Your best guesses: beyond the obvious, which classic settings will 5e prioritize and in what time frame? How much attention will and should each one get? Which will get shafted and how much will they deserve it? Will any get handed out to 3rd parties?
Depends how the rules roll out.
Really, it does.
Forgotten Realms first it seems.
But WOTC has been really keen to reboot and resell Dragonlance.
I have no doubt we'll see Eberron sooner or later.
I am pretty sure Dragonlance is being worked on right now and will probably be the next setting to see published material.
Quote from: jadrax;769940I am pretty sure Dragonlance is being worked on right now and will probably be the next setting to see published material.
Which would be interesting, as I had the anecdotal impression
Dragonlance was the setting you love once but can never go back to. Would banking on that nostalgia really the right move business-wise?
It is a bit polarising. I was always under the impression that there were two camps: The 'realms and the 'lance and never the twain shall meet. Unless they play Spelljammer.
Would they farm out Dragonlance to Weis? Or is that a touchy subject?
As for the pipeline. It is difficult to say as personal preference clouds judgement. I want Spelljammer, but without the travel between worlds like Toril or Krynn (see comments above!). It could be really really pulp awesome.
At this point, I'd be surprised if they do any setting books at all. 5e seems premised on the 1e idea that, other than core books and adventure modules that tie into (or 'extend') setting info, players are better off without proliferation of material. I'm not even sure the resources are there, what with one of their major setting guys - James "Mr Eberron" Wyatt - already transitioned over to the Magic:tG department.
Quote from: BarefootGaijin;769952As for the pipeline. It is difficult to say as personal preference clouds judgement. I want Spelljammer, but without the travel between worlds like Toril or Krynn (see comments above!). It could be really really pulp awesome.
This is touched on in an old Legend & Lore article. 5e assumes Planescape as the default cosmology (for the outer planes, at least,) but for Spalljammer, they're "going to focus on it as its own setting and downplay its role as the connecting tether between various D&D Next worlds."
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20130701
If i had two wishes? Dragonlance and Birthright.
If they do setting books, i think what we will see is Eberron. Maybe Dark Sun again.
I suspect we'll get a psudo Planescape setting book in the form of a manual of the Planes type book that will also offer Sigil as fully fleshed out city to set a campaign in whilst adventuring in the different planes...not sure we'll get more than that beyond a few odds and ends in dragon and such.
Dragonlance, Ravenloft and Eberron i can see coming back in some form aswell(maybe not as campaign settings for all of them), Dark Sun is possible but they may just try Al Qadim as the desert setting instead given its part of the realms and thus an easier fit(also they can get jeff grubb back to help with setting info since he created it).
From what I know about Dragonlance, it seems like that would easily get enough support for their next released setting. Then again, LordVreeg is right--it may be too early to tell.
I do know that I want Ravenloft and maybe Dark Sun. Ravenloft I can see them being able to market to new players as "the horror setting", but I'm not sure how they can sell a revised Dark Sun. Maybe tap into the "post-apocalyptic" craze of the moment.
There seems to be enough references to old settings sprinkled through the core books that I wonder whether that's a sneaky way of gauging interest to see what people want after FR - for instance, if there's a lot of buzz about Warforged thanks to their inclusion in the DMG then Eberron may move up the queue.
In a perfect world....
Mystara...
One can dream...
The cynic in me assumes it will be whatever setting still has strong novel sales. Are Dragonlance novels still a thing?
Quote from: YourSwordisMine;770012In a perfect world....
Mystara...
One can dream...
I would love it, also Dragonlance given it would be so easy with the existence of subclasses.
Quote from: YourSwordisMine;770012In a perfect world....
Mystara...
One can dream...
If I end up liking 5E enough to start running a 5E campaign then it WILL be set in Mystara. No official products will be needed.
If I can run 4E in Mystara then 5E will be a snap. :)
Quote from: Haffrung;770028The cynic in me assumes it will be whatever setting still has strong novel sales. Are Dragonlance novels still a thing?
Looks like the last new book was back in 2010, it's all been reprints and translations since then.
Still, there is a hell of a lot of them.
Quote from: Exploderwizard;770038If I end up liking 5E enough to start running a 5E campaign then it WILL be set in Mystara. No official products will be needed.
If I can run 4E in Mystara then 5E will be a snap. :)
Oh I know, but my dream is of new official and awesome material.
