D&D 5E D&D Next "genre books" replace d20 Modern

[Greylond]

They "cooperated" with WOTC because of an out of court settlement due to WOTC illegally using Knights of the Dinner Table on the Dragon CDROM. K&Co used HM4 to develop a following for RPG fans who don't like where WOTC went with D&D after year 2000. During that time, they had some bad experiences with WOTC Editing.

Also, making products for a game other than HackMaster RPG(the new version) would be competing against their House brand, which would be stupid. Not to mention they would be spending time writing/editing something instead of putting out their own stuff.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Mike Mearls and Modern/Future in 5e

I found a relevant interview with Mike Mearls:

I'm wrapping up a four year-old campaign d20 Modern campaign. I would love more of the "interesting things to do" aspect of 4E integrated into those rules. Will we ever see the return of 5E's rules used in other genres, like d20 was for Modern and Future?

Mike Mearls: I can’t say for certain at this point, but one of the nice things about a modular approach is that it’s much easier to extend the game in different directions. If you have an elegant, robust, and easily learned core, you can imagine adding rules for mutations and dangerous tech for Gamma World, or beam weapons and space travel for Star Frontiers.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Update

I added D&D Gaslamp and D&D Steampunk to the 5e Genre webpage.

Also:

D&D Storybook, which would feature rules modules which support genres of fantasy which are more story-oriented, with little to no combat. The classes would be "story roles" instead of "combat roles". But they'd still be mechanically compatible with core D&D. D&D Storybook would feature campaign models which tell stories like Narnia, Wizard of Oz, Jim Henson's Labyrinth and Dark Crystal, and The Neverending Story. These might even be "D&D Earth" versions of some of those copyrighted worlds--for example, a quasi-Narnian campaign setting written by a "D&D Earth version" of C.S. Lewis who exists in the Urban Arcana timeline. Within the Urban Arcana campaign model, these "storybook worlds" are novels or films.

 

[Mengu]

I'd be happy with generic fantasy, but we're not even going to get that. Ultimately, D&D's depiction of fantasy is VERY narrow. Greyhawk. That's it. Even the steam-punkiness of Eberron pushes the envelope of D&D too far for some people. 4e "destroyed" D&D because there were silly healing surges and AEDU powers.

So, basically D&D is Greyhawk. If you don't want dwarves, elves, halflings, and orcs in your fantasy world, but instead want anubi, basti, tethru, and sebeki, you're not playing D&D any more. Go find another rpg. If your world doesn't operate on Vancian magic, go find another system. If you have steam engines and gunpowder in your world go play something else. Is that it? What happened to creativity? What happened to the DM's freedom to create his own campaign world? I guess we can only create our own D&D campaign world, only if it's a Greyhawk clone, is that it?

My venting seems purely academic, but I don't think of D&D as Greyhawk. I have never even played Greyhawk. I have mostly played in worlds created by the DM running the game. I've played in a Thundercats campaign, a Lost World campaign, numerous save the world campaigns, rare magic campaigns, I've run campaigns with flying castles, continents encased in magical barriers, worlds without dragons (*gasp*), and I've populated my current current campaign with all manner of star wars races, flying ships, and alien cultures. This is what we do. This is how we play. We borrow/steal ideas from books, movies, games, and all manner of fantasy culture, add our own creativity, and come up with campaign worlds, then tell an epic story. To me, THAT is the essence of D&D. Not dwarves, not elves, not vancian magic, not high fantasy. The major commonality is that D&D characters are heroes, whatever universe they may be dropped into.