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

[LuisCarlos17f]

Remember the saying "the customer is always right". If the players want to play with dragonborns then dragonborns have to be offered. The publisher only has to offer options and we are who choose these.

It is not a bad idea a setting where the dragoborn are the members of the noble houses. Maybe the commoners are simple kobolds or dragonkin (these appeared in 2nd Ed and 3rd).

Really I don't reject the tielflings but I don't like the aasimars were forgotten during a long time. Now they are in the 2024 PH and I feel better.

Other point is to sell a new setting because you have to design a lot of elements like the geography and the History and now players can read it free in the fandom wiki.

Other idea is a world or demiplane created by Vecna to take revengue against old enemies. The irony is this world soon becomes the salvation of Athasians who were escaping the cataclysm what would cause the end of the Athaspace. After the initial surprise the god Vecna accepts these refugees because he notices the great potential of their psionic powers. Then Vecna chooses not to be hostile against the newcomers and secretly he helps them to grow their population.

 

[Charlaquin]

I was responding to Scribe's comment about older settings not being changed or retconned. Which I find to be both impossible (if they are supposed to be aligned with the current rules) and futile.

Oh. Yeah, that explains a lot, I can’t see Scribe’s posts. And in light of that context, I do agree with you.

To that point, a "5.5" setting would most likely suffer a similar fate when the next edition comes. Something will change that will invalidate the compatibility between lore and mechanics in the core books and we'll be back to determining if updating to 6e is retconning the lore or not.

As I said, I think D&D is already spread too thin over eight legacy, three MTG and one newer setting (Exandria) so adding another just further weakens how much support the rest are getting. But if we do add an all new setting, I want it to be because there is an interesting hook first and compatibility to the new rules second because, IMHO, ALL settings should be compatible with the new rules and if there is a conflict, the current rules take priority over the old lore.

So the idea of a "5.5" designed setting is pointless, they should all be "5.5 settings".

Totally reasonable! I think I'm largely in agreement.

 

[Charlaquin]

I've always wanted to do a Phandbox! I imagine you've combined Lost Mines and Icespire Peak, but what else have you put in? Stormwreck Isle? The 4e Neverwinter book?

I’m starting with Lost Mines and Icespire Peak, with a tiny dash of the new Forgotten Realms book. What else happens from there will depend on what the players do. At some point before the dragon is dealt with, Sister Garale is going to lead a group of refugees to Red Larch fleeing the dragon, which if the players decide to follow to protect the refugees could lead to Princes of the Apocalypse. Though, the refugees will pass through Nightstone on the way there where the attack that kicks off Storm King’s Thunder will happen, which could lead to them off on that questline. Though, part of that questline leads to Byn Shander where they could end up doing Rime of the Frostmaiden instead. Storm King’s Thunder also has a big “roam around Ferun and gain some levels I guess” section, which would be an opportunity to bring in more of the content from the new Adventures in the Forgotten Realms book, or any other 5e adventure anthology material.

Alternatively, they might stay in Phandalin to see the dragon crisis through, in which case they’ll miss the pilgrimage entirely. After they defeat the dragon, Leilon will request aid from Phandalin which could lead to the Storm Lord’s Wrath/Sleeping Dragon’s Wake/Divine Contention trilogy. Or they might decide to stay in Phandalin and get to the bottom of the whole goblin raiders plot, which would lead into Shattered Obelisk.

I don’t currently have any hooks planned that would lead to Neverwinter, but if the players decide on their own that they want to go there, I’ll adapt something from the 4e book for sure. I’m also considering finding a way to work in a hook to lead to Candlekeep and the Candlekeep Mysteries adventures. Heck, maybe they’ll find a Deck of Many Things in a random treasure hoard somewhere and the campaign will get derailed by the need to rescue a party member from the Donjon or something.

Ultimately, what I do or don’t include in the campaign will come down to what my players are interested in pursuing. And like I mentioned, I have two groups who I’ll be running for, both starting out in Phandalin, but who knows how their paths might diverge from there. Quest opportunities one group picks up won’t stay available for the other, so I expect in a few months time I’ll be running two entirely different campaigns that just happened to have started in the same place. But maybe their paths will cross again at some point. Not knowing until it happens is exactly what’s most exciting to me about this idea!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I dunno how anyone could complain about Saltmarsh. There are zero dragonborn (although there is a dragonborn in one of the pictures) and the only tiefling is a trader from Iuz.

