D&D 5E What campaign is next?

[Scribble]

I can't help but wonder if 'shadow' will tie in with a new swashbuckling setting based on Pirates of the Carribbean, Monkey Island, and maybe Pirates of Darkwater... Undead pirates, voodoo magic, pacts with the ocean deeps, ship combat, zombie monkeys, rum and gunpowder running, mystical harbors in the mists, island hopping, "age of exploration" vibe, black waters leading to davey jones locker, pirate lingo, insult sword-fighting, whirlpools leading to the elemental chaos, horrors of the deep, vengeful sea gods, ghosts walking the port on hallows eve, shapeshifting sea wolves, corrupt governors, competition for a scarce resource, sea hag hexes, acrobatic rapier duels, treasure coves of the lich pirate king, and more!

I would also be hype for a setting like this as well.

 

[ourchair]

I'd like to see an all-new setting. Designed by Bruce Cordell. With art by Brom. And free pie when you buy it.

Mmmm... pie.

I'm pretty sure Oriental Adventures is totally out and don't understand why people are interested in it as an individual setting. The idea of PCs kung fu-ing and samurai-ing around their way in a grand wuxia extravaganza is more of a campaign theme than an actual setting (I think even the DMG1 mentions wuxia as a possible campaign angle).

As ggroy and AbdulAlhazred have pointed out, most of the old standbys of our childhood --- well okay, other gamer's childhoods not mine, I'm new --- are being 'genericised' (great word!) into 4E. That means we can't expect a Piratesy flavored thing as that's stuff that can be covered in Eberron (swashes be buckled on our ship voyage to Stormreach!) or in the default setting.

Not that I wouldn't play a Pirates-style game. I'm no fan of the movies, but I am seriously disappointed they didn't do as much as they could have with a briefly touched on idea of "the end of one age, the beginning of another" Maybe Spelljammer could be weird enough to do it?

 

[doctorhook]

Another thing is whether WotC still has the interest in producing or reviving an Oriental Adventures type setting at this point in time.

Even back in the TSR days, Oriental Adventures didn't have many supplement titles produced for it. (IIRC, the last OA titles produced during the TSR era was back around 1990). During the 3E D&D era, many of the Oriental Adventures supplement books published by AEG had dual-stats for d20 rules and the older "Legend of the Five Rings" ruleset.

These days I would probably be more inclined to play "Legend of the Five Rings" for an oriental type game, than an Oriental Adventures tacked on to D&D.

I don't think that Oriental Adventures (nor Al Qadim) will be full-fledged 4E campaign settings -- they're both too much of a gimmick, and one with ethnocentric overtones, at that. That said, I still wouldn't mind seeing them both... as stand-alone supplements. Spelljammer and Ravenloft can come too. Planescape would be great, but there's away too much info to fit in, unless they remade it for the new cosmology, which likely won't fly with existing Planescape fans.

I'm apprehensive about this outcome, but I think the person who suggested a M:tG crossover was on to something. On the plus side, at least it would be something new to D&D.

 

[ggroy]

What would be the easiest way to incorporate M:tG into a D&D setting?

What stuff in M:tG could make it unique as a D&D setting, which cannot be easily replicated by the present generic 4E D&D system and the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, or Dark Sun settings?

 

[doctorhook]

What would be the easiest way to incorporate M:tG into a D&D setting?

What stuff in M:tG could make it unique as a D&D setting, which cannot be easily replicated by the present generic 4E D&D system and the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, or Dark Sun settings?

Good question. Does anybody here know anything about the fluff of M:tG?

 

[ggroy]

For 2011, in principle they could do something completely different that isn't a D&D setting.

For example, they might do a new version of d20 Modern using the 4E ruleset.

 

[ggroy]

For a new version of d20 Modern using the 4E ruleset, they would revise the rules for modern weapons like firearms, bombs, etc ... and other modern stuff like vehicles, aircraft, etc ...

Not entirely sure how the "talent trees" structure of d20 Modern could be easily translated into the 4E at-will/encounter/daily structure.

 

[tyrlaan]

For a new version of d20 Modern using the 4E ruleset, they would revise the rules for modern weapons like firearms, bombs, etc ... and other modern stuff like vehicles, aircraft, etc ...

Not entirely sure how the "talent trees" structure of d20 Modern could be easily translated into the 4E at-will/encounter/daily structure.

Well, my vote is still squarely on WoW DnD ( ), but I don't think 4e modern would be all that tough. I don't think they'd necessarily try to recreate the talent tree concept though. What I would expect to see however, is a whole lot of piggybacking off of the skill powers concept. I could see a characters power choices being completely driven by their skill selections instead of a character class.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Well... If they are now going to release Shadow classes in a Player Options book that strongly hints to me that PHB4 is vapor. In fact it isn't on any official schedule anywhere at this point or is at most "sometime down the road maybe". They could as easily be going to put Elemental classes in PHB4 anyway. I think its pretty hard to say that we can tell what's coming in settings based on core rules. Sure there was a correlation with DS and PHB3, but Psionics would have been released anyway, DS or not.

Right now, pretty much everything they have in the development pipeline past the Essentials line has not been made available to the public yet. So I'm not going to believe that PHIV has been shelved until they begin releasing post-Essential info and they tell us that.

That being said... I definitely do believe that any consideration on the new power source for IV would be going hand-in-hand with the decision on the next campaign setting. And while you are right in that Psionics would have most likely been the next power source released regardless of campaign setting... the inverse most certainly would not have been true. They wouldn't have released Dark Sun without having the Psionic power source available to them.

But whether or not the next power source is Shadow, or Elemental, or any other new idea they come up with to fill up a PHIV... to not release a campaign setting that would make great use of it seems folly and illogical to the point that I wouldn't see WotC making that mistake. To release PHIV focused around the Shadow power source and then having Spelljammer be the campaign setting released? That is not a product synergy folly that I see Wizards making.

For 2011, in principle they could do something completely different that isn't a D&D setting.

For example, they might do a new version of d20 Modern using the 4E ruleset.

I would consider 4E Modern to be a game (like Gamma World) that is 'outside' the perview of the D&D release schedule. While I have no doubt that there is probably a second "freestanding" 4E-mechanical game in development to follow the release of Gamma World, I would be highly suspicious if these were used to 'replace' D&D product in their schedules. Gamma World and whatever is next are in addition to their D&D production.

 

[jcayer]

I'd really like to see either a source book, or campaign setting dealing with the Far Realm. That could certainly work as a very different setting.

I do believe it will be something new. Now it's just a matter of patience...my 6 year old told me the other day, she doesn't have patience yet...I told her, neither do I.