D&D 5E Further Future D&D Product Speculation

[overgeeked]

Ajit George put his hat in the ring to tackle Darksun.

Two things come to mind.

That would be insanely cool!
And being an insider what does he know? Does that mean they dint have Darksun being worked on now?

Source please.

 

[Parmandur]

Ajit George put his hat in the ring to tackle Darksun.

Two things come to mind.

That would be insanely cool!
And being an insider what does he know? Does that mean they dint have Darksun being worked on now?

I'm becoming a big Ajit George fan fairly quickly: I think he has the intelligence and passion necessary to make a Dark Sun that is true to it's origins, but works for today's audience.

 

[JEB]

SCAG has sold very well, and consistently. I am skeptical that there is that much need for a ForgotteReqlms Setting product,

SCAG has indeed sold fairly well and consistently, but fan response has seems more mixed, and it often seems to place behind other sourcebooks. It's also one of the oldest books in 5E, and one of the most outdated in terms of design. (Heck, it was co-produced with Green Ronin, so it's not even 100% Wizards thinking.) And the dawn of a new era for the game in 2024 would be a prime time to tackle their flagship setting again.

whereas Greyhawk is a perfect 50th Anniversary Setting. If Luke Gygax was involved, they could have their Grognard cake and eat it too by expanding to a broader and younger audience.

Again, I can see a Castle Greyhawk adventure/mini-setting, like Saltmarsh or Strixhaven or Dragonlance. That taps the nostalgia and ties in with the 50th, without the troubles inherent in a setting-wide update. But given the choice between updating their default setting, or taking a chance on a complete Greyhawk refresh, a Realms "revisit" objectively seems like the better move.

 

[JEB]

And being an insider what does he know? Does that mean they dint have Darksun being worked on now?

Yeah, I took that as a sign that Dark Sun is not in the works. If it was, preliminary work would have necessarily started by now. (Unless they kept it secret from George, or he's being deliberately coy.)

 

[Parmandur]

Again, I can see a Castle Greyhawk adventure/mini-setting, like Saltmarsh or Strixhaven or Dragonlance. That taps the nostalgia and ties in with the 50th, without the troubles inherent in a setting-wide update. But given the choice between updating their default setting, or taking a chance on a complete Greyhawk refresh, a Realms "revisit" objectively seems like the better move.

Well, that's essentially what I'm suggesting with a slipcase: that would be more original Folio Greyhawk, than a giant campaign book, with an Adventure to boot.

I don't think it is accurate to call the Forgotten Realms the "default Setting" at this point. The last firmly Realms product was Icewind Dale in 2020, nearly two years ago, with no indication of another this year: Candlekeep barely counts. The Forgotten Realms makes less sense as an Anniversary revisit to me than the OG. But tike will tell.

 

[JEB]

Source please.

EDIT: Better link.

 

[Parmandur]

EDIT: Better link.

Doesn't mean they aren't working on it, and Ajit just doesn't know. But man I'd love his take, I think.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

If you don't want chains in Dark Sun the answer is easy, these to be replace with debts, too high taxes and the food&water monopolized by the state.

My question is about the faction of the Black Spine (module), because this could allow PC races from outer worlds, the classic "abducted by aliens for genetic investigations". Other suggestion is living constructs (psiforged or shardminds) could be allowed in DS with some condiction, for example they need water and oil to "clean aura" or they will cause a "toxic radiation", something like the promethean from White Wolf's Chronicles of Darkness.

And what if players want to add elements published later? Not only PC races but classes as the psionic ardent, martial adepts or totemist shaman. Can paladins without deity possible in DS?

 

[JEB]

I don't think it is accurate to call the Forgotten Realms the "default Setting" at this point. The last firmly Realms product was Icewind Dale in 2020, nearly two years ago, with no indication of another this year: Candlekeep barely counts.

I think we'll need a few more years of absolutely no Realms products before we can say the Realms isn't their de facto default. It still features in spin-off media like Baldur's Gate III and the MTG set, for example, and all those old Realms adventures are still on shelves. And it remains prominent in the core rulebooks.

The Forgotten Realms makes less sense as an Anniversary revisit to me than the OG. But tike will tell.

I guess I'm looking at it this way.

If they make the 50th anniversary "revisit" Greyhawk, and they don't make any significant changes, the old-school fans might be happy but it might bomb with newer fans, which would be a PR disaster. If they do change it, it wouldn't be guaranteed to succeed with new fans, and it might bomb with old-school fans, which would also be a PR disaster. That's significant effort for a possible failure. And in turn, it might not sync as well with the 2024 revision as the Realms would - it would essentially be a brand-new, unknown setting to many newer fans.

On the other hand, a smaller-scale Saltmarsh approach to Castle Greyhawk would allow for maximum 50th nostalgia (since the focus is on the dungeon crawl) and minimum risk of misfires (since any setting development would necessarily be limited). While making the anniversary "revisit" the Realms is a safer bet, ties in with older adventure products, and gives new-in-2024 players the opportunity to buy into the best-known D&D setting.

 

[Malmuria]

The problem with slavery in ttrpgs (or other media) is that it easily becomes sensationalized and gratuitous violence—violence merely for the sake of creating atmosphere, which can’t really do justice to the actual horrors of that violence. Heroic fantasy, which tends to turn up the contrast on moral conflict in general, exacerbates this dynamic. That said, I don’t think it’s impossible to worldbuild including slavery in a way that isn’t just a caricature.

The difficulties of planescape will be a) the planes are multiple and infinite and b) there’s a lot of legacy sludge which one would not include if making a cosmos from scratch. All the planes have a different number of layers, the layers overlap in theme while still being in theory infinite, and the environments become monotone, either suffocatingly good and devoid of interesting conflict (upper planes) or so hostile as to discourage adventure (lower planes). I have little confidence that a 64 page book in a slipcase will be able to present the entirety of the planes in a way that is useful (Planescape had multiple such 64 page booklets for dms in the various box sets, and the above problems remain. More useful were the themed box sets like Hellbound)