You have been chosen by WoTC to make an interesting new setting for D&D 5e that you (but mostly them) think people will...

You have been chosen by WoTC to make an interesting new setting for D&D 5e that you (but mostly them) think people will love. What do you give them?

Blue Rose with serial numbers filled off and D&D races.

You mean like Twin Peaks Blue Rose or...

I pitch an Age of Exploration setting. The Old World is pretty much your standard D&D fantasy setting but teched up a little from an anachronistic Middle Age to proper Renaissance while the New Worlds are strange and exotic locations, some based on real world cultures and some much less so. The first module would cover court intrigue, power struggles and conspiracies and how the wealth pouring into it from the newly discovered continents and trade routes affect it while only hinting at what goes on in these strange foreign lands. Adventures would be recommended to stay relatively small scale and PC's rarely progressing further than level 6 or so.

Then we would be able to pump out new modules for every foreign land we can think of starting with the Americas. Now the players also get the option to not only play as explorers trying to bring home treasures to the Old World but can also play as natives trying to repel the invaders. And so on.

A dawning of magical industry setting with a focus on a band of thieves/gang war setting where the majority of the setting is based around a handful of major trade centers with other locales beyond civilized walls holding treasures and supply convoys for the larger empire.
The object of the campaign is to eatablish and protect your gang, grow the size of the group, take territory in terf wars or political maneuvers, evade or bribe the law, and eventually get into legitimate positions of power.

It's like Birthright, but less noble.

I give them a balanced crafting system and tell them to release Eberron.

Interesting doesn't sell. The vast majority of gamers, especially the kind who like 5e, just want something familiar that won't take them out of their comfort zones.

>A revamped Spelljammer, with simpler/less wonky physics, less emphasis on unifying the other settings, and more on the Age of Sail/Age of Exploration themes of a boundless and unexplored world
Or, if it has to be original
>A setting centered around the not!Mediterranean, all about adventuring in port cities
I like ships.

...

I don't think it's that people truly hate interesting settings, or at least that the people who play them are tiny fringe minority. Unusual takes on the familiar can sell (Eberron). It's just that when they want to run something weird or high concept, they usually want it to be their concept and not someone else's

D&D is already a western though, more than it's medieval Europe. Thematically, anyway

That's why it's such a good fit.

I would add steampunk though, and sixguns.

I get in contact with Zenimax and use my Hasbro licensing bucks to make Skyrim an officially licensed D&D setting. Then I swim in my Scrooge McDuck vault of money.

I can dig it. Maybe mix it with the classic fantasy desert setting. Dusty badlands that stretch on seemingly forever, with towns and occasionally cities springing up around oases, caravans that are always in need of armed guards to protect them from bandits and who knows what else

I pitch them Forgotten Realms, but everything is Russian, slightly dystopian, and features in everything they've printed so far.

What parts of dnd make it a western?

A band of freelance fighters wandering the (sparsely populated) land righting wrongs is much closer to the classic American western than anything that ever existed in historical Europe. You can make the case it's based on certain mythological heroes like Jason or Odysseus, but Westerns are a cleaner fit

Also, muh freedom for the good races, the absence of a meaningful hierarcy, a surprinsgly scientific magic, the races (it's not an exact fit, but the idea is there), the past as there for looting, the wilderness.

But this is why cowboys and dragons is overkill, if you ask me. It's kinda like having Tenra and making it less anime and more jidai geki.

Anyway DnD meets XCom. The heroes are the finest soldiers in the land, and they're part of the sperhead of the forces of the kingdom/magical academy/whatever that are sent there to go innadungeons and do very dangerous shit.
What is different form the usual is that they have an organization to lean on, directly for the missions. At perhaps 3 level, they could enlist the help of some 1 level adventurers from the get go, or ask special equipment, evac in the form of teleportation at certain conditions etc.
While there is an added layer of duty, the parties (not that here swapping adventurers between missions would be pretty common) are more like privateers that can select their missions with the (supposed) degree of difficulty and intel they want. I'd add even a inter-mission phase in which the players and the DM decide what happens in the organization for things like funds and research, the GM details it tough.

Forgotten Realms but everyone is Dragonborn

The deity of monsters kills the rest in combat somehow, and then does the same to the deities of the world of man. Having done away with the others he is bored and now tries to raise creatures strong enough to be worth fighting.

Mystara.

>terf wars
this typo amuses me more than it should

"Tall Tales", a world themed around fairytales and American folklore. Woodcutters, folk magicians, conjurers and travelling reverends fighting fearsome critters on a strange new frontier.

Renaissance Gunpowder Fantasy.

A campaign arc about fighting a cult of TERF amazons sounds great

Kinda generic tough if it's only guns.

Something with lots of sexy nuns.

Fuck magitech. Dwarves and gnomes can have weird pepperboxes and organ guns, but keep your airships in eberron. I just want my Pike and Shot fantasy realm.

I didn't say anything about dumb gizmos. What are the renassaince-inspired themes of the setting and how are they developed?

If not, it's just switching weapons' numbers.

I advocate the setting, but not as much that campaign.

Floating islands, magical airships, no solid ground beneath, elemental bands of flame and water as giant rings rotating through all of creation, sky sharks with leather harnessed helicopter blades strapped to their backs.

Explore, plunder drifting ancient ruins, uncover the mystery of who blew everything up or why the world isn't a world not that anyone remembers there ever being a world and not floating islands.

Corrupt centralized religion with each "God" you pray to being a certain saint of something, with certain offshoot religions having their own "Saints".

