As the other poll exceeds 70 votes, I am deciding to do a runoff of the top two. Which would you like to see Larian tackle next with this engine?

Farewell, Spelljammer, you will be missed.

I wanted to put spelljammer, as it was my #2, but I couldn’t justify putting my finger on the scale like that.

"Rabenhorst" !

Ravenloft, I love Vampires plus Strahd von Zarovich is the closest thing to Dracula in D&D.

I don't feel informed enough to answer. I'm familiar with Ravenloft, but don't know anything about Planescape other than it's apparently about traveling around the planes of existence, which seems kind of overly ambitious, doesn't it?

Anyway, I'm voting for Ravenloft because I know what it is, and I could see it being fun.

(Although another part of Forgotten Realms makes *a lot* more sense to me.)

Planescape would be closest to Larian's style and weird sense humor, so that's where my vote goes.

I'm no fan of the 5E version of Ravenloft, with all it's changes for the sake of "diversity". They should have left the old Darklords alone and just added a couple new domains with appropriate darklords.

Fascinating how close it is, but not enough people have voted.

Also what changes were made to Ravenloft for diversity?

I voted Planescape. Ravenloft has always felt closed-in and claustrophobic while Planescape literally opens up the entire multiverse.

They changed the gender of some Darklords and completely rewrote some of them. For example Falkovnia is now ruled by Vladeska Drakov (in 3.x Falkovnia's ruler was Vlad Drakov), another such change was made to Dementlieu and to a few other domains. It was, at least to me, all extremely heavy-handed and generally not explained with in-setting events. They also changed the Vistani a lot.

All in all, I prefer the 3.x version of the setting.

Let me guess, the Vistani are no longer gypsies that want to steal from you or curse you? xD

I vote Rifts.

Well... they are sort of gypsies in so far that they still travel and are mainly outcasts. But yeah, you're basically correct ... can't have a nasty cliché in a modern game after all.

The Vistani were kinda a racist caricature though...

It's a fictional game with a fictional world and a fictional story, worrying about real world issues withing a game makes no sense.

Nobody is going to play a game where everyone is happy and fair and just and there's no conflict and everybody is equal because it's not fun.

Slavery is bad, no one wants slavery to be a thing in the real world, but I have 0 problems having it on games, same for racism. Can't drow hate elves because it's not PC? come on xD

Friendly note, I think this might be slipping into "making work for the moderators" territory, and I'd hate to see this thread locked 😀

@Adgaroth:

Except it's not in-universe fantasy racism. That's not what I am talking about. The Vistani were based on a pejorative stereotype of the Romani people, stereotypes which ultimately contributed to the genocide of over 250,000 people during the Romani Holocaust. They were portrayed as inherently evil, shady, curse-dealing nomads. That's ripped straight from some of the most hateful stereotypes about Romani peoples.

My Vote Is Greyhawk!!!!

So what? Sure, they were based on clichés (like most of the cultures in Ravenloft) but they were thematically fitting and the VR Guide to Vistani gave them a lot of background.

Let's face it, many cultures in fantasy and D&D in particular are caricatures of real world cultures. There's nothing wrong with that, it makes it a lot easier for us to relate to them.

It's wrong when certain cultures are portrayed as necessarily more evil and shady than others, and when those kinds of stereotypes led to the actual slaughter of actual peoples, and when it's really obvious which culture the "evil" one is supposed to be.

I guess it's best to agree to disagree before the debate gets anymore heated, as it seems to be sensitive topic for some.

@Zerubbabel

Ok, have you seen 300? why are half of the persians abominations? is it racist?

Let's say they made a game taking south american colonization as a base and the invaders/conquerors are sadistic hedonistic abominations that only want to erradicate half of the world, should I be offended because I'm spanish?

Games are made to entertain, and many of them base their lore,races or events on the real world, if we took what you said by heart there shouldn't be any movie or game about WW1 or WW2, or serial killers or basically anything that might hurt the sensibilities of any person.

Feudal Japan was a very shitty place and it's always stereotyped in media as a place where everybody was honorable and bushido this and whatever and nobody cares, because people want to see ninja and samurai.

And if you don't like a part of the forgotten realms world-building just made the changes you see fit for you and the people you play with. And of course the same applies the other way around, I don't care what is canon and what is not I ultimately will play the game whoever I want but it's not the same for videogames because you don't have such freedom of choice, you can only play what's programmed.

TL;DR -> Let fiction have diversity in every way.


I'm just having a normal conversation here, I don't think there's need for anyone to get heated xD


That would be a very bad Mod work to close a thread because you don't like 3 or 4 comments (instead of deleting those comments if needed) but don't worry I won't say more.

I agree.
I do respect your position though. I don't think it's racist to say that real-world parallels in fantasy make the world more relatable. I just have personal and specific reservations. However, I am writing this out of respect for your own desire for put the functions of fantasy first rather than our own reservations, and leave it at that.

