D&D 4E What Campaign Settings would you like to see for 4e?

[Najo]

I voted for Ghostwalk. I used it's ghosts in Eberron with really good results. Manifest zones of Dolurrh were used an insanity ensued.

As for Planescape in 4E, I see Sigil as a domain in the Astral Sea with portals leading everywhere. And possibly Spelljammer's sailing the Astral Sea between dominions, Beware the Astral Kraken!, encouraging Trade and Commerce with docks in Sigil making it the place where you can find anything and everything. Have the Bloodwar replaced with a Cold War going on between the Devils of the Nine Hells and any allies against the Celestial's Light. The Factions may need a tweak here and there but overall will be easy I believe. I have really thought about this and plan to incorporate it in my games.

You could reinvision the Blood War as a planar conflict between the demons, devils, angels and such, similiar to the idea in planescape, but with the factions being involved in it and various militant groups of outsiders instead of the Tanari and Bazatu.

 

[Kaodi]

I think Spelljammer would work well as a Points of Light campaign. The difference would be that each of your adventures could have a dramatic effect on whatever world you are currently on, so that even at upper Heroic levels you are liberating whole continents or worlds. However, I would give it a unique setting, instead of having it be a bridge setting. The Shadow of the Spider Moon would probably be a great place to start, but make plenty of other systems and worlds as well as time goes on.

 

[megamania]

DARKSUN

(without the wind board druids)

Bring on the REAL Thri-kreen.

 

[megamania]

Im happy (and somewhat surprised) to see Dark Sun sitting at number one in the poll.

same here. If Darksun was done I would buy 4e. Plain and to the point.

 

[M.L. Martin]

A brand new 4th Edition setting would be good to set 4E in the right direction, and I know this will never happen because Mattel owns the license, but an "Eternia" setting from Masters of the Universe would be interesting too.

I know Eternia. I've loved Eternia longer and more deeply than I've loved D&D.

D&D can't HANDLE Eternia.

Now, M&M for Eternia . . . who do I have to kill to write it?

 

[Atlatl Jones]

I would also like to see a new Oriental Adventures, but I would rather not see it linked to the Realms like Kara-Tur is, and I certainly don't want it to be Rokugan.

I'd much rather have a generic Oriental Adventures book rather than a campaign setting. Make it like a Player's Handbook, with an assumed setting in the background details, rather than a fully fleshed out setting.

I don't think that is the case. Planescape and Darksun have always been the most popular settings. I've owned a game store since before WOTC had D&D (TSR Days) and this poll supports the attitudes then too (at least for the old settings), which is one of the reasons I am surprised they stuck with Greyhawk for 3.0 and 3.5 and then basically supported settings like the Realms and Dragonlance instead of Planescape and Darksun. I did expect Planescape to out do Darksun overall, so that is a bit of a surprise. Back when Planescape came out it flew off shelves until the line was cancelled. Darksun did really well until they ruined its look and feel with the revised edition.

If Planescape had done that well it wouldn't have been canceled. Ditto Darksun. Wizards has the sales numbers, and you can bet that they would have done what would bring them the most income. Now, Planescape and Darksun probably had the most devoted fans, but they didn't have the same popular appeal as the Realms, or maybe even as Dragonlance.

I do hope that they put out a planescape-esque setting for 4e. Updated to the new cosmology, but with the old philosophy and style. Even if they don't commission any new artwork, and just cherry-pick the best from the old planescape books, it would be awesome.

In the poll, I also voted for Birthright, Dragonlance, a new setting based on the points of light assumed setting of 4e, and other.

A spelljammer/planescape hybrid would be wonderful, especially since the new planar cosmology of 4e works so well with it, with its astral sea and elemental chaos. Take the cool factions, tone, and art design of planescape, and wed it to the least-goofy aspects of spelljammer (like the ship designs and the imperial elven/eladrin armada), and you're done.

