Three New 5e Settings Confirmed

[PhoenixPhyre]

You do not seem to have understood my post
I read around a dozen dragon lance books. Maybe a few more than a dozen.
The first series as they came out.
The twins trilogy. Some of the one-offs (there was one with Kit and Tannis I vaguely recall, but I also think that some of the books were written by others who weren't MW or TH ... it's been a long time)
What I didn't do was read any of them a second time. Things I have read a second time like Starship Troopers, Hobbit, LoTR, Hobb's Assassin series, etc, are books that I really like.
The DL books that I owned I donated to the ship's library when I left that assignment.

As to the modules: we played the first one. The second one (and the rest which I picked up later) never left their wrapper.

As more books came out, I'd had enough of them and didn't bother.
(I just remembered another piece of the world building / annoying fiddly bits, that bugged me: steel coins).

I liked the Deathgate cycle but didn't keep those books either.

Yeah. That's how I felt about 90% of the stuff from Hickmann & Weis. Ok-ish to read once (I have really low standards for that ), but not something I'd keep around and re-read (I have much higher standards for that). Or have any interest in actually playing in those worlds. The worlds just didn't grab me at all.

[KorvinStarmast]

For Twamis: I guess I'm being Debbie Downer here, and for me the Kender is the deal breaker. So yeah, I need to stop.

Plenty of people really enjoy/enjoyed that setting.

[Sigreid]

For Twamis: I guess I'm being Debbie Downer here, and for me the Kender is the deal breaker. So yeah, I need to stop.

Plenty of people really enjoy/enjoyed that setting.

That's ok, the deal breaker for me is the whole towers of high sorcery thing. I don't play a wizard so I can have 1/3 of the spells off limits.

[IsaacsAlterEgo]

Kender have a lot of problems (at least, ones that I can't really get past. Let's not even get into the problems behind the existence of half kender...) but I don't think they're the only issue. Gully dwarves are Dragonlance as well, correct? I believe they are also one of the most widely despised races. To me their depiction from what I know is rather...cruel and mean spirited. They apparently cannot count as well as some real life animals? And then there's the tinker gnomes, which I know very little of but have heard nothing but complaints about. Does anyone have a more positive take on them?

Dragonlance seems to just have a lot of baggage as a setting that for 5th would have to be changed pretty extensively or left out entirely, which feels like more work than WotC is typically willing to put into their settings. I figure they will probably end up including Grayhawk over it, as the two setting do seem somewhat similar.

Personally, I'm hoping for Planescape, Spelljammer and Darksun. They feel the most "different" to me; Grawhawk and Dragonlance feel, in my opinion, very similar to Forgotten Realms and I don't feel like there is a lot you can do in those settings that you absolutely couldn't make work in forgotten realms.

[rooneg]

Kender have a lot of problems (at least, ones that I can't really get past. Let's not even get into the problems behind the existence of half kender...) but I don't think they're the only issue. Gully dwarves are Dragonlance as well, correct? I believe they are also one of the most widely despised races. To me their depiction from what I know is rather...cruel and mean spirited. They apparently cannot count as well as some real life animals? And then there's the tinker gnomes, which I know very little of but have heard nothing but complaints about. Does anyone have a more positive take on them?

I can't imagine Gully Dwarves actually existing in any modern version of Dragonlance. They'd literally be the first thing to cut for me, even before Kender.

As for Tinker Gnomes, I actually like them, but they do require the party to be willing to add a certain amount of humor to their game. Not everyone wants to play that style of game though.

[Hael]

Yeah. That's how I felt about 90% of the stuff from Hickmann & Weis. Ok-ish to read once (I have really low standards for that ), but not something I'd keep around and re-read (I have much higher standards for that). Or have any interest in actually playing in those worlds. The worlds just didn't grab me at all.

The problem with DL, is the setting is pretty much a plot device to frame the memorable characters. So while Weis and Hickman did create some of fantasies more iconic characters, it makes for a pretty limited setting for a campaign.

Conversely, Darksun isn’t really defined by its characters and it’s more about the setting. This of course makes for a much easier place to create a story.

[Arkhios]

Kender are fine as long as people who play them don't over-do their kleptomaniac nature.

I'd be interested in a Dragonlance setting. The novel series were my first I read of the genre, even though I remember only bits from here and there.