In the real world, some cultures are more evil than others.
The aztecs sacrificing children was bad, actually!

Get Tuco to say something, that'll get it closed for sure



edit: i'm just kidding D: don't hurt me.

I don't want to derail this thread or have it locked, but I think the comparisons you make are rather irrelevant.

300 as a film is fundamentally a revisionist work. However, no living person can reasonably say that they are descendants of Achaemenid Armies. The work portrays a historical period over 2000 years ago between political and ethnic groups that functionally no longer exist (Modern Greeks can hardly be called Spartans; Modern Iranians can hardly be called Achaemenid Persians). There is no message in the film that you should not trust the descendants of Persians or that modern day Iranians are abominations.

Unlike fantasy, the real world has nuance. If you were a Latin American of Spanish descent, you would be right to think that being portrayed as brainless, heartless monstrosities crosses a line, especially if the message of the game is that people bearing any resemblance to you or your ancestors should be mistrusted or harmed. In reality, a good game about South American colonization would capture the nuance of the Spanish-descended peoples who would come to those lands. Certainly some came as conquistadors, while on the other hand, many were priests and workers. Still further, many tribes in those lands used the arrival of the Spanish to throw off regional hegemonies, like the Aztecs.

People want to see ninja and samurai, yes. But no piece of media in historical Japan portrays particular peoples with modern day parallels as inherently evil.

In fantasy, you can say that certain peoples are more evil than others. And you can say that is fundamental to their nature. So when you take a real world group of people who are consistently discriminated against for the stereotype of being shady thieves, alcoholics, liars, and child-stealers that refuse to integrate into a legitimate society, and then make a race based on that, arguing they are inherently that way and inherently evil, you might be teetering on racism by allegory.

Tl;dr: History has nuance. Fantasy can remove nuance. The examples you bring up don't have implied allegories about still-living peoples with ongoing oppression. The Vistani do.

EDIT:
I do think that if we can keep this discussion civilized, respectful, fair, and on-topic concerning Ravenloft, we can maintain a reasonable dialogue.

So following your argument, what does that mean for the Romani people, supposing their fantasy parallel are more evil than other cultures?

I voted for Ravenloft in both polls, but I admit that Greyhawk would have been my first choice.

@Zerubbabel

Maybe GTA San Andreas and its turf wars with black-vs-black/latino, latino-vs-latino/black was a better example but at this point I think we see, understand and disagree on each other points so we can leave it at that if you want xD

Also, I voted for Ravenloft, I like the setting and how harsh it is on the players.

I agree.
I'll tell you the same thing I told Kendaric:
I respect your position because I would rather worldbuilding be more free of our real-world concerns than less free, as it makes for fuller and more interesting worlds. Your position is my usual position; I just hold this one particular case (and a very small number of others) as minor exceptions.

Shocked at how the poll is consistently neck-and-neck.

Well Larian is just going to have to make both games. They already have the engine, how hard can it be?


(Kidding!)

Nothing about Larian's narrative style strikes me as jibing with Planescape. Nor in my opinion should Planescape be a combat encounter heavy narrative, Torment is already practically a visual novel. Actually Ravenloft shouldn't really be combat heavy either I suppose, but considering all of the Gothic Horror we're already getting in BG3 I think Ravenloft would be an easier translation.

When folks say Planescape is traversing the Astral Planes, what does that mean in practice? Because it sounds like it means detailed preparation for an amusingly huge collection of possibilities

All witches, just like in real life!

I don't really want Larian to dive into either of these settings. So there will be no vote from me on this one.

I think there was another thread that addressed this very issue of why we won't see Maztica...

I think it's a shame, because it can also be an opportunity, for example for educational work, to address something like this anyway and to work through it "playfully". What are game and media pedagogy for?

Bumping this thread because I want to see results at 70 votes

Dark Sun.

A true dark fantasy of D&D.

Tbh Greyhawk theme-wise way too similar to Forgotten Realms.
And as of third edition, even though Wizzards decided to make Greyhawk as default settings, community still much preferred Forgotten Realms.

I voted for Planescape this time. Ravenloft would also be interesting, but I'd really love to see Sigil.

That's Spelljammer, you travel the astral (5e) /ethereal (3e) /phlogiston (2e) in ships to other worlds outside the multiverse (but not always). In Planescape you usually travel directly via portals, rifts, spells, or transient planes like Sigil and the outlands to other planes within the multiverse. EDIT: Also the infinite staircase.

Both can offer a huge amount of story possibilities, because of the sheer scope. Notably, 2e Spelljammer had a map of the stable paths that allowed one to travel between all the known settings of DnD, it included Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Krynn, and others.

Final bump, I promise.