 

[Najo]

If Planescape had done that well it wouldn't have been canceled. Ditto Darksun. Wizards has the sales numbers, and you can bet that they would have done what would bring them the most income. Now, Planescape and Darksun probably had the most devoted fans, but they didn't have the same popular appeal as the Realms, or maybe even as Dragonlance.

Ryan Dancey's review of TSR and its sales showed that all of the settings had done a splintering of the D&D market and divided up the sales. What wasn't shown accurately was that the splintering was also caused by TSR's focus on publishing for DMs instead of players. Almost everything that released for the settings was a product aimed at the DMs. That, and the products duplicated each other a bit. The result, all of the campaigns were initially cancelled.

The theory with 3.0 was a return to Greyhawk becuase it was D&D's history and the most setting neutral. Greyhawk was an expriment to see who really cared about it. very little risk hsa been taken with Greyhawk, the closest thing it got for a book was the Living Greyhawk Gazatteer, and that was never reprinted for 3.5. Forgotten Realms was supported becuase the novels do so well and the world has so much history, but WOTC has admitted the sales could be better. Eberron was an attempt to make a new setting for the 3.5 rules and an experiement to gather creative material from 11,000 people. Dragonlance was liscensed out to its creators (and I don't think did well), again very little risk for WOTC.

Every Dragon issue with campaign setting materials from the past revisted has sold out. When polled, planescape is at the top. It sold well then, it is the setting everyone talks about still, it is the one everyone in the industry that worked on it is excited about. If you read the books Worlds of TSR and 30 years of D&D you can get comments directly from the people who worked on the game.

WOTC played it conservative with 3.0 and 3.5's settings. The buzz now is that they are returning to the campaign settings with 4e. I wouldn't be surprised if Planescape is going to get revisted sooner than later.

You can't single out Planescape or Darksun when all of TSR's settings were cancelled.

 

[Raduin711]

Dark*sun as presented in the first box set.

See, I don't think they would ever DO that.

I think our best bet would be to hope they resurrect the setting, and get some new writers on board and continue the setting, but try to reign it in. They could have a sidebar in the book perhaps on how to change the rules to fit it into different eras, but I think that is the best we could hope for.

 

[Sadrik]

Create new campaign settings:

However, I think that they should include several conceptual setting ideas that they have explored in the past. They need a Horror setting (old Ravenloft), they need an oriental one (old Kara-Tur and Rokugan), I also like the concept of Kingdoms and knights setting (Birthright), and last but not least a Genie and pseudo Persian-Arabian setting would also be real nice setting (Al-Qadim).

The easy way out is to reinvent those campaign settings and make them just like all of the old TSR settings. But I would like to see WoTC create their own new settings. And please do not have a competition and adapt somebody else's campaign. Do it internal, hire the staff, get creative. So, my vote is to develop new campaign settings- again (TSR style).

 

[Sadrik]

So here are the years. Assuming 4E lasts 8 years that takes us to 2015. Hopefully it lasts indefinitely!

2008- Forgotten Realms and Points of Light
2009- Something with a psionics focus (Dark Sun, Ebberon) and Greyhawk
2010- d20 modern and d20 Sci-fi (Because these would be cool if brought into the same game with D&D rather than have there own different rules)
2011- Oriental so they can have samurai, ninja, and monks (because it is so 4E) and Arabian too
2012- Horror- HP lovecraft style and Ravenloft
2013- Planescape and Knights and Kingdoms
2014- Epicness and how great it is to be epic (Hercules, Merlin and Beowulf)
2015- Something new here to preview 5E

Also, the game settings in my opinion should not be a list of cities with every inhabitant, they should be much briefer and painted in broad strokes so that the DM can "make-it-their-own". The setting should be written from the players perspective so that the player will need the book to play in the setting (specific character rules and fluff etc.) This also, makes it important for the DM portion to be setting specific lite. Their should probably be 50% DM/Player fluff and 50% player crunch (DM crunch should be in the form of an adventure book, monsters appear in the MM).