WotC So, when do the announce the July book? Guesses on what it'll be? 🤔

[Parmandur]

Greyhawk also serves that purpose quite well, IMHO. Is there indication that GoS was not well received?

It was well received, though the Greyhawk books don't service the Forgotten Realms fans. Between Forgotten Realms aficiandos and homebrewery who like generic products to pick apart, that covers a majority of players, apparently.

 

[overgeeked]

Karameikos was published under license for a while, but the rights always belonged (and still do) to Kenzer & Co.

Sorry, but what? How would Kenzer own a piece of D&D‘s Mystara?

 

[Nikosandros]

Sorry, but what? How would Kenzer own a piece of D&D‘s Mystara?

I apologize. Brain fart. Kenzer own Kalamar. Sorry about that.

 

[dave2008]

When they said Classic Settings did they mean that or was it a reference to their MtG series instead?

The three "classic" settings under development (with Ravenloft being one of them) was specifically mentioned as D&D settings separate from MtG settings, which will also continue to be ported to D&D.

 

[Mercurius]

I don't see much/any negativity towards games that include stuff like slavery as a setting element, but the issue is whether they make it kind of a central issue, and make it more like Roman-style slavery, or more like Southern-style slavery. Unfortunately, despite the presence of some Roman and Ancient World trappings in Dark Sun, the slavery was more oriented towards the Southern-style, replete with an entire race of beings who only exist via slave-breeding (and who unfortunately play into some weird racist tropes about human breeding associated with slavery).

Well, I don't agree that including Southern-style (or influenced) slavery is inherently problematic. I mean, it is something bad in Dark Sun that was inspired by something bad in the real world. It is a "What If" scenario and I see no reason to disallow such speculative set-ups. I do understand that D&D is not a fringe product; it isn't some indie game with a small, insular audience and it needs to have broad appeal and be somewhat sanitized for mass consumption. But it is really no different than, say, shows like Man In the High Castle or the film Get Out - they're exploring speculative What If scenarios that are based on real-world dynamics, and thus the point of it is "What If this horrible thing were true?" I don't see why a D&D setting can't be published with mature themes...it is already marketed as a game for 14+ year olds.

So I think you'd have to re-work and re-name or simply re-move Muls, and you could have slavery but you'd want to turn it down a bit and push it more towards the Roman style (which would make more sense anyway in the setting).

I don't see a problem with altering it somewhat. I'd say the best model for Dark Sun slavery would be Sumer, which had both debt slavery--which one could work themselves out of--and chattel slavery, which were usually non-Mesopotamian prisoners of war and locked-in as a lower class.

But from an RPG perspective, it would make sense that a PC slave could earn their way to freedom, so rigid (unalterable) chattel slavery would be tough to justify for an RPG.

Also Dark Sun is only going to happen one of two ways - a vast re-working which removes Psionics as a key element of the setting (doable) or after they actually bring in a Psion-type class.

Agreed! I hope the latter.

 

[darjr]

The three "classic" settings under development (with Ravenloft being one of them) was specifically mentioned as D&D settings separate from MtG settings, which will also continue to be ported to D&D.

This. We are likely to get these settings and Magic settings.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

The Desert of Desolation comes to mind, but the last time that was set in Faerun I think.

(consults my avatar)

The ghostly specter of Amun-Re speaks thusly: Desert of Desolation was retconned into the Forgotten Realms when it was published as a single AP, but the original three modules were setting agnostic, and the ur-module of Pharoah was written by Hickman prior to joining TSR.

 

[overgeeked]

I apologize. Brain fart. Kenzer own Kalamar. Sorry about that.

No worries. I just had a moment of WTF?

 

[hopeless]

Understandable I'd like to see that come to 5e, but that's doubtful after they did a 3e and 4e version.
I think they use their Hackmaster variant for that now.

 

[Reynard]

We had the DMG 2 & DMG 3, Xanathar's Guide to Everything & Tasha's Cauldron of Everything (also the PHB 2 & PHB 3). Not to mention Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica, Eberron, Theros, Wildemount, and now Ravenloft each had DMG extension modules built in.

I don't own all of those books. Which one has the domain management and mass combat rules?