D&D 5E (2024) WotC Should Make 5.5E Specific Setting

[W'rkncacnter]

Here is an interesting question I had not thought of: does either LevelUp or ToV have a bespoke setting mae for those 5E games? I know Kobold has their Midgard setting, but I believe that setting was originally created for Pathfinder or 3.5 (I think).

uh...well for level up...no, but actually yes. kind of. almost. ish.

level up makes references to the worlds of to save a kingdom, war of the burning sky, and zeitgeist, but those are more like midgard in that enpublishing already made those, they weren't specifically made for a5e (tsak was o5e, wotbs was 3.5, zg was 4e/pf1e). but level up DOES have a setting beyond magic items or monster descriptions or whatnot - the dungeon delver's guide has underland, and the planestrider's journal details various different planes, from the inner planes to the outer planes to the far realm to a whole bunch of weird planes like one populated by extremely large giants (like, giants with toes the size of tarrasques giant).

but there isn't, like, a dragonlance or eberron (not in the sense you mean, anyway - i've always thought zeitgeist kind of felt like a remixed eberron with guns and a sprinkling of sigil, and that's not an insult).

 

[Yaarel]

Where do all the new 5.5 races come from? How do the new classes interact with the AD&D of it all? Dwarf wizards, what?!?

Old school Greyhawk tropes explain all of the 5e species. Dragonborn come from Dragons, Tiefling from native Fiends, Awsimar from native Celestials, Goliath from Giants. The Elves are the same: 5e High Elves comprise the diverse Greyhawk elven cultures: Grey, Faerie, High, and Valley. 5e Wood Elves comprise Wood and Grugach cultures. Old school Orcs tend to be default bad guys but so too did certain Human cultures. There were enough Good Orcs and Drows for the more realistic 5e cultures to resonate within the Greyhawk cultures.

Regarding 1e Dwarf Magic-Users, many game tables ignored the official species-class restrictions anyway. The Duergar culture was more magical with innate Psionic spellcasting. Any official aversion to "Arcane" magic is best understood as a cultural taboo. The 1e UA later allowed the player Dwarf to be Divine Clerics, Primal Druids, with Psionic, so the Greyhawk cultures were always evolving. There were Hill, Mountain, and Grey cultures and other dwarven cultures potentially exist as well, including a Dwarf Arcane Wizard culture, which feels a bit more Norsesque relating to magic items production. This Arcane Dwarf culture might come from the North Kingdoms or even faraway Jotnumheim coastlands.

The premise of Greyhawk as an official 2e world setting is everything TSR ever published is simultaneously true -- including Dragon magazine romps. Greyhawk can accommodate anything weird and wonderful.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

A new setting is possible but I suspect it would be not because WotC wanted to sell more sourcebooks but because Hasbro wants a new multigenre franchise. We shouldn't be too surprised if they used D&D to recover some old franchise like Golden Girl and the Gemstone Guardians, Inhumanoids or Robotix.

Exandria officialy is 3PP, isn't it?

If now officially Conan the Barbarian is public domain, maybe WotC could create a D&D version of Hyrboria. I would advice to redrawn the geography of the continent because in the original novels it was more like all the kingdoms within a "square".

Eberron was the winner of a contest about the creation of settings. There were two more and WotC has got the "copyright" but we know nothing about them.

* A return of Nentir Vale? Maybe the world could be expanded, even adding other worlds from the same wildspace, and it would be more focused into mass battles, style Warhammer Fantasy or Warcraft.

* If WotC is going to publish a new setting this has to be enoughly original, with its own style.

* The origin of the dragonborns in Greyhawk during 3e was different, there were humanoids chosen by Bahamut to be his champions against Tiamat. They were sterile and they appeared for the first time in 3.5 "Races of Dragons". I bought the book.

In the novel "Flint, king of the gullys", and I guess it is not a true spoiler if I say it here, the antagonist was a dwarf wizard, and it was 2nd ed.

* How would be a reboot of Mystara for an isekai crossover with Capcom's characters from different franchises?

* We shouldn't be too surprised if in the future Hasbro acquired more IPs and these were added to the D&D multiverse.

* Maybe there is a future videogame of Gamma World, offering a version closer to fantasy.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

level up makes references to the worlds of to save a kingdom, war of the burning sky, and zeitgeist, but those are more like midgard in that enpublishing already made those, they weren't specifically made for a5e

I think you make an important point here. The trend these days is to create settings that are system-neutral and rules are setting-neutral.

So a “5e” setting would be completely system-neutral, making no reference to any rules.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's also not exactly a "5e" setting in its worldbuilding

Exandria is characteristic of the culture and attitudes at the time of writing, not the rules. I wouldn’t have any difficulty running a 1st edition game in Exandria.

 

[Stormonu]

I think TSR was at its best when it was making campaign worlds - many are still beloved today. WotC seems to have handed that off to the 3PP, but I'd really like to see a handful of new worlds come out. I'm fine with one-and-done releases of a campaign world (though revisiting and expanding is always nice - but it could be left up to 3PP's).

While I think a world based on the current rules would be enjoyable, I'd also like to see them dip their toes in worlds that play with the default assumptions - being willing to limit races, change others and add new ones.

 

[Corinnguard]

But what is a setting supposed to say about the existence of dwarf wizards when the original pretense of there NOT being dwarf wizards was so incredibly thin to begin with?

Like, the original rationale for the non-existence of dwarf wizards was never baked into the setting. It was a rules restriction because the sense of balance was that the author wanted humans to be important to the game, so he literally put his thumb on the scale.

Or he was worried that the other races in D&D at the time could become more popular than humans and therefore no one would really be interested in wanting to play as a human. This 'worry' would later pop up in 3e's Savage Species which offered everyone the chance to play something even more exotic than one of the standard races. As a result, anything more exotic than a member of the standard races came with a Level Adjustment and an Effective Character Level. Thankfully these were dropped when 4e and 5e came around.

Dragonborn could be utilized as Draconians in the Dragonlance setting with minor tweaks. Likewise, as Saurials in the Forgotten Realms.

One thing that sets the Dragonborn apart from the Draconians in Dragonlance is the absence of the latter's Death Throw feature. If the Dragonborn were the Draconians, I would be worried if my Dragonborn character did a TPK to my own party upon his own demise. In the afterlife: "Sorry about that, gents..."

Dragonborn as Saurials. Hmm...the Saurialborn?

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

My theory is if WotC wanted to create a new setting this could be strongly influence by the Asian speculative fiction, specially isekai. I don't mean a Kara-Tur 2.0. but the Asian styles with a Western look. This setting should allow "collabs" or crossovers with IPs from Asian fiction (comics and videogames). They wouldn't be a "visitors from other realities" but a mash-up version of external IPs, among other reasons to nerf too powerful characters.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Exandria is characteristic of the culture and attitudes at the time of writing, not the rules. I wouldn’t have any difficulty running a 1st edition game in Exandria.

That's as maybe, but the statement from the OP was...

Instead of shoehorning all the 5.5 mechanics and species and vibes into old settings, WotC should design a setting especially FOR 5.5E and it's target market.

Unless, in the intervening posts (which I did not read comprehensively), it has been re-defined, it would seem to fail the OP's intended test of being a world built "especially FOR 5.5E", seeing as how it was a world built for 4e with judicious PF1e additions.