D&D 5E How do you hope WotC treats the upcoming classic settings?

[Mercurius]

The main contenders seem to be Planescape, Dark Sun, and Dragonlance, with the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk and Spelljammer being darkhorses, and everything else varying shades of unlikely.

But this is all speculation, so you decide which ones you want to talk about.

To elaborate the question of the thread title a bit more, how do you hope WotC produces these classic settings? Presentation, format, and--at the heart of it--the setting itself.

Some thoughts...

Planescape: Detailed treatment of Sigil and the Outlands. Re-envision the Factions, but keep them in place. Touch on the planes, but go into detail in later supplements and/or adventures. De-emphasize the 90s-esque vibe, but keep it cosmic and otherworldly, Sigil as the "universal city."

I'd also like to see them incorporate elements of 4E, particularly the Astral Sea, and spelljammers as an alternate means of conveyance.

Also, a treatment on "variant cosmologies," playing with the idea that the true nature and structure of the cosmos and planes is inherently unknown, but with different cosmologies that yield different results.

Dark Sun: This is one setting that I hope they take a different approach than the past. Keep Dark Sun, Dark Sun, but I want to see more of the world, not just a third (or fourth) rehash of the Tyr region. I want to see the entire planet, or at least large portions of it. Sure, keep large swathes unknown and inhospitable, but I want to see WotC's version of this map:

Furthermore, go for exotic: don't try to force all the core 5E races and classes into the setting, but emphasize other ones, unique to the setting.

Oh yeah, solid, epic rules for becoming dragons and avangions.

Dragonlance: I grew up on the Chronicles and Legends, so for me those stories are Dragonlance. I didn't read much after, and from what I've gathered, it sort of went all "X-Menish" post Claremont: complexity upon complexity, with an overall diminishing effect. That said, do we need another rehash? Anyhow, I'd take one of two approaches:
1. Classic Dragonlance - War of the Lance, but revisioned and updated. Bring more depth and detail to Ansalon, and touch upon Taladas and even other continents, but keep the details for possible later expansions.
2. Advanced timeline - with all the books in the past, the stuff of legend. A new Krynn, with Taladas playing a more central. And Irda!

 

[NaturalZero]

I hope they give it the treatment like they did Ravenloft - better hooks and more evocative lore.

 

[overgeeked]

No matter how they do it, someone will be mad.

I think Ravenloft was a let down because of the page count and the trimmed down nature of it being a single hardback.

Most of these deserve a lot more than decades of lore, factions, NPCs, and monsters crammed into 256 pages.

To do them right, the settings should be at least three books, if not four. A box or slipcase with 3-4 books and a heap of accessories would be best.

The first book is the main setting info. History, lore, manor cities, regions, character stuff, new rules, etc. Really go in depth.

The second book is nothing but monsters. Creatures, beasts, factions, enemies, legendary creatures, and other NPCs. But done properly. With ecology, tactics, lore DCs, interesting actions and defenses, etc. Basically the best parts of how earlier editions handled monsters.

The third book should be an adventure path that takes the PCs from 0-20. Yes, zero. And moves them through the high points of the setting. Having played through the AP should give the player the chance to learn the high-level lore from the setting book and a lot of the details along the way.

The optional fourth book should be an anthology of shorter adventures and side quests that can be added to the main AP, dropped in to any campaign in the setting, or maybe used somewhere else. The focus should be on filling in the rest of the lore blanks rather than compatibility with or ability to port them into other settings.

Though another thought is to go Enemy Within and do a massive, sprawling, 5-6-part AP that covers it all. Though I don’t think they (or we) could handle how awesome that would be.

 

[Baldurs_Underdark]

I hope they will bring out a 5e map of all of Faerun. That is very obviously still missing.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

For me, simple:

"Convert... don't 'Update'..."

I don't care what setting it is (other than Mystara or Greyhawk; I don't want either of those touched...I don't trust WotC to do it 'correctly'...or at least not 'correctly' for me). Whatever it is though, I don't want it "updated"...just converted.

Hope that makes sense.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[TheSword]

For me I want them to look at what was ace about the original setting and bring that to the 5e, not slavishly try and keep every event, location and NPC etc the same. Essentially how they did Curse of Strahd and Van Richtens guide.

What is absolutely key for me though is that they release a AP book. I don’t mind if it’s a Curse or Strahd style book with the setting included and a Campaign book to expand the world but I want both.

My dream is for a 10 book Adventure Path and Sourcebook supplement like Enemy Within but let’s be honest it’s never going to happen, even on a smaller scale. Though imagine how awesome a 4 book (four tier) adventure would be setting in four areas of the Forgotten Realms each with a companion book to detail the area further.

 

[Hussar]

Whereas to me, Ravenloft is a setting done right.

I do rather hope Dragonlance gets the update. You could bang out a 20 level (or, heck, if you're traditional, start the group at 5th level) adventure path following, loosely, the War of the Lance. But, instead of a single path, I'd rather they did the Dragon Heist method of presenting several adventure locations that can then be modified depending on what happened before. So, the adventure locations will largely be the same, but, the story is very different depending on the choices the players make.

So, the Dragonlance book (or really any of these setting books) could very much benefit from a Dragon Heist style treatment where the adventure is half setting gazetteer, half adventure and then let the individual tables work it out.

What I never want to see again is a setting "line". If I have to buy more than one or two books to get the setting information, I'm just not interested. Settings are disposable. One and done is a perfectly fine way to go.

 

[fenixfenix]

I would love to see them go hard on Dark Sun. New mechanics for crafting/piecemealing armor and weapons from crude materials.
New mechanics for spellcasting (defiler and all that).
A new version of the Thri Kreen.
Muls and other half breed races/subraces.
And if not the whole world, a region we have not seen before would be a nice change.

 

[Micah Sweet]

See, I already found good 3rd party 5e conversions of Dragonlance, Ravenloft and Planescape's mechanics, so I no longer care what they do with those. I want the same thing for Spelljammer and Dark Sun, but I dont expect them to do it in a way i would be happy with. I'm sure all those new fans would like it though.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I hope they produce a book. And that book puts the setting into the consciousness of those players who weren't familiar with the setting prior to that.

And then I hope the DMs who were and are familiar with those settings can now find players who are interested in playing in it... and then the DM goes back and just re-uses all the setting material they already own from all the editions past and is completely unconcerned with what is in the 5E book. They don't need a 5E book to run these settings. They never have. So I'm hoping against hope they remember that and can use everything they ever had at their disposal to make their game exactly the way they want it, regardless of what Perkins, Levitch, Wyatt, Crawford, and the others wrote down in the 5E book.