Ravnica: Is This The New D&D Setting? [UPDATED & CONFIRMED!]

If so... meh?

 

[Chaosmancer]

[MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION] "Depending on how powerful you wanted it to be, couldn't you just use the rules already established by the Arrow of Slaying and the Dragonslayer swords? I don't think Dragonlances were 1hit kills, but the only thing I remember about them was "really good at killing dragons" and you don't need a lot of fancy rules for that. Just a lot of dice. "

Ye and no. Depends. Dragonlances had some odd functions, against dragons and draconians they dealt number of the wielders hitpoints in damage which at times where a dragon wcould have only 42 hp instakill. They were +5 weapons. They could be used while mounted on a dragon, and in this case I thinkthey did even more damage + in this case they could be used to direct and commad the dragons breathweapon.

A 5e arrow of slaying or a dragonslayer sword is nothing compared to that.

Really?

Point 1) Dealing players hp as damage. This is just more damage, and like you said that could have been an instant kill. So, a roll at disadvantage versus a high DC or instant dead is perfectly fine. Or, a number of weapon dice equal to the players HD if you want that same "hp is tied to damage" thing

Point 2) +5 weapon. Well, no weapon is currently a +5, but you could easily make it +5, or leave it at a +3 since dragons have so much lower AC in this edition

Point 3) Can be used while mounted on a dragon... So can pretty much every other weapon in the game. Might have a hard time with a dagger, but a lance while mounted is pretty common.

Point 4) More damage while mounted on a dragon. Easy enough to increase damage once a player is mounted on a dragon. A scale based on how old the dragon is, giving a modifier to hit and damage.

Point 5) Directing Dragon Breath... Doesn't need a special ability really, it would just need the player to say "shoot the breathe weapon to the left group" so it doesn't need any sort of write up

 

[Philip F Goding]

My opinion on what WotC is doing as far as classic settings such as Greyhawk, Mystara, Blackmoor, Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Kara Tur, Al Qadim and all the rest is that first each has to be significantly different than Forgotten Realms and also be true to what they were like before. I am sure there has been a lot of play testing concerning unique features of each and the fact that they are not coming out yet shows they are not ready yet and possibly they were not as high on the priority list, which to some extend is affected by the demand.

I am a big Greyhawk fan from back to 1979 and the early days of AD&D 1st edition and the Holmes Basic D&D. Everything I run is in Greyhawk. The only other setting I have ever used is Dragonlance. However I could easily be interested in visiting other settings. To me they are all nice places to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. Like in Oz returning to Kansas was a must as there is no place like home and that is where the heart is. Later I did run the so-called d20 3rd edition too as there appeared to be some focus on Greyhawk there.

As a player I have played in Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, Kalamar and Dark Sun and that has been fine to explore other worlds, but Greyhawk is the world that I have made my own and I know what is happening there on cosmic levels. Anything I want in Greyhawk is there no matter what it came form whether that was another setting, some book I read or film I saw or my own inspiration. My Greyhawk of course is not the same as anyone else's version, but that's ok.

I have noticed that WotC for 5th edition has focused on Forgotten Realms as their main setting with a visit to Ravenloft, which I always felt was somewhat connected to FR anyway. Many of the ealy adventures though seemed largely derived from early Greyhawk adventures, but set in Forgotten Realms. That was a bit annoying to me as I watched products which were to me the T series, the D series and the G series based. I fully expected the A series at some point too.

Then we got Tales of the Yawning Portal with a C module and a couple of the S series, as well as Against The Giants and the first two of the 3rd edition Greyhawk series. Here we appeared to actually be going to Greyhawk, so perhaps in a way we've already gone there and this is play testing for the future Greyhawk setting.

Now besides a Waterdeep module that you could convert to Greyhawk or Sharn or another large city in another setting as well as the Ravnica setting, which is a planetwide city that reminds me somewhat of Judge Dredd's Mega-City One. I do note that some folks seem to want a different magic system coming out of this, but I gather that it's set up to follow conventional D&D magic rules with some aspects of the colors in place as far as the guilds, but the rest seems to be left to the will of whomsoever runs this setting. Seems they didn't want to rely on that too heavily and alienate D&D fans, but it seems open to Magic:TG to refer to things that way. In other words they are trying to thread the needle between two groups of fans. I expect some tweeks in the future perhaps. I am not surprised to see Eberron either.