Back when 5e Unearthed Arcana articles were a new thing, IIRC there was this one article that spoke of introducing alternative racial traits to some races, especially making a variant dragonborn for draconians for Dragonlance piqued my interest. Obviously replacing their breath weapon with something more fitting for the various draconian types.

[KorvinStarmast]

Conversely, Darksun isn’t really defined by its characters and it’s more about the setting. This of course makes for a much easier place to create a story.

Which is why I like it.

Kender are fine as long as people who play them don't over-do their kleptomaniac nature.

Which is the problem, isn't it? Structurally enabling grief play in a cooperative role playing game is bad game design. It took a while playing on line games for me to understand that.

[Fnissalot]

I can't imagine Gully Dwarves actually existing in any modern version of Dragonlance. They'd literally be the first thing to cut for me, even before Kender.

As for Tinker Gnomes, I actually like them, but they do require the party to be willing to add a certain amount of humor to their game. Not everyone wants to play that style of game though.

I personally think the best example of gully dwarfs are the podlings in the dark crystal universe and wouldn't need to be cut if done that way. Small cute beings that enjoy partying. That said, I only read through some of the dragonlance modules and played parts of the computer games. I haven't touched the books.

Tinker gnomes are more or less rock gnomes, right? What is the problem with that?

[JadedDM]

I can't imagine Gully Dwarves actually existing in any modern version of Dragonlance. They'd literally be the first thing to cut for me, even before Kender.

I'd agree that gully dwarves are...incredibly problematic, to say the least. But you wouldn't need to cut them, just reflavor them. Give them a big CON boost and make them immune to non-magical disease. Now, the reason they live in refuse and eat garbage isn't that they are too stupid to know better, it's because they can. Why bother bathing, cooking their food or otherwise practicing hygiene when there's no downside to not doing so?

Rather than being pathetically cowardly, they are just conflict-adverse because they don't see any need to fight over land, resources or ideals. They live and let live. They're fine surviving in ruins or sewers or other places the so-called 'civilized' races consider unlivable, because nobody bothers them there. But if you threaten them, they go ballistic. Essentially, make them the honey badgers of dwarvenkind.

[Arkhios]

Which is the problem, isn't it? Structurally enabling grief play in a cooperative role playing game is bad game design. It took a while playing on line games for me to understand that.

Ehh, it's only a problem if you make a problem out of it.

Same could be said about a rogue whose player over-does the class' larcenist behaviour.

Or a warlock whose player plays it as evil as it goes, as a Chaotic Idiot.

Or an obstinate, lawful stupid paladin with a one-inch-wide worldview and moral code.

The list goes on...

[Corsair14]

I never had a problem with Kender in my games. When I ran it I would randomly have items that the kender picked up in his day to day travels with the group and often from the group. I would remind the player he was playing an innocent klepto that generally doesnt even know he picked anything up. Kind of like how people mindlessly click pens and dont even realize it until someone nearby calls them on it. Many times a player would go to use something and it wasnt there and they would look at the kender and he would go oh yeah, this? I would generate his pouch contents depending on where they were, in town or just the party, and would pick a few items that would be found in those environments. Sticks, sling bullet, healing potion, for example.

Gully Dwarves are just stupid dwarves. They are afraid of everything, take nothing serious unless it looks scary, have very little situational awareness and no short term memory. While I didnt restrict them, I find they dont make a very good playing character race. I think they had a max intelligence of 8?

Tinker gnomes are awesome. Always working on some kind of crazy device. It requires a very imaginative player to properly play one. I am strong into racial traits and people playing them correctly. Even the most sensible tinker gnome is working on something and the less complicated it is, the less useful or impressive it is. "Oh, just an auto-hitting axe? How about we have it shoot steam too?"

I really recommend people read some of the less major books to see some of the off-races of Dragonlance and how they should be run. Flint the King is a great one for seeing an indepth look at gully dwarves. There is a Spelljammer novel that goes into detail on the Tinker Gnomes, I think it was the first book of Cloakmaster series? For the Draconians, because i am in full favor of them being player races, Doom Brigade and its sequel are awesome reads into the mindsets of the various draconian races.

[JadedDM]

Tinker gnomes are more or less rock gnomes, right? What is the problem with that?

