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

[Ibrandul]

If/when they do Dragonlance, I feel confident it will have the same relationship to the original War of the Lance module saga as Curse of Strahd does to the original Ravenloft module. It'll be a "fresh take" / expansion upon the original storyline.

The only difference is that with Strahd there's an easy cyclical "eternal penance" canonical excuse for rehashing the same story, whereas with Dragonlance they will either have to A) create a similar in-world excuse for the reboot or B) ignore canon.

Given how much effort they've made to incorporate / allude to / namecheck old Forgotten Realms lore (yes, I really believe that, though of course I know that many hardcore FR fans just scowled at their screens and started composing angry rebuttals), I would have laid a little money (not a lot) on option A—until WotC's recent "Pre-5e Lore Isn't the Boss of Us" press release. Now I would wager a lot on option B; it's still possible that the new DL novel trilogy will provide a canon-respecting justification for the reboot (possibly involving either time-travel, a trope that already has been used in Dragonlance canon, or else multiversitude), but I now highly doubt that a WotC DL RPG book would make any effort to respect or acknowledge the decades of post–War of the Lance DL continuity.

Which is probably for the best.

 

[TheSword]

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.

I think this is why I would prefer adventures more than guides. I don’t need a gazetteer of Tyr or a discussion of trade routes to Nibenay I want completed adventures and most important of all… maps for VTT.

There are some settings that are fiendishly difficult to get quality maps for. Planescape and Darksun particularly.

 

[Aldarc]

Nentir Vale (pipe dream): keep the tone points of light. The Nentir Vale should be represented more as a playground setting that exists in sketched form. It's mythic in scope - i.e., the Chaoskampf of the Dawn War - but the setting should feel incomplete and not fully realized in terms of its details: again, it should exist more as a sketch or toolkit. Included tips for the GM on filling in the details, adventure hooks, coloring in the setting, and incorporating player backgrounds/goals/mythos into the game play. Writing Team: James Wyatt, Rich Baker, and Chris Perkins. Possible forward by Matt Mercer on how he used the 4e background materials (e.g., pantheon, Dawn War, etc.) to build his own Exandria setting.

 

[R_J_K75]

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:

Where is this map from?

 

[R_J_K75]

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.

Been saying this for a long time. Instead of releasing 1 FR book, 1 RL book, a mega adventure, a dice pack, etc. as they've been doing, to really do things right make it the year of Darksun, Planescape or Spelljammer and release a bunch of books for one setting back to back. That's what I want and hope they do. Now I'm just speculating but I doubt they will.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

How do I hope they treat the old settings?

Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. It's the only way for the settings to become who they were meant to be.

The old settings will always be there. You can still use them! If they are going to re-visit them, take the good stuff, and go punk-rock on the rest. Give a new generation something to call their own. The only way to keep something alive is to re-invent it.

 

[GuyBoy]

I hope it’s Greyhawk and, in a perfect world, I’d like to see:
A world book, but updated to (a suggestion) 50 years in advance of the last timeline, which would allow “clearing” of things which don’t sit well to a more modern audience. This may upset some purists, but I still think it would work well.
A monster/NPC book
A Return To...style adventure: my personal choice would be Tsojcanth and Tharizdun modules, but there are others.
A brand new adventure set in Greyhawk somewhere. Possibly the city itself but I wouldn’t really mind.

Like several earlier posters, a boxed set a la Night Below would be a dream...and sometimes they do come true.

 

[tetrasodium]

I hope it's with mechanics thst change o5e core rules. I don't expect to be see thst actually happen.though

Many of the older settings need mechsnics tweaks to fit the tones and themes but with eberron and ravenloft thst didnt happen

 

[iserith]

How do I hope they treat the old settings?

Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. It's the only way for the settings to become who they were meant to be.

The old settings will always be there. You can still use them! If they are going to re-visit them, take the good stuff, and go punk-rock on the rest. Give a new generation something to call their own. The only way to keep something alive is to re-invent it.

Agreed! Decades of play experience later, we can take what's good, leave behind what's bad, and add some new stuff that preserves the theme and tone in a more practical format. The past is important, but it's not all good by default. (I've been reading a lot of AD&D 2e modules recently and holy cow they are bad.)

 

[Urriak Uruk]

How do I hope they treat the old settings?

Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. It's the only way for the settings to become who they were meant to be.

The old settings will always be there. You can still use them! If they are going to re-visit them, take the good stuff, and go punk-rock on the rest. Give a new generation something to call their own. The only way to keep something alive is to re-invent it.

Off-topic, but the really ironic thing about the "Let the past die, kill it if you have to," line is that folks quote it to say "Disney hates the longtime fans, this is a veiled reference to how they want to disregard old fans and destroy what we love about OG Star Wars." Which makes no sense at all because Kylo Ren is the villain in the movie... but I digress.