D&D 5E Should 5e have a "default setting" and cosmology?

[marleykat]

3e had Greyhawk as the default setting. 4e had "points of light".

In the 2e and 3e days, "the Great Wheel" was the default cosmology with several products referencing it.

Should 5e have a default setting or cosmology?

I personally don't want a default setting or cosmology. I think the rules should avoid mentioning anything other than the bare basics of cosmology. (e.g. The spell "Contact Other Plane" would imply the existence of other planes, but doesn't say what the planes would be.) That would encourage DMs to design any setting or cosmology they want without having feel like they have to shoehorn them into the "official" D&D setting.

What do you think?

I say yes it needs a default setting. I started playing regularly with 2e. I still hold fond memories of Dragonlance. Part of the why 4e never clicked with me is the PoL setting. Half the reason Pathfinder clicks with me is the setting Forgotten Realms like it may be but it's evocative despite that. So yes please give me fun settings especially at start.

 

[The Shadow]

I very much do not want to see a default setting built into the crunch. A bit of fluff to help new people - fine. The 3e default pantheon was a waste of page space for me, but I could see why they did it, and it was easy to ignore. But do not built anything of the sort into feat names or anything else.

(I'm a little torn on spell names. Mordenkainen, Bigby, Otiluke, Tenser - these are part of D&D's history. Arguably they now transcend the Greyhawk setting they originated in. But a little goes a very long way - let's not introduce any more. Though I do have a soft spot in my heart for Abi-Dalzim, it must be said.

I do see the point of a sample setting for beginners. These can really help fire the imagination - by giving examples of what's possible, and even by their flaws! Mystara, for example, has some great stuff in it, but also some dumb stuff that encouraged me at the time to do better. But fluff only, please, and emphasize that it's only an example. It doesn't need to be a $40 book - a booklet that comes in the boxed set will be fine, or if absolutely necessary, a couple dozen pages at the back of the DMG.

I do not ever want to see the Dinner Plate again. (My group's derisive name for the so-called 'Great Wheel'.) I have despised that thing ever since I first saw it in the AD&D DMG at the age of 11, and I've met plenty of people from the same era with the same reaction. I realize this is likely a losing battle, and that they will feel the need to mention it somewhere. But PLEASE, WotC, don't build into the core rules!

I actually rather like the 4e cosmology - one of the few things I thoroughly like about 4e, in fact. I think it's a distinct improvement over anything that came before. But I don't think it should be pushed hard either. The core rules should include only the most minimal of setting assumptions about the planes. It's impossible to have none, of course - if there's an Astral Projection spell in the book, they have to say something about an Astral plane - but I think there should be light touches only, with some options presented in the worldbuilding section of the DMG. Leave the rest for a Manual of the Planes.

 

[Belphanior]

None from the first PHB. This was pretty obviously intentional: D&D players are going to own the first PHB, and they are going to expect to be able to play with the options therein.

Except they ditched all divine classes, including paladin and cleric. So the expectation you talk about is really kind of not what's going on in 4e DS.

(Yes I know there's a sidebar reminding you that you can Rule 0 this, but the default rule is pretty clear.)

It goes beyond that. Saying that Tieflings come from Bael Turath, and had an empire that spanned the world millenia ago intrudes far more into my campaign setting than the examples you mention.

How?

How is "these guys are from Place X" intrusive in a way that "this spell was made by Mage X" not? That's an honest question by the way. They both seem incredibly easy to ignore, to me.



Moving along, I don't see how you can not have a default implied setting. Literally. I don't see how that is even possible.

"Elves are a PC race but orcs are not" is a piece of setting.
"Multiple gods exist" is a piece of setting.
"Wizards are in the game but gunpowder is not" is a piece of setting.

There is simply no way you can write D&D without injecting a setting into the pages. I think some people have become so used to the default Greyhawk style of pre-4e editions that they genuinely see it as something neutral - but it isn't. It's a setting that's just as much as "Points of Light" was, except it was different so you couldn't gloss over it as easily.

 

[Recidivism]

I'd very much prefer if the default setting was kept to a minimum (not sure it's entirely possible to cut it all out).

