Editing Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition (section)

===Lack of Settings===
For a while, most adventures and sourcebooks were based exclusively around the Forgotten Realms, with mentions of other settings being relegated to the backs of sourcebooks, discussing how to adapt their ideas to other settings. Even when [[Ravenloft]] got [[Curse of Strahd|official support]], most of the hooks revolved around Forgotten Realms characters being taken to the Demiplane of Dread. To add insult to injury, iconic Greyhawk villains like [[Tomb of Horrors|Acererack]] received [[Tomb of Annihilation|new]] [[Tales From The Yawning Portal|adventures]], except they take place in the Forgotten Realms, with the books giving tips on how to set the adventure in other worlds, ''and'' a book containing conversions of many previous modules in DnD history, most of which were originally set in Greyhawk, was themed around a tavern in the Forgotten Realms, with a limply tacked-on backstory about patrons from other worlds telling stories.

Also, several fans of [[Mystara]] grumbled about the new version of the Tabaxi resembling the [[Catfolk]] of Mystara, the [[Rakasta]]. Not to mention, [[Tortle]]s were outright ripped from the setting and placed on an island nearby Chult. Fans of [[Planescape]] and especially [[Spelljammer]] have also been feeling the burn from this. Several sourcebooks and reveals have taken bits of either setting,ss creating false hope on multiple occasions. This is most apparent with the reveal stream for the "The Descent", the last of the 2019 splatbooks and the second adventure book of that year. Fans speculated a planar adventure path that would most likely incorporate Planescape-related themes. Rather than go the logical route and use [[Sigil]] as a starting hub, the reveal showed that [[Baldur's Gate (City)|the city of Baldur's Gate]] was the beginning point (even though several other locations in the Realms are way more suited to anything [[devil]] related). On the Spelljammer side, many fans have gotten burned out over the setting being continually used as a joke, while elements and monsters are pushed into the Forgotten Realms. However, DM's Guild seems to allow Toril's crystal sphere as a compromise, for now.

Happily, this may have begun to shift with the release of the latest new sourcebook. ''Mordekainen's Tome of Foes'' instead chooses to focus on [[Greyhawk|Oerth]] and planar stuff. This seemed to herald the start of a new direction going forward... And, in fact, it did!  July 2018 had WotC announce the official return of [[Eberron]] to the fold, in the form of Keith Baker's own 5e conversion book, "The Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron", being released on [[DM's Guild]] as an "Early Access" playtesting base for Eberron. An informal announcement for its physical release was given during the aforementioned stream of "The Descent", where they casually mentioned the hardcover at the last minute. If you bought the playtest, you'll get an updated PDF, but no hardcover book. At the same time, they also formally announced the surprise release of the Guildmaster's Guide to [[Ravnica]] in November 2018, converting the [[plane]] to a 5e setting whilst using language that implied the same could happen to other [[Magic: The Gathering]] planes in the future. And the first adventure splat of 2019, [[Ghosts of Saltmarsh]], is actually set entirely in the world of [[Greyhawk]], admittedly with notes at the start of each adventure giving advice on adapting it to the [[Forgotten Realms]], [[Eberron]] and, surprisingly, [[Mystara]].

The reason why this complaint galls so many people, beyond the simple lack of support for their preferred settings, is that a secondary element is that writers are unable to submit any content to [[DM's Guild]] that is not based on the ''very'' short list of approved settings - which, as of January 2021, stands at [[Forgotten Realms]], [[Eberron]], [[Ravenloft]], [[Ravnica]] and [[Theros]] - or else super-generic. There has been some luck in wriggling in content based on subsettings of those settings - for example, a bunch of crazily devout fans managed to get a 5e conversion of [[Maztica]] (the South America subsetting for the [[Forgotten Realms]]) approved - but... yeah, if you wanted to try and write stuff for [[Mystara]], [[Greyhawk]], the [[Nentir Vale]], [[Spelljammer]], [[Planescape]], [[Birthright]], etc? You're shit out of luck, WotC says that you can't do that.  (Yes, despite ''Ghosts of Saltmarsh'' being set in Greyhawk.)

Additionally, as much as it might be painful to admit, settings like Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and the Forgotten Realms just aren't that thematically distinct form each other compared to other settings. [[Eberron]] is magically powered pulp interwar, [[Dark Sun]] is Mad Max-ish post-apocalyptic with a dash of [[Sword & Sorcery]], and [[Ravenloft]] is Gothic Horror, but [[Greyhawk]], [[Dragonlance]], and [[Forgotten Realms]] are all vanilla heroic fantasy. Thus, regardless of whether they choose to update [[Dragonlance]] or [[Greyhawk]] to 5e, WotC really won't be able to win. If they don't, they'll piss off grognard fanboys; if they do, they'll piss off newcomer fans who would feel like WotC is trying to sell them more of the same. So their options are to either spend a lot of effort in updating several settings only to get yelled at, or get yelled at ''without'' spending all that effort.

2021 had fans hopeful that maybe things were changing and this controversy would be a thing of the past; in an interview, the new head of development for D&D declared that 2021 would see the release of '''three''' "classic" D&D settings. It of course turned out to be another fucking tease from WotC. Only ''two'' of that year's five [[splatbook]]s would be campaign settings, and they consisted of [[Ravenloft]] and [[Strixhaven]]... aka 1 classic D&D setting, and one [[Magic: The Gathering]] conversion. 

And of course, in the opinions of anyone who actually liked Ravenloft before 5e got its grubby hands on it, they absolutely '''destroyed''' the setting...sort of. The truth is, Ravenloft had already been subjected to unpopular retcons and lore tampering prior to 5E, but it is the case that 5E reopened those old wounds and put salt on them for good measure, mutilating Ravenloft to drop all vestiges of the independent campaign setting it had grown into over 2nd and 3rd edition to instead reduce it back to a pure [[Weekend in Hell]] setting, shitting all over the lore and stuffing it full of [[SJW|obvious political pandering]] in the process. Lore changes ranged from mostly inoffensive (race-swapping the [[Weathermay-Foxgrove Twins]] but keeping most of their backstory the same), to the arbitrary (replacing the [[Darklord]] of Dominia, a cunning and ruthlessly manipulative mind-controlling man cursed to appear increasingly hideous to any woman he desired, with a [[ghoul]] fake princess throwing an eternal masquerade), to the irksome (downgrading the achievements of Weathermay-Foxgrove Twin's male counterparts), to the baffling (turning the [[Darklord]] Vlad Drakov, the setting's ''Vlad the Impaler'' into a woman and characterizing her as "a hard (wo)man making hard decisions"). 

And Strixhaven was almost deliberately chosen to tick players off, since the ''Harry Potter'' bonanza was long-over (with most consistent Potter fans not necessarily part of the tabletop gaming crowd), a lotta core players have very negative feelings about their memories of school generally, and also it was [[fail| about as well-designed as most of the other ''Magic'' and ''Critical Role'' sourcebooks]].

To an extent, the complaints about lack of old settings coming back has faded over time, as more and more of the non Forgotten Realms settings have returned to print. The complaint was also heard almost exclusively within players of older editions, since old D&D books are rather hard to find outside the Internet, and most of the millions of players who jumped on board with 5th Edition didn't even necessarily know that there even ''were'' old settings.