Quote from: Haffrung;770028The cynic in me assumes it will be whatever setting still has strong novel sales. Are Dragonlance novels still a thing?
The only setting that has new novels coming out for it is the Forgotten Realms, but the core Dragonlance novels are still in print.
Indicators we've seen:
- The four game-setting pantheons in the PHB are Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Greyhawk and Dragonlance (along with Norse, Celtic, Greek and Egyptian).
- Weis has been making noises about wanting to do Authors' Cuts of the original Chronicles, with all the stuff that was cut for space 30 years ago. A War of the Lance adventure path would be a natural tie-in with those.
- In one of the Forbes articles promoting 5E, they said we could look forward to new Ravenloft stuff "very soon". Since Ravenloft is my all-time favorite setting, and the primary thing that's kept me in D&D's orbit for the past 20 years, I regard this as a good thing. :)
Quote from: Armchair Gamer;770098The only setting that has new novels coming out for it is the Forgotten Realms, but the core Dragonlance novels are still in print.
Indicators we've seen:
- The four game-setting pantheons in the PHB are Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Greyhawk and Dragonlance (along with Norse, Celtic, Greek and Egyptian).
- Weis has been making noises about wanting to do Authors' Cuts of the original Chronicles, with all the stuff that was cut for space 30 years ago. A War of the Lance adventure path would be a natural tie-in with those.
- In one of the Forbes articles promoting 5E, they said we could look forward to new Ravenloft stuff "very soon". Since Ravenloft is my all-time favorite setting, and the primary thing that's kept me in D&D's orbit for the past 20 years, I regard this as a good thing. :)
Please let there be Ravenloft stuff. Despite being a 4e fanboy, when they announced the Ravenloft Adventure Game and then quietly cancelled it, I was really bummed.
Quote from: Starglyte;770123Please let there be Ravenloft stuff. Despite being a 4e fanboy, when they announced the Ravenloft Adventure Game and then quietly cancelled it, I was really bummed.
That announcement was one of the things that got me to give 4E a second look, and I'm really disappointed we never even got a public release of the playtest draft as a 'might have been'. Then again, a couple of comments by the WotC design team have suggested to me that it was working on that game that convinced them that 4E wasn't working and that they needed to retool the whole D&D engine.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;769839Will any get handed out to 3rd parties?
Speaking of, has there been any comments about what form 3pp stuff will take?
Quote from: YourSwordisMine;770012In a perfect world....
Mystara...
One can dream...
You beat me to it:)
Quote from: Exploderwizard;770038If I end up liking 5E enough to start running a 5E campaign then it WILL be set in Mystara. No official products will be needed.
If I can run 4E in Mystara then 5E will be a snap. :)
While I never ran it in 4e, I concur with your reasoning. Vision of the savage coast dance in my head.:)
Quote from: Will;770146Speaking of, has there been any comments about what form 3pp stuff will take?
Not yet it seems we won't know until sometime in 2015.
Personally, I don't give a fuck about Dragonlance. It was fun to a point, after War of the Twins it went downhill like a fucking avalanche. The original modules were eh, but the hardback and box sets were worthy.
There's too much overwrought retconning needed. Realms needs a good enema too after 4e.
Eberron is a good bet they'll cover.
I hope they go full bore with Al-Qadim and KaraTur. Fuck it I'd like Spelljammer and Darksun too.
Mystara would be a surprise,a good one too. But I'm not betting on it.
It would be clever if they made Dragonlance a Kickstarter, feat. Weis & Hickman.
Quote from: Haffrung;770028The cynic in me assumes it will be whatever setting still has strong novel sales. Are Dragonlance novels still a thing?[
Quote from: jadrax;770040Looks like the last new book was back in 2010, it's all been reprints and translations since then.
Still, there is a hell of a lot of them.
And the recent set of novels, pretty much set the clock back to just after the War of the Lance, minus Takhisis and Paladine (the big Evil and Good god, respectively).
It would be nice if WotC published a sword and sorcery setting for D&D. Something more like the Wilderlands or Hyboria than Dragonlance or Faerun.
Frankly, I've never seen much difference between Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Faerun, and Mystara. They're all pretty much middle of the road, vanilla fantasy settings. It would be nice to to have a setting that is weirder or grittier than Greyhawk or Faerun without going full Dark Sun with insect people and no metal.
Speaking of Sword and Sorcery, I'd sell a kidney to see Lankhmar...
Not my OWN kidney, mind you.
I'll never understand this.