As Kaodi demonstrated earlier in this thread, provide a pantheon of god archetypes for religion. If not that then I would provide several real-life pantheons: Greek, Norse, Egyptian.

I definitely prefer to use a pantheon in my games that players who aren't steeped in D&D mythos are familiar with. I can have a character in my game make a reference to the wrath of Ares, or the beauty of Aphrodite, and most people immediately understand the comment. No one knows the D&D pantheon(s) unless they've been playing for years, so those comments require explanations, and even then there isn't nearly the richness of a real mythos.

Feats and other powers that don't appear in setting-specific material should probably avoid referencing setting specific features. The god-specific feats are a good example of things I'd rather not see. References to the history of the races are less annoying, but I think it can be kept speculative rather than giving definitive information.

A good way to do this is [ironically] to introduce some sort of character, like Volo in the Forgotten Realms, who provides his interpretation of history or other controversial features. If the Player's Handbook has an introductory sidebar on Tieflings written by <Scholar X> that says that the Tieflings used to have this ancient empire that spanned the globe, well ... He could just be wrong.

Planes and other cosmology should be left out entirely. I've never felt a need to have this in any campaign except as a hinting at greater powers. Providing too much information on this is the quickest and easiest way to take all the mystery and sense of wonder out of it. Specifying that the Eladrin are fey and come from the Feywild was pretty inappropriate to me, as it basically sets up that travel between different planes of reality is trivial.

 

[catsclaw227]

Look guys, there's gotta be somewhere for them to plop sample encounters, the initial 1-3 adventure and some DDI articles. So where should it be?

I've heard that a time-indifferent FR or GH is where they'll do it, but who knows?

BTW, who where the runner-ups in the old 3.5 setting contest?

Maybe we'll be playing 5e in the OotS world!

 

[avin]

From what we can tell about the 4e DS creative process, the designers didn't include eladrin and dragonborn because they had to but rather because, as game designers, they thought it was a good idea for including the 4th edition version of Dark Sun.

High Elves (Eladrin) fit smoothly on DS. I like it.

Dragonborn are Dray, and that's it.

 

[Osgood]

I would rather there was no default setting. Perhaps the base books have the Greek pantheon as an example, or refer to gods in terms of their portfolio/domains (ie. death god, sun god, etc.), and then include several setting options in the DMG. This could be a 2- or 4-page spread for several campaign settings, perhaps with equivalency charts (in Greyhawk the death god is Wee Jas or Nerull, in Eberron use the Blood of Vol, etc.).

 

[Umbran]

Should 5e have a default setting or cosmology?

Yep. Because the best way to teach is by example: "Here's the standard. Here's a variation or two from the standard." This would give folks an idea of how far you can go in various directions, and how much extra work/rules you do (or don't) need to do it.

 

[Halivar]

How is "these guys are from Place X" intrusive in a way that "this spell was made by Mage X" not? That's an honest question by the way. They both seem incredibly easy to ignore, to me.

Saying "this spells was made my mage X" does not in any way affect my campaign setting. Not in the slightest, teensiest bit, unless my setting says mages don't invent spells. In which case, I am ignoring a single word.

In 4E, there were entire sections of text (the entirety of all the fluff included with Dragonborn, Tieflings, and Eladrin, in fact) that I really could not use because of its campaign setting intrusion.

 

[Alzrius]

Yes.

1. For new DMs and players.
2. For the shared experiences across the hobby.
3. For experienced DMs and players that don't have time to make it all up.

This does not impede people from using another setting, not in the least. But it does enable entry to the game for new people, and w/o new people, there is no DND eventually. It does give people who don't want to invent a new world, a world to work with. It does give us a shared experience.

For all the talk of the importance of story, I keep reading threads that ask for no story in the game. And I don't get that.

I agree with this fully. My one caveat is that I'm not sure what the best way is to present such a setting.

Should it be in the Core Rulebooks? If so, how? A chapter or chapters detailing the setting, and if so how much detail should be presented? Or should references just be sprinkled throughout the book as a given ("who is this 'Mordenkainen' that made this disjunction spell?")? In that case, should there then be a setting book published separately, a la a campaign setting guide, with clear reference that this is the default campaign assumed?

I think a default setting is a good idea, but how it's presented isn't an afterthought - it's half of the equation.