D&D 5E (2014) Xanathar's Guide to Everything -- new mechanical expansion/UA book! -- November 10 with a limited-edition cover by Hydro74

[Staccat0]

Sounds like a fair book to purchase.
Pretty sad that the Mass combat rules won't be in. I was really looking forward to those. Ah well... maybe next time.

As a point of perspective, I don't totally know who Xanathar is, other than a beholder in charge of a thieves guild apparently, and this was all learned from this thread. Frankly, that he is part of some FR lore will factor exactly 0% into my decision to by this book. I find it pretty weird that someone would get hung up on something like that. It has to be titled something, may as well be that. Probably better than what I would come up with.

Just my 2 cp.

Same here. No idea who he is or much about FR. I'm enjoying 5e despite having never been much into the realms. It's just words.

 

[Shasarak]

At that point... easiest and cheapest thing to do (for both WotC *and* the players would would like to play in those settings) is for just the "Worlds of D&D" type of book to point to DMs Guild and tell people "If you want even more detail... the setting info you can get from any of the setting books released during 1E/2E/3E/4E are all still valid, unchanged, and because they are PDFs of older books, much less expensive for you the consumer."

Maybe easiest and cheapest but otherwise the worst thing they could ever do. So I doubt we would see that ever happen officially.

All still valid and unchanged, man I am glad my eyes needed a good hard roll around my skull.

 

[DEFCON 1]

All still valid and unchanged, man I am glad my eyes needed a good hard roll around my skull.

Oh, you mean Eberron and Dark Sun have seen their histories change since their 4E books? Really? Players can't run games in these settings anymore because all the background, history and stories are now invalid? Wow! I had no idea! Thank goodness you were here to tell us that, because otherwise I might possibly have used all of these old books with all this invalid material to run games in those settings!

 

[Shasarak]

Oh, you mean Eberron and Dark Sun have seen their histories change since their 4E books? Really? Players can't run games in these settings anymore because all the background, history and stories are now invalid? Wow! I had no idea! Thank goodness you were here to tell us that, because otherwise I might possibly have used all of these old books with all this invalid material to run games in those settings!

Nah, your cool bro. All that stuff in a 3e Eberron book or a 2e Dark Sun book will work exactly the same in a 5e game!

I would love to see the face of the poor sap that follows your advice.

 

[Charles Rampant]

Nah, your cool bro. All that stuff in a 3e Eberron book or a 2e Dark Sun book will work exactly the same in a 5e game!

I would love to see the face of the poor sap that follows your advice.

I've run Planar stuff using Planescape books, no problems.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Nah, your cool bro. All that stuff in a 3e Eberron book or a 2e Dark Sun book will work exactly the same in a 5e game!

I would love to see the face of the poor sap that follows your advice.

You do realize I was talking about history and not mechanics, right? I mean, if you didn't read further back in the thread and were just reacting to my very last post, I can understand why you might not have picked up on the subtleties of the conversation. Where the point was that a single book that gave the necessary game mechanics for running games in each the various settings with maybe a small section on basic information on these settings was all that was really going to be made available in this day and age of WotC publishing. And that the thing we weren't going to get is a 300+ page tome for each and every setting because that's just 90% a photocopy of information already available on DMs Guild. You got all that, right?

 

[Jester David]

Nah, your cool bro. All that stuff in a 3e Eberron book or a 2e Dark Sun book will work exactly the same in a 5e game!

I would love to see the face of the poor sap that follows your advice.

You can absolutely use 4e or 3e or even 2e campaign material in a 5e game.
A party of a human fighter, dwarf cleric, elf wizard, and halfling rogue can run around in Eberron just as effectively using the 5e rules and the 3e campaign setting product. Because world's are system agnostic. Eberron is the setting and the lore and the places. And NONE of that has changed. All that has changes is five or so races and a class, which doesn't require a new book to work so much as a 10 page document.

 

[Shasarak]

I've run Planar stuff using Planescape books, no problems.

It certainly was the easiest way to run them for sure.

 

[Shasarak]

You can absolutely use 4e or 3e or even 2e campaign material in a 5e game.
A party of a human fighter, dwarf cleric, elf wizard, and halfling rogue can run around in Eberron just as effectively using the 5e rules and the 3e campaign setting product. Because world's are system agnostic. Eberron is the setting and the lore and the places. And NONE of that has changed. All that has changes is five or so races and a class, which doesn't require a new book to work so much as a 10 page document.

So nothing changes except for the stuff that changes?

Just have to hope the stuff that changes did not do anything important.

 

[Jester David]

So nothing changes except for the stuff that changes?

Just have to hope the stuff that changes did not do anything important.

The map? No changes.
The key locations? No changes.
The timeline? No changes.
The nations? No changes.
The major rulers? No changes.
The enemy factions? No changes.
The major mysteries? No changes.
The tone of adventures? No changes.
Everything that makes the setting distinct and different from other campaign settings... no changes.