Not exactly. Tinker Gnomes are inventors, dedicated to science and technology. However, they have been cursed with a lack of caution or basic safety. In their minds, a machine that actually does what it is supposed to do can't be improved upon, which means it's pointless. So they are constantly adding bells and whistles, which ultimately makes their inventions useless. Gnomish weapons are as likely to hurt the user than the enemy. Instead of stairs or elevators, they have 'gnome-flingers' which are basically catapults that fling people up to the floor they want (it's more efficient, they argue). That sort of thing.

Also, they speak hilariously fast and have names that take several minutes to recite because they are so long. Most of them live in a hollowed out volcano called Mt. Nevermind. It got its name when someone asked them what their home is called, and after several minutes of listening to the name, they interrupted and said, "Never mind, Never mind!" and the gnomes adopted it as the new name.

There's also a 1% chance any gnome born will be immune to the curse, meaning they can actually invent things that work the way they are supposed to. They are called Thinker Gnomes, although the other Tinker Gnomes refer to them as 'Mad Gnomes.' Because creating a device and then saying, "Yes, this is good enough. I don't need to do any more to it," is surely madness, as far as they are concerned.

[KorvinStarmast]

Ehh, it's only a problem if you make a problem out of it.

I may not have been clear about the game design bit. On a related note, the initial functionality of Town Portal in Diablo II was a failed game design that enabled grief play by those who get their kicks PKing people in public games. It took more than one patch to fix that structural failure.

Kender are a conceptual game design failure (if not as big of a world building failure as I think they are) in that they structurally enable the chaotic idiot you referred to.

And I am sure that at various tables they have harmoniously fitted into a group of people who played them like ... halflings.

I think we can agree that some of the structural problems with paladin ( a class, not a race) were fixed in this edition.

[Fnissalot]

I
Gully Dwarves are just stupid dwarves. They are afraid of everything, take nothing serious unless it looks scary, have very little situational awareness and no short term memory. While I didnt restrict them, I find they dont make a very good playing character race. I think they had a max intelligence of 8?

I really recommend people read some of the less major books to see some of the off-races of Dragonlance and how they should be run. Flint the King is a great one for seeing an indepth look at gully dwarves. There is a Spelljammer novel that goes into detail on the Tinker Gnomes, I think it was the first book of Cloakmaster series? For the Draconians, because i am in full favor of them being player races, Doom Brigade and its sequel are awesome reads into the mindsets of the various draconian races.

The thing with 5e is that the playable races doesn't need to represent the majority of the race. Centaurs and minotaurs tends to be large but playable ones are medium. PCs tend to be heroes and the 4d6 drop the lowest enforces that and they are beginning to remove negative stat mods from orcs and such. I could totally see a gully dwarfs who is brave and wants to join a knightly order and runs around hitting things he deems evil with a kitchen utensil. When I have ran a homebrew dragonlance campaign in 5e, I ran gully dwarfs similar to podlings in the dark crystal universe and my players enjoyed them while being slightly disgusted. If you want to make them a playable character, you would bend them into having saving graces and being driven enough to go on adventures, not just enforce their disregard for sanitation, their cowardice, and their low intelligence.

[Luccan]

The thing with 5e is that the playable races doesn't need to represent the majority of the race. Centaurs and minotaurs tends to be large but playable ones are medium. PCs tend to be heroes and the 4d6 drop the lowest enforces that and they are beginning to remove negative stat mods from orcs and such. I could totally see a gully dwarfs who is brave and wants to join a knightly order and runs around hitting things he deems evil with a kitchen utensil. When I have ran a homebrew dragonlance campaign in 5e, I ran gully dwarfs similar to podlings in the dark crystal universe and my players enjoyed them while being slightly disgusted. If you want to make them a playable character, you would bend them into having saving graces and being driven enough to go on adventures, not just enforce their disregard for sanitation, their cowardice, and their low intelligence.

The PC equivalents for Minotaur and centaur are written for settings where they are the standard.

[Devils_Advocate]

If your player (if it was allowed) was stealing things and denying it, then they're not playing the (traditional) Kender correctly.

Kender appropriate absolutely anything that catches their eye. Physical boundaries or notions of privacy are both alien concepts to them

Kender are never happier than when their hands are in the pockets, pouches, or backpacks of those around them.

Kender always give perfectly reasonable explanations for just about every accusation leveled at them. Favorites include:

"It must have fallen into my pocket."

"You dropped it. I picked it up so I could give it back."

"I was just keeping it safe. You never know when someone might try to steal it."

"I forgot I had it. Is it yours?"

"What a coincidence! I have one just like that."