Shift in economics and culture due to the invention of the printing press resulting in Wizard academies becoming less important in the information transfer process.

Exploration and conquest in concert with increased individualism resulting in your PCs likely working for merchants rather than nobles.

Wonderous cities with astounding centers of learning and art contrasted with underclasses and crime.

Discovery of a new landmass with only sketchy reports of what is over there but a need for enterprising individuals to chart it.

The wizard thing is intriguing. So how would spellbooks work?

Spells require the time and intelligence to study them, and thus not everyone can use them. But the invention of the printing press means that spells can be printed on paper, and a common tactic is to print a cantrip on a leaflet and distribute it. If someone comes to the address and performs the cantrip reliably, they are taken under tutelage by those people. This means that many naturally intelligent but poor people are now students of magic, but this is being fought against by the traditional Wizard academies who fear both losing their political power as well as what havoc can be wrought by the unscrupulous or foolhardy upstarts. However, the greatest concern is that the nobility and burgeoning merchant houses can use the accessibility of spells to create their own centers of arcane study which could further entrench themselves in the political landscape.

I like it.

not that user, but I've been thinking about that concept for a while.
Basically - a printing press that can use magically-infused ink AND a standardized magical script change everything. Suddenly, a spellbook filled with low-level spells turns from being a result of decades of personal study into a Wizardry High School freebie: 'Spellcasting Basics - Entry Course'. Instead of devising your own notation you start using a common language of written magic - therefore, every discovery you make can be propagated further, mechanically speaking - maybe cutting down the expenses of writing down new spells, but also making magical learning a much easier process.
Remember, that the common assumption with D&D Wizards is that there's nothing inherently magical about them - it's all just study.
The other offshoot of a magical printing press is a mass produced spell scroll (probably a spell card at some point). You use unqualified, unskilled, but magically apt workforce (enslaved high elves are the easiest option) to keep magic flowing through the printer, while it churns out standardized and simplified spell formulas on hardy, but disposable card stock using component-infused ink prepared in industrial batches.

A new born world. Where there are few kingdoms, in which the pcs set up legacies.
Players would be allowed to send the production team 'chronicals' of their adventures, and ones that impress the workers make it into future lore

Do these books basically anyone to become a wizard?

Well, in the same way a Pre-Calc book allows everyone to become a STEM major.
(Sidenote: I honestly thing that Calculus and other kinds of advanced mathematics would be a perfect analogy for learned arcane magic in such a setting.)
Once it becomes part of the curriculum of the compulsory public school system - everyone who bothers to actually learn it has a good chance of becoming a Wizard; but most will get by in life with a few of the most basic tricks from the book (or even the precursors to it). So, basically, in 5e's terms: Middle School gives you Ritual Caster, High School gives you Magic Initiate, College gives you a level or two of Wizard - and not a specific Magic&Wizardry college, but any old College.

What would 90's magic textbooks look like?

>define '90s'
Like, honestly, we're looking at a vastly different history here.
Also, I don't know what 90's textbooks were like in your country, so I can't draw any parallels here. Mine were reprints of old boring-yet-efficient Soviet textbooks.

>Put your own twist on a classic character from literature.
>Time travel with other classic characters.

THIS x1000

Hrm. But how to have enough archetypes?

This, but advance the timeline a few hundred years to make it even more distinct than the other D&D settings.

A new take on the Feywild. Or a pirate setting.

A new country ran by one queen commisioned company (e.g. British Raj, Prince Repuert's Land) Establishing a somewhat cyberpunk vibe in the fantasy setting...Add a criminal group, a major religious movement and some other N.G.O Superpowers and your golden...

I can't be the only person who wants Not!Canada complete with moosehead mafia, Quebec liberation front, hudson bay co., and the holy catholic church...

And the party are all magical maidens (male)

The modern world but with magic and d&d races and the like

It's scientifically proven that most people prefer things that are similar to things they already know and recognize. This is why all pop music sounds the same, why all block buster movies tell the same story, and why all fantasy settings look and feel the same.

Humans are evolutionarily predisposed to shun the new in favor of the familiar.

I write the default Notfantasybritain and get the sleaziest porn artists I can get my hands on to do any and all illustrations.

All of the human women in Neo Olde Greyhawk are ten or thirty-six with no in-between, and drawn by Shadbase. There are goopeople, and they're all done by NitroTitan. There's a giant race, and Ochiko has been restrained from making them larger than the setting itself.

Halflings are the evolved forms of dwarves, who are kind of like eggs from which the former hatch. The only non-porn artist on the team will be whoever drew the dwarven women for 4th Edition, and he'll be responsible for these two races, almost exclusively.

Also, I won't actually be writing anything. That's Oglaf's job, and his drawings will fill the Bestiary section.

I'm pretty sure multiple people did the dwarf women in 4e. William O'Connor and Eva Widermann are the only two I know, though.

That said, why do you want the guy/gal who drew the 4e dwarf women drawing them again in your cheesecake setting?

It's a bit like camouflage, you see. If I have a lineup of artists that are only known for porn, questions are going to arise, questions that I don't want to answer. Also, those female dwarves were almost exclusively pure sex. I hadn't realized the finer points of large eyes and stout builds until then.

Just imagine the sweatiest neckbeards can possibly get, recognizing the artists and not being able to say anything at the table without revealing their horrifying fetishes.

not!Gor with furries, race mixing and forced feminisation.

That's what popular with kids nowadays, isn't it?

Don't forget that Lampton is accepting commissions now.

90s textbooks in America looked like this