Is WotC announcing a new setting at GenCon?

[Silverblade The Ench]

well the "crystal Spheres" were

a) based of kind of from Ptolemic ideas of space, which, way back then proposed planets were fixed onto invisible crystal spheres, thus holding them in place, allowing orbital motions (yes, our ancestors could work out the Earth's precise diameter and that planets rotated in the heavens..they just didn't understand proper celestial mechanics but they were damn smart)

b) The D&D Crystal Spheres neatly cut each game setting off from each other, so the special conditions of each didn't have to be justified, and DMs could control transport if needed.
Also going across a Sphere, through the Phlogiston, was difficult and long, making such travellers very rare, keeping unusual goods rare (like guns in Faerun) and making such trips remarkable to play

ie, Dark Sun's sphere is closed, you can't enter it, so no one could like, ship in metal, lol
and the way magic works in Krynn has no effect on Toril because each has it's own solar system, cut off from the other allwoing unique laws of magic etc
Solar system in a Crystal Sphere = a unique prime material plane

Only issue I had with Spelljammer mechanics ("Grubbian Physics" hehe), was the "Planar" nature of gravity, which causes REAL headaches when designing ships in 3D, where I can see what crazy problems that would cause.
so I decided ships set their internal gravity according to their designer's needs.

 

[I'm A Banana]

In the end marketing trumps pretty much anything else when you're selling retail products...

I'd like to think WotC is better than that. They have remarkably creative people on board, and I've got confidence in their ability to expand D&D. If I was to do a "Monster Mash" supplement for D&D, there's any number of possibilities (heck, re-use the Heroes of Horror title! Perfect!), without slapping a name on with little consideration for what that name means.

A module where you fight a vampire is one thing, but if you're going to make an entire campaign about that stuff it seems like there are a LOT better game systems out there to use than D&D, even with some added mechanics.

I dunno, I see Strahd and their ilk as "Level 35 Solo" badasses in 4e. Or possibly lower-level, but the point remains: they're BBEGs. They're the Final Bosses. They're the people behind all the trouble the world is experiencing (or at least very nearly the people behind it). They're the ones you will work toward killing as you gain levels, since they cause overt suffering, and you know it, becuase you spend your lower levels working obliquely against that suffering.

They're different in that they define the setting. Asmodeus is present in D&D, but the campaigns don't just revolve around him. There's plenty of evil big and small to take out in various places.

A Ravenloft game might be like a regular D&D game set entirely in the Nine Hells. And I'd hope that a Ravenloft setting would give me rules that would help me do that as much as it would help me fight against The Mummy in a world where The Mummy is in control.