I mean you can easily give Thri-Kreen the ability if they take the attack action, to be able to make a bonus action attack with another weapon as long as its a light weapon and the damage die automatically becomes a d4 OR to get a 2nd interact with object action OR the ability to ignore the loading property.... or a combination of that. Nothing really game breaking but still beneficial. First thing that came to mind. 

Eh, the selling point of Thri-Kreen in 2nd Edition was because you could give them four short swords and go "will it blend" on enemies by attacking with every weapon each round.  Remove that and you're left with something that's a lot more generic.

Quote from 6thLyranGuard >>

 That was already out the window in 3.5 and in 4th as well and still the Thri-Kreen was getting playtime. 

3.5

• Multiple Limbs: Thri-kreen have four arms, and thus can take the Multiweapon Fighting feat instead of the Two-Weapon Fighting feat. Thri-kreen can also take the Multiattack feat. These are not bonus feats.

4.0 

• Multiple Arms: Once per turn, the thri-kreen can draw or sheathe a weapon (or retrieve or store an item) as a free action instead of a minor action.
  
  

Another option would be that the arms allow for somatic component casting while holding weapon and shields etc.... there is quite a few things you can do that are in the realm of a half-feat etc. to give it some flavor and use case without going overboard. 

Thri-Kreen could still do it in 3.5, you just needed to spend a feat if you didn't want to be stuck with big penalties to your attacks.  Third Edition was the edition that tried to give everyone attacks, attacks, and more attacks.  And like most monster races, Thri-Kreen were generally regarded as an extremely weak PC option thanks to being saddled with racial hit dice and a Level Adjustment modifier.

but it wasn't part of the race and was an optional ability accessible via feats. who knows if a feat investment will later come to give additional optional benefits to the Thri-Kreen as it does for a multitude of races now in 5e already. Making Thri-Kreen only about their multiattack is a very narrow boiling down of a race imho. But everyone plays things for a different reason i guess. 

It was part of the race.  Taking the multiweapon fighting feat just reduced the penalty on your attack rolls.  And feats were cheap and readily available in 3.5- you always got one at 1st level, and you got another at every level divisible by three after that.  They were not major investments unless you were trying to get something like Whirlwind Attack.

4e had some additional feats that let them throw or shoot ranged attacks with their extra arms.

I think they'd still be super useful even if they couldn't attack. They could hold potions or other items, perform somatic components, interact with objects, or load crossbows.

Also, I'll point to Simic Hybrid as a 5e race with (optional) extra arms. No extra attacks, although if you use them to make unarmed strikes you can grapple as a bonus action.

I'm hoping for a Forgotten Realms setting book for DMs. As a DM who has run all of his campaigns in the Realms, the lack of info about it in 5E (other then cities/areas that have been featured in adventures such as Waterdeep and Baldur's Gate) is immensely frustrating. SCAG is great for lore and gives a good overview of each place for players, and all of it is in-game lore that any character in the Realms could conceivably know. But when it comes to concrete info for the DM, it's pretty much useless. Every time I need any of the Realms in my campaign, I shouldn't have to go through all the published adventures for scraps of info, look it up on the Forgotten Realms Wiki, and then dig through all the old 3E/4E stuff for it to actually be presentable, and even then I find myself improvising/homebrewing loads of stuff.

Also, I'd like to see a Dragonlance setting too. I've never read any of the old adventures/setting guides for it, just the novels, which were pretty good, so I'd like to run an adventure in it sometime.

Going back to the OP, one thing I'm thinking is that this is all pretty wishy-washy, even as teasers go.

"New formats" for settings probably just means changing how the books are organised, or maybe going more the boxed-set route that has been popular with Curse of Strahd Revamped and D&D Essentials. Or maybe D&D Beyond tokens that come with the books, like Essentials?

The updated old setting is probably Forgotten Realms, let's be honest. Although I'm also wondering if the DMs Guild Exploring Eberron will see an official book like Wayfinder's did to Rising from the Last War.

Hoping for Planescape and/or Spelljammer as the 2022 settings, and they're the ones that already fit with recent publications anyway (e.g., Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes bringing back Gith and the Blood War; Rime of Frostmaiden bringing in spaceships and laser guns). After all the hullabaloo over Weis and Hickman's new book being unceremoniously canceled, I would not expect a Dragonlance setting book to reopen that wound.

The "new settings" are interesting, although it's hard to believe these will go anywhere when 5e is so nostalgia-focused.

Quote from ratwhowouldbeking >>

 After all the hullabaloo over Weis and Hickman's new book being unceremoniously canceled, I would not expect a Dragonlance setting book to reopen that wound.

When you write that, are you aware the lawsuit has been dropped and the book is back in the production cycle, the first of the trilogy scheduled to come out this summer?  The fact. that the books are back in the pipeline I think speaks to a Dragonlance game resource.  Why else would D&D put its copyrights back into circulation with novels and not use those books to sell a game product?  

I guess I'm just perplexed by all these folks who cite Weiss and Hickman getting dunked on by WotC being evidently unaware that the conflict's been resolved.

