Do Birthright and/or Dragonlance deserve to be revived before Dark Sun, Eberron, and/or Planescape for 5e?

Birthright needs love. Contrary to old boy over here.
It's a pretty hard setting to convert to because it's all about playing as leaders of men with Regency. Sure, you could easily convert a game where you're a bunch of adventurers without much trouble, and all wizards would need to help in that regard is a short little setting primer and some work on bloodlines. That's not what Birthright is though. Birthright when it released essentially had the best rules for playing D&D as rulers and all the war-fighting and politicking that went with it, bundled with a unique setting and rules for the very cool concept of Bloodlines.

Samefag.

Birthright was a really neat concept that should be revisited, if not in D&D.

Dragonlance should stay dead. Eberron was always shit. Any attempts to reboot Dark Sun and Planescape will fuck them up so bad you will wish they had never bothered.

>Birthright when it released essentially had the best rules for playing D&D as rulers
Those rules were still totally awful and nigh unplayable.

>most people here are way to young to remember a time before video games popularised forgotten realms
For what it's worth they were making video games set in FR practically since the setting was released, and by the same metric (fantasy readers who know shit about the game) those shitty Drizzt books were at least as high profile as the Dragonlance ones.

This isn't really true though is it, If you grew up during the third edition era your campaigns would've been set in Greyhawk whilst most of Veeky Forums claims to have played FR.

5e reviving the popularity of D&D has led to a shitton of imposters who want to have the old school cred despite having started with 5e, hence why you see them spread the splatoverload myth.

No they weren't. I distinctly remember playing them and thinking they where pretty good. Sure, better stuff has come out now, GURPS has great rules for that type of stuff for one, but Birthright was acclaimed for it's rules.

To be fair Birthright was designed during a period with RPG's were actually about playing a game not LARPing, so players expected mechanically intensive rules like Birthright had.

Just because you thought the rules were "pretty good" doesn't mean they were; you could just be a terrible judge of rules quality. The fact that you then go on to praise GURPS pretty much confirms that.

>Dark Sun
4E update
>Eberron
4E update
>Planescape
Shit

I had studied Birthright for a time.

1. The "starting domains" for PCs have no sense of balance to them whatsoever. In Anuire alone, you could choose for your PC to start off as regent of the small little "recommended" domain of Roesone... or you can start off in control of "the most powerful church in Anuire," the Western Imperial Temple of Haelyn, or the massive megacorporation that is the Heartlands Outfitters (which also has its own city-state).
Another massively overpowered "Recommended for PC use" starting domain is Danigau, in the Western Reaches of Brechtur. You start off in control of *eight* moderately-developed provinces, many Law and Source holdings, a huge amount of pre-accumulated Regency and GB, an elite army with considerable fortifications, and the inexplicable ability to raise defensive militia extremely efficiently.

2. Wizards are actually underpowered here. They are mistrusted by the populace to start with, their realm spells start off middling, and by the time said spells become strong, they are hamstrung by the fact that developing provinces reduces magical source ratings. (This can be circumvented by playing an elven domain, but elves are locked out of temples.)

3. Priests, on the other hand, are godlike for their ability to wield priestly realm spells (many of which, especially those from the supplements, are on the level of wizard realm spells) without having to deal with magical source reductions. They are also necessary for investitures.

4. Some classes are objectively superior than others at the domain management subsystem. For example, fighters collect Regency only from Law, while rangers collect Regency from Law and Guilds (and have overland map mobility benefits), and paladins collect Regency from Law and Temples. Halfling ranger/priests can collect Regency from Law, Guilds, *and* Temples (while keeping the overland map mobility benefits), and are probably the single best character type at domain management.

5. The game claims that a government type wherein the province-owner delegates Law holdings to others is viable (and indeed, this is the case in the Rjurik Highlands), but this actually screws over province loyalty tremendously (and makes the Rjurik Highlands ironically quite disloyal despite the delegation of Law holdings, which goes against the lore).

6. Some domains have less detail than others, which is a bad thing for a GM who has to manage a massive world. Some domains have listed treasuries, Regency accumulated, armies, and fortifications, while others go into no detail at all on such things. In fact, the writers were so lazy with some domains that they declared their holding values to be "unknown" and up to the GM to decide.
We are looking at *31* domains for Anuire alone, and that is just the southwestern peninsula of the game's main continent. That is a tremendous burden for the GM to fill in the blanks for.