The interesting thing to me is the Dungeon of the Mad Mage version of Undermountain. Never before did I see this as a rip off of the original Castle Greyhawk or Castle of the Mad Arch Mage until now. That had some connections to Wonderland, The Looking Glass, Skull Island and so on. There were pieces of these sort of settings to visit in the EX series and WOG and you had other connections Maure Castle, Tsojcanth, Tharizdun and the Barrier Peaks perhaps.

I generally start new players in the Tower of Zenopus from the Holmes book, Keep on the Borderlands (I may use In Search of the Unknown with either of these), the U series, the L Lendore Isle series or the Sunless Citadel. I may follow with the A series or something else or I may follow the series that begins with the Sunless Citadel and leads to Ashardalon the red dragon from 3rd edition. As the years go by there are more and more options although may want to convert what ever you use filling in the spaces with whatever comes from the imagination and who knows what direction players will choose anyway.

In any case it appears as if they at WotC seem to be talking about the history of D&D lately and they seem to know fans want them to be true to that history they remember. It just seems likely that the Greyhawk setting that has only been teased so far they are going to want that to be something that older Grognard players and DM's are going to want to use. I know there is a fear that they are going to ruin it somehow by putting in Dragonborn, nice Drow, Gnome Paladins, and racial harmony and of course any DM would strip out anything like this they didn't like anyway.

I focus on so-called "nice" Drow. First of all whether or not a drow is food or evil is relative. A drow that is good very likely is dealing with a lot of PTSD stuff and in anycase us not likely to be very nice unless he/she is crazy in this way. The story of this drow is of one who has gone through a lot of suffering in order the attempt of changing their nature and upbringing. Such a drow is unlikely to survive. I suppose there could be some setting or alternate reality where being a nice drow is normal, but then what are other elves like in that reality? I could see an Afro-centric setting where the dark skinned elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings etc are the good folk and light skinned versions of the same are evil. It all depends on what you want to play. Skin color isn't really the thing so much as the society or culture you grew up in. I find it interesting that dark skinned evil versions of some of the races live underground where they are exposed ro little light to make their skin dark, but then this is a magical fantasy world that doesn't necessarily follow the rules that we know about science. I tend myself towards a Tolkienesque sort of thing on elves where there are no Drow per se and perhaps goblins and especially orcs were elves that were tortured and twisted into the evil beings they became by Sauron the dark lord who had been the chief lieurenant of Morgoth and then Melkor before the events in LotR. Their whole purpose was to corrupt the different races of Middle Earth anyway. Of course D&D can't really use things that are from Tolkien, but that doesn't stop me. I did have the original white box D&D books, which did lean heavily on Tolkien and other writers. I use Balrogs and Hobbits too among other things. Drow to me are just pretty orcs with more magic perhaps. my goblins however are from Piers Anthony's Xanth series.

In Xanth Goblins are half the height of a Human, the males tend to be very ugly rude and violent, and the females tend to be very sweet and pretty. During the Harpy-Goblin war, the Harpies cursed the Goblin girls to only like ugly violent men, so by natural selection all of the decent men disappeared. The curse was abated later, but by then the damage was already done.

So in my world you might have a nice Goblin female, but not so with male-Goblins, Orcs or Drow. Usually not even half-Orcs or Half-Drow elves are foing to be good. The stigma against these corrupted beings is just so great against them. People who face racial prejudices from folk of other races tend to develop racial prejudices too towards people of the races that oppressed them. They may not think of themselves as evil because they tend towards being the hero of their own story, but it's all relative to the perspectives of those around you and a relatively good Drow is not going to hold up to the human standard of what is good and especially not the Elven standard. They are only seen that way in accordance with Drow or Orc standards and they do not see being good as a good thing. I look at the Star Trek: Mirror Universe as the basic idea here or in DC comics the Crime Syndicate of Amerika vs the Justice League of America. In these cultures there is not going to be any rehabilitation as it is only seen as making one who is strong weak. Drow abd Orc cultures are certainly seen this way and not as corrupted at all. We only from our own standards of today see it as Sociopathic or at least selfish.

Certainly we have evolved from thse beginnings ourselves. I'm sure the Holy Roman Empire appreciated such strength over weakness. There are many today who still believe in strong patriarchal leaders while D&D itself is one area in society where we move towards cooperation and collaboration over the Capitalistic competitive ways. Remember that the bigger they are the harder they fall and what goes up must come down. It's all a cycle of King of the Hill and then two heads are better than one and can remain on top longer. no wonder they want to divide groups because they are then easier to conquer quicker.

