Dear WotC, Where Are My Smaller Scale Settings?

               With the announcement of Mythic Odysseys of Theros, the soon-to-be released of Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount, the previous releases of Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica and Eberron: Rising from the Last War, we are seen a pattern in releases of what appear to be ever expanding magical worlds from WotC. My question is where are my smaller scale settings? According to Mythic Odyssey’s promo “The Gathering world of Theros where players can wield god-weapons and select new races to indulge in a challenge fit for the gods.” So we are battling gods now on the regular at this point? I am not saying there is not a place in D&D for all of these magic-rich, god-slaying settings, but could we maybe get a change of pace and have something a little lower down the powerscale? A setting that reigns in the power a bit and allows for smaller more personal adventures? I am also not opining for the “good ole days” and "please give me every setting from my youth". It just seems like the writers are always trying to top one another with the next release. To be clear though, I am not taking about low level adventures, this is more about lower scale. Settings grounded in reality than in epic fantasy.

                I would love to see something like Thunder Rift from D&D Basic. This was a valley that had tons of interesting encounters, none of which were in the god-tier of encounter rankings. It had a great detailed background with fun little hooks that the players could get involved with and some factions that they could deal with in different manners. It was designed to be a beginner’s area that could be expanded by the GM or plunked into any setting you would like. It was sort of genius at the time, and is still kind of a great design. I think this style was done somewhat well with the Curse of Strahd. The setting was limited in scope and focus. This made for what many consider the best supplement to date for 5e. You could easily expand the valley in CoS, and one of my friends did just that with an adventure that we went on beyond the borders of Barovia. For the most part, CoS was grounded and not heavily steeped in magic and over-the-top fantasy.

                When Forgotten Realms was created it was really considered by myself and my friends to be the highest of High Fantasy with all the gods, magic, and items scattered throughout it. Nowadays it seems like it is the base-level fantasy adventures, possibly even on the low end of the fantasy spectrum. This seems to show how the paradigm has shifted. I am not upset by the paradigm shift, but I would like for some products that are on a more grounded level. Are the days of smaller fantasy gone? I would like to think they are not, but I could be wrong.

Will it be Epic Fantasy all day every day from this point on?

If you are interesting in Thunder Rift click HERE.





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