D&D (2024) Greyhawk Confirmed. Tell Me Why.

[Chaosmancer]

The response I got was that "we don't need new ideas", "refluff old ideas", and "new education practices that guide people into creating their own material is a waste of book space".

It's not just a Plane of Dinosaurs. It's a Plane of Prehistoric Power. The beasts are big and stupid. The people wild and rugged. The earth and waters untamed and untamable. And the magic is raw and before words and gestures were attached to them. And the riches pure and untapped. It's the Plane of Beasts much like the Feywild is the Plane of Fey.

It's less about being hostile to my ideas. It seems people are hostile any new ideas unless it's a remake to their favorite nostalgia product.

Sure, the DMG COULD decide to create entirely new things, whole cloth, with no prior references or reasons... but why would they? And why would I want them to? They haven't expanded enough on their old ideas, I don't even WANT all of their old ideas. I'd love to reduce the 16 Outer Planes down to about four, combine the elemental planes back into the Elemental Chaos, and flip the Ethereal plane into the Dream plane. Because as it stands, we don't DO anything with the VAST VAST majority of the planes.

And, on top of that, your suggestions are not being rejected because we hate new ideas. You want a Plane of Beasts, where the beasts are big and the people are wild and rugged, the land is untamed.... We have a places called "The Beast Lands" in the Outer Planes right now. And reading the description in the 2014 DMG... it sounds like EXACTLY what you want. From Page 60 "The Beastlands is a plane of nature unbound, of forests ranging from moss-hung mangroves to snow-laden pines, of thick jungles where the branches are woven so tight that no light penetrates, of vast plains where grains and wildflowers wave in the wind with vibrant life. The plane embodies nature's wildness and beauty, but it also speaks to the animal within all living things." Okay, sure, it doesn't say that the magic there is "raw and before words and gestures" or that the beasts are particularly stupid... but if THOSE are the only differences, why in the world would we want to make an entirely new plane of existence for this?

This isn't me saying "all new ideas are terrible! We should never have new ideas!" it is me saying "Hey, that sounds cool, we have almost that exact same thing over there. Why don't we take this opportunity to take this old idea that almost no uses, and focus more effort into making it cool, and incorporating that stuff you said, instead of making something new that we will ALSO new use or explore?"

And sure, I get you may hate the Great Wheel. Good news, I do as well! But I also don't imagine WotC is going to spend a whole lot of time making an entirely seperate set of things that don't appear in the Great Wheel, they barely gave Eberron its unique cosmology, they aren't going to make three or four entire new SETS of multiverses.

Like I said at the start, creating a new setting from scratch would help and inspire new DMs than reprinting a multiple decades old setting. This is nostalgia bait and IP spotlighting.

Gosh, maybe for their next 50 year anniversary they won't indulge in things like supporting their old IP and referencing the nostalgia of the past. I mean, I always appreciate an anniversary that says "old stuff is stupid and only bait for fools, new stuff is the way to go!" Really feels like a celebration of their history when they do that.