So I know that both the Feywild and Shadowfell are supposed to be sort of fill in the blanks planes for people to run their own adventures but personally ever since the 4th edition heroes of the Feywild and Heroes of Shadow books I've been craving full campaign-sized books on both the Feywild and Shadowfell.
Ideally here is how the book would be laid out.
Lore
Races of the Feywild
Politics of the FeyWild
Locations
Spells/equipment
Monsters
I realize that this is much the same way that the 4th edition books were laid out but with 5th edition production values I think this would be a great book. I get that wizard"s doesn't want to overwhelm the player base with content we'll never use but I would be lying if I said I wasn't fatigued with the adventure format with their mammoth releases. While this book would be a mammoth release it would also be a new set of tools in our toolbox which I feel Volo's guide was a great step in that direction. However, I feel that we all have our preferences for our campaign settings, some people love Ravenloft more than Darksun and so on and it would be nice if those settings were fully updated to the new edition.
For Ravenloft, I would love a full book with information on all the other baronies and the barons/baroness's with more Ravenloft adventures a la Curse of Strahd. Yes people can use their imaginiation but it's also nice when your favorite setting has more support same goes for Darksun.
Going back to planes of existence how would you feel if they made a massive book that went into detail on all four of the Elemental Planes?
I feel like a massive book detailing the elemental planes is needed. Its a great part of D&D that needs to be fleshed out. Personally I'm tired of the small books that barely cover anything (Looking at you Sword Coast) and try to cover information in as little detail as they can get away with.
I feel like all the adventures that span 7-10 levels is just material that I'm never going to use. You basically have to commit your entire first half of your game to the campaign, which means the other ones aren't going to be used anyway. I love the much smaller adventures of fourth.
A "massive" book has been published for the Inner Planes, albeit in 1998, and it was written by the esteemed Monte Cook. Planescape books were so rich with "fluff" that the material in this volume should go a long ways to answer your questions about the cosmology of the Inner Planes where the Elemental/Para-elemental/Quasi-elemental/Energy Planes reside. I'll have to pull this one off the shelf again, but I recall the bits on the Energy Planes to be particularly mind-blowing material. There are crunchy bits (read: metagame) but 2E and 5E are such similar editions that the conversion of anything crunchy shouldn't take too much effort or time.
Frankly, I don't see Hasbro signing off on any expansive books detailing other well-loved game settings (Dragonlance, World of Greyhawk, Mystara) let alone producing anything considered a "niche" product. Your best bet is hoping some of the top tier third party publishers will produce something that you can use; I recall something fey-related on Kickstarter within the last month that Kobold Press was side-promoting since it wasn't their Midgard setting.
And that was for 2e! Realistically, I think you need a source book detailing it, not just a couple of pages in the DMG. Not to mention I think it would be more beneficial to have than another campaign long adventure.
Right?! I would love for the Elemental planes to be fully fleshed out. I think that the problem with 4th Ed aside from being more of a miniatures game was the fact that there were too many player options and as a result, most of that material wasn't utilized. On the other hand, while I realize that the development team for 5th edition is understaffed the mammoth adventures while very well done are actually too large resulting in people not fully making it through the adventures. I appreciate what Wizard's is trying to do by giving us ideas to use for making our campaigns but I feel that giving us a toolbox book such as I'm suggesting would be more effective in the long run. I also like that they are trying not to overwhelm players but say 5th edition lasts till 2027 that's still 13 years worth of content that people would have to look through they wouldn't have to buy it all.
Player options tend to not get used, because DMs have a tendency to limit players to the Player's Handbook. Either because books outside the PHB tend to become overpowered, or the DM just doesn't have all the books and doesn't want to take the time to figure out what is and isn't going to be overpowered.
I feel like stealing ideas from the company down the street might not be such a bad idea. Having the Campaigns come out in segments rather than one huge book, with each segment having more details could be nice.