"Didn't you mean to give this to me as a gift?"

- DragonLance Campaign Setting, 3rd Edition, page 28

Now, those aren't all denials of taking the purloined item, but some of them are. And assuming that the kender only has reason to believe that the fourth response above is true, it seems like kender are honest about their handling an estimated 17% of the time. Somehow, that doesn't strike me as terribly innocent.

If kender don't realize that they tend to end up with others' belongings as a result of their favorite pastime of rifling through everyone's stuff, then they're basically delusional in a way that impairs their ability to interact well with others.

I'm curious how kender tend to react to requests not to rifle through everyone's stuff. Surely people ask that of them from time to time?

As for a lazy attempt at a Hobbit, I would differ - as someone who read all the books and didn't just play a module and not make it through the first (or second?) book.
When I played a Dragonlance specific campaign (taking place after Chronicles and not a module), I played a Kender. And it was never about stealing or hoarding. It was more about - imagine an entire race that has the curiosity and often times childlike fearlessness - to do and try different things. That's what a Kender is. A Hobbit is very much the opposite. A Hobbit wants to sit in their hobbit hole, smoking their pipes, enjoying the sunrise. Very much the opposite of a Hobbit in every regard.

The only relation to "Hobbits" would be their "size." But then, why not say they're dwarves or gnomes? Because they're the same size too.

Why would anyone ever think to compare a small player character race geared towards the Thief class with another small player character race geared towards the Thief class? The twist with hobbits is that they very much tend to be the opposite of adventurers, but OH MY GOODNESS THIS ONE IS AN ADVENTURER, JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER HOBBIT PC, WHAT A SURPRISE! Whereas the twist with kender is that they have a form of racial insanity that makes them think that they aren't thieves even though they actually steal stuff all the time, OH HA HA HOW FUNNY! Those are totally different twists, which obviously makes hobbits and kender completely different! Why, you might as well compare the unimposing little sneaky non-magical race to the unimposing sneaky little magical race, which is clearly absurd.

The twist with kender via-à-vis hobbits is that they're naturally adventurous, in contrast to hobbits who are naturally non-adventurous. But they're designed for and tend to fill the same party role. So kender player characters as a group serve as a foil to hobbit player characters as a group. Hence, a kender is "a hobbit for an adventuring party without it being a hobbit". (It seems like you may have missed the underlined part of Korvin's post). Gnomes, on the other hand, tend to slot into a different sort of class... but in a functionally halfling-like sort of way. An Illusionist turning invisible and a Rogue hiding in the shadows are both being sneaky, just in different ways. So gnomes could be considered a foil of sorts to halflings as well.

Dwarves, on the other other hand, really do not seem to have much in common with halfling other than being short. Physically, they tend to be stockier and beardier and manlier and are much more likely to be heavy-armor-wearing front-line melee combatants. They're stubborn and industrious. They share no role with hobbits, and so are not a foil.

Kender are fine as long as people who play them don't over-do their kleptomaniac nature.

Hopefully this anecdote doesn't drag this discussion too far off track, but... I remember once seeing a thread on another board about why people don't like the Forgotten Realms. And a Realms apologist responded by saying that powerful NPCs dominating the setting was something that could be ignored in play. But the thing is, all of its significant high-level characters and divine intervention and whatnot seem to be what differentiate the Forgotten Realms from an utterly generic D&D setting. So that defense kind of adds up to "The Forgotten Realms is fine so long as you ignore the stuff that makes it so gosh-darned Forgotten Reamsy."

Kender have been described as "childlike". Another applicable term might be "immature". And I get the impression that their acquisitive tendencies aren't the only potential problem. They're also fearless and have a proclivity for taunting. The impression I get is that insulting a temperamental giant because the giant is being kind of a jerk would not be out of character. Of course, if the giant only gets mad at the kender, and the rest of the party is happy to let the giant squash the kender by this point, then maybe this is one of those cases where certain problems eventually take care of themselves. But until that happens, they have to put up with a teammate easily distracted by shiny objects.

I'm sure that it's possible for a player to work around basically everything about kender in order to play a kender who isn't too poorly behaved. I'm also sure that that's damning kender with faint "praise". If the best that can be said in their defense is "The kender aren't so bad if you downplay all the stuff that makes them so gosh-darned kendery", maybe that's a bad sign.

