"Stream of Many Eyes" -- WotC To Announce New Storyline In June

jeremypowell said:

I just watched the bit you're referring to, and Stewart clearly over-emphasizes the word "sun" when he says this. He's definitely trying to tease Dark Sun and psionics; the only question is whetehr he's pranking us in doing so.

Remember that they will almost certainly be announcing not one but two books during the "Stream of Many Eyes" -- Broadway and Catacomb -- and possibly three (the rumored fourth book for 2018).

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Well, the hip rumors are that WotC is prepping two separate Waterdeep and Undermountain books, but they have also made a large number of setting related teases all year, for basically all of the settings. We might eventually be seeing a metasetting guide, covering the basics for all the different worlds...

jeremypowell said:

I just watched the bit you're referring to, and Stewart clearly over-emphasizes the word "sun" when he says this. He's definitely trying to tease Dark Sun and psionics; the only question is whetehr he's pranking us in doing so.

Remember that they will almost certainly be announcing not one but two books during the "Stream of Many Eyes" -- Broadway and Catacomb -- and possibly three (the rumored fourth book for 2018).

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Seeing how central FR is to 5e, this is when we discover that Dark Sun is now being established as the post-apocalyptic Forgotten Realms, and the next big adventure is a time-traveling jaunt meant to save the Realms by preventing Athas from ever existing...

delericho said:

Bear in mind that we only have a sample size of one. There's nothing to stop them opening any other setting at any time and for any reason. They could, for instance, decide to open up a few settings as a means to judge interest - if nobody writes for Birthright (for instance) then they know not to bother with a Birthright adventure. (And, conversely, if there's a sudden flurry of Birthright material, maybe they rethink that.)

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Uhm, let see... the situation is the following:

FR, published official adventures: a lot, open on DMsGuild? Y
Ravenloft, published official adventures: 1, open on DMsGuild? Y
Mystara, published official adventures: 0, explicitly cited in DM Guide, Island of Terror in DM Guild, open on DMsGuild? N
Eberron, published official adventures: 0, explicitly cited in DM Guide, treated in UA, treated in SCAG, open on DMsGuild? N
Dragonlance, published official adventures: 0, explicitly cited in DM Guide, treated in UA, treated in SCAG, open on DMsGuild? N
Planescape, published official adventures: 0, explicitly cited in DM Guide, planes and Sigil in DM Guide, open on DMsGuild? N

etc. etc.

For me the relationship "a setting is open in DMsGuild only if it has an official 5E published adventure in hardback format" is quite solid.

So maybe Broadway = Waterdeep Sourcebook/adventure, Catacomb = Undermountain, divided in two like Horde of the DragonQueen?

vincegetorix said:

What if its Waterdeep is only a distraction? What if Stream of Many Eyes is meant to hide the codename ''Stream of Many I's''? Quick everybody, find the alliterate name for book that would contain as many ''I''s as possible!

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I'll take that a step further - what they are releasing is a 5e update of all the "I"-series modules!

Feast your I's on this:

Code Title Levels Author(s) Published Notes
I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City 4–7 David Cook 1981 Set in Greyhawk; Ranked 13th greatest adventure of all time[1]
I2 Tomb of the Lizard King 5–7 Mark Acres 1982
I3 Pharaoh 5–7 Tracy & Laura Hickman 1982 Desert of Desolation part 1. Originally published by Tracy & Laura Hickman in 1980.
I4 Oasis of the White Palm 6–8 Philip Meyers Tracy Hickman 1983 Desert of Desolation part 2
I5 Lost Tomb of Martek 7–9 Tracy Hickman 1983 Desert of Desolation part 3
I3–5 Desert of Desolation 5–10 Various 1987 Revised Compilation. Ranked 6th greatest adventure of all time[1]
I6 Ravenloft 5–7 Tracy & Laura Hickman 1983 Ranked 2nd greatest adventure of all time. First module set in Ravenloft.[1]
I7 Baltron's Beacon 4–8 Philip Meyers 1985
I8 Ravager of Time 8–10 Graeme Morris & Jim Bambra 1986 UK
I9 Day of Al'Akbar 8–10 Allen Hammack 1986
I10 Ravenloft II: The House on Gryphon Hill 8–10 Tracy & Laura Hickman 1986 Sequel to I6.
I11 Needle 8–10 Frank Mentzer 1987 [Official download: text, cover, PC art, art part 1, art part 2[3]
I12 Egg of the Phoenix 5–9 Frank Mentzer and Paul Jaquays 1987 Abbreviated compilation of R1–R4
I13 Adventure Pack I Deborah Christian (ed.) 1987
I14 Swords of the Iron Legion 1–15+ Skip Williams (ed.) 1988

