D&D 5E D&D's Classic Settings Are Not 'One Shots'

In an interview with ComicBook.com, WotC's Jeremy Crawford talked about the visits to Ravenloft, Eberron, Spelljammer, Dragonlance, and (the upcoming) Planescape we've seen over the last couple of years, and their intentions for the future.

He indicated that they plan to revisit some of these settings again in the future, noting that the setting books are among their most popular books.

We love [the campaign setting books], because they help highlight just how wonderfully rich D&D is. They highlight that D&D can be gothic horror. D&D can be fantasy in space. D&D can be trippy adventures in the afterlife, in terms of Planescape. D&D can be classic high fantasy, in the form of the Forgotten Realms. It can be sort of a steampunk-like fantasy, like in Eberron. We feel it's vital to visit these settings, to tell stories in them. And we look forward to returning to them. So we do not view these as one-shots.

- Jeremy Crawford​

The whole 'multiverse' concept that D&D is currently exploring plays into this, giving them opportunities to resist worlds.

When asked about the release schedule of these books, Crawford noted that the company plans its release schedule so that players get chance to play the material, not just read it, and they don't want to swamp people with too much content to use.

Our approach to how we design for the game and how we plan out the books for it is a play-first approach. At certain times in D&D's history, it's really been a read-first approach. Because we've had points in our history where we were producing so many books each year, there was no way anyone could play all of it. In some years it would be hard to play even a small percentage of the number of things that come out. Because we have a play-first approach, we want to make sure we're coming out with things at a pace where if you really wanted to, and even that would require a lot of weekends and evenings dedicated to D&D play, you could play a lot of it.

- Jeremy Crawford​

You can read more in the interview at ComicBook.com.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Ravnic and Wildemoint are quite good.

Fair point on Wildemount and I'll recuse myself re: Ravnica because I loathed it as the poor man's Sigil.

The 5E Setting books are less worldbuilding encyclopedias, and more genre booster packs. So Ravenloft has a section that's Horror themed booster for the PHB, a section that's Horror themed booster for the DMG, and a section that's a jorror themed booster for the MM.

Only Ravenloft 100% fits this.

Theros is like, an 65% fit to that.

Spelljammer, MtG Harry Potter (forgot name) and Dragonlance are just adventures masquerading as settings with varying levels of success. They fail as both settings and genre booster packs.

SCAG and Wildemoint are the exceptions here, because SCAG was an early experiment and Mercer has a 2E approach to things.

Eberron too.

At this point there are more exceptions than there are non-exceptions!

Also, just as a broad commentary on RPGs - many RPGs have tried the "genre booster pack approach", and they've pretty much universally failed. So maybe given none of those WotC books that even might count were stunning successes they shouldn't attempt to repeat a 1990s mistake?

Oh wait, I'm hearing from the studio that WotC are going to doing a metaplot-ish multiverse adventure to link stuff together, so it sounds like repeating 1990s mistakes is absolutely WotC's goal here!

 

[Parmandur]

In yhe article, Crawford raises the interesting point that the evergreen compatibility of the new rulebooks means that all 5E content already out remains relevant to the current rules...which makes building off of them easy to do in the future, rather than do a new edition retread of the same material.

"In fact, Crawford noted that the upcoming 2024 rules revision provides more opportunities to re-visit these worlds, in part because the D&D design team doesn't have to keep going back to re-make certain rules systems or rulebooks moving forward. "This is another boon of the rules revision. It means we can just keep journeying in the multiverse," Crawford said. "Rather than sort of having to reset the clock, [the rules revisions] means then we can return and do different things the next time we visit a setting, look at it through a different angle, explore different parts of the setting, dig deeper in certain areas than we did before. If you imagine Fifth Edition as a D&D campaign, it means the campaign can keep going. So we are going to get to high level and see things that we haven't seen before.""

 

[CleverNickName]

I'll be sitting here reading about D&D and someone will describe Eberron as a 'classic D&D setting' and my brain will make that record-scratch sound and I'll think "What? No way, it's too new to be called a classic! It was released just two---? Oh god. Two decades ago. Nevermind, carry on."

Eberron is as old now as Dragonlance was, when Eberron was released.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Nah Dark sun came of age as the internet was growing and everyone wanted to connect thier campaign worlds into a multiverse. Dark sun was all about bein separate from everything else. That's what killed it. The weird after box set supplements of psionic halfing barbarian tribes that fit a Jules Verne or E.R. Burroughs book better than the Dark sun source material didn't help at all. It was pure genious without any vision or brand control applied.

