Is Chris Perkins Working On A New D&D Setting?

Chris Perkins posted some tantalizing tidbits on Twitter last night… any thoughts on what it all means? He states that Forgotten Realms is not the default D&D setting, that he's working on something slated for 2016, and that there's non-Realms stuff in the works. It sounds like something related to an older setting. Could be good news for those hoping to see Eberron or some other setting brought back for 5th Edition!


View attachment 66430View attachment 66429View attachment 66428View attachment 66427View attachment 66426View attachment 66425

[Post promoted to article and edited by Morrus]

 

[mouselim]

I would love if they redo Greyhawk but please, please don't spoil it for us old-timers...please...

 

[Krypter]

It would be a great idea for WOTC to have an adventure path in each classic setting, starting with Greyhawk then moving on to Planescape, Eberron, etc.

Setting books can often be boring to read. Adventures often have too little setting detail for a GM to flesh out the world. Combine the two together and you get a great, detailed adventure with a tonne of world info that can be immediately applied to what the PCs are doing. It's a good format to present information and the perfect melding of high theory and praxis.

 

[halfling rogue]

I'm calling it. It's Greyhawk.

Based on Perkins' past hints/photos (see above)

As well as well as Mearls' affinity for it, not to mention comments on it regarding 5e:

"Personally, I’d love to see a big, Greyhawk hardcover sourcebook. The fifth edition rules system would work very well with Greyhawk. You wouldn’t need a lot of new class options, but the background system would be very handy for drawing out the differences between different regions. It would also be cool to get an in-depth treatment of the Free City of Greyhawk and the surrounding region. The original City of Greyhawk boxed set powered many of my campaigns in high school."

Also Rodney Thompson has been running a Greyhawk campaign. Here's a shot of (what seems to be the same shiny) Greyhawk Gazetteer that was on Perkins' desk. Just a guess, but since both pics were taken in the same month and since Perkins' retweeted the pic, I'm guessing there's a theme.https://twitter.com/ChrisPerkinsDnD/status/524735452725915648

Not only that, but just the other day on twitter Rodney wrote: [forgive me...I can't figure out how to embed tweets]

"Hey, Greyhawk fans, a couple of questions about the setting incoming."

"First, what would you say is the unique tone or character of the city of Greyhawk itself? What sets it apart from other cities?"

"Second, do you have a favorite adventure, book, reference, etc. that highlights the that tone?"

"In my city of Greyhawk sandbox campaign, I'm struggling a bit to convey a unique character of the city, and wanted to seek further opinions."

"Frankly, running the sandboxy campaign itself is enough of a challenge on its own that I haven't devoted as much time as I'd like to "feel.""

"Plus, since I'm not running traditional adventures per se, I have to communicate the city's uniqueness through description, events, & NPCs."

Sure, this could just be someone asking for advice for their own campaign...BUT...he works at friggin WoTC so yeah friggin right. I call shenanigans. No doubt he's running a game, but I'm willing to bet that there's more to it than that. They're studying and playing around with Greyhawk because they are going to release it (in whatever form) in 2016.

I also can't help but think Mearls' comments about "an in-depth treatment of the Free City of Greyhawk and the surrounding region" mixed with Thompson's "I have to communicate the city's uniqueness through description, events, & NPCs" is no coincidence.

 

[MartyW]

However the setting fluff is 130 years out of date. That's like using a book about the German Empire for an RPG in modern Germany, we just need to replace the rules for Dreyse needle-guns with rules for G36 assault rifles

Pshaw. Nobody cares about the recent history garbage... especially the 4e retcon followed by the 5e re-retcon.

Sure a few NPCs may have changed in the last 100 years, but the basics of all those countries are going to be essentially the same.

Besides, anyone who plays a Realms game set after the Time of Troubles is doing it wrong. Long live Bane!

 

[lkj]

So, I just saw the following tweets by Jeremy Crawford (the first of which Mearls retweeted):

"Does the #dnd tabletop RPG have one official setting? The answer is yes. That setting is the multiverse, which includes all #dnd worlds."

"The worlds occupy pockets of the Material Plane—sort of like planets but in a space shaped by magic and divine "forces.

This prompted me to go back and look at a tweet by Chris Perkins:

"I'm proud that 5E embraces all worlds and settings. I can't wait to show y'all what we're working on now."


