What kinds of New Settings do you want?

[Nellisir]

Count me in for a magical Dark Ages setting. Mabinogion + Chretian de Troyes. Magical without being "high-magic". Lots of kinglets and ruins and bandits and wild forest. A place where civilization has fought the wilderness, and lost.

 

[howandwhy99]

(Re)Release Epic of Aerth by Gygax. It's the only setting Wizards still owns which Gary wrote. I mean, a Greyhawk one-off would be nice too, but it would need at least 3 or 4 distinct timelines to satisfy all its fans.

For totally new stuff, just wow us. One of those designers up there wrote Ptolus. I'm guessing there're some more settings those guys have as well.

Personally, I don't believe settings need adventure-specific products or even supplements. If it really sells well, then maybe a couple, but a "take what you want" and "Mix & Match" mindset in players would go a long way in keeping CSs from being customer dividers. Not only would it allow more variety and sell more settings, but it would grow some setting creation monsters in the community too (by which I mean people).

Once that last happens, you have some hard core adventure writers you can contract with. And a setting search wouldn't hurt at that point either, if it could be kept low cost and done easily.

 

[Quickleaf]

I forget who posted this setting idea first, but a number of us have expanded on it during the past year or two...

A swashbuckling setting of colonial empires stretched to the brink, relying on massive magic rituals to control the sea lanes and deter would-be conquerors. A precious magic substance/crystal/spice is needed to perform these rituals (along with lots of gold), so this drives the colonial urge. Other planes are derived from sailor/pirate lore, with a healthy dose of Cthulu mythos: the Abyss is a watery hell and the multitude of Tentacled horrors are Dagon's children. Sorcerers may be touched by the "Maelstrom", a neverending supernatural storm. Potions are re-skinned as voodoo recipes, and Davey Jones' Locker actually exists. Elves have coral cities and are among the most notorious of corsairs. Dwarves are inspired by Jules Verne's 10.000 Leagues and are submersible machinists. The setting would be based on books like Jack London's Seawolf and Melville's Moby Dick, influenced by Erol Flyn movies and Pirates of the Caribbean, with traces of the Monkey Island video game for good measure.

I hope I've done the idea justice in this brief post. I've certainly described it as I envision and with my own embellishments, but the original idea seed came from someone else on ENWorld I believe...

 

[Ratskinner]

You know all those ruins and ancient weapons of legend that are scattered about? I want to play in the setting where those haven't been made yet, or are just being constructed.

I've been musing about a similar world. I keep thinking of setting it right after the Titanomachy or something like that.

 

[Frostmarrow]

I think D&D should be an adventure parh with adventures stretching from first to twentieth level. Then bam! New edition - new adventure path. One edition per year, and one new setting with 20 levels worth of adventure in it.

 

[tuxgeo]

Just to be different:

"Wobble World," a low-magic setting on a high-silicon planet with severe polar tilt, short days, and long years, so the poles get quite hot for weeks in the summer, quite cold for weeks in the winter; and the high silicon content leads to lots of glass content in the rocks. Glass is a non-crystalline solid; that is, it tends to flow slowly, but still moves much more easily than crystalline rocks.

The resulting continental drift would be quite perceptible. It might take a mere 1000 years for a tropical location to become temperate, or a temperate location to become polar.

People would have to be on the move often. Cities could be built if they were built fast; but cities would have to be abandoned occasionally as they got closer and closer to the poles.

People on the move would come across relics of ancient cities that had moved down from the poles to the temperate regions; and the people might be puzzled by inscriptions such as, "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."

Edit for clarification: So, everybody would be able to find ruins. Every culture would have to move from time to time. Few cities would be more than 3000 years old. There would be lots of ruins to explore; hence, being an explorer wouldn't be too weird.

Edit edit: Inspired by Jack Vance's "Big Planet" more than anything else.

 

[Yora]

I've been musing about a similar world. I keep thinking of setting it right after the Titanomachy or something like that.

I am working on it! ^^
I hope to have it ready when the new edition is released and that there's 3rd party support that allows me to directly reference and alter official rules material.
The premise is that the immortal fey people abandoned all their cities and castles in the world of mortal creatures, but left enough magic and technology behind that was rediscovered by mortal cave men to start off their own civilizations. It's all about surviving in a dangerous environment, fighting magical monsters and hostile nature spirits, and hunting for tomes or artifacts that can give your clan an edge over the others.
It's however a rather low-magic, low- to mid-level setting that does not attempt to include all customary D&D races, classes, and monsters.

I am actually quite suprised that there appear to be so many people who want to play in such a setting.

 

[ren1999]

You frequently see people proclaiming that they want 5th Edition to introduce new campaign settings instead of reviving old settings.
While I am quite sure I wouldn't use any, it would still be interesting to see what new directions the game can go in the new edition.

What kinds of setting would you like to see for 5th Edition?

Personally, I would love to see something based more on Antiquity or the Dark Ages than just another late Renaissance/Early Modern world like about every single one that was officially published for D&D, with the exception of Dark Sun, possibly.

Me too, Yora. I'd like to see all of this and then an attempt to explain why a long bow can't shoot through armor. Perhaps wizards came from the future where steel making made plate armor effective again.

My Dungeons & Dragons Hybrid Game for Firefox and Chrome kira3696.tripod.com/CombatTracker.rar

 

[Starman]

You know all those ruins and ancient weapons of legend that are scattered about? I want to play in the setting where those haven't been made yet, or are just being constructed.

Check out Dawnforge from Fantasy Flight Games. It is exactly what you describe. It's one of my favorite settings and I wish it had gotten more love back when it was released.

 

[Gentlegamer]

Personally, I'd like a setting that had a feel of a Western.

The players are normally, the law or posse protecting people scraping a living from the land.

Various wild creatures are the dangers of the land requiring a few elite people to right the wrongs and bring a steady moral compass to the society.

Some towns would be sprung up over night and be boom towns filling up on the equivalent of a gold or silver strike (could still be the case but it might be ancient ruins strikes from some past semi-egyptian or incan society that had a love to bury their riches or magics with their dead)

You just described the secret underlying D&D since 1974.