 

[gyor]

My opinion on what WotC is doing as far as classic settings such as Greyhawk, Mystara, Blackmoor, Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Kara Tur, Al Qadim and all the rest is that first each has to be significantly different than Forgotten Realms and also be true to what they were like before. I am sure there has been a lot of play testing concerning unique features of each and the fact that they are not coming out yet shows they are not ready yet and possibly they were not as high on the priority list, which to some extend is affected by the demand.

I am a big Greyhawk fan from back to 1979 and the early days of AD&D 1st edition and the Holmes Basic D&D. Everything I run is in Greyhawk. The only other setting I have ever used is Dragonlance. However I could easily be interested in visiting other settings. To me they are all nice places to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. Like in Oz returning to Kansas was a must as there is no place like home and that is where the heart is. Later I did run the so-called d20 3rd edition too as there appeared to be some focus on Greyhawk there.

As a player I have played in Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, Kalamar and Dark Sun and that has been fine to explore other worlds, but Greyhawk is the world that I have made my own and I know what is happening there on cosmic levels. Anything I want in Greyhawk is there no matter what it came form whether that was another setting, some book I read or film I saw or my own inspiration. My Greyhawk of course is not the same as anyone else's version, but that's ok.

I have noticed that WotC for 5th edition has focused on Forgotten Realms as their main setting with a visit to Ravenloft, which I always felt was somewhat connected to FR anyway. Many of the ealy adventures though seemed largely derived from early Greyhawk adventures, but set in Forgotten Realms. That was a bit annoying to me as I watched products which were to me the T series, the D series and the G series based. I fully expected the A series at some point too.

Then we got Tales of the Yawning Portal with a C module and a couple of the S series, as well as Against The Giants and the first two of the 3rd edition Greyhawk series. Here we appeared to actually be going to Greyhawk, so perhaps in a way we've already gone there and this is play testing for the future Greyhawk setting.

Now besides a Waterdeep module that you could convert to Greyhawk or Sharn or another large city in another setting as well as the Ravnica setting, which is a planetwide city that reminds me somewhat of Judge Dredd's Mega-City One. I do note that some folks seem to want a different magic system coming out of this, but I gather that it's set up to follow conventional D&D magic rules with some aspects of the colors in place as far as the guilds, but the rest seems to be left to the will of whomsoever runs this setting. Seems they didn't want to rely on that too heavily and alienate D&D fans, but it seems open to Magic:TG to refer to things that way. In other words they are trying to thread the needle between two groups of fans. I expect some tweeks in the future perhaps. I am not surprised to see Eberron either.

The interesting thing to me is the Dungeon of the Mad Mage version of Undermountain. Never before did I see this as a rip off of the original Castle Greyhawk or Castle of the Mad Arch Mage until now. That had some connections to Wonderland, The Looking Glass, Skull Island and so on. There were pieces of these sort of settings to visit in the EX series and WOG and you had other connections Maure Castle, Tsojcanth, Tharizdun and the Barrier Peaks perhaps.

I generally start new players in the Tower of Zenopus from the Holmes book, Keep on the Borderlands (I may use In Search of the Unknown with either of these), the U series, the L Lendore Isle series or the Sunless Citadel. I may follow with the A series or something else or I may follow the series that begins with the Sunless Citadel and leads to Ashardalon the red dragon from 3rd edition. As the years go by there are more and more options although may want to convert what ever you use filling in the spaces with whatever comes from the imagination and who knows what direction players will choose anyway.

In any case it appears as if they at WotC seem to be talking about the history of D&D lately and they seem to know fans want them to be true to that history they remember. It just seems likely that the Greyhawk setting that has only been teased so far they are going to want that to be something that older Grognard players and DM's are going to want to use. I know there is a fear that they are going to ruin it somehow by putting in Dragonborn, nice Drow, Gnome Paladins, and racial harmony and of course any DM would strip out anything like this they didn't like anyway.

