D&D 5E What Main Themes Would You Want a New Official Setting to Focus On?

[Lanefan]

Some options I think are missing in the poll; either as stand-alones or in combination with other ideas:

--- Desert/Heat world (i.e. opposite of Ice/Snow)
--- Points of Light world (a few beacons of civilization within a vast amount of wild land - 4e's Nentir Vale idea, only dialled up)
--- Renaissance/Chivalric world (sort of a low-ish magic cross between Birthright, King Arthur, and A Knight's Tale)
--- Divine/Immortal/Land-of-the-Dead world (i.e. the root setting is an immortal plane)
--- Islands/Maritime world (i.e. a nautical/pirate/sea-exploration themed setting, as others have already noted)
--- Gonzo world (a setting that constantly redefines its own physics, where nothing works today the way it did yesterday or will tomorrow)

Not that I'd necessarily vote for all of these, and couldn't in a poll where only three choices are allowed...

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I am surprised that modern/urban is leading as imo D&D/D20 games are entirely unsuitable for this genre because of their level system, how skills are neglected, the HP bloat which makes modern weapons behave really weirdly and because those kind of games kinda expect a lot of combat which is harder to justify in a modern environment.

Modern =/= realistic. See: Any Fast and Furious movie.

 

[Yora]

People asking for modern and futuristic settings.
Which can be fun setting, but why for D&D?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

People asking for modern and futuristic settings.
Which can be fun setting, but why for D&D?

D&D 5e is a fun game, but pseudo-medievalism and tolkienesque elves and dwarves are old and tired.

 

[Mind of tempest]

People asking for modern and futuristic settings.
Which can be fun setting, but why for D&D?

not been done yet

 

[Parmandur]

People asking for modern and futuristic settings.
Which can be fun setting, but why for D&D?

Why not for D&D...?

My group had a blast with d20 Cthulu back in College, using the area around the UC Berkeley campus as a Setting.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

People asking for modern and futuristic settings.
Which can be fun setting, but why for D&D?

Why is Dark Sun in D&D, and not some other system? Or Ravenloft? Eberron? Surely other systems can do those settings just as easily, if not more easily, than D&D, right?

D&D 5e is popular. A ton of new players are getting into the game, and new settings are popular, largely because they touch on new themes. IMHO, D&D is a "fantasy" game, and fantasy is a broad genre and 5e is suited to tackle most (if not all) facets of that genre. Modern/Urban Fantasy is a huge part of the larger Fantasy Genre (Percy Jackson, Harry Dresden, Artemis Fowl, etc), as is Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy (Dark Sun, Dying Earth, Fallout, if you count radiation and their high-tech as magic, etc), and there are plenty other sub-genres of Fantasy that D&D as a whole has left untapped.

 

[NaturalZero]

People asking for modern and futuristic settings.
Which can be fun setting, but why for D&D?

Have you seen the recent Army of the Dead movie? Possible spoilers ahead.

It's a movie about a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas that gets contained after a literal war between humans and intelligent zombies. There's a wall around Vegas and the zombies are contained. A rich guy wants money from a vault under a casino and hires a cliche line-up of action heroes with different specialties to perform a heist in the center of a city filled with aggressive monsters. It's a story set in a modern Earth.

Now, imagine that all of the protagonists are D&D races with D&D magic and guns. Imagine that there are other types of fantastical monsters roaming around the zombie kingdom. There's so much meat on the idea of D&D modern.

 

[Mind of tempest]

can we add transhumanisum to the list may be competitive Eschatology, love it when the different end of the worlds have to fight each other for who gets to do it?

 

[Yaarel]

can we add transhumanisum to the list may be competitive Eschatology, love it when the different end of the worlds have to fight each other for who gets to do it?

I consider transhumanism to be part of Near Future, thus both Modern and Future.

I view the main difference between Modern and Future is whether the game happens on Earth or in Space, respectively.