"D&D 5th Edition Supplements Questions" Topic

Just purchased the three core rulebooks after not having run a campaign since 3.0. Looking at current WOTC offerings, it appears all the other hardbacks are adventures. Are there any plans for a 5.0 campaign setting book? (assuming Forgotten Realms). Any word on Ravenloft or Dragonlance? (assume they are dead). Outer Planes material?

My next question is regarding 3rd party campaign settings and other supplements. Anything to recommend in this regard? Again have been doing historical miniatures exclusively the last 15 years, and aside from collecting Cubicle 7 RPG's and the occasional Call of Cthulhu book have no idea what the current RPG scene is like.

Thanks,

CW

I have bought two of the campaign supplements and they were fine though a bit railroad-ish. I have packed everything up for a move, so cannot be more specific. The beauty of 5e is that it is not all that difficult to convert old/classic adventures, esp 1e and 2e AD&D ones, to use under the 5e rules. All of those long lists of skills and feats are gone, making running monsters the simpler task of days of yore.

There is a Sword Coast Adventure's Guide but it's not really worth the purchase.

Ravenloft as an adventure module is due for re-release very soon. Otherwise no campaign setting fluff books seem to be on offer [yet].

Otherwise all the adventures are pretty good and set in the Forgotten Realms. The starter box is an excellent introductory sandbox mini-campaign which I'd heartily recommend, some of the others are a bit railroady but that's kind of inevitable with the nature of the product. None of them are complete rubbish though.

Ravenloft Campaign (curse of strahd) is a good campaign book. Is a complete setting taking you from lvl 1 up. I am currently running it.

Sword coast guide is pretty good, plenty to set up the area for a campaign.

There is a chapter on the outer planes in the 5e DMG which can get you started, but it is curious that not much in the way of setting material has been released yet.

I've been sorta collecting 3PP stuff, would recommend Primeval Thule as a 'barbaric' campaign setting, and Frog God Games' Lost Lands as a more traditional Medieval one.

Also check out Kobold Press' Tome of Beasts and Book of Lairs, they look to be dripping with good, er, evilness!

The 5th Ed "Ravenloft" is called "Curse of Strahd"…it's a massive adventure able to take characters from Levels 1-10. While some folks love it with a passion, IMHO, my judgement is still out on it.

I think the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide is a great source for Realms lore. It also has some race and class rules. No adventures.

In about a month they will launch the next campaign book which involves giants. Hot on the heels of that is the Volos Guide to Monsters but I don't know much about it.

I don't know muchd about third party publications. I recommend checking out the DM's Guild website. That seems to be where a lot of third party stuff is available.

The adventure in the starter box is fun.

Thanks for the input so far gents. I did grab some Thule books in PDF, like the Lovecraftian-Hyborian mixture.

Everything is a wee bit confusing via 3pp trying to find what is a 5e supplement and all the others for Pathfinder and a number of other rules sets. No luck on the Lost Lands 5e, though I found the Pathfinder and S&W versions (whatever the latter is).

Grabbed the Tome of Beasts PDF & Print Combo, like the book thus far. Book of Lairs may be next.

I do miss the old campaign settings though. I read the Realms have jumped 100 years since 2nd Edition? Not the Realms I fondly remember then I guess. Loved Ravenloft for 2e, so I may need to get Curse of Strahd (noticed Lord Soth in the MM). Dragonlance/Krynn and Greyhawk are probably long dead and buried by now as campaign worlds (aside from earlier edition material).

Again my thanks, keep suggestions coming. Just starting this again after a very long hiatus and it is a bit cluttered out there.

One last thing….what I miss most about the game, going back to 1st and 2nd Editions, the boxed campaign worlds, from the 1st Greyhawk box set up through all the great 2e material (and some from 3rd). Even miss the old "Role Aids" line of box sets like Demons, Demons II, etc.

Was hoping there may be some campaign releases like this in the future for 5e rather than the world given in bits and pieces through "official" hardback adventures.

Are WOTC going to use there Magic the Gathering world as a game setting? Thought i read something about that?

Really hope not. Not much of a MTG fan (though I inherited over a thousand cards).

Ravenloft has been out for months. Next is the Against the Giants book. The first two adventures dealing with the Dragon Queen are really uninteresting and railroady, but everything else has been top notch. They are pretty much trying to avoid the mass proliferation of books that WOTC was known for in the past. The idea was less releases of more substance.

I doubt we'll see boxed campaign sets, though you can get the old versions digitally on Drive Thru RPG.

Princes of the Apocalypse is a mega-campaign, but it is a sandbox setup where players are free to go where they want, and I have read of some DMs who simply use it as a setting. The stocked dungeons are there but the players are free to just encounter them without pursuing the campaign story, the factions are making war on each other, and gradually the background has more and bigger nefarious events.

Like other posters I found the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide rather thin, but it is probably the closest thing out so far to a campaign setting book.

I agree it should be easy to port prior edition publications to 5E. The Eberron group I play in, the DM was already running 4E while using 3E releases for supplemental material, and he's just switched the mechanics to 5E and continued the story.