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!

 

[Older Beholder]

I think Spelljammer or Planescape are the most likely as others have mentioned, both were umbrella settings in 2E designed to make it possible for people to link all the various other settings available at the time, so that anything you had already bought could be used together.

Going with one of these two next in 5E seems a more logical way to build on what they've put out so far with the FRealms. Dark sun or Eberron (or even Dragonlance for that matter) feels like starting over a bit, creating a divide rather than building on what's come before it.

Of course, I could be completely wrong, personally I'd love to see Taladas get a 5E reboot. ;-)

 

[Staffan]

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.

Previous to the release of Defilers & Preservers, one of the last books of the line, there was nothing indicating that Athas didn't have the same access to the multiverse as any other setting. Plane shift and astral spell were available in the priestly sphere of Air. Wizards had teleport without error and astral spell. The original boxed set called out some items and spells as being unsuitable for Dark Sun, but none of those had anything to do with planar travel. Dragon Kings had some discussion of cosmology (basically the standard AD&D one) - it de-emphasized the astral and outer planes, but didn't say anything about them being harder to access than was suggested by the regular rules. The revised & expanded box set even included various fiends from from the Monstrous Manual as appropriate monsters to use (original Dark Sun did not, because there were pretty much no planar monsters in the Monstrous Compendia released up until that point).

 

[TheSword]

Previous to the release of Defilers & Preservers, one of the last books of the line, there was nothing indicating that Athas didn't have the same access to the multiverse as any other setting. Plane shift and astral spell were available in the priestly sphere of Air. Wizards had teleport without error and astral spell. The original boxed set called out some items and spells as being unsuitable for Dark Sun, but none of those had anything to do with planar travel. Dragon Kings had some discussion of cosmology (basically the standard AD&D one) - it de-emphasized the astral and outer planes, but didn't say anything about them being harder to access than was suggested by the regular rules. The revised & expanded box set even included various fiends from from the Monstrous Manual as appropriate monsters to use (original Dark Sun did not, because there were pretty much no planar monsters in the Monstrous Compendia released up until that point).

I can’t check my books now as I’m not at home but I’m pretty sure the isolation was Athas’ thing. Just checked the wiki on my phone and it’s pretty specific. Of course wikis can be wrong but I usually find for the main concepts they are pretty accurate. I’ll come back in more detail when I have access to my laptop.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think there have always been inconsistencies, since there are no gods in the Athas setting, one has to assume that it is cut off from the planes where the gods live.

One also has to assume that the entropy afflicting the planet couldn't be reversed simply by opening a portal and drawing power from another dimension (see Doctor Who: Logopolis).

I think the implication with regards to planar spells where simply overlooked. However, if you assume that the Elemental and Astral planes that can be reached from Athas are not the same as those reachable from Greyhawk - I.e. it exists in a completely different multiverse - the conflict can be resolved.

 

[Coroc]

[MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] "From my limited understanding and what I have heard from other Eberron fans, that game is Eberron in Name Only. "

It is not. I am a Long time DDO Player and besides it being so much better than any other mmorpg available these days, it reflects eberron quite well although it leaves some classes out, as in it does not have shifters or kalashtar as playable races.

Artificers, warforged, dragonmarks, stemapunk magitech, Pulp Noir, are all realised very well. The dungeons got real riddles not like neverwinter where a sparkly path leads you to the next "hidden" Lever. The Thing with the rift between worlds aka Lolths demonweb, although i do not like it leading to a Connection to FR, is realized very well with great graphics and backstory.

I guess they did this for Marketing reasons. They also included ravenloft recently and they did this outstanding well. They also included some classic dungeons of which the ToEE really shines in how they realised it.

 

[Bitbrain]

personally I'd love to see Taladas get a 5E reboot. ;-)

Um, isn't taladas a continent on Krynn?

 

[Older Beholder]

Um, isn't taladas a continent on Krynn?

Yeah, it's the reverse side of the planet, It's probably one of the least likely things we'll see.