I focus on so-called "nice" Drow. First of all whether or not a drow is food or evil is relative. A drow that is good very likely is dealing with a lot of PTSD stuff and in anycase us not likely to be very nice unless he/she is crazy in this way. The story of this drow is of one who has gone through a lot of suffering in order the attempt of changing their nature and upbringing. Such a drow is unlikely to survive. I suppose there could be some setting or alternate reality where being a nice drow is normal, but then what are other elves like in that reality? I could see an Afro-centric setting where the dark skinned elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings etc are the good folk and light skinned versions of the same are evil. It all depends on what you want to play. Skin color isn't really the thing so much as the society or culture you grew up in. I find it interesting that dark skinned evil versions of some of the races live underground where they are exposed ro little light to make their skin dark, but then this is a magical fantasy world that doesn't necessarily follow the rules that we know about science. I tend myself towards a Tolkienesque sort of thing on elves where there are no Drow per se and perhaps goblins and especially orcs were elves that were tortured and twisted into the evil beings they became by Sauron the dark lord who had been the chief lieurenant of Morgoth and then Melkor before the events in LotR. Their whole purpose was to corrupt the different races of Middle Earth anyway. Of course D&D can't really use things that are from Tolkien, but that doesn't stop me. I did have the original white box D&D books, which did lean heavily on Tolkien and other writers. I use Balrogs and Hobbits too among other things. Drow to me are just pretty orcs with more magic perhaps. my goblins however are from Piers Anthony's Xanth series.

In Xanth Goblins are half the height of a Human, the males tend to be very ugly rude and violent, and the females tend to be very sweet and pretty. During the Harpy-Goblin war, the Harpies cursed the Goblin girls to only like ugly violent men, so by natural selection all of the decent men disappeared. The curse was abated later, but by then the damage was already done.

So in my world you might have a nice Goblin female, but not so with male-Goblins, Orcs or Drow. Usually not even half-Orcs or Half-Drow elves are foing to be good. The stigma against these corrupted beings is just so great against them. People who face racial prejudices from folk of other races tend to develop racial prejudices too towards people of the races that oppressed them. They may not think of themselves as evil because they tend towards being the hero of their own story, but it's all relative to the perspectives of those around you and a relatively good Drow is not going to hold up to the human standard of what is good and especially not the Elven standard. They are only seen that way in accordance with Drow or Orc standards and they do not see being good as a good thing. I look at the Star Trek: Mirror Universe as the basic idea here or in DC comics the Crime Syndicate of Amerika vs the Justice League of America. In these cultures there is not going to be any rehabilitation as it is only seen as making one who is strong weak. Drow abd Orc cultures are certainly seen this way and not as corrupted at all. We only from our own standards of today see it as Sociopathic or at least selfish.

Certainly we have evolved from thse beginnings ourselves. I'm sure the Holy Roman Empire appreciated such strength over weakness. There are many today who still believe in strong patriarchal leaders while D&D itself is one area in society where we move towards cooperation and collaboration over the Capitalistic competitive ways. Remember that the bigger they are the harder they fall and what goes up must come down. It's all a cycle of King of the Hill and then two heads are better than one and can remain on top longer. no wonder they want to divide groups because they are then easier to conquer quicker.

Wow, I dude was born in 1979, back when you were playing Greyhawk, puts things in perspective doesn't it.

 

[Demetrios1453]

. It just seems likely that the Greyhawk setting that has only been teased so far they are going to want that to be something that older Grognard players and DM's are going to want to use. I know there is a fear that they are going to ruin it somehow by putting in Dragonborn, nice Drow, Gnome Paladins, and racial harmony and of course any DM would strip out anything like this they didn't like anyway.

If I may ask, why single out gnome paladins in particular? Surely there are followers of Gaerdal Ironhand who could combine the holy and martial in the defense of the home burrows from outside threats...

 

[gyor]

Your and @Coroc comments have given me food for tought , and while I don't fear for the release of the ravnica setting, I know it will not be as good as it should and here why :

I don't think they will integrate the color system to it.

The color system is the backbone of magic lore, but in some planes it can be more or less impactful, innistrad being quite less influenced by it than say Zendikar ( and while the zendikar planeshift manual did talk lightly about colors , it did nothing to integrate it into the mechanics )

The color system can be akin to the alignements, and in such ambientations could totally supplant it.

Where a lich in alignement terms is fundamentally evil, in magic color system terms it would be black.

What would it mean in a mechanical sense ? well , colors represent ideas and abilities, and that could as well bestow creatures and players alike with those and vice versa.

This message is a lot longer than I tought it would...and I feel there is much more to say, but...it's not like wizard of the coast read these , so I won't go into a 20 pages word essay to explain why I think the color system should be integrated with these ambientations...