Having started at 3rd edition and having never really played in the Forgotten Realms, I have never gathered a large number of the books for that setting. As such, I'm very unlikely to ever run a Forgotten Realms campaign and find most of the material in Sword Coast to be useless, beyond the last five or so pages. (Thankfully for WotC I tend to buy every book to get at least some ideas from).
Even right now If I wanted to run a forgotten realms campaign, I would have to dig out my old 3rd/4th edition books which many of the people I am going to play with don't have a copy. (Yes you can buy them from DMs guild, but they are for older editions. I'd even like a consolidation of material that removes the now irrelevant content at a lower price)
Something in depth detailing the planes would be awesome and it would make them feel like more a part of the game rather than an afterthought. At this point they are almost like another element that exists in 5th only because it always has.
I'm finding that I want more "new" books less and less as I get my hands on more of the older books (mostly the 2e stuff).
There is so much old TSR material to catch up on, I'll never get through them all.
I think I'm cool with the smaller books like Volo's guide and Sword Coast if I can I can just take the monsters, locales, and items from these awesome old books and then and find 5e examples to directly convert to. Then, use all the Old School fluff from those original books. The stories, characters, and artwork were so much better then; everything is so sterile, safe, and politically correct now.
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Be careful what you Wish for... your DM may just give it to you!
Different planes are usually reserved for high level play. WotC has said they are not doing as much to support high level play with 5th because people don't play high level that much. People don't play high level that much because there is little to no support for it. WotC has said they are not doing as much to...you get it.
I'm finding that I want more "new" books less and less as I get my hands on more of the older books (mostly the 2e stuff).
There is so much old TSR material to catch up on, I'll never get through them all.
I think I'm cool with the smaller books like Volo's guide and Sword Coast if I can I can just take the monsters, locales, and items from these awesome old books and then and find 5e examples to directly convert to. Then, use all the Old School fluff from those original books. The stories, characters, and artwork were so much better then; everything is so sterile, safe, and politically correct now.
This. So much this. 2E was the "Golden Edition of Creativity" as everything hinted at in 1E was now fully realized in 2E after the reorganization of TSR. Planescape. Spelljammer. The Realms exploded in 2E (albeit historical by 5E timelines but no reason one cannot play a game set in an earlier era). Birthright. Dark Sun. So much goodness to mine for ideas, adventures, and hours and hours of entertainment. Some settings waned dramatically (Greyhawk, see TSR reorganization). The "Living Campaign" concept was born in the RPGA. Great times.
One could argue the artwork claim a little, let's just say there was a diversity of styles and looks in 2E has been somewhat sterilized in 5E (no different than early diversity of MtG artwork compared to it now, beautiful as 'ell but it all looks like the same artist for the most part). As for political correctness, 2E was still backpedaling from the "D&D Is Satan's Gateway Drug" label. Thus no demons or devils. But hey, we had tanar'ri and baatezu. Artwork, the women seemed to get bigger breasts but their nipples went into stealth mode. Muscular barbarians made the Ken doll look well-endowed. *shrugs* Such is nature of a business model that is attempting to appeal to as many demographics as possible. 3.xE tried to get edgy again (Book of Vile Darkness, oooooh, scary!) but the edginess of 1E and the paranoia it induced in the "old" generations will never really be duplicated again...mostly because the old dinosaurs are playing the game still (good morning! *waves*).
Different planes are usually reserved for high level play. WotC has said they are not doing as much to support high level play with 5th because people don't play high level that much. People don't play high level that much because there is little to no support for it. WotC has said they are not doing as much to...you get it.
The worst part of that cycle, in my opinion, is that WotC put out a new edition that works differently so it isn't inherently unwieldy at high levels like previous editions, and stuck more support for high level play in the core books than has ever been in core books of prior editions, gave people some time to try out the new high level play experience, then asked everyone what level their campaigns are ending at and saw that there wasn't much change from prior editions (and I say "much change" rather than "no change at all" because I assume there has to be more than literally just my group that look at 5th edition and say "Yay! We can play high-level again! Haven't been able to do that since 2nd edition."