RPGs were mainly created for GMs to make their own settings. I know this is a popular thing...but it has never made a whit of sense to me.
Personally I never use existing settings, but they can offer cool ideas and rules to steal for my own settings.
It's about time a new setting was dreamed up by the brain-trust.
Quote from: One Horse Town;770450It's about time a new setting was dreamed up by the brain-trust.
Agreed, maybe something like,
Quote from: Haffrung;770406It would be nice if WotC published a sword and sorcery setting for D&D. Something more like the Wilderlands or Hyboria than Dragonlance or Faerun.
Didn't Mongoose drop or lose the Conan license? That could be a nifty sword and sorcery setting for WizBro to license.:)
DragonLance: The Setting is decent.
DragonLance: The Original Modules is a good argument in favor of book burning.
Quote from: Haffrung;770406It would be nice if WotC published a sword and sorcery setting for D&D. Something more like the Wilderlands or Hyboria than Dragonlance or Faerun.
What, like Dark S--
QuoteFrankly, I've never seen much difference between Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Faerun, and Mystara. They're all pretty much middle of the road, vanilla fantasy settings. It would be nice to to have a setting that is weirder or grittier than Greyhawk or Faerun without going full Dark Sun with insect people and no metal.
Never mind, then.
Quote from: One Horse Town;770450It's about time a new setting was dreamed up by the brain-trust.
We
had Nentir Vale, but I guess that doesn't seem to have gone over except among the hardcore 4e crowd.
Quote from: Haffrung;770406It would be nice if WotC published a sword and sorcery setting for D&D. Something more like the Wilderlands or Hyboria than Dragonlance or Faerun.
Not sure how their licensing is going to be structured, but I'll be surprised if we don't see some 3pp settings along those lines.
Quote from: Haffrung;770406It would be nice if WotC published a sword and sorcery setting for D&D. Something more like the Wilderlands or Hyboria than Dragonlance or Faerun.
Frankly, I've never seen much difference between Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Faerun, and Mystara. They're all pretty much middle of the road, vanilla fantasy settings. It would be nice to to have a setting that is weirder or grittier than Greyhawk or Faerun without going full Dark Sun with insect people and no metal.
I dunno. Mystara always seemed drastically different to me than other settings, because it was based on the BECMI D&D rules. Things were somewhat different than the AD&D settings, because the rules were different.
It also had a lot of over the top stuff. Flying ships. Hell, a flying city protected by magical biplanes. You had it being hollow and and elevator to the center of the planet.
Dragonlance was somewhat different because you had different classes. And races. And the main enemy wasn't orcs or humanoids, but dragons and draconians
Quote from: Ronin;770452Didn't Mongoose drop or lose the Conan license? That could be a nifty sword and sorcery setting for WizBro to license.:)
Kind of. The people who owned it decided that it was worth about ten times more than Mongoose were willing to pay due to the film coming out...
Quote from: jadrax;770486Kind of. The people who owned it decided that it was worth about ten times more than Mongoose were willing to pay due to the film coming out...
We see how that ended up.
Quote from: LordVreeg;770438I'll never understand this.
RPGs were mainly created for GMs to make their own settings. I know this is a popular thing...but it has never made a whit of sense to me.
RPGs were also created for hardcore gamers of college age who had 20 hours a week to devote to their gaming. Today, a lot of people have trouble finding the time even to play the game, let alone design an entire world to play in.
I've mostly used my own settings in the past. But with my current lifestyle, I wouldn't mind a published setting I can use out of the box.
Quote from: LibraryLass;770456We had Nentir Vale, but I guess that doesn't seem to have gone over except among the hardcore 4e crowd.
I liked Nentir Vale. Though more for the manageable, practical scope than any great originality.
Quote from: Haffrung;770555RPGs were also created for hardcore gamers of college age who had 20 hours a week to devote to their gaming. Today, a lot of people have trouble finding the time even to play the game, let alone design an entire world to play in.
I've mostly used my own settings in the past. But with my current lifestyle, I wouldn't mind a published setting I can use out of the box.
Yeah, I vacillate between making my own setting and just saving time for the most important stuff by using a premade. While the "homebrew setting lovingly crafted over many campaigns across decades" thing really appeals to me, if I'm honest most of my best campaigns took place in either a) settings I threw together at the last minute with lots of player input after too much perfectionist hesitation on the "perfect" setting, b) premade settings.