I'm sure that's a factor, but I suspect that @Ruin Explorer 's hypothesis is a bigger one.

 

[The Glen]

Whistles sadly in Mystara.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Fair point on Wildemount and I'll recuse myself re: Ravnica because I loathed it as the poor man's Sigil.

Only Ravenloft 100% fits this.

Theros is like, an 65% fit to that.

Spelljammer, MtG Harry Potter (forgot name) and Dragonlance are just adventures masquerading as settings with varying levels of success. They fail as both settings and genre booster packs.

Eberron too.

At this point there are more exceptions than there are non-exceptions!

Also, just as a broad commentary on RPGs - many RPGs have tried the "genre booster pack approach", and they've pretty much universally failed. So maybe given none of those WotC books that even might count were stunning successes they shouldn't attempt to repeat a 1990s mistake?

Oh wait, I'm hearing from the studio that WotC are going to doing a metaplot-ish multiverse adventure to link stuff together, so it sounds like repeating 1990s mistakes is absolutely WotC's goal here!

I might actually be into that if I respected the story writing skills of the current WotC 5e staff. But then, as a fan of 2e-style metaplot I'm an outlier.

 

[Reynard]

I'll be sitting here reading about D&D and someone will describe Eberron as a 'classic D&D setting' and my brain will make that record-scratch sound and I'll think "What? No way, it's too new to be called a classic! It was released just two---? Oh god. Two decades ago. Nevermind, carry on."

It's that "Nirvana on the classic rock station" feeling...

 

[Parmandur]

Fair point on Wildemount and I'll recuse myself re: Ravnica because I loathed it as the poor man's Sigil.

I will note that some at the time did not see Ravnica as precluding Plaanscape in the future, as they are quire different, and here we are.

Only Ravenloft 100% fits this.

Theros is like, an 65% fit to that.

Spelljammer, MtG Harry Potter (forgot name) and Dragonlance are just adventures masquerading as settings with varying levels of success. They fail as both settings and genre booster packs.

Hardly, each one of those is going for that. Theros ia very much a highly active gods ancient Myth booster, Spwlljammer is an adding of SPACE to the basic rules, and Strixhaven does add quite a bit of systems to help run a multi-year academic campaign, though it is mainly an Adventure. But it's a very Crunchy booster Adventure.

Eberron too.

Oh, Ebberon very much fits that genre booster model: the pseudo-steampunk, pulp 20's fiction booster. As does Ravnica, the Ecumenopolis post-scarcity political factiona booster.

Also, just as a broad commentary on RPGs - many RPGs have tried the "genre booster pack approach", and they've pretty much universally failed. So maybe given none of those WotC books that even might count were stunning successes they shouldn't attempt to repeat a 1990s mistake?

I mean, this current approach goes back to 2018 with the release of Ravnica, and they seem to be carrying it forwards now past 5 years. That's longer than the publishing lifetime of any pre-5E WotC Edition, let alone publishing model.

 

[CleverNickName]

I do miss Mystara. I'm happy that there is a fan-created 5E adaptation floating around on the 'net, let me see if I can find a link.
(Found it! Special thanks to Glen Welch for all the heavy lifting.) And DriveThruRPG has all of the classic Gazetteers and most of the adventure modules, too. So yeah, I understand why Wizards of the Coast might be unwilling to take on the risks of adapting every campaign setting to the new edition...but I'm thankful that whenever this happens, the fans rise to the challenge and fill the gap.

Hollow World not so much, but I can kinda see where they were trying to go with it. I adapted Nightwail to my Isle of Dread campaign setting (that's right, I built a whole campaign setting around that one island) back in the day, and it was a lot of fun.

But I did like Red Steel, too.

 

[LordEntrails]

I really wish they would stop calling Eberron steampunk. It is aetherpunk, which is both cooler and broader. By calling "steampunk-like" as a shorthand, Crawford is unintentionally limiting what I think is D&D best setting.

I get what you are saying, but I think you don't realize, almost no one knows or has ever heard of the term "aetherpunk". Outside of this board, I've never heard or seen it used. Marketing terns are usually more effective when people know what they mean, or when you put a lot of money into a new word so that people become interested in exploring what that word means. "aetherpunk" is not a word that at this time would be wise for WotC to invest in bringing to the public conscious. I suggest we accept that for the vast majority of the world, "steampunk-like" is a better marketing term that can help grow D&D, aetherpunk is not.