So it's basically too little, too late, and the majority of DMs that answer surveys are locked in to not playing high level because they don't play high level. Like how I don't use the interstate highway to get across town because I've always used city streets for that, and don't feel like changing because city streets get me where I am going fast enough.
So one thing that I'd really like to see (sadly not an option on this poll) is campaign settings that are released as being an adventure hard back, with a player's option book on the side.
In the way that Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide is really nice to have if you play say, Storm King's Thunder, or Out of the Abyss- i would want each campaign setting to get a "story season" with AL, a Hardback Adventure, and one options book focused on it.
So I would want them to release a hardback "War of Souls" as one release for the year, with the second being the "Adventurer's Guide to Krynn" the third can be whatever- then move yearly (or maybe once every couple of years) to a new setting.
I don't buy published adventures. I want more source books that are setting neutral but provide resources for regional specific mythologies. For example a source book with players options, equipment and monsters of the Far East, Middle East, Mesoamerica, and the like.
Shadowfell is a Campaign that needs and deserves it's own source book. There are quite a few resources out there for it (Gloomwrought and beyond, 4th) but nothing really grounded. there isn't even a completed map of the plane. sure there is mention of a few different places, such as the Gol Mountains, the Chaos scar, and big ass evil cities etc. but nothing actually anchored. I have been waiting for this for a really long time and could have had a lot of use from it. I especially like the rendition in the "Neverwinter" mmo game.
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So I know that both the Feywild and Shadowfell are supposed to be sort of fill in the blanks planes for people to run their own adventures but personally ever since the 4th edition heroes of the Feywild and Heroes of Shadow books I've been craving full campaign-sized books on both the Feywild and Shadowfell.
Ideally here is how the book would be laid out.
I realize that this is much the same way that the 4th edition books were laid out but with 5th edition production values I think this would be a great book. I get that wizard"s doesn't want to overwhelm the player base with content we'll never use but I would be lying if I said I wasn't fatigued with the adventure format with their mammoth releases. While this book would be a mammoth release it would also be a new set of tools in our toolbox which I feel Volo's guide was a great step in that direction. However, I feel that we all have our preferences for our campaign settings, some people love Ravenloft more than Darksun and so on and it would be nice if those settings were fully updated to the new edition.
For Ravenloft, I would love a full book with information on all the other baronies and the barons/baroness's with more Ravenloft adventures a la Curse of Strahd. Yes people can use their imaginiation but it's also nice when your favorite setting has more support same goes for Darksun.
Going back to planes of existence how would you feel if they made a massive book that went into detail on all four of the Elemental Planes?
I feel like a massive book detailing the elemental planes is needed. Its a great part of D&D that needs to be fleshed out. Personally I'm tired of the small books that barely cover anything (Looking at you Sword Coast) and try to cover information in as little detail as they can get away with.
I feel like all the adventures that span 7-10 levels is just material that I'm never going to use. You basically have to commit your entire first half of your game to the campaign, which means the other ones aren't going to be used anyway. I love the much smaller adventures of fourth.
A "massive" book has been published for the Inner Planes, albeit in 1998, and it was written by the esteemed Monte Cook. Planescape books were so rich with "fluff" that the material in this volume should go a long ways to answer your questions about the cosmology of the Inner Planes where the Elemental/Para-elemental/Quasi-elemental/Energy Planes reside. I'll have to pull this one off the shelf again, but I recall the bits on the Energy Planes to be particularly mind-blowing material. There are crunchy bits (read: metagame) but 2E and 5E are such similar editions that the conversion of anything crunchy shouldn't take too much effort or time.
Frankly, I don't see Hasbro signing off on any expansive books detailing other well-loved game settings (Dragonlance, World of Greyhawk, Mystara) let alone producing anything considered a "niche" product. Your best bet is hoping some of the top tier third party publishers will produce something that you can use; I recall something fey-related on Kickstarter within the last month that Kobold Press was side-promoting since it wasn't their Midgard setting.