The Thief (sub)class is totally also a potential problem, because the category of characters who steal obviously includes characters who steal from their own companions. But it doesn't only include them, so players and DMs who take issue with PCs stealing from other PCs are only taking issue with how a player is playing a thief, not with playing thieves in general. When characters of some race, or class, or alignment, or whatever can't not steal from their companions, and that whatever is supposed to be a valid character option, then there is a valid character option with those PVP antics baked in.

Now, that's not necessarily a problem. Some groups are okay with PVP. And some DMs will say "No PVP, and therefore no kender". But unless a clear stance is taken on this matter, there is great potential for misaligned expectations. And part of why dealing with this issue up front is less than 100% standard practice is that a lot of the time, those misaligned expectations just don't wind up coming up. If some players assume that PVP play isn't okay, and others assume that it is okay, and yet the latter players never have any reason to have their characters take any action against other player characters, there is no resultant conflict.

Kender are a case where a player who otherwise wouldn't cause problems can wind up annoying other players because a type of annoying behavior is effectively endorsed by being part of an option for player characters, and the player assumes that that means it's fine. Like Evil alignment, kender would seem to at least warrant a warning label to the effect of "Hey. It can be hard to roleplay this in a way that doesn't spoil others' enjoyment of the game, so you might want to consider just not picking this. If you do, have a discussion with your group about what's expected of players and what is and isn't acceptable. Dungeons & Dragons is generally a cooperative game, so player characters need to be able to cooperate with each other unless a group decides to discard the default assumption of cooperation."

It's ironic, in a way, people keep trying to label kender as thieving jerks, because the whole reason for their creation was Tracey Hickman didn't like the idea of halfling thieves who maliciously steal things from people, so he came up with kender handlers as a way around that.

How many thieves are motivated by malice, rather than simple greed? The issue is that some thefts are inordinately likely to be motivated by player malice. Replacing greed with outright kleptomania encourages thefts of that nature. Now there's always an in-character reason to steal even when there's no practical benefit to doing so! The "best" roleplaying excuse for antisocial behavior is one that's "always-on".

[KorvinStarmast]

Tracey Hickman didn't like the idea of halfling thieves who maliciously steal things from people

Which would make Tracy an idiot if Kender is how he solved that perceived problem. And I don't think Tracy Hickman is an idiot.

[JadedDM]

Which would make Tracy an idiot if Kender is how he solved that perceived problem. And I don't think Tracy Hickman is an idiot.

Are you saying I made it up? It's in their wikipedia page, the source being from The Annotated Chronicles.

Two of the other key characteristics of kender—their curiosity and kleptomania—were introduced by Hickman.[4][6] Hickman was uncomfortable with the notion of a "race of thieves" in his games, but still wanted the skills typically associated with thieves, so he added their "innocent tendency to 'borrow' things for indeterminate periods of time."[3]

[Trafalgar]

Bad news: All three settings are different versions of the Forgotten Realms, all set during different time periods

Back when Dark Sun came out in '91, I was convinced that it was the Forgotten Realms, just 2000 or 3000 years in the future. I believed this because "Tyr" was both a god in Forgotten Realms and a City in Dark Sun. I thought that TSR was going to roll out some massive magical/psionic apocalypse that would kill Elminister, banish the FR Gods, and turn Faerun into a desert.

Dark Sun was such a radical departure from the rest of 2e. It "fixed" a lot of 2e's RAW problems and was such a different flavor than the earlier settings that it felt like a different TTRPG. So I really hope they do the same with a 5e Dark Sun.

I also hope that Planescape returns.

[ProsecutorGodot]

Are you saying I made it up? It's in their wikipedia page, the source being from The Annotated Chronicles.

Two of the other key characteristics of kender—their curiosity and kleptomania—were introduced by Hickman.[4][6] Hickman was uncomfortable with the notion of a "race of thieves" in his games, but still wanted the skills typically associated with thieves, so he added their "innocent tendency to 'borrow' things for indeterminate periods of time."[3]

"innocent tendency to borrow things for an indeterminate amount of time" is a really nice way to say "Thief who might give it back when caught" as far as I'm concerned.

They likely would have been as innocent as he intended if it weren't something anyone could use to "borrow" things and give them back post campaign. It's fine, so long as it's returned... eventually, when I'm done with it.

I'd say this is an example of the cobra effect. Hickman wanted to avoid having a race defined by thievery and in attempting that made a race that is (seemingly) universally despised for their absolute and unstoppable urge to steal from you.

