D&D General D&D products that never were

[Urriak Uruk]

Also Robert Kunto had a City of Brass module in the works before the Gygax fiasco, there was q fi ished Greyhawk module that Wizards put out later, Ivid the Dying, and a ton of Mystarra stuff, including a Princes Ark box set and a bunch of canceled Gazateers.

Is this the City of Brass module?

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

He was also planning on re-releasing it last year, but that didn't happen. Still sitting in limbo.

K3a Journey to the City of Brass

Coming in March 2021! K3a Journey to the City of Brass by Rob Kuntz, will be a Three Little Books Adventure for 6-9 characters of 8th to 10th level. The adventure will be a smaller than digest-sized, 32+ page adventure booklet with a sturdy, separate, card stock cover. Included within are...

www.tlbgames.com

 

[Parmandur]

Is this the City of Brass module?

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

He was also planning on re-releasing it last year, but that didn't happen. Still sitting in limbo.

K3a Journey to the City of Brass

Coming in March 2021! K3a Journey to the City of Brass by Rob Kuntz, will be a Three Little Books Adventure for 6-9 characters of 8th to 10th level. The adventure will be a smaller than digest-sized, 32+ page adventure booklet with a sturdy, separate, card stock cover. Included within are...

www.tlbgames.com

View attachment 156784

Yup, that's a rework of the old convention module Kuntz wrote and had run back in the day. It was being reworked for TSR, when things for Gygax and Gygax's friends went pear-shaped.

 

[Parmandur]

Now, we know at least, and I stress "at least," one 5E book that got cancelled and partially released: the Elemental Evil Player's Companion free document was originally slated to be released in 2015 as part of a larger book, called the "Elemental Evil Adventurer's Handbook" that even had an ISBN as reported here on ENWorld at the time. Now, we got part of this books contents in the free Companion, and later in Princes of the Apocalypse and Xanathar's Guide, but the word on the street is that there was a bunch more in the works that just never saw the light of day, at all.

 

[Jer]

From memory the basic line of DnD had some additional gazetteers that never made it to print. I think I saw in a Dragon magazine the future line up, but they never came.

Bruce Heard had major plans after Champions of Mystara to do Gazeteers on Heldann, Wendar and Sind. He also had plans to do multiple boxed sets - one eventually became the Red Steel boxed set for 2e, but he also had plans for an Adventures in Blackmoor boxed set that I would have loved to see. His notes ended up on Pandius Mystara - Reference Guide

Jeff Grubb wrote a 2nd edition treatment for the Known World that got revised down into Karameikos:Kingdom of Mystery. I'd love to eventually see his treatment too.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

It never went past the pitch phase, but Jeff Grubb's Stormfront could have been a really cool campaign setting. I wish we had seen it on the bookshelves.

 

[cbwjm]

Bruce Heard had major plans after Champions of Mystara to do Gazeteers on Heldann, Wendar and Sind. He also had plans to do multiple boxed sets - one eventually became the Red Steel boxed set for 2e, but he also had plans for an Adventures in Blackmoor boxed set that I would have loved to see. His notes ended up on Pandius Mystara - Reference Guide

Jeff Grubb wrote a 2nd edition treatment for the Known World that got revised down into Karameikos:Kingdom of Mystery. I'd love to eventually see his treatment too.

Heldann, that's the one I remember reading about, it would have been cool to see.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Does the Elemental Evil Player's Companion count? That was originally supposed to be a full book, but they cut almost all of its content and just released it as a free PDF online. It still technically exists, but not at all to the extent that it was supposed to be.

 

[JEB]

Now, we know at least, and I stress "at least," one 5E book that got cancelled and partially released: the Elemental Evil Player's Companion free document was originally slated to be released in 2015 as part of a larger book, called the "Elemental Evil Adventurer's Handbook" that even had an ISBN as reported here on ENWorld at the time. Now, we got part of this books contents in the free Companion, and later in Princes of the Apocalypse and Xanathar's Guide, but the word on the street is that there was a bunch more in the works that just never saw the light of day, at all.

Does the Elemental Evil Player's Companion count? That was originally supposed to be a full book, but they cut almost all of its content and just released it as a free PDF online. It still technically exists, but not at all to the extent that it was supposed to be.

This, and some of the late Next material/early UA material, make me wonder if early 5E considered a different direction than we wound up with - more sourcebooks, and more revivals of old settings, as opposed to the "two adventures and a sourcebook" approach we got.

 

[Parmandur]

This, and some of the late Next material/early UA material, make me wonder if early 5E considered a different direction than we wound up with - more sourcebooks, and more revivals of old settings, as opposed to the "two adventures and a sourcebook" approach we got.

The initial plan, which Mearls outlined in 2014, was two Adventure storylines a year, with each storyline having an accompanying splatbook. They never really gave the whole story of why they canceled the first splatbook, or fully acknowledged that they did. SCAG seems to have been slapped together from parts of the Elemental Evil and Out of the Abyss storyline books, and maybe the Storm King's Thunder book to boot...

I really look forward to the inevitable retrospective art and tell-all book in the style of Arcana Unearthed.

 

[delericho]

This, and some of the late Next material/early UA material, make me wonder if early 5E considered a different direction than we wound up with - more sourcebooks, and more revivals of old settings, as opposed to the "two adventures and a sourcebook" approach we got.

That makes a lot of sense - reading through the PHB there were a lot of areas I expected to see filled out by the inevitable splatbooks, that then never came - many more subclasses, and feats, and spells, and magic items, and...

I should probably note at this point that that approach, as used in 3e and 4e, would almost certainly have been no more of a success than the previous times it was tried. So I'm not criticizing the 5e approach here.