Keeping hope for the 5th?

Hi there,
I just find an interesting recent image from WOTC who’s related to Dark sun, not directly but through spelljammer, their last setting in place.
It shows a thri-kreen,

here it is :
spelljammer thri kreen|400x500

I hope that DS will not be officially developed with current team in Wizards.

DnD 5ed isnt good to low-magic, quasi-post-apo setting.

I am divided on the question. I agree with you on the points of rules but it is what interests me the least in RPG. What I expect is above all to fill an old frustration of not having all the informations at the time.

I think for example of what happens in the ruins of Bodach, what is there in waverly, and so on…

Of course, everyone was able to imagine them over time, by inventing or finding scenarios, official or not, which could fit, but…

On the other hand, when I see what they do and the quality of certain content, such as Icewindale: the rime of the frostmaiden, I think that it would be great if they got back to it. Everyone can always sort out their own vision of DS

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But also from second hand - current team also ignore lore and core concepts.

We can look what was done with eg. Candlekeep. For me this caused toothache. Gorion turn in one’s grave after this (ok, ok - Gorion havent own grave). How many was created “new types of good drows” and change concept, that “drows have evil in own blood, and only neverending hard work on his personality can lead to situation, where drow X isn’t evil and not return to evil”.

If current team of Wizards would be work on DS - I will be scared :frowning:

Indeed, zap and just keep what you need. In my own campaign, Aarakocra are non playable characters, barbarian class neither, etc…
But if they produce some resources, it will always be useful.
I hope so

DS isn’t low-magic. Its just low-metal and unfriendly to arcane arts.

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My feeling is that DS works perfectly well in 5e but that 5e wouldn’t work well in DS. There’s too much stuff in 5e that doesn’t fit which makes it a poor choice of official setting to showcase the game. WotC and Dark Sun fans might be better served by licensing the IP to a third party developer though I don’t think think this is likely to happen.

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I think that Spelljammer could be a good opportunity for WOTC to test a scenario in the universe of dark sun, or which resembles it without calling it that, and see if the setting can please before developing a wider range . It would be, for us, the opportunity to see what they can do with it

Standard 5e might not be a great fit for DS, but I’ve seen stuff from plenty of DMs that have used the existing optional rules to run DS as 5e ‘hardcore mode’ quite well.

The classes and races might need some tweaks, but a brutal Old School DnD feel can be achieved just fine with what already exists (optional: Death save rules, carrying capacity, resource management [food, water], short vs long rest rules, etc).

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My point wasn’t that 5e is a bad fit for Dark Sun. It’s that Dark Sun is a bad fit for WotC. I think, in general, they have moved away from stand-alone campaign settings to material that can find a place in just about any campaign. The 2e era of multiple settings - Dark Sun, Birthright, Planescape etc - was commercially disastrous because it just ended up fragmenting their market.

The IP from that era that they’re developing now - recently Ravenloft and now Spelljammer - are the parts that can easily bolt on to existing campaigns and will allow players to use any of their favourite things from Volo or Tasha or whatever without worrying about whether it works in the setting.

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Yes, and I count on it so that they release a campaign in a “universe where the desert reigns supreme” and that we can easily adapt to our stories.

On the other hand, they do as they always do, that is to say, develop their main and classic universe (at the moment it’s forgotten realms) and then nothing prevents them from reaching a wider audience with spelljammer, dragonlance, and why not DS

Anything is possible if there is a decent 5E official version of psionics. 5E feels a lot closer to 2E to me (I’ve played a handful of times) than 3.5e. That said, I think that 3.5e does a better job at representing subtleties and edge cases when it comes to character concept.

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I agree that 5e is MUCH closer to 2e than 3.Xe ever was.

3.5e is super filled with options (some would call it fiddley), which is both its strength and weakness.

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We can also see, how Wizards ignore less-generic-fantasy regions of FR - eg. Maztica or Hordelands. General information, silent, lack local adaptation to new editions. Even in 4ed they preferred to throw away the whole “new world” to other planet. Even more normal Zakhara (still many fantasy in arabian style are popular) was ignored.

Similar like a @brokenlogic - I think, that Wizards now prefer go to more universal, loved and knowed types of settings. Easier adaptation basic mechanics, without big nums of new changes (greater or lesser) and without deep reinterpretations. Eg. Hordelands should need new mechanism of fight on horse.

For 5ed progress of power in function of level PC’s is more constans. For 3.5ed was more abrupt, steep. Very easy is creating multi-classes person, who will be much better in melee than pure, classical barbarian. This is one of points, why I like developing character in 5ed.

But for current team of Wizards the greater problem (for me) is fact, that they often ignore old lore.

This is only in UA, if I good remember. +/- some subclasses, but without separate, common mechanism. Even Mind Flayers haven’t “psi dices” or something similar.

or maybe psionics will be relegated to a kind of magic.

Ok but what about Dragonlance wich, it seems, will be a futur project? I don’t know this world exept some images I’ve seen but is it as easy to adapted?

Dragonlance is pretty mechanically generic - it’s feel and story is the non-standard parts.

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Worth noting though that the Dragonlance product is billed as an adventure book - not as a campaign setting. Adventures and campaigns have a somewhat broader appeal. With a bit of re-skinning it’ll still be useful to a DM who doesn’t want to run it as Dragonlance per se.

It also ties in with a new sequence of novels. And… it is being released with a board game - Warriors of Krynn - which can be used in conjunction with the adventure book. There’s a lot of cross-selling going on here to justify the production costs.

Dark Sun - as has been noted - has a higher design overhead than Dragonlance (it’s less standard and needs more mechanics development, more play-testing, more curation) and lower brand recognition. If I was planning a product pipeline at WotC Dark Sun just isn’t an obvious legacy IP to take off the shelf.

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Oh no!! it seems you were right, A space thri-kreen!!!

space thri-kreen

Kreens - sad history from sleepless predators to speakless telepathically peacemakers :rofl:

No more click, pop, grind, hum and glottal stop. In place “fun because somebody try use unnormal form of speak” we will have “nah, telepathy”.

This can be resoult fact, that too many players hadn’t good communication by mimicry sounds as kenku. But solution IMO is wrong.

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