Just kidding of course. Agree it is likely Undermountain. But wouldn't a Desert of Desolation update/conversion be nice...

There is a huge Twitter thing happening to tease the next book. Check out [MENTION=47770]immortal[/MENTION]4tress

A psion wizard is a horrible idea, in my opinion. A major part of the fun of psionics--going back to 1E--is that it was different, both thematically ("fluff") and structurally ("crunch"). To take the latter away diminishes the former.

GarrettKP said:

There is a huge Twitter thing happening to tease the next book. Check out immortal4tress

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That certainly took off this afternoon! Went from just a few of us who found it (I was first follower - woohoo!) to about 500 followers and a dozen more tweets. It'll be interesting to see where this leads.

As long as we're speculating wildly, here's my attempt at a grand unified theory:

In the past, Mike Mearls has remarked that he considers himself to be in the "happiness business", or something to that effect. So he thinks of his goal as trying to make everybody happy when possible. If they're going to expand into a new setting, however, this presents a problem: when you pick a particular setting, you automatically make some people happy and other people unhappy. If you start putting out books on Dark Sun, the people who really wanted Eberron are going to be disappointed, and vice versa.

The way around this would be to create a book with multiple settings instead of just one. That way they could expand into Dark Sun, and Eberron, and Planescape and Spelljammer and Ravenloft and whatever else. This way they make as many people happy as possible. This also fits into comments about opening up the DM's guild, since presumably all of these settings would be valid for DM's guild content.

They also don't release books that focus only on one side of the screen anymore, and an all-settings book would fit pretty well with that idea. In addition to broad setting information, they could easily fit Psionics into this book, and include a few new races and class features to support all these new settings. Mystics and Artificers would fit in there, Warforged or Kender could go there, backgrounds associated with Planescape factions could go in there. It would be really easy to make that kind of book fit the current 5e book model.

Lastly, a book like that would be an absolutely massive expansion to the game. It would dramatically shake things up, and would probably be one of the most important books that they've ever released. For many players, it would be as important as the original three core books. They might want to hire a new member of the creative team in advance of a book like that. And for such an important book, I expect they would want to do a big, dramatic announcement with plenty of hype. Like a huge expensive liveshow, for instance.

Or they could just be hyping up a book about Undermountain, I guess that's possible too.

One more thought, for people who follow Dice, Camera Action: In the past, Chris Perkins has based each season of the show on whatever the hot new campaign book happened to be. They touched on Curse of Strahd, Storm King's Thunder, and Tomb of Annihilation. The new season premiered last night, and there was no hint that they were going to base this season on any particular campaign book. Maybe the campaign isn't going to take place in one single setting, this time.

Lidgar said:

I'll take that a step further - what they are releasing is a 5e update of all the "I"-series modules!

Feast your I's on this:

Code Title Levels Author(s) Published Notes
I3 Pharaoh 5–7 Tracy & Laura Hickman 1982 Desert of Desolation part 1. Originally published by Tracy & Laura Hickman in 1980.
I4 Oasis of the White Palm 6–8 Philip Meyers Tracy Hickman 1983 Desert of Desolation part 2
I5 Lost Tomb of Martek 7–9 Tracy Hickman 1983 Desert of Desolation part 3
I3–5 Desert of Desolation 5–10 Various 1987 Revised Compilation. Ranked 6th greatest adventure of all time[1]

Just kidding of course. Agree it is likely Undermountain. But wouldn't a Desert of Desolation update/conversion be nice...

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I for one would excitedly welcome our new I Desolation Overlords! I recently started a campaign specifically to bring the players into contact with said modules, and a 5e update would be splendid...

Kannik