EDIT: Gosh it's even worse reading into it more, they've got the gall to be offended at being called a thief when they don't see any issue with taking your belongings in the first place. Just baked in excuses for a PC to wreak havoc and blame it on their fantastic roleplay ability.

No wonder they're not recommended as player characters. Let's keep it that way from now on.

[Ozreth]

Back when Dark Sun came out in '91, I was convinced that it was the Forgotten Realms, just 2000 or 3000 years in the future. I believed this because "Tyr" was both a god in Forgotten Realms and a City in Dark Sun. I thought that TSR was going to roll out some massive magical/psionic apocalypse that would kill Elminister, banish the FR Gods, and turn Faerun into a desert.

Whoa. That's cool. Haven't logged into this site in quite some time now and only check it every few months. Logged in to let you know that I'm adding this quote to my signature.

[KorvinStarmast]

@JadedDM

halfling thieves who maliciously steal things from people

as compared to

Hickman was uncomfortable with the notion of a "race of thieves" in his games, but still wanted the skills typically associated with thieves, so he added their "innocent tendency to 'borrow' things for indeterminate periods of time."

I fail to see where "malicious" is where you claim that it is.
(Again, I do not care for it as world building)
But I remain correct about him wanting hobbits without having hobbits, which Devils_Advocate has expanded upon in some detail.

Look, I was around when this stuff came out. It was bloody obvious what they were doing to anyone with even a remote familiarity with the genre as it was growing, at the time.

And to give MW and TH credit, they were working without a net and did a pretty good job. I think it is fair to say that they were laying the foundation of a second generation of Swords and Sorcery lit, perhaps pulpy, but heck they had a few best sellers. A variety of other authors were able to ride their muses down the road that TH and MW helped to pave.

[Tawmis]

Heh. I am surprised there's still quite a bit of discussion around Dragonlance. I love Dragonlance, but even I said, I doubt it's going to be Dragonlance (in regards to the original purpose of this thread). But hey, if we wanna keep talking Dragonlance and 5e, count me in! :)

I liked the Deathgate cycle but didn't keep those books either.

I had an entire BBS (bulliten board system - yes, the thing with phone modems) centered around The Death Gate series called "The Nexus."

For Twamis: I guess I'm being Debbie Downer here, and for me the Kender is the deal breaker. So yeah, I need to stop.

Plenty of people really enjoy/enjoyed that setting.

Naw. You have an opinion, vastly different than mine, but that doesn't mean ye need to stop. So you don't like Dragonalnce (as a book or for 5e). We can agree to disagree and be all right and keep talking about it. So far, it's been civil.

Kender have a lot of problems (at least, ones that I can't really get past. Let's not even get into the problems behind the existence of half kender...) but I don't think they're the only issue. Gully dwarves are Dragonlance as well, correct? I believe they are also one of the most widely despised races. To me their depiction from what I know is rather...cruel and mean spirited. They apparently cannot count as well as some real life animals? And then there's the tinker gnomes, which I know very little of but have heard nothing but complaints about. Does anyone have a more positive take on them?

Dragonlance seems to just have a lot of baggage as a setting that for 5th would have to be changed pretty extensively or left out entirely, which feels like more work than WotC is typically willing to put into their settings. I figure they will probably end up including Grayhawk over it, as the two setting do seem somewhat similar.

Personally, I'm hoping for Planescape, Spelljammer and Darksun. They feel the most "different" to me; Grawhawk and Dragonlance feel, in my opinion, very similar to Forgotten Realms and I don't feel like there is a lot you can do in those settings that you absolutely couldn't make work in forgotten realms.

It's true, that one might think a Gully Dwarf might be problematic. But D&D also defined "High Elves" (or Gold Elves, or whatever) as arrogant, self-centered, etc. But that doesn't mean every High Elf has to have that same attitude. They give the "general population" description - but that doesn't mean every single one of them is like that.

I firmly believe importing Dragonlance, as much as I want it to happen - would take a lot of work. Between the Knights of Solmania (Rose, Sword, Crown - each being their own), three orders of Wizards, the way the Moon impacts Wizards/magic, etc. Some of it could easily be done (Knights is simply broken up into a path - start as Crown, work up to Sword at Level 10, then 11 to 20 is Rose), the Wizards and the moon could be done with Add +1d4 when the moon is aligned or whatever, giving a bonus (1d4 damage, lasts 1d4 minutes longer, etc) as an optional rule (or just do away with the Moons impacting Wizards). Kender, like Dwarves in old editions, don't really do anything other than Rogue type things (no mages, barbarians, etc) - but could be done. (Not sure how they'd handle a Kender mage... a Kender who has overcome his need to be overly curious and study instead, could be a thing).

I never had a problem with Kender in my games. When I ran it I would randomly have items that the kender picked up in his day to day travels with the group and often from the group. I would remind the player he was playing an innocent klepto that generally doesnt even know he picked anything up. Kind of like how people mindlessly click pens and dont even realize it until someone nearby calls them on it. Many times a player would go to use something and it wasnt there and they would look at the kender and he would go oh yeah, this? I would generate his pouch contents depending on where they were, in town or just the party, and would pick a few items that would be found in those environments. Sticks, sling bullet, healing potion, for example.

My DM (way back when) would basically have a chart of 100 things he'd roll against. And like 00 was "Something useful" so if the party go in trouble and I said, "I reach into my bag and pull out..." (He'd roll) and sometimes it was, "The feather of an axe beak!"

[SaintRidley]

I definitely want Spelljammer and Planescape. Metasettings are awesome for linking up worlds so you can do fun things with setting hopping. Also I find the Blood War politics (most easily assisted with Planescape stuff) and Illithid stellar empire/war against Gith factions stuff (most easily assisted with Spelljammer stuff) irresistable.

For the third, we have Eberron now, and the only other setting I think is worth a damn is Dark Sun, so I want that. Give me Dark Sun in all its brutality and hard mode, please.

[Tawmis]

It's like trying to roleplay in Middle-Earth. Simply too much history, overly developed, and too many well known characters. Run something in one of those settings with someone who knows all the books better than you? No thanks, I'll pass.

I wanted to start here (as an avid fan of Tolkien). I know - despite my passion for Tolkien's writing - that there are a metric ton of people out there who know it WAY (and I wish I could emphasize the word "Way" like... a lot) more than I do. Similar to Dragonlance - I've read the books quite a few times. But I am sure someone out there knows it better than me. I am positive of it.

And yet, I play the Lord of the Rings Online MMO - and find countless adventures there. I don't think I've run into a "known" character yet in that MMO.

And for the person who might be like, "That's not how it is in the Tolkien books!" - just remind them, that the gaming session is similar to the movies, which also don't follow the books exactly. What you're doing is playing in a parallel universe that has almost exactly the same history, but different events may have shifted the "known" world of the books. I believe even 5e, explains that everyone is playing in the "multiverse" of Forgotten Realms. That's why 10 different groups, all playing some official module, can do whatever they want and produce utterly different results.

As someone who has played - and run - Dragonlance - I never encountered (as a player) any of the official characters, nor as a DM did I ever use them. In my own games, it was a group that helped win the war (for which the Chronicle series was based off of) - but like a large group, of like 40. So there's no hand picked heroes to meet or overshadow anyone. Why? Because of the wonderful multiverse.

Which for me, has always addressed this concern:

I really dislike the idea of Dragonlance as a 5e setting. I feel like it suffers from years of creative baggage. Almost 200 books and all those heroes and their descendants that take center stage time and again really drags player agency down tremendously. Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk to a degree suffer the same baggage. I think there comes a point where a setting becomes too developed and has too much history for me want to go adventuring there.

[Trafalgar]

Whoa. That's cool. Haven't logged into this site in quite some time now and only check it every few months. Logged in to let you know that I'm adding this quote to my signature.

Thank you! I don't believe I have ever been quoted in someone's signature before, even in my own.

[Segev]

If you want lots of new mechanics and a higher-power character build as part of the setting lore, there’s always a possibility of Birthright.

[KorvinStarmast]

If you want lots of new mechanics and a higher-power character build as part of the setting lore, there’s always a possibility of Birthright.

While that's an intriguing possibility, it's almost a second game in we look at how 5e is built from the ground up. Birthright seems to be aimed to hit a sweet spot that would translate into something like late Tier 2 and early Tier 3 for 5e.

I'll still hope for Darksun since the over population of book heroes mentioned above isn't a problem; surviving is.

[Segev]

With Dark Sun, would defiler and preserver be sorcerer or wizard subclasses? Or would doing magic just have those attached to it in such a way that all subclasses are fine as-is?