Edit : Forgot to add, I'm still hyped for the book , as it will serve as a solid base for my own version that I will make my players play

The ideas and things the colours convey will be in the book, they just won't use the MtG terminology for it.

 

[gyor]

My opinion on what WotC is doing as far as classic settings such as Greyhawk, Mystara, Blackmoor, Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Kara Tur, Al Qadim and all the rest is that first each has to be significantly different than Forgotten Realms and also be true to what they were like before. I am sure there has been a lot of play testing concerning unique features of each and the fact that they are not coming out yet shows they are not ready yet and possibly they were not as high on the priority list, which to some extend is affected by the demand.

I am a big Greyhawk fan from back to 1979 and the early days of AD&D 1st edition and the Holmes Basic D&D. Everything I run is in Greyhawk. The only other setting I have ever used is Dragonlance. However I could easily be interested in visiting other settings. To me they are all nice places to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. Like in Oz returning to Kansas was a must as there is no place like home and that is where the heart is. Later I did run the so-called d20 3rd edition too as there appeared to be some focus on Greyhawk there.

As a player I have played in Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, Kalamar and Dark Sun and that has been fine to explore other worlds, but Greyhawk is the world that I have made my own and I know what is happening there on cosmic levels. Anything I want in Greyhawk is there no matter what it came form whether that was another setting, some book I read or film I saw or my own inspiration. My Greyhawk of course is not the same as anyone else's version, but that's ok.

I have noticed that WotC for 5th edition has focused on Forgotten Realms as their main setting with a visit to Ravenloft, which I always felt was somewhat connected to FR anyway. Many of the ealy adventures though seemed largely derived from early Greyhawk adventures, but set in Forgotten Realms. That was a bit annoying to me as I watched products which were to me the T series, the D series and the G series based. I fully expected the A series at some point too.

Then we got Tales of the Yawning Portal with a C module and a couple of the S series, as well as Against The Giants and the first two of the 3rd edition Greyhawk series. Here we appeared to actually be going to Greyhawk, so perhaps in a way we've already gone there and this is play testing for the future Greyhawk setting.

Now besides a Waterdeep module that you could convert to Greyhawk or Sharn or another large city in another setting as well as the Ravnica setting, which is a planetwide city that reminds me somewhat of Judge Dredd's Mega-City One. I do note that some folks seem to want a different magic system coming out of this, but I gather that it's set up to follow conventional D&D magic rules with some aspects of the colors in place as far as the guilds, but the rest seems to be left to the will of whomsoever runs this setting. Seems they didn't want to rely on that too heavily and alienate D&D fans, but it seems open to Magic:TG to refer to things that way. In other words they are trying to thread the needle between two groups of fans. I expect some tweeks in the future perhaps. I am not surprised to see Eberron either.

The interesting thing to me is the Dungeon of the Mad Mage version of Undermountain. Never before did I see this as a rip off of the original Castle Greyhawk or Castle of the Mad Arch Mage until now. That had some connections to Wonderland, The Looking Glass, Skull Island and so on. There were pieces of these sort of settings to visit in the EX series and WOG and you had other connections Maure Castle, Tsojcanth, Tharizdun and the Barrier Peaks perhaps.

I generally start new players in the Tower of Zenopus from the Holmes book, Keep on the Borderlands (I may use In Search of the Unknown with either of these), the U series, the L Lendore Isle series or the Sunless Citadel. I may follow with the A series or something else or I may follow the series that begins with the Sunless Citadel and leads to Ashardalon the red dragon from 3rd edition. As the years go by there are more and more options although may want to convert what ever you use filling in the spaces with whatever comes from the imagination and who knows what direction players will choose anyway.

In any case it appears as if they at WotC seem to be talking about the history of D&D lately and they seem to know fans want them to be true to that history they remember. It just seems likely that the Greyhawk setting that has only been teased so far they are going to want that to be something that older Grognard players and DM's are going to want to use. I know there is a fear that they are going to ruin it somehow by putting in Dragonborn, nice Drow, Gnome Paladins, and racial harmony and of course any DM would strip out anything like this they didn't like anyway.

