As was reported on The Piazza today by Big Mac, WotC has just announced that they will be bringing back an old D&D setting, presumably for D&D Next. Which setting that will be is to be revealed on GenCon this Thursday!

Is it going to be Blackmoor? Unlikely. Although as Twin Agate Dragons mentioned in the same Piazza thread, Blackmoor would be ideal in many ways. Greyhawk is the obvious choice, but in a recent poll held by WotC Greyhawk ended up fairly far down on the list. As one commenter suggested, perhaps it is "too soon" for another go at Gygax' campaign setting after Greyhawk's return as a default 3E setting.


Full version: http://blackmoormystara.blogspot.no/201 ... tting.html

-Havard

If it is Mystara, I will shave my head.

If it is Mystara, I will shave your head.

Fur-gotten Realms. Ho-hum and bleh.

Ponytail safe.

I dont want to come off as anti Forgotten Realms, but the fact that WotC announced the old setting to be revived as the Forgotten Realms is a pretty gigantic anti climax. First of all, the FR has been continuously published since it first came out, so how can there be a revival?

Secondly, everyone already knew that the FR would be supported under 5E, so was there really a need for an announcement?

I didnt have very high hopes for Blackmoor or Mystara (although it would have been beyond awesome), but at least they could have given us Dragonlance or Ravenloft or something...

Oh well. Fans can do it better anyway!

-Havard

I am less polite than you when it comes to WotC. The truth is, it was just another cheap media buzz to keep people interested that they desperately want to buy their books,
but never actually do anything to garner to their interest.

FR rebooted? Ah, who cares? There's so much out for the setting that it's nearly unplayable on canonic terms. I don't think it's a bad setting, by any means,
but apart from stuff that was already out twenty years ago, I have ZERO interest in new books. There's so much to read out there that it's kind of arbitrary already.

As for 5e support for older settings, I think that seals the coffin. IF they had something THAT big to announce, they would have done it on Gencon.

I am happy that the back catalogue is going to be rereleased, though. Hopefully, that will keep our branch of the community open for a few years longer.

Actually this is the most fantastic news I have seen in ages

-Havard

I could have gone for a few more minutes of the keynote devoted to this than the Realms.

Yep. This could actually mean that they will be bringing back all of the old settings, not just one

-Havard

Well, I never expected it to be anything, so I wasn't that disappointed. Actually, to be precise I was already disappointed before the announcement. It's like the milkman promising something extra special for weeks and weeks, and then turning up with another pit of skimmed.

Has there been any announcement of the format in which they will re-release the back catalogue? If not PDF, my worry is that it will be some apple-like deviltry involving subscriptions, so you never actually "own" the book, you're just renting it. The other thing I wonder about is whether they will just re-use the old (not ery good) scans or produce some new, high-quality ones instead. The latter seems unlikely from a financial viewpoint. I'd prefer even the old scans over "some other electronic format", though.

It'd be nice if they released all the old editions - the pastel cover modules, Holmes B2, that sort of thing ...