 

[neogod22]

That's nice and all, but to me you are just some random, anonymous person on a message board bragging about things they cannot possibly prove because they are supposedly not allowed to. So what is your name in the real world and is your name in the credits of any published WotC books? If you cannot even tell us that, then please stop posting about what you supposedly secretly do or do not know.

You can believe what you want. I couldn't care less. I don't have to lie to you, I don't know who you are either, and your approval isn't necessary.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I don't have any special insider knowledge, but I would still be willing to bet my life that it isn't Greyhawk...

 

[Jester David]

Yeah, it really is a funk. I was just thinking about that. This unwanted baked-in flavor is really getting to me. I really did try to remove it, but it is too ubiquitous.

What is nice about D&D 1e is how freeform it is. Everything is an option that requires effort to *opt in*. The rules are all over the place, require effort to even piece together ones own version of the rules, and there is almost no flavor. Just a sentence with a suggestion here or there to spark the DMs creative juices.

By contrast, 5e bakes ‘official’ flavor into everything. It requires extreme effort to try *opt out*. There are no tools for DMs to world build. There are no resources with flavorless mechanics, to make it easy for the DM to author the flavor, to craft a new dedicated setting.

Relatedly, 1e requires effort to opt in to official flavor. All the references to polytheism were in a separate splatbook, Deities & Demigods. Any DM who wanted polytheism purchased the book, then figured out which of the options in the book to integrate into the setting. (I own this book, being curious about the less than accurate representation of the Norse spirituality − and curious about about Elric.) But this D&D polytheism requires an *opt in*. It doesnt happen by itself. When I as a DM say no, then the separate splatbook never happens. Then that is it. I never see polytheism again in the rest of rules that I do use. I never have to deal with it. I never have to fight against the unwanted flavor to *opt out*.

By contrast, 5e is the Borg. Everything is hardwired together, from top to bottom, from the fusion of mechanoflavor, from book to chapter to page to paragraph to sentence. Everything is entwined together. Even what were once utterly unrelated settings imagined by different authors are all assimilated into a single, homogeneous, totalitarian supersetting. The polytheism is everywhere, at every level. The uninspiring mundane elf is now the only one-size-fits-all option. It too is nothing but baked in polytheistic flavor. It is impossible to use any rules without the Borg contaminating and assimilating any effort to try use the rules for a different kind of setting.

1e was a little more flavour sparse, but a lot of it was still there. Elements like the great wheel were in the PHB, and it assumed things like Thieves' Guilds, Assassin's Guilds, clerics following gods, alignment languages, and more.
And when you branch out into the DMG, there's so much more lore. Deities are pretty clearly tied to clerics on page 38.

The difference is, if you were playing 1e and didn't have time time to make a campaign setting... well, you had no choice. There was no other option. You had to make up the flavour.
With 5e, there's a choice. You can choose to ignore the default fluff, or use it if you have no better idea.

Look, it's easy for you as an experienced player, to homebrew D&D. You have an idea what gnolls are like. How goblins and kobolds are different. If you blank on an idea, you have years of experience to turn to.

Plus... books of just rules are boooooring. I love my 5e Monster Manual for all its lore and I hated my 4e Monster Manual that was just a brief paragraph of lore. I need that story. Reading a Pathfinder splatbook doesn't fire my imagination; it's like reading a textbook.

Based on surveys of the fans, only 45% use a published setting and 55% use a homebrew world. And I'm sure quite a few are only using the Realms because they're also using the published adventures. The majority of fans, many whom are very new to the hobby, are having zero problems stripping out the flavour.

If WotC is set on baking flavor into D&D for the sake of corporate ‘branding’ of its legal trademarks, I dont even need the name ‘Dungeons & Dragons’. I just need the rules without someone elses setting baked into it. Call these rules some other name. All of D&D mechanics without the flavor. Heh, call this version of the game ‘Meka’. Or call it ‘Modern’. Or maybe call it ‘5e Soon’, soon in the sense of a near future setting, and soon in the sense of requiring the DM to assemble the setting oneself.

I need a way to play the game in a way that brings me joy.

Again, read the SRD. There is surprisingly little flavour. None of the classes have any lore. It's probably as devoid of flavour as 1e. It's at least as fluff independent as the 3e SRD.