D&D 5E What changes or retcons would you approve in a reboot?

[Echohawk]

Dragonlance didn't even become a setting until after all three novels were published IIRC.

That doesn't sound right. Dragons of Spring Dawning was released in October 1985, the same month as DL10: Dragons of Dreams so by the time the first three novels were out, there were already ten adventures available for the setting.

Or by "become a setting" did you mean "get a dedicated campaign setting book", in which case, you'd be right, because the hardcover Dragonlance Adventures had a September 1987 release date. Dragonlance is odd like that though, almost every setting which followed started with a boxed set or book detailing the world. Of the major settings, only Greyhawk and Dragonlance followed an adventure-first release model. Oh, and Mystara, but for different reasons.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

You know movies and teleseries based in superheroes comics aren't 100% the same details. You know, an actress playing a character with a different hair color and that type of things. If Hasbro wants to produce movies and series for streaming services, we may find possible conflicts about canon. Some changes or retcon could be welcome, for example the kenders wouldn't be so annoying.

I guess all the metaplots but FR will be totally frozen until Hasbro said the media adaptations to be ready.

* Rig-Laganth is an empire with a timeline what appears in the AD&D 2nd sourcebook "Chronomancer". It may be a transitional setting about time-travel and parallel universes. People from this empire want to invade the "timeshards". These are special demiplanes created when time-travelers or chrononauts alter the past. Then the original timeline isn't erased but become a "ghost deplane", as a dream land, or a nightmare-realm. If the timeline suffers too many changes by the time-travelers, then the demiplane fills up of planar holes, and this may be very wrong, allowing planar invasion from the Far Realm, or being abducted into some infernal plane. The timetravelers from a timeshard can alter other timeshards, creating a great cosmic chaos. For example the future from "Terminator: Dark Fate" could received visitors from the timeline where Skynet was defeated, and from the happy end whithout nuclear war nor Skynet neither legion super-computer.

 

[EscherEnigma]

Later TSR tried to make every setting like FR, which turned out to be a disaster for pretty much everyone. Rebooting any of those is not only reasonable, but probably helpful (4E did this with Dark Sun, which was a massive improvement).

This is my point. Meta-plots, advancing time-line, working the novels into game products, making everything "connected"... that was a TSR thing, not a WotC thing.

If/when a 6e comes along, FR will get a new magical apocalypse because that's it's thing. The other campaigns, when/if they get republished, will be an update to the setting to incorporate changed rules, maybe include a few interesting ideas that have come along since it was previously published, but they won't "advance the timeline" or try to explain how book X and game Y changed things up.

WotC just isn't pushing meta-plot in campaign settings like TSR did. And because they don't, future editions won't need a "reboot".

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The age of the metaplot in the TTRPGs ended with the arrival of internet. Now you don't need to buy the last sourcebook to know what is happening. My theory is Hasbro wants to make money with the franchises but mainly with media productions...and the videogames. Then the scriptwriters from Enternaiment-One will choose the future of the D&D worlds.

My fear is Hasbro will want to create its own multiverse, the hasbroverse, and D&D will be added, but this is not ready for modern-age settings. We can create medieval fantasy version of famous franchises, superheroes, transformers, power rangers, G.I.Joe but not d20 Future with D&D, because the power balance is broken too easily.