D&D 5E Volo's Other Book(s) / Future Spoilers?

[Parmandur]

It always steams my buns a bit when they do the whole "boundaries between worlds are breaking down!" comic book schlock.

Like, okay, Tomb of Horrors is a classic, and yeah, you want to update it, so keep it in Greyhawk, you donks!

If you have to stay in FR for some arbitrary branding reason, you should double down on what makes FR exceptional and unique, like no other fantasy property. Cribbing stuff from Greyhawk doesn't do that!

Tossing chunks of GH into FR is lame. It feels inauthentic. Stop trying to turn yourself into something for everyone FR, just be yourself and let GH be itself, it's fine to not have everyone love you.

Maybe Ackerack is the villain in an upcoming AP: "Secret War on Infinite Planes in Realms Shaking Crisis"

 

[Remathilis]

Maybe Ackerack is the villain in an upcoming AP: "Secret War on Infinite Planes in Realms Shaking Crisis"

In Return to the Tomb of Horrors, Acerack wasn't on Greyhawk but the negative energy plane. You had to travel to a pocket dimension to get to him as well. It is possible this might take a similar idea; rather than "move the Tomb to Faerun" he could be building a new Tomb connected to Moil and his nep citadel.

I'm keeping an open mind; at least they are acknowledging it's Greyhawk origins...

 

[Demetrios1453]

In Return to the Tomb of Horrors, Acerack wasn't on Greyhawk but the negative energy plane. You had to travel to a pocket dimension to get to him as well. It is possible this might take a similar idea; rather than "move the Tomb to Faerun" he could be building a new Tomb connected to Moil and his nep citadel.

I'm keeping an open mind; at least they are acknowledging it's Greyhawk origins...

This is what I'm thinking, that the new Tomb of Horrors is based elsewhere in the multiverse (I was thinking a pocket demiplane, but the Negative Energy Plane works for this as well), that is accessible both from FR and Greyhawk. Acererak needed something from both worlds (Information? Expertise?), and thus has been seen in both. This also works if they plan on setting some or most of the adventure on Oerth (Acererak is based in Greyhawk, but needed something from Toril and thus has been seen there), giving us another CoS-type situation that allows characters from the FR to cross over to another setting. They certainly wouldn't have gone into Greyhawk as much as they did if they were just planning on ignoring it afterwards...

 

[Patrick McGill]

If the Tomb connects to Greyhawk and FR that would be amazing, and a good way to keep AL PCs relevant.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I also wouldn't be shocked if they didn't bring the actual tomb over to FR, but rather had another couple new tombs get placed in the Realms either by Acerarak or by acolytes of the demilich. After all... we've seen them go both ways-- in Curse of Strahd they incorporated the actual Castle Ravenloft into the AP, but in PotA they took the essence of the ToEE to create an adventure that was like it, but not it. And the temples were all new.

So having a handful of new "deathtrap" dungeons be found throughout the Realms could deliver the experience of adventuring through the Tomb of Horrors, without actually physically moving the tomb itself.

Plus after all... the original Tomb has been updated for so many editions already that the "surprise" factor of going through it is going to be lost regardless. Which is why when they did Return To The Tomb of Horrors all the adventure stuff was outside the actual tomb or on another plane, and the original Tomb itself was really just a fast walk-through with no real traps set (as they went under the assumption the tomb had been breached so many times that there was really no surprises left in it.) So an actual update of the original Tomb seems unnecessary, but an adventure about Acererak and/or his disciples across the multiverse building new ones makes a bit more sense.

 

[Prakriti]

Traveling to the Shadowfell and fighting Acererak sounds like a definite possibility. It checks multiple important boxes:

☑ Iconic monster (lich)
☑ Iconic enemy (Acererak)
☑ Classic adventure (Tomb of Horrors)
☑ Planar travel

The only problem is that an undead-heavy adventure would overlap with Curse of Strahd.

