Dungeons & Dragons Teases New Campaign Settings

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Dungeons & Dragons seems to be preparing to explore brand new campaign settings. Last week, EN World had the opportunity to visit Wizards of the Coast headquarters and get new details about D&D's 2025 slate. While much of the focus was on the newly announced Eberron: Forge of the Artificer book or the upcoming pair of Forgotten Realms book, the D&D design team is also looking at expanding their official multiverse to include brand new worlds.

When asked about the decision to return to Eberron in 2025, the D&D design team noted that keeping the Fifth Edition ruleset allowed them to grow the game instead of rehash it. "One of the opportunities that we have by revising the game, as opposed blowing it up and starting over, is we can actually move forward," said Jeremy Crawford, game director . "And I can't wait until we can tell you about 2026 and 2027."

"With Jeremy Crawford taking on the game director role and then Chris Perkins taking on the creative director role is that we were able to really reestablish a world building environment," added Jess Lanzillo, VP of D&D Franchise at Wizards of the Coast. "What does that mean? We can really establish our worlds and settings like the Forgotten Realms and also look to creating new ones again. That's something that we are working on and we don't have anything to really discuss today other than to tell you like we are re-establishing everything that we have and we are going to make some new stuff too."

While Wizards of the Coast has integrated Magic: The Gathering worlds and Critical Role's Exandria as campaign settings for 5th Edition, D&D's last truly new campaign setting was Nentir Vale, a 'points of light' setting that established small bastions of civilization in an otherwise dark world. In 2023, D&D introduced the Radiant Citadel, a new city within the Ethereal Plane that was connected to numerous new civilizations and worlds briefly touched on in anthology books.
 

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Christian Hoffer

Christian Hoffer

That's something that we are working on and we don't have anything to really discuss today other than to tell you like we are re-establishing everything that we have and we are going to make some new stuff too.
I mean, this has been the line since at least 2020, and arguably since about 2015, though I'd prefer the 2020 date. Ray Winninger went on about it and even said that they explicitly had new settings in development, and had had other ones which hadn't made it.

All the talk about "re-establishing" seems a bit... meh... I get why they're doing more FR books and that's smart, but what other settings do they even need to "re-establish"? It's pretty clear Greyhawk ain't it, Dragonlance they did recently and it wasn't great, Dark Sun has been ruled out more than once (and nearly killed off in Spelljammer, with them changing it out at the last minute). Spelljammer and Planescape they did recently.

This is I think one of those cases where I'll believe it when I see it. They've had 10 years to make a new setting. They haven't even got to the point of dropping hints about a specific one.
 



While I wasn't a fan of it, I think Radiant Citadel sold well and I believe there's definitely a hunger for D&D set in non-European or non-Western settings. I would not at all be shocked if we saw revitalizations of "Oriental Adventures" (certainly under a different name), Al-Qadim or who knows, maybe a new crack at Maztica as some sort of "Latino fantasy" (hey, Perytons were invented by Borges, Maztica could make a name for itself as "Magic Realist D&D").

I could see the Faerun books being published in 2025 setting the groundwork for other continents of the Forgotten Realms. A lot of players would rightly be pissed if they went straight to Kara-Tur when some parts of Faerun haven't been mentioned since 3e, so they can get fantasy Europe out of the way, then hire some creators of color to flesh out the rest of the planet.
 



I'd be curious to see what a brand spankin' new setting from this team would be like. We've got a lot of flavors of D&D out there, even officially-sanctioned. What would we add?

The Radiant Citadel civilizations were all pretty interesting, but those were also contracted out. I wonder if something official would be more DIFFERENT or just some kind of generic fantasy slurry with a twist.
 



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