even mind if it was released as a three-book set.

 

[IndigoTraveler]

It’s obviously going to be Angel Grove, Cybertron, and whatever the main GI Joe place is

America,which is where all tree take place in (especially after the Transformers leave Cybertron)