One other thing to consider: There are a surprising number of dinosaurs in Volo's Guide, suggesting that we might be heading to Chult sometime in the future.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Traveling to the Shadowfell and fighting Acererak sounds like a definite possibility. It checks multiple important boxes:

☑ Iconic monster (lich)
☑ Iconic enemy (Acererak)
☑ Classic adventure (Tomb of Horrors)
☑ Planar travel

The only problem is that an undead-heavy adventure would overlap with Curse of Strahd.

One other thing to consider: There are a surprising number of dinosaurs in Volo's Guide, suggesting that we might be heading to Chult sometime in the future.

Concerning Chult, was thinking the same thing, especially with other jungle/swamp creatures like vegepygmies and froghemoths, as well as all the in-depth coverage of yuan-ti.

 

[Dire Bare]

On a more serious note they are literally ripping dungeons from other worlds to dump in FR, that is how unoriginal they're getting. Sigh.

Like, okay, Tomb of Horrors is a classic, and yeah, you want to update it, so keep it in Greyhawk, you donks!

If you have to stay in FR for some arbitrary branding reason, you should double down on what makes FR exceptional and unique, like no other fantasy property. Cribbing stuff from Greyhawk doesn't do that!

Tossing chunks of GH into FR is lame. It feels inauthentic. Stop trying to turn yourself into something for everyone FR, just be yourself and let GH be itself, it's fine to not have everyone love you.

Taking inspiration from Dragonlance for Tyranny of Dragons, Tomb of Elemental Evil for Princes of Evil, and Raveloft (I6) for Curse of Strahd were savvy, smart moves by the D&D team. So is the possibility of adapting the Tomb of Horrors for 5E and set in the Forgotten Realms.

While not "original" in the sense of a completely new storyline (and certainly not a "rip-off"), it isn't any less original than the previous adventure paths, which were all high quality and well received, and dare I say it, fun!

To create something new based on a classic storyline set in D&D's most popular setting (by leagues) is smooth moves by WotC and is hitting all of my buttons, and helping to make "D&D Next" the most popular and successful D&D edition yet.

Dragonlance fans, Ravenloft fans, Greyhawk fans . . . adapting adventures set in your favorite worlds to the Realms isn't taking anything away from you, the sour grapes are beyond tiresome. All of those classic settings are awesome, but we are very unlikely to ever see them featured in print again (at least not in pure form) simply because YOUR SETTING ISN'T POPULAR ENOUGH. Sad perhaps, but true. Enjoy the revivals for what they are, bringing something cool from classic settings and storylines into the current edition. It's a good thing.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Dragonlance fans, Ravenloft fans, Greyhawk fans . . . adapting adventures set in your favorite worlds to the Realms isn't taking anything away from you, the sour grapes are beyond tiresome. All of those classic settings are awesome, but we are very unlikely to ever see them featured in print again (at least not in pure form) simply because YOUR SETTING ISN'T POPULAR ENOUGH. Sad perhaps, but true. Enjoy the revivals for what they are, bringing something cool from classic settings and storylines into the current edition. It's a good thing.

In which case, why not just ignore Greyhawk entirely in this book? Bringing it up and going into a bit of detail on the setting seems a bit disingenuous in an introductory book if they are simply going to ignore the setting from here on out.

 

[Dire Bare]

In which case, why not just ignore Greyhawk entirely in this book? Bringing it up and going into a bit of detail on the setting seems a bit disingenuous in an introductory book if they are simply going to ignore the setting from here on out.

Who said WotC is ignoring older settings? Quite clearly, they are not. They simply aren't publishing major products set in these older, classic settings. Disingenuous? Oh good lord . . . .

We won't know until if & when WotC publishes something inspired by the Tomb of Horrors or some other classic Greyhawk adventure (which, were all pretty much setting neutral anyway). But the hints suggest that a 5E Tomb of Horrors would be set in the Forgotten Realms, but would make some callbacks to one of the first D&D settings.

And I think that's great.