I focus on so-called "nice" Drow. First of all whether or not a drow is food or evil is relative. A drow that is good very likely is dealing with a lot of PTSD stuff and in anycase us not likely to be very nice unless he/she is crazy in this way. The story of this drow is of one who has gone through a lot of suffering in order the attempt of changing their nature and upbringing. Such a drow is unlikely to survive. I suppose there could be some setting or alternate reality where being a nice drow is normal, but then what are other elves like in that reality? I could see an Afro-centric setting where the dark skinned elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings etc are the good folk and light skinned versions of the same are evil. It all depends on what you want to play. Skin color isn't really the thing so much as the society or culture you grew up in. I find it interesting that dark skinned evil versions of some of the races live underground where they are exposed ro little light to make their skin dark, but then this is a magical fantasy world that doesn't necessarily follow the rules that we know about science. I tend myself towards a Tolkienesque sort of thing on elves where there are no Drow per se and perhaps goblins and especially orcs were elves that were tortured and twisted into the evil beings they became by Sauron the dark lord who had been the chief lieurenant of Morgoth and then Melkor before the events in LotR. Their whole purpose was to corrupt the different races of Middle Earth anyway. Of course D&D can't really use things that are from Tolkien, but that doesn't stop me. I did have the original white box D&D books, which did lean heavily on Tolkien and other writers. I use Balrogs and Hobbits too among other things. Drow to me are just pretty orcs with more magic perhaps. my goblins however are from Piers Anthony's Xanth series.

In Xanth Goblins are half the height of a Human, the males tend to be very ugly rude and violent, and the females tend to be very sweet and pretty. During the Harpy-Goblin war, the Harpies cursed the Goblin girls to only like ugly violent men, so by natural selection all of the decent men disappeared. The curse was abated later, but by then the damage was already done.

So in my world you might have a nice Goblin female, but not so with male-Goblins, Orcs or Drow. Usually not even half-Orcs or Half-Drow elves are foing to be good. The stigma against these corrupted beings is just so great against them. People who face racial prejudices from folk of other races tend to develop racial prejudices too towards people of the races that oppressed them. They may not think of themselves as evil because they tend towards being the hero of their own story, but it's all relative to the perspectives of those around you and a relatively good Drow is not going to hold up to the human standard of what is good and especially not the Elven standard. They are only seen that way in accordance with Drow or Orc standards and they do not see being good as a good thing. I look at the Star Trek: Mirror Universe as the basic idea here or in DC comics the Crime Syndicate of Amerika vs the Justice League of America. In these cultures there is not going to be any rehabilitation as it is only seen as making one who is strong weak. Drow abd Orc cultures are certainly seen this way and not as corrupted at all. We only from our own standards of today see it as Sociopathic or at least selfish.

Certainly we have evolved from thse beginnings ourselves. I'm sure the Holy Roman Empire appreciated such strength over weakness. There are many today who still believe in strong patriarchal leaders while D&D itself is one area in society where we move towards cooperation and collaboration over the Capitalistic competitive ways. Remember that the bigger they are the harder they fall and what goes up must come down. It's all a cycle of King of the Hill and then two heads are better than one and can remain on top longer. no wonder they want to divide groups because they are then easier to conquer quicker.

I think the ones that are most different from FR get top priority, but I think they will hit all of them.

There is roughly a 4 month gap between Eberron's release and Ravnica's. If that continues that is 3 settings a year.

So maybe Dragonlance, Darksun, and Spelljammer 2019,then Mystara, Planescape, Greyhawk 2020, and Nentir Vale, Birthright, another MtG setting 2021, then 2022 a completely new setting.

 

[Philip F Goding]

If I may ask, why single out gnome paladins in particular? Surely there are followers of Gaerdal Ironhand who could combine the holy and martial in the defense of the home burrows from outside threats...

It wasn't just the Gnome not being allowed to be a Paladin, but other races could not bne certain classes as well. Human was the only race that was allowed to be any class. Also the various races were limited in how high they could progress in classes and class abilities, not just in accordance with their race, but also their ability scores. The requirements for some things were sometimes quite high. I carried this particular example forward instead of putting forth another example. I was actually focused on the "nice" Drow idea and not the Gnome. Requirements for a Paladin were quite high and I think the Gnome was not the only race that could not be one, but that wasn't just Greyhawk, but it was 1st Edition AD&D.

 

[Philip F Goding]

Wow, I dude was born in 1979, back when you were playing Greyhawk, puts things in perspective doesn't it.