7. The action economy is completely screwed. No matter how expansive your lands are, you still have the same allotment of actions (and scale for those actions) as you did when you were starting off. This means that your lands are bound to rapidly spiral out of control once you start expanding... unless you make *every* new land you expand into a vassal state under your control (because then they get your own set of actions). However, since vassals can be disloyal and/or passive-aggressively be unhelpful, the DM is the one to control them; this means that eventually, the DM is playing out the majority of your little empire's actions.
Alternatively, if *each* PC controls their own domain, then the action economy is stacked tremendously in their favor, because they and their vassals receive many more actions than the DM ever will.

8. The DM controls only a few other domains each turn. Every other domain is just assumed to be zero-summing itself and not accomplishing anything, but also not losing anything. In other words, the PCs' domains and their DM-controlled vassals get to steadily improve, whereas the vast majority of the rest of the world is completely stagnant for no good reason.

9. I have not studied it too in-depth, but I have not heard good things about mass battle.

Point #7 bears elucidation. It is pseudo-feudalism, but it is not true to the setting.

1. Very few regents in the writeups have vassals, even those who lord over very large domains. The only ones with vassals are the power-hungry ones or the ones who need to band together against a major, external threat.

2. Birthright is a very high-magic setting once you get to the rulers, because *domain management is literally magic*. I am not exaggerating. Regency Points are magical energy drawn from the land, which rulers then use to conjure up and refine their holdings. Page 32 of the Birthright rulebook explains:
>Regency is the mystical power associated with blooded rulers and leaders. It's a blend of nobility, honor, and kismet that a true king wears like an invisible crown. If a character rules well and exemplifies the quality of his alignment, his regency is strong—his unseen aura of power helps him to do things that lesser mortals couldn't even dream about. If a king rules poorly, his regency weakens.
>In game terms, a character's regency is measured by a score: Regency Points, or RP. During the game, the regent can use these points to expand his domain, increase the power of his bloodline, or affect events occurring within his domain.

3. Perhaps this is just me, but once you have a great deal of manpower, gold, and raw strength of domain management management at your disposal, it should be possible to create more sizeable holdings with one of your actions than you could muster at the start of your career.

Action economy is poorly thought-out in Birthright. In the event that, say, four player characters each have their own domains (not impossible given that regent characters are the default in Birthright), they already have four sets of actions each domain turn compared to the DM's three sets of domain actions for *the rest of the entire world*.

If the players all choose the strongest of the "Recommended for PC use" domains, they will be even more unstoppable, at least until their domains expand to the point wherein they are forced to rely on vassals for reasonable action economy.

Point #4 could use further elaboration as well.

Characters of the following classes gain Regency from the following holdings:

>Guid: Thief, Ranger, Bard (only half)
>Law: Warrior, Priest (only half), Thief (only half)
>Source: Wizard
>Temple: Priest, Paladin
>Province: All
>Trade Route: Thief (1 RP per GB produced)

"Warrior" includes fighters, paladins, and rangers, so fighters receive the short end of the metaphorical stick here.

Multiclassed characters count as members of all of their classes.

It costs 1 GB for a party to "relocate to any province or holding in their domain," but bards and rangers can do this for free because they "have a knack for traveling quickly and being near the action."

Priests have access to priestly realm spells, and they do not have to contend with declining Source ratings, unlike wizards.

In Birthright, only halflings can be ranger/priests, and as far as I am aware, this is the single most effective possible character type from a domain management standpoint. It also helps that halflings, as a race, have a host of inexplicable benefits, including Detect Evil, Detct Undead, Detect Magic (necromancy only), Dimension Door, and Shadow Walk.

The ideal way to game Birthright is to choose to be the teleporting halfling ranger/priest regent of the almighty domain of Danigau.

For people of a very specifi-
Oh, wait, did he say NON-gamers? Never mind. I mean, yeah, there were probably people of a very, VERY specific age who read the godawful War of the Lance trilogy at an impressionable age and *weren't* gamers, but that would literally be right when the books came out.
And no, I don't care what anyone tries to claim, playing through the War of the Lance is the ONLY thing you can do with Dragonlance. Everything else you can do better in a better setting.

You touch on one of the biggest problems I had - the system ONLY worked for the starting region. The various other regions of the continent had vastly different governmental setups, and the rules completely failed to work there.

