The New D&D Adventure Storyline Will Be Announced On June 2nd-3rd

WotC is holding an event, which they're calling the Stream of Annihilation, on June 2nd and 3rd to announce the new D&D storyline. Various D&D Twitch steamers have been invited to participate in the upcoming campaign, which will be live streamed along with interviews, and so on. "We’ll have folks from Misscliks, Maze Arcana, Critical Role, and Dice, Camera, Action! with Chris Perkins, not to mention international gaming groups like Yogscast's HighRollers (U.K.) and Dragon Friends (Australia)." You'll be able to watch it all live on Twitch at the time. Is this where we'll discover the identity of the mysterious Dust and Midway? Speculate away!

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Here's the announcement in full. There's more info about the hosts and the guests here.

Dungeons & Dragons loves the amazing video streams produced by our fans. This community-generated live-play highlights what’s fantastic about D&D—sitting down together