What the current version of D&D does, it does very well. Character classes, backgrounds, feats and features, spells, monsters, treasure…these things are only as complicated as you want to make them, and the simple mechanics of 5e ensure that DMs can arbitrate on the fly with things like Advantage and Disadvantage to keep the game flowing and the dice rolling.

If there’s another edition of D&D that has more settings and reskinned environments than fifth edition, I don’t know what it is. It’s a good game system; a nearly perfect balance of crunch and DM fait accompli. I don’t think it’s a universal system, and there are some suppositions baked into the game (like armor class and to a lesser extent, alignment) which is hard to square up in certain genres, like science fiction. Why people keep wanting to do space opera with d20 is a mystery to me in a world where we have Star Wars and Traveller, but I digress.

Both historically and currently, there’s been a morbid fascination with new worlds, new settings, new environments, and 5e has enjoyed robust success at playing host to nearly every stripe of fantasy, its sub-genres, and their sub-genres. Once you figure out how the sausage is made, making a stat block for a flying monkey or a hookah smoking caterpillar is a snap. Heck, Second Edition even published a series of historical campaign books for things like Vikings for players who wanted a more authentic historical adventure. They were called “splat books.” Dumb name.

These days there’s no shortage of differently flavored D&D to be had, from great games in the OSR (DCC’s Lankhmar and Dying Earth sets stand out here) to licensed properties like Hellboy and the BPRD, to original worlds and settings of nearly every genre. What few Intellectual Properties not currently shoved into the shape of a 5e stat block are readily available elsewhere (Conan, John Carter, Aliens, Blade Runner, The Walking Dead, etc.) And yet, there remains a few book-related properties that have never enjoyed a conversion into D&D, for reasons which probably sound great but that I would reject out of hand because, come on, it’s 2024.

The Chronicles of Narnia

C.S. Lewis’ classic fantasy series has never enjoyed the universal success of his buddy J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings saga, but that’s not to say that Narnia hasn’t had an outsized impact on modern fantasy. Considering how many of the creatures in Lewis’ alternate world look a lot like creatures from British, Celtic, and Greek and Roman myth and history, you wouldn’t even need to reskin any monster blocks—minotaurs are already statted out. Ditto pirates, witches, and fauns. And what few new stat blocks you would need aren’t even worth mentioning. Aslan is a talking lion. Boom. Done.

The world itself would need a good map, a gazetteer that was keyed with the original stories, and a timeline of events. The only “new” parts of the game might be found in a way to first roll up a modern-day character and then pull them into Narnia, but honestly, I think you’d do much better making modern day Backgrounds and leaving the character classes largely untouched.

I can only guess that the reason why this hasn’t happened is because of the Lewis Estate, but think about it…how baller would it have been to hold up a boxed set back in the 1980s and say, “This is a game by a Christian author! We’re going to a dreamland of magic! Aslan is Jesus! How is THIS Satanic, Mother?!” Now we have Alice in Wonderland converted to 5e and not one but two Oz 5e conversions. Where the hell was this stuff in the 1980s?

The World of Jehreg by Steven Brust

While not exactly in the same “classic” category as the Chronicles of Narnia, Brust’s adventures of Vlad Taltos, a witchcraft-practicing assassin in a world of long-lived sorcerers, was an Appendix N-Adjacent series, being published initially back in the 1980s as part of the influx of fantasy novels riding the wave of sword and sorcery. Brust’s World of Dragarea was unlike anything else back then; a mix of wry, hard-boiled, sarcastic writing, near-heist and caper-based adventures, and a unique set up for characters. The Dragaeran calendar was similar to the Chinese Zodiac, with seventeen houses based on animals (and whose characteristics spilled over into people born of that house—Dzur were stocky and strong, etc, like looking up your sign at the Chinese take-out.

Vlad, however, is from the East, where humans only live about 80 years instead of hundreds. And he’s a member of House Jhereg, the only house that actually sells its house name and status to whomever can afford it. Jhereg is the “thieves’ guild” house, you see, and it’s a motley assortment. Everyone in Dragarea practices sorcery. Witchcraft is outlawed. Guess what magic Vlad uses? Oh, and every swordman from the various houses uses a long sword, which seems rather like a katana. Only Vlad uses a rapier, which is also against the law.

These books are like popcorn; you can’t read just one. They are well-plotted with interesting and fun characters who grow and change. From a gaming standpoint, again, this writes its own supplement. Seventeen Dragaeran castes, with new heritage features and traits, new weapons, new spells, new monsters and deep history and lore…it’s the thing we all look for in a D&D splat book; stuff to crib for your own game.

I know Brust wouldn’t say no to someone wanting to make his books into a game; in fact, he is a gamer from back in the day and the series was based on an AD&D campaign he played was in with fellow author Robert Sloan. I’m just surprised that it hasn’t happened after all this time, especially with so compelling a setting. As close at we ever got was a stretch goal add-on for Blades in the Dark…and that’s not going to cut it for me.

The Maradaine Saga by Marshall Ryan Maresca

The city of Maradaine is a cosmopolitan gem, the center of Druth politics and society. However, such prosperity comes with an underside; drugs are destroying lives, a conspiracy to take over the government is underway, and poor neighborhoods are threatened with eviction by unscrupulous developers. It’s just another day in Maradaine, but some people are standing up against the corruption; people like the mysterious Thorn, who plagues the drug dealers with his enchanted cloak and rope; the inspectors, Satrine and Minox, who are each on the outs with the rest of the constabulary; the Rynax brothers, former ne’er-do-wells who are trying to go straight, but find themselves planning one final heist, and Dane, the knight errant member of the Order who lives with the results of his decision in combat.

These (and many other) characters are each part of their own series of novels, each highlighting a different aspect of the underside of Maradaine. The four series, The Thorn of Dentonhill, The Maradaine Elite, the Streets of Maradaine, and the Maradaine Constabulary are written piecemeal, one a timeline that has characters crossing over from one series to the next, with the final book in the saga, People of the City, being an Avengers-style tale where everyone comes together to fight off a grand threat. It’s a lot less complicated than it sounds.

Maradaine is a perfect city setting for a low- to medium-level magic campaign. It’s strength lies in the excellent world building and lays out, piece by piece, the relationship between cops and robbers, mages and the military, the people and the government, and us versus them. I can’t think of a more interesting place to set city campaigns, and here’s the deal—I know Marshall, and I know what a big ol’ geek he is, and I am surprised no one has asked him for the license to do this.

There’s a lot of gameable elements in Maresca’s world, my favorite one being that all mages must belong to a circle after they graduate from Wizard School. The circles provide legal protection from undue persecution and also assume responsibility for mages who act badly. This keeps spellcasters on a short leash, unless, of course, the whole circle wants to break bad. The tech level in Maradaine is clockwork in practice, but not over the top; it’s steampunk-lite (so light it’s nearly translucent).

I’m sure there are other books and series that have not gotten a game-ification and even a few that once did but no longer exist (looking right at you, Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion). Fans generally won’t be deterred in converting their favorites to 5e, which is how we ended up with a 5e Fallout and a 5e Star Wars, whether we needed or wanted them, or not. Again, I prefer my 5e all fantasy or mostly fantasy, so I wouldn’t use that system to play in those worlds, even as I fully appreciate the amount of work it took to get those square pegs into those round holes. Here’s hoping that some small publisher with a little dough picks up the baton and does a splat book for the series I mentioned, as I think they would all be welcome in the marketplace of rpg ideas.