Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Speculation on New D&D Settings

 Something Chris Perkins has now mentioned a couple of times is that WotC is working on two brand-new campaign settings for D&D. This would be unlike the various returns we've seen like with Eberron and Ravenloft in 5th Edition, or even the introduction of Wildemount, which, while new as a canonical setting for D&D, was previously established in the Critical Role campaign and in their own Tal'dorei Campaign Setting (Wildemount and Tal'dorei both being continents on the world of Exandria.)

The way I see it, a campaign setting needs a very distinctive hook to make it worth developing. The Forgotten Realms, alongside Dragonlance and Greyhawk, and, actually, Exandria, to me seem to cover the classic fantasy setting pretty well.

Going into other settings we've seen recently, Eberron covers a more technological, pseudo-modern (or at least pseudo-early-20th-century) setting.

Naturally, there are a lot of different ways to do a medieval fantasy setting - the world of A Song of Ice and Fire is very different in tone and history than Tolkien's Arda (on which Middle-Earth is a continent,) so I suppose I might be too dismissive of an attempt to make a traditional-style setting.

D&D has also gotten fairly weird in as well - Ravenloft's reality doesn't work the same way that the material plane does, and there's already the outer-planar weirdness of Planescape and the science-fantasy hi-jinx of Spelljammer.

So, where does one go?

One place to look for inspiration is history. Eberron has a few hints of a wild-west-type setting, though it mixes that with a lot of other pulp adventure genres like the Noir-ish city of skyscrapers in Sharn and adventure stories in jungles and ruins. As far as I know, there's not a setting with a really dominant empire in the vein of Rome. Theros does a riff on Greek Myth, of course, but I think you might have some fun with the palace intrigue of Rome.

I always like to mix some sci-fi into my fantasy, though I realize that Spelljammer already covers this to a large extent. That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing a somewhat more tonally serious science fantasy setting for the game (though not until after we get a legit Spelljammer book.)

Another personal favorite of mine is the modern fantasy concept. Dimension 20's Fantasy High does a great job of making the game work in a suburban, pseudo-modern setting with cars and cell phones and high school, and I think it would be really cool to see something like that.

D&D's settings do tend toward a more Euro-centric style, and though we've seen area in, for example, the Forgotten Realms expanded into regions inspired by other parts of the world, it might be interesting to see a whole setting inspired by the myths and history of a place that isn't full of white people (this is, of course, assuming that the leads on said project would likewise be people of color.)

Also, while there are elements of it in many settings, there isn't really any true D&D steampunk setting (I suppose gas lamp fantasy would be the more accurate term, given the existence of magic.) Admittedly, Eberron comes close to this.

As we've seen in The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, WotC is playing with the idea of parallels existing between the Shadowfell and the Feywild, with the Feywild having its "Domains of Delight" in the vein of the Shadowfell's Domains of Dread. Might we, then, see something akin to Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, but for whimsical Feywild adventures?

Of course, these two settings, whatever they are, are still in a rough stage of development, and aren't even guaranteed to come out. But they have been mentioned multiple times now, which seems to bode well for their eventual release.

And I'll certainly be keeping an eye out for them.

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