Folks respond to "new formats" because it was spoken of as "formats" different from what D&D products usually look in the same presentation that mentioned the three classic settings.  If anything, I'd say more words were spoken on efforts to take D&D in further directions than it's gone than were spoken on the three settings.  But you're right, the "nostalgia focus" led a vocal amount of the fan base to focus on that.

Quote from MidnightPlat >>

Quote from ratwhowouldbeking >>

 After all the hullabaloo over Weis and Hickman's new book being unceremoniously canceled, I would not expect a Dragonlance setting book to reopen that wound.

 

When you write that, are you aware the lawsuit has been dropped and the book is back in the production cycle, the first of the trilogy scheduled to come out this summer?  The fact. that the books are back in the pipeline I think speaks to a Dragonlance game resource.  Why else would D&D put its copyrights back into circulation with novels and not use those books to sell a game product?  

I guess I'm just perplexed by all these folks who cite Weiss and Hickman getting dunked on by WotC being evidently unaware that the conflict's been resolved.

Folks respond to "new formats" because it was spoken of as "formats" different from what D&D products usually look in the same presentation that mentioned the three classic settings.  If anything, I'd say more words were spoken on efforts to take D&D in further directions than it's gone than were spoken on the three settings.  But you're right, the "nostalgia focus" led a vocal amount of the fan base to focus on that.

 Nope, wasn't aware. Perplexity resolved!

Quote from ratwhowouldbeking >>

"New formats" for settings probably just means changing how the books are organised, or maybe going more the boxed-set route that has been popular with Curse of Strahd Revamped and D&D Essentials. Or maybe D&D Beyond tokens that come with the books, like Essentials?

 I hope they start doing boxed sets for the books, similar to earlier editions, where you would get the book, some maps, a booklet of monsters or something, etc. I love the Strahd and Essentials boxes, wish they did that for all adventures.

As much as I like Dragonlance as a setting, I don't see a whole lot of point in a campaign setting book for it, since it wouldn't be hard to reskin plenty of existing stuff to fit it just fine.  I'd really like a Planescape book, but honestly the planes have had at least one book every edition.  While that's not a whole Planescape setting, it's more than nothing.  Now Spelljammer, that hasn't been touched since the 90's.  This would be a great time to revisit the setting, considering all the brand new setting lore that's been showing up from MtG.

Fizban's Treasury of Dragons apparently has more information on the First World that Tasha's mentioned in passing. I wonder if any of the two new settings they're considering publishing is a Campaign Setting Book for that world. IMO, that would be a great setting, especially if it doubled as a prehistoric world for D&D 5e. 

I kinda hope at least one of the two new settings isn't just an official port of another streaming show's setting. Not disparaging Exandria or Aquisitions or any of those, but 5e still doesn't have it's "own" setting the way 1st had Greyhawk, 2nd had Mystara (is that right? Not 100% sure), the way 3rd had Ebberon, and the way 4th had a handful of dedicated players trying their best.  I'd love to see a new setting from while cloth that, whole I don't think anything could replace FR  as the default setting, at least becomes the world you think of when you think of 5e.

Mystara was the default setting of Basic D&D.  Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (which is what 3rd Edition and on have been based on) had Forgotten Realms.  I don't really see WotC doing something like that: they've been much more focused on rule books than TSR was- TSR would write books that were 100% fluff with no rules, stats, or the like but Wizards has never really gone that route except at the very beginning of 3rd Edition.  They try to focus more on books that have broader usage no matter what setting someone is trying to use and seem to expect that GMs will spend more time writing their own fluff.

4E had Nentir Vale, if you're talking about a major "emergent" setting. 5E seems to be converting M:tG material for new setting content though. 

Quote from 6thLyranGuard >>

Mystara was the default setting of Basic D&D.  Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (which is what 3rd Edition and on have been based on) had Forgotten Realms.  I don't really see WotC doing something like that: they've been much more focused on rule books than TSR was- TSR would write books that were 100% fluff with no rules, stats, or the like but Wizards has never really gone that route except at the very beginning of 3rd Edition.  They try to focus more on books that have broader usage no matter what setting someone is trying to use and seem to expect that GMs will spend more time writing their own fluff.

To be fair, I think 5e is more supportive "you can do it too!" in the encouraging DMs to create their own fluff/lore than prior editions.  I think, like other stuff that's shown up in 5e, it's simply a recognition of what a lot of tables did anyway and making some tools to facilitate it.

Yeah, and it's also easy to find pretty well-written stuff for free online these days (or collaborate with people who will help you write it), too.

Quote from CharlesThePlant >>

I kinda hope at least one of the two new settings isn't just an official port of another streaming show's setting. Not disparaging Exandria or Aquisitions or any of those, but 5e still doesn't have it's "own" setting the way 1st had Greyhawk, 2nd had Mystara (is that right? Not 100% sure), the way 3rd had Ebberon, and the way 4th had a handful of dedicated players trying their best.  I'd love to see a new setting from while cloth that, whole I don't think anything could replace FR  as the default setting, at least becomes the world you think of when you think of 5e.

 
Mystara will always be what I think of when I think of D&D. I strongly dislike the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and Dragonlance. They’re all way too boring and generic. I have been porting Mystara along through the editions and will continue to do so as long as I’m DMing D&D.