We all leave footprints in the sands of time.
And that was for 2e! Realistically, I think you need a source book detailing it, not just a couple of pages in the DMG. Not to mention I think it would be more beneficial to have than another campaign long adventure.
Right?! I would love for the Elemental planes to be fully fleshed out. I think that the problem with 4th Ed aside from being more of a miniatures game was the fact that there were too many player options and as a result, most of that material wasn't utilized. On the other hand, while I realize that the development team for 5th edition is understaffed the mammoth adventures while very well done are actually too large resulting in people not fully making it through the adventures. I appreciate what Wizard's is trying to do by giving us ideas to use for making our campaigns but I feel that giving us a toolbox book such as I'm suggesting would be more effective in the long run. I also like that they are trying not to overwhelm players but say 5th edition lasts till 2027 that's still 13 years worth of content that people would have to look through they wouldn't have to buy it all.
Player options tend to not get used, because DMs have a tendency to limit players to the Player's Handbook. Either because books outside the PHB tend to become overpowered, or the DM just doesn't have all the books and doesn't want to take the time to figure out what is and isn't going to be overpowered.
I feel like stealing ideas from the company down the street might not be such a bad idea. Having the Campaigns come out in segments rather than one huge book, with each segment having more details could be nice.
Having started at 3rd edition and having never really played in the Forgotten Realms, I have never gathered a large number of the books for that setting. As such, I'm very unlikely to ever run a Forgotten Realms campaign and find most of the material in Sword Coast to be useless, beyond the last five or so pages. (Thankfully for WotC I tend to buy every book to get at least some ideas from).
Even right now If I wanted to run a forgotten realms campaign, I would have to dig out my old 3rd/4th edition books which many of the people I am going to play with don't have a copy. (Yes you can buy them from DMs guild, but they are for older editions. I'd even like a consolidation of material that removes the now irrelevant content at a lower price)
Something in depth detailing the planes would be awesome and it would make them feel like more a part of the game rather than an afterthought. At this point they are almost like another element that exists in 5th only because it always has.
I'm finding that I want more "new" books less and less as I get my hands on more of the older books (mostly the 2e stuff).
There is so much old TSR material to catch up on, I'll never get through them all.
I think I'm cool with the smaller books like Volo's guide and Sword Coast if I can I can just take the monsters, locales, and items from these awesome old books and then and find 5e examples to directly convert to. Then, use all the Old School fluff from those original books. The stories, characters, and artwork were so much better then; everything is so sterile, safe, and politically correct now.
Be careful what you Wish for... your DM may just give it to you!
Different planes are usually reserved for high level play. WotC has said they are not doing as much to support high level play with 5th because people don't play high level that much. People don't play high level that much because there is little to no support for it. WotC has said they are not doing as much to...you get it.
We all leave footprints in the sands of time.
So one thing that I'd really like to see (sadly not an option on this poll) is campaign settings that are released as being an adventure hard back, with a player's option book on the side.
In the way that Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide is really nice to have if you play say, Storm King's Thunder, or Out of the Abyss- i would want each campaign setting to get a "story season" with AL, a Hardback Adventure, and one options book focused on it.
So I would want them to release a hardback "War of Souls" as one release for the year, with the second being the "Adventurer's Guide to Krynn" the third can be whatever- then move yearly (or maybe once every couple of years) to a new setting.
I don't buy published adventures. I want more source books that are setting neutral but provide resources for regional specific mythologies. For example a source book with players options, equipment and monsters of the Far East, Middle East, Mesoamerica, and the like.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Shadowfell is a Campaign that needs and deserves it's own source book. There are quite a few resources out there for it (Gloomwrought and beyond, 4th) but nothing really grounded. there isn't even a completed map of the plane. sure there is mention of a few different places, such as the Gol Mountains, the Chaos scar, and big ass evil cities etc. but nothing actually anchored. I have been waiting for this for a really long time and could have had a lot of use from it. I especially like the rendition in the "Neverwinter" mmo game.