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

[Mind of tempest]

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.

to me it is so easy to do even In a normal fantasy setting that it honestly confuses me why it is not used more, not even for bad guys does it get used.

 

[Yaarel]

to me it is so easy to do even In a normal fantasy setting that it honestly confuses me why it is not used more, not even for bad guys does it get used.

Yeah, for a character to transform from one kind of lineage into an other kind of lineage, should be a normal option, via various kinds of "rituals".

In a way, a Lich is a kind of transhumanism using necromantic technology, for an Undead creature type and a Shadow planar origin.

But there should be other kinds of transformations as well, such as becoming a Construct creature type, or a True Dragon creature type, or a different planar origin such as Elemental, Fey, Celestial or Fiend.

3e Psionics had the Elan as a transformation into an Aberrant creature type.

Even a Dwarf becoming an Elf and visaversa should be known.

 

[ccs]

Meh. Nothing on that list inspires me to want an entire campaign world for D&D designed around it.
But then I'm not one of those who've ever wanted 1 ruleset to cover everything - if I did I'd have a higher opinion of GURPS.

 

[Yaarel]

For D&D, transhumanism, specifically, is probably to transform into a Living Construct, either partly or fully. The big question is where consciousness comes from and how it works. The "seat of consciousness" remains unknown scientifically, tho there are interesting speculations with deep implications. It seems unlikely that a computer as we know it can be conscious, even if the computer can behave in a way that is indistinguishable from a conscious human.

 

[Yaarel]

@Ruin Explorer et al

Regarding the Modern setting.

Perhaps it is acceptable to make the setting EXACTLY the reallife current events, in live time.

The setting introduces fictional characters (including the player characters), fictional institutions, and even fictional buildings and structures. But the setting stays away from reallife political leaders, religious leaders, and so on.

The players can respond to reallife as they see fit, such as at a higher tier run for election against a reallife political candidate. But such things are 100% player driven, and each table will do things differently, according to their own sensibilities.

As current events happen in reallife, that becomes true in the Modern setting as well.

Most current events wont be relevant to an adventure arc, but be there as background.

 

[R_J_K75]

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

We ran an Alternity game and D20 Modern set in the city/neighborhood we live in. It was really fun, we just ran around causing chaos. We used alot of people and places we knew so we pretty much had a built in setting. When we advanced the time line to a future post-apocalyptic story we used one of the neighborhood thugs as the donor of the DNA for the super soldier serum.

 

[J-H]

One with clear "good" and "evil" sides and less of the excessive grey areas and exceptions and retcons. Let's have some unambiguous mustache-twirling evil for our unambiguous Team Good to heroically punch in the face while collecting legendary magical artifacts and riding dinosaurs.

India is an under-drawn source of mythology (we got east Asia but never south Asia), as are all of the Native American peoples (from Inuit to Inca and in between).

I expect to be disappointed.

 

[Aldarc]

I think if you go full water world you can get some really interesting twists beyond "fantasy Caribbean"; ship cities, living islands, merfolk kingdoms, etc. Take every nautical trope from the Odyssey to Horatio Hornblower and smash them all together and I think you could have something cool.

Plus psionics.

 

[Undrave]

I picked a few interesting ones but what I would like is a world that would be an excuse to really develop the Martial side. Every damn book is always filled with spells and that's always the easy content they can farm out without fail. We're getting a whole setting based around a magic academy... let's have a MARTIAL setting with tons of fighting styles, maneuvers and non-magical subclasses!

What made me get into worldbuilding was a lack of settings that are dominated by largely unexplored wilderness with new strange creatures and magic phenomenons to be discovered.
Of course I now have my own which I am working on, but there's still very little that has been done in that regard.

I would really like an 'Age of Discovery' setting where one continent is discovering a new one that, at first, seems empty of civilization and they all rush to claim ressources... but as they push deeper, maybe it turns out it's not so empty so they also have to establish alliances to really benefit from the discovery.

A new Fantasy Asia world. Probably be High Magic and World-with-Heroes, assuming it takes any inspiration from the wuxia c-dramas on Netflix and YouTube.

You should watch Thunderbolt Fantasy! It's very much that kind of world, down to people having famous nicknames and titles.

 

[Vaalingrade]

High magic, rule of cool physics, Po:, but those points are huge, complex cities, the tone is light and fun, and absolutely nothing Lovecraftian.

Basically, Eberron didn't go too far enough with dealing with the actual fun and exciting part of fantasy: the fantastic bits. More magic, not rare and 'special' grandma's heirloom figurines. Thrilling action, not Earth physics as imagined by people who think Earth is way more boring than it is. Thriving and lively instead of oppressively grim (how can the Eberron setting be so fun but the novels be so... ugh?). Interesting mosnters instead of HP's spitup.