Now, up front, I want to acknowledge that there are several ways to interpret what that means for future products and that both gentleman might simply be stating a philosophy unrelated to specific product development.

However, if one were to let go of caution and just wildly speculate (what? on the internet?), one might consider the following idea:

The WotC folk have consistently said they want to support all worlds. Perkins' tweet might be taken (-- yes totally speculating--) to hint either that he is working on something besides FR (as speculated in this thread) or that he is working on a project that helps 'embrace all worlds and settings'

Now, clearly, producing hard back books with detailed descriptions of every campaign setting is simply not in the cards. But if we accept that WotC would like to have some mechanism to support multiple worlds, maybe some more than others, is there a unified mechanism for them to do that?

Could you imagine a web project, crowdsourced or licensed, that pulled together materials from various settings updated to 5e through a common 'multiverse' portal? Might there be a sourcebook that details building worlds that uses some of the favorites (Greyhawk, DL, etc.) as examples?

I honestly don't have a good grasp of how they might achieve such a goal. But I keep seeing this theme of wanting to support a broad base. I keep wondering if they're trying to come up with a clever way to do that.

Anyway. Just thinking about it. It could well be they will simply point to previously published material. But, who knows, maybe there is something more interesting than just one or two campaign books in the cards.

OK. Back to work.

AD

 

[NiClerigo]

"It would be a great idea for WOTC to have an adventure path in each classic setting, starting with Greyhawk then moving on to Planescape, Eberron, etc.

Setting books can often be boring to read. Adventures often have too little setting detail for a GM to flesh out the world.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...-On-A-New-D-amp-D-Setting/page5#ixzz3PaWONyQ8"

While I love campaign setting books, especially because I prefer an open sandbox style of DMing which can be done being familiar with different aspects of the world (especially my favorite, Eberron), I admit that this is a sound idea. If they have been releasing and outsourcing the writing of adventures, why can they not publish future adventures set elsewhere, in settings different from the Realms I am not so interested in? I will not buy a FR adventure, for sure, but different adventures in different worlds could appeal to different players and highlight different aspects and possibilities of D&D games and styles. Furthermore, for instance, they could outsource adventures in other worlds to their creators or those who have worked on them, e.g. asking the great Keith Baker to write the respective Eberron one.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Could you imagine a web project, crowdsourced or licensed, that pulled together materials from various settings updated to 5e through a common 'multiverse' portal? Might there be a sourcebook that details building worlds that uses some of the favorites (Greyhawk, DL, etc.) as examples?

Maybe they're re-introducing the old Spelljammer/Crystal Spheres idea.

 

[Staffan]

So, I just saw the following tweets by Jeremy Crawford (the first of which Mearls retweeted):

"Does the #dnd tabletop RPG have one official setting? The answer is yes. That setting is the multiverse, which includes all #dnd worlds."

"The worlds occupy pockets of the Material Plane—sort of like planets but in a space shaped by magic and divine "forces.

This prompted me to go back and look at a tweet by Chris Perkins:

"I'm proud that 5E embraces all worlds and settings. I can't wait to show y'all what we're working on now."

Clearly, they are working on the best and most popular of all D&D settings: Spelljammer.

 

[gweinel]

Jeremy Crawford on twitter

Does the #dnd tabletop RPG have one official setting? The answer is yes. That setting is the multiverse, which includes all #dnd worlds.

They said that they have as core the multiverse, so i suspect that they have an inclusive holistic solution for all the settings. I don't know what this solution will be, but this the reason why we don't have yes an indication for a specific setting.
An inclusive holistic solution could have as a base spelljammer and/or planescape and through these two setting you explore the various worlds or something that we cannot yet imagine.

 

[tangleknot]

They said that they have as core the multiuniverse, so i suspect that they have an inclusive holistic solution for all the settings. I don't know what this solution will be, but this the reason why we don't have yes an indication for a specific setting.
An iclusive holistic solution could be having as the base spelljammer and/or planescape and through these two setting you explore the various worlds or something that we cannot yet imagine.

I'd understand if they want to make a generic Forgotten Realms or Grey Hawk as their default setting. New players might be turned away from anything but good-old reliably- generic fantasy.

But I agree with Gweinel: To encompass them all: Ebberon, Birthright, Raveloft ect.. The default ought to be a Spelljammer/ Planescape setting!

Well a guy can dream can't he