It doesn't have any halflings, goliaths, orcs, gnomes or aasimar either. And the only elf is an non-PHB sea elf. It does have some lizardfolk and a couple of hobgoblins. The tiefling and a couple of dwarves where later additions. But given that its a 1980s adventure set in a pseudo-17th century England (before it was unceremoniously dumped in Greyhawk), that's hardly surprising.

 

[Hussar]

It doesn't have any halflings, goliaths, orcs, gnomes or aasimar either. And the only elf is an non-PHB sea elf. It does have some lizardfolk and a couple of hobgoblins. The tiefling and a couple of dwarves where later additions. But given that its a 1980s adventure set in a pseudo-17th century England (before it was unceremoniously dumped in Greyhawk), that's hardly surprising.

Oh, I totally agree. Since they were doing a lot of recycling in 5e, it's not surprising that later elements have gotten short shrift. And, IIRC, the Dragon Queen adventures were being written before the 5e PHB had hit the streets, so, the writers may not have even known if dragonborn were going to make the cut or not. After all, 5e was very much a rejection of 4e, and it wasn't a bad guess to think that dragonborn might not make it into the new PHB.

So, we get an entire AP about dragons that use half-dragons and not dragonborn.

There were so many recycled or homage style adventures in 5e, and they were all based on much older adventures.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

As I stated upthread, 5.5 moves some elements from species to background, and that could be represented in setting design in an interesting way. 5.5 is a looser ruleset than 3.5, so a lot of the "these are the effects of the magic item economy on the setting" we saw in Eberron aren't really applicable, but 5.5 does make some assumptions about the overall meta-setting so those can be incorporated.

Most importantly, embracing the current rules allows you to build a world that does not contradict the system, or create undo tension. That's the real goal.

Nothing in this would induce me to invest in that setting. I have Greyhawk in the DMG, I have Wildemount, I have the recent Realms books (which are as close to my ideal, in terms of information and structure as settings, as I have seen in my lifetime). I even have some of the earlier 5e Ebberon stuff. Unless this putative setting book does something new and interesting, I do not see myself as a potential buyer.
I have not seen D&D rules as remotely simulationist for many years, I do not see tension between the rules and the setting.

 

[TiQuinn]

Huh. I'm running Out of the Abyss. Zero Dragonborn or tieflings. Ghosts of Saltmarsh, 1 tiefling, zero dragonborn. Candlekeep Mysteries, IIRC, 1 dragonborn, 0 Tieflings. Waterdeep Dragonheist, 0 dragonborn or tieflings that I recall. Phandelver - 0 dragonborn or tieflings.

And while there are a number of half-dragons in Tyranny of Dragons, there are exactly 0 actual dragonborn characters. I remember because I actually played a dragonborn character in the campaign, expecting to see lots of dragonborn and then not meeting a single dragonborn NPC in the entire campaign.

I'd say they are pretty under represented.

Guess we just have had two vastly different experiences.

 

[Parmandur]

Huh. I'm running Out of the Abyss. Zero Dragonborn or tieflings. Ghosts of Saltmarsh, 1 tiefling, zero dragonborn. Candlekeep Mysteries, IIRC, 1 dragonborn, 0 Tieflings. Waterdeep Dragonheist, 0 dragonborn or tieflings that I recall. Phandelver - 0 dragonborn or tieflings.

And while there are a number of half-dragons in Tyranny of Dragons, there are exactly 0 actual dragonborn characters. I remember because I actually played a dragonborn character in the campaign, expecting to see lots of dragonborn and then not meeting a single dragonborn NPC in the entire campaign.

I'd say they are pretty under represented.

There is a dragonborn NPC in Hoard of the Dragon Queen somewhere between Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter.

 

[Remathilis]

And Mystara was not originally a BECMI Setting: it was the Kent State shared home campaign for OD&D that Schenck, Cook, and Moldvay took into TSR with them when they graduated and got jobs together.

Mystara/Known World is a bit of an odd duck. On the surface it's a very generic D&D setting but just underneath the surface (even somewhat literally) is all manner of weird and interesting stuff. The problem is that it's hard to sell that on first blush as being all that different from Greyhawk or the Realms, the elevator pitch is essentially "it's the original setting for Basic and Basic got weird" doesn't sell much.

Love the setting to death, but I completely understand why it's not on the list to be rebooted.

 

[Remathilis]

2. Class representation. Warlocks, for example. Clerics have churches. Bards have schools. Where are the warlock organizations?

Those are called "cults" and they tend not to advertise there presence.