Yes, I'm sure we would have started in THAC0 AD&D 2nd Edition either in Greyhawk or Dragonlance and then converted to d20 D&D 3rd Edition when that came out or we would have been players together in someone else's Forgotten Realms game.

 

[Mercurius]

I think the ones that are most different from FR get top priority, but I think they will hit all of them.

There is roughly a 4 month gap between Eberron's release and Ravnica's. If that continues that is 3 settings a year.

So maybe Dragonlance, Darksun, and Spelljammer 2019,then Mystara, Planescape, Greyhawk 2020, and Nentir Vale, Birthright, another MtG setting 2021, then 2022 a completely new setting.

While I hope this is true, I think it is wishful thinking. More realistically we get one, maybe two, classic setting PDFs per year.

 

[Philip F Goding]

I think the ones that are most different from FR get top priority, but I think they will hit all of them.

There is roughly a 4 month gap between Eberron's release and Ravnica's. If that continues that is 3 settings a year.

So maybe Dragonlance, Darksun, and Spelljammer 2019,then Mystara, Planescape, Greyhawk 2020, and Nentir Vale, Birthright, another MtG setting 2021, then 2022 a completely new setting.

I pretty much agree although I don't think we can count on any set gap between settings. First of all there is already some Greyhawk setting specific adventures out there. Then with the Plain Shift materials coming out we already have five of those M:TG settings out there in some form and I'm sure they are still putting the fine tunings on Ravnica and there are other M:TG settings being worked on.

Eberron is in a playtest form that they seem to really be pushing now. Who knows when the final version of that will be done. It could be ready before or after Ravnica or even the same time. Spelljammer is technically a way to travel between the Prime Material Planes different settings even though it's something of it's own setting as well. Planescape involves traveling between the various planes, but you could conceivably travel to different settings in the Prime Material Plane as well. Looks as if you can do this at the Yawning Portal or some other gateways/portals doors in the Undermountain or if you could get to Sigil.

They have spoken about Eberron as if the Crystal bubble surrounding Eberronspace has locked people in that setting in and other setting out, but that this is changing as shards fall to ground and cracks appear. That to me is quite interesting, so I see aspects of Spelljammer and Planescape being worked on and appearing.

I would say that setting such as Dragonlance and Dark Sun are likely to come along following Ravnica and Eberron and then Spelljammer and Planescape. Mystara and Greyhawk go way back and will no doubt along at some point. I think they plan on Dominaria coming up before too long and other M:TG settings as we go down through the list of those. Just as we go down the list of D&D settings.

Some settings that have come out before may have rights issues attached to them so I wonder if there will be some 3rd party support product settings come out at some point. I hope for some collaboration deals to be worked out with some of these as unity seems to be helping D&D a lot these days and division seems to hurt.

Some settings such as Al Qadim, Maztica, Kara Tur, Malatra and The Horde are just different areas that we know are just on the same planet as Faerun and Chult and just involve normal travel. Similarly Savage Coast and Hollow Earth are part of Mystara.

I don't know much about Nentir Vale a default 4th edition setting that I don't think got that much play. It seems to be some sort of cross between Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk. As for Birthright, I don't know much about that either, but some folk seem to love it.

As we go down the list I'm sure the more obscure settings won't get a lot of love for a while if ever and there are planty of them. I expect we will be on to another edition before WotC exhausts them all. We may see one or two completely new settings in a way similar to how they came upon Forgetten Realms and Eberron. All new settings fill a niche of interest among fans.

Some of the settings that I wondser about rights issues, but have had connections with D&D in the past include Blackmoor, Kalibruhn (Rob Kuntz), Lankhmar, Kalamar, Rokugon (Legend of the Five Rings), Hyborean Age, Melnibone, Tekumel (Empire of the Petal Throne) and so many others. You could just go down a list of mythologies in our own history with setting based in Norse Mythology, Egyptian Mythology, Greek Mythology, Roman Mythology, Celtic Mythology, Japanese, Chinese, American Indian, Arthurian, Central and South American, Judeo-Christian, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Babylonian and Sumerian, African and so forth. There is no lack of settings based on books or movies or comics even. There is the cosmic horror of Lovecraft, Middle Earth of Tolkien, The Land of Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Elfquest of Richard and Wendy Pini, the cartoon Pirates of Dark Water. Those are just a few of what I've taken from. I've used everything from Alien to Zardoz. All that stops WotC is working out deals with whomsover owns the rights.