Lately I'm even doubting the purity and competence of my world building.
Quote from: Haffrung;770555RPGs were also created for hardcore gamers of college age who had 20 hours a week to devote to their gaming. Today, a lot of people have trouble finding the time even to play the game, let alone design an entire world to play in.
I've mostly used my own settings in the past. But with my current lifestyle, I wouldn't mind a published setting I can use out of the box.
I liked Nentir Vale. Though more for the manageable, practical scope than any great originality.
I didn't say who it was created for, I say what it was created to do. I can't disagree at all that it was created for the college aged crowd and those that were just past it (which is partly what made it also so perfect and tantalizing for those younger at the time).
I said it didn't make sense to me; I guess that is because the big-picture, artistic side of me uses game and setting creation as my main creative outlet. Some people like to play the game; I get a much bigger charge out of the PCs interacting with what I build. And I seem to do a good job...or get very lucky...finding people who appreciate the setting work.
For first 20 years or so of my life I adored making big, elaborate settings.
But the thing is... in pretty much every case, the players didn't care. Only the immediate scope really mattered to them.
Whenever I play, next, I'm inclined to do a Sword and Sorcery 'port city' type immediate setting, some local politics, and leave the rest of it in broad brushstrokes until the players actually poke at it. (And possibly use various methods to get players to actually be involved, if they want to be, in what further details evolve)
Quote from: Will;770564But the thing is... in pretty much every case, the players didn't care. Only the immediate scope really mattered to them.
I have found the exact same thing, and when the players go off piste, much of it becomes wasted. MOARN or Make Only As Really Necessary, something Marc Miller wrote about in T5, it is good advice; he's actually peppered good advice through the book, as a GM. It is also the "Lazy GM" theory; which I find thinking of a ton of rough sketch kind of ideas about which way the campaign will go is a better use of time.
If players are engaged and care, they probably would enjoy being involved. So you can kibbitz with them about what 'the lost kingdom of Urz five days travel away' actually means.
If players don't care, they are also not going to care if you kibbitz with different players or make it up just before they walk in.
Quote from: Will;770571If players are engaged and care, they probably would enjoy being involved. So you can kibbitz with them about what 'the lost kingdom of Urz five days travel away' actually means.
If players don't care, they are also not going to care if you kibbitz with different players or make it up just before they walk in.
Also, the length of the campaigns play into this.
QuoteDragonLance: The Setting is decent.
The setting is awesome the modules? Never used them, why would we? Though I would love a S&S setting complete with DCC/Warhammer style magic.
The 'MOARN' rule cited above is one of the deeper insights into good DM world creation, and you can see it expressed in some of the best published settings.
Glorantha has to be on any reasonable person's list of the best settings presented by a company, but if you really pay attention to the way it grew as a game setting it was created one small sandbox at a time, stitched together into a somewhat larger but still modest sandbox. The over-arching world and mythology existed from the beginning but had little direct expression in the setting material. The Dara Hapan empire and Seshnella and so forth existed, but only as brief references. There was no effort to raise the water level on all parts of the world at once; for all practical purposes the 'world' was a place you could ride across in a week or two, and you spent most of your time in places you could ride across in a day or two (Borderlands, Pavis, Big Rubble, Snakepipe Hollow, Shadow's Dance, Griffin Mountain area). And this was more than enough for roughly a decade of setting development (basically, until AH took over with 3E). And I don't remember anyone complaining or feeling like something was missing. I think of this as the commercial example of a really excellent DM- (or gaming group) created setting.
My personal view is that the decline in player-driven setting creation was when the hobby started to slide, in numbers, visibility and quality. Of course all the games that focus on DM-created settings still exist and there will always be a population of people who play this way. But the center of mass of the hobby shifted to large 'synoptic' commercial settings. Those existed in some form from the beginning, but if you were gaming in 1978-80 you know they had relatively little impact; most people were playing in their own settings. This act of creation gave people a real sense of investment and attachment to the game.
I'm not sure what caused the loss of this as the mainstream gaming experience. The business of modern life; the rise of computer games that give you a sort of easy, masturbatory version of roleplaying games, or the industry itself pushing big-setting product. In any event, if I were in charge of the 5E line I would put serious effort into helping gaming groups re-learn this skill, to help re-kindle this level of personal investment in the game. This kind of focus for a 5E DMG could have a huge impact, though I fear we're more likely to get a bunch of rules no one needs and everyone either ignores or complains about.