Two New Settings For D&D This Year

if it comes out this year i would agree with you. Possibly published by a third party company that has a good reputation (Green Ronin etc)

However if it’s coming next year I would stake all the money in my pockets that it will be a Curse of Strahd style book. Campaign with background and new monsters etc. Curse of Strahd was too successful not to repeat!

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Nope. Because you are still implicitly assuming that it otherwise would be. You are just restating the Thanos Problem that was floated earlier. You are suggesting that one should "snap it out of existence" rather than "snap it into existence."

And that is a problem why. Snapping it out is easier then snapping it in.

Does it matter if it is assumed to be the default if you plan to ignore it anyway? The second you say it does not exist in your campaign is the end.

Edit: To be clear. I do not mind the existence of Planescape. I mind when certain settings touch, particularly when they try to touch Eberron. I mind because I would never want to read an adventure from WotC about characters from the Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, or Planescape suddenly showing up in Khorvaire.

Sadly for you they are part of the same cosmology and that already happened 6 years ago. D&D online the MMO featured an attack on Ebberron by Lolth worshiping drow and demons, Lolth having torn open a portal to try and draw Eberron into the Demonweb Pits.

Anyway the current explanation is that while they are part of the same cosmology, Eberron's sphere is very very far away to the point that most planer travlers consider the place a legend and next to no planeswalkers have gone there. (Mordenkainen did apparently in the recent book. Though just to make some observations about the world and it's species like Elves.)

Keith Baker even suggested a few years back that beyond Eberron's Astral Plane the Great Wheel cosmology existed. (Other suggestions were the Far Realm, and Nothing the Astral was the end of it.) Stating that Eberron and it's planes can be just another world existing in the greater whole's Cosmology. Which is more or less what the current situation seems to be.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

All humans exist in one world - this one. And all campaign settings exist in the minds of humans. Ergo all campaign settings already exist within the same world.

 

[Aldarc]

Does it matter if it is assumed to be the default if you plan to ignore it anyway? The second you say it does not exist in your campaign is the end.

It matters when I sit at a table that claims to be running Eberron and then multidimensional travelers from Sigil or Forgotten Realms show up. It matters when I pick up any published Eberron adventure that has these things.

Sadly for you they are part of the same cosmology and that already happened 6 years ago. D&D online the MMO featured an attack on Ebberron by Lolth worshiping drow and demons, Lolth having torn open a portal to try and draw Eberron into the Demonweb Pits.

From my limited understanding and what I have heard from other Eberron fans, that game is Eberron in Name Only.

(Mordenkainen did apparently in the recent book. Though just to make some observations about the world and it's species like Elves.)

And I disliked that as well as I mentioned earlier.

Keith Baker even suggested a few years back that beyond Eberron's Astral Plane the Great Wheel cosmology existed. (Other suggestions were the Far Realm, and Nothing the Astral was the end of it.) Stating that Eberron and it's planes can be just another world existing in the greater whole's Cosmology. Which is more or less what the current situation seems to be.

Keith Baker tends to be diplomatic and willing to entertain open-ended possibilities for game masters. That's fine. My problem, however, is when those open-ended possibilities become hard-baked canon.

 

[TheSword]

It matters when I sit at a table that claims to be running Eberron and then multidimensional travelers from Sigil or Forgotten Realms show up. It matters when I pick up any published Eberron adventure that has these things.

From my limited understanding and what I have heard from other Eberron fans, that game is Eberron in Name Only.

And I disliked that as well as I mentioned earlier.

Keith Baker tends to be diplomatic and willing to entertain open-ended possibilities for game masters. That's fine. My problem, however, is when those open-ended possibilities become hard-baked canon.

It may matter, but it doesn’t matter a lot does it. In the grand scheme of things it’s not high on the list of great tragedies.

We haven’t seen 5e Eberron or 5e Planescape so it’s a bit early to be saying what’s Cannon and what isn’t. It’s easy enough to the think that the only known conduits to Eberron might be through their coterminous planes... there problem solved. Several of those planes are almost identical to existing planes - the Beast Lands, Arcadia, The Far Realm etc.

 

[Aldarc]

It may matter, but it doesn’t matter a lot does it. In the grand scheme of things it’s not high on the list of great tragedies.

It would be a fairly significant red flag for me that WotC is out-of-touch with the Eberron fanbase. It would not bode well for any other potential changes to the setting.

 

[TheSword]

It would be a fairly significant red flag for me that WotC is out-of-touch with the Eberron fanbase. It would not bode well for any other potential changes to the setting.

The sad thing is, the more roadblocks fans of the setting throw up to specify precisely what incarnation they expect (despite the fact that every setting changes when new editions come round, including the realms), the more likely WOC are to think relaunching that setting is too risky.

That said you’re railing against changes that haven’t been made, just in case they get made. If WOC offered to remake Athas but it was going to be connected to the great wheel. I’d love the fact we were getting a remake and just alter the fluff for stuff I didn’t like. Simple. I think the correct expression is “looking a gift horse in the mouth.” Except you’re describing the characteristics you expect from your gift.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It matters when I sit at a table that claims to be running Eberron and then multidimensional travelers from Sigil or Forgotten Realms show up. It matters when I pick up any published Eberron adventure that has these things.

Err, it's entirely up to the DM what backstories to allow at your table. Tell them to go away and come back with a character whose backstory fits your setting.

 

[Staffan]

That said you’re railing against changes that haven’t been made, just in case they get made. If WOC offered to remake Athas but it was going to be connected to the great wheel. I’d love the fact we were getting a remake and just alter the fluff for stuff I didn’t like. Simple. I think the correct expression is “looking a gift horse in the mouth.” Except you’re describing the characteristics you expect from your gift.

Athas was never not connected to the Great Wheel.

 

[Aldarc]

The sad thing is, the more roadblocks fans of the setting throw up to specify precisely what incarnation they expect (despite the fact that every setting changes when new editions come round, including the realms), the more likely WOC are to think relaunching that setting is too risky.

That said you’re railing against changes that haven’t been made, just in case they get made.

Such railing incidentally saved Eberron's timeline from being advanced significantly in 4e - as per the Realms - as they were considering updating Eberron more radically. They did, however, force the Great Axis cosmology into Eberron a bit in 4e, which left a lot of Eberron fans somewhat sour including Keith Baker.

 

[TheSword]

Athas was never not connected to the Great Wheel.

It wasn’t connected directly. The planar conduits led to the elemental planes not the great wheel. The adventure Dregoth Ascending published on Athas.org was all about reversing the position creating conduits to the great wheel and closing the elemental conduits. My understanding was that there weren’t direct links (not that they couldn’t be created, but that they weren’t known). Black spine accesses the multiverse through the astral plane. Dregoth’s mirror could allow planar travel but was an artifact so who knows.