This is true, to an extent. The way Law holdings work make the Rjurik Highlands' system of delegating Law holdings to thanes completely unviable, Khinasi's wizard-kings are undermined by the way province levels screw over Source holdings, and the civilized domain management rules make little sense for Vosgaard's savagery and primitive "might makes right" society.

The base rules only handle Anuire and Brechtur well. Even then Brechtur is feasible only because they later introduced a relatively well-thought-out set of trade expedition rules.

Of course, we come to the issue that the base rules are poorly-written even for Anuire and Brechtur.

You mean before video games popularized Mystara?

Well, you can see what the bloodlines turned into with Eberron's Dragonmarks. But as I said, converting Birthright direct (so letting it still be not 100% cross compatible with every campaign setting) is actually fairly simple - it's trying to make it 100% cross compatible that's the issue.
I fucking love Spelljammer, and that should be the default cross-setting setting, not that hyper-political Planescape bullshit.
Or they're like me, and grew up with books instead of vidya.

You must really hate birthright. Did you play it when it released?

WotC doesn't hold all the copyrights to Spelljammer.

You pretty much pointed out all the flaws the system had. With exception to balance and gaming the system, which a good DM is supposed to snuff out before it can begin, it's pretty rough by today's standards. I actually remember a few of these being an issue when I played back in 95-97. Particularly in regards to expansion, and I remember the wizard getting thrown a lot of bones. Houseruling helped.

It was still amazing at what it did when it came out 22 years ago (at least out of what was readily available), and I think they should take another shot at it. It was far from totally awful and nigh unplayable like one user claimed. There's a lot to build on, and a lot of hindsight to work around the problems.

>The fact that you then go on to praise GURPS pretty much confirms that.
>pic related

I should clarify, balance in regards to gaming the system, not inherent balance problems.

Spelljammer is a part of Planescape.

I say move forward with Birthright, Planescape, and Spelljammer.

Birthright because, compared to the rest of D&D, it has a lower magic/lower fantasy feel. It's very mythical and there's still plenty of magic, but the focus added to kingdoms and armies will play to the folks who consider GoT to have "revived fantasy" or some shit like that,

Planescape because it makes the Wheel an interesting place to visit. IMO it's *the* over-setting. More attention could be paid to the Planes At Large than just to Sigil than has been at times though. Oerth and Faerun are larger than Greyhawk and Waterdeep and are presented as such even if their most impressive cities get a heavy treatment. So let it be with the Planes.

And Spelljammer is, frankly, the most 'Weird and Wonderful' setting there's ever been for D&D. 5e veered a little back to 'lighter' stuff being OK, rather than being driven by a need to be 'extreme' or 'gritty' so I think this could be Spelljammer's time to make a return. It's a great setting that deserves an update.

Maybe trot out Dark Sun a little later.

I guess put out something Dragonlance if the nostalgia will sell, but it should probably be left to rest in peace.

Leave Eberron in the garbage where it belongs.

Personally, I'd run it using [INSERT D&D EDITION/CLONE OF YOUR CHOICE] and throw the Reign company system on top.

I was the Baron of Diemed once, it was rad.

>War of the Lance
>godawful

Fight me nigga

S O T H
O
T
H

(Also, if I were to run it, I'd not actually use Birthright and instead use an original setting. It'd be built collaboratively so everyone playing really feels like they own their place in the world. Basically, I want to run a civilization game.)

Dragonlance was practically tailor--made or the purpose of selling novels.

Birthright looked good in theory but did not handle well in practice unless every player was on board for the play style.

As or every other setting, well after seeing what happened to forgotten realms after salvatore, well lets saw I will never pick up newer source material or any o the older settings should they be revived.

Lord Soth is probably the best thing to come out of that setting.

>be Lord Soth
>get sent to Ravenloft
>The Dark Powers want to taunt him and make him relieve his agony by giving him second changes and his own domain so he'll be a Dark Lord
>instead he just crosses his arms and sits in his room because he WANTS to suffer (literally No I'm enjoying my anger.png)
>they get pissed and send him back to Krynn

Birthright was wonky as hell and would need to be totally rewritten, and complex interactions on a huge scale is antithetical to 5e mechanics
Dragonlance is just the third "Oh look it's D&D setting" and stands out for having many awful core races and factions, if the best novelizations
Dark Sun could work in 5e with some survival rulesets and reinforcements, and alternatives to armor for many classes
Eberron is a stretch because 5e doesn't have magic item crafting rules the likes of which inspired and enabled the setting in the first place, and while it can be done it's hard to strike the balance between not rushing and oversaturating PCs with the relatively more powerful magic items and giving them too few to feel like a post-magic industry world is rough
Planescape is high powered bollocks that basically demands your party has a wizard or DM fiat, it could work but would need a lot of updated content

>Dragonlance deserve to be revived before Dark Sun, Eberron, and/or Planescape for 5e?
Fuck no, remove kender

I'd rather not have Wizards get their claws on those settings, so no.

Couldn't tell you about Birthright, but

>Dragonlance

No. Dragonlance needs a Neutronium Golem sent to its doorstep ASAP.

No, it's not. Planescape focuses on the Outer Planes (and the non-Prime inner planes, too, if they weren't so dull). Spelljammer focuses on the Prime Material via the medium of "fantasy spacefaring".

Planescape is about adventuring in the heavens and hells.

Spelljammer is about adventuring across different planets.

Birthright... maybe. Birthright's thing, from what little I know about it, was trying to go for more of a social combat option, with high-level political fields and mass combat. It was a setting about the burdens of being an adventurer-king with divine lineage, and that was pretty unique.

Dragonlance... I honestly wouldn't bother. Aside from some innovations at the time - replacing orcs with goblins and draconians, having societies of dragons instead of lone monsters, expanded elf & dwarf cultures - it was pretty bog-standard D&D fantasy. Plus, it's the birthplace of bungling inventor tinker gnomes, gully dwarves, and kender.

Planescape... I'm torn on this. On the one hand, I hate the Great Wheel and found a lot of the Factions to be dull as ditchwater, even if the concept of Sigil and the way 4e handled the idea of adventuring across planes both intrigued me. On the other, it's certainly an option for not only gonzo-fantasy campaigns, it's a valid option to bring back epic tier PC material - this is a setting about hobnobbing with fiends and angels, the perfect "upscale" field. Certainly now we're not likely to be faced with "your PCs can't really do any shit because we don't want you killing off our precious NPCs or wrecking our metaplot".

Eberron and Dark Sun... both have their points, but I'm not really sure what the demand for them is with their recent 4e update.

Spelljammer... honestly, I think this would be my preference for a new "Adventure's Guide" or whatever release, simply because it's a completely untapped niche. It's a world-hopping gonzo fantasy, tailor-made to support crossover campaigns and metaplots without needing to to the outer planes, so you can get in on the fun from 1st level. Plus, it's an inherently gonzo setting, so you can add more unique or bizarre races.

I mean, I'm not sure how they'd justify bringing Mystara back, but I'd love to have formal stats for lupins, aranea and diaboli.

Lord Soth is awesome.
Lord Soth is not so awesome to make a shit book series actually good.
Note - I actually think the War of the Lance campaign has some value - maybe not as written, and certainly not as it's always collected. But it has value. The books are trash and do not. (And what's worse, in the decades since, every time they collect the War of the Lance adventures, they alter them to make them even more like the books, taking away what little wiggle-room DMs had in the original.)

bump

Nobody mentions Ghostwalk.

How does this contradict that Spelljammer is a part of Planescape?

No endless stream of questionable content - no popularity.

I never understood why kender got so much attention. Their whole personality wore thin after 1 chapter.

kender meant someone could be a complete dick to the rest of the party, stealing gear and pass it off as "part of being a kender" Seriously I have never known a single person who played a kender and didn't play it that way.

What we need is Mystara.

Which really makes me question how he'd end up on Ravenloft in the first place. The entire point of a Darklord is that they WILL NOT admit that what they did was wrong, that they are convinced that they acted correctly.

So how was Lord Soth ever a potential candidate?

I've never played Dragonlance, but I saw the cartoon, and finding out Gully Dwarves were a player race chilled me to my fucking core.

I don't recall where, but I am almost positive that a wizard employee said that this was the one setting that they would not devote anytime to. I vaguely remember something about not enough interest in it (ie no one was writing novels based in Mystara) which seems to be the diving force wizards has or supporting any setting.

...Soth at some point admitted that he was wrong?
I was under the impression that his position remained 'fuck you, fuck the Knights, fuck my first wife, and fuck my second wife, I do what I want!'
If that changed at some point in the books, it just further demonstrates how shit the writing in Dragonlance is.
>Mfw I could have countered the 'Soth is awesome' argument by bringing up all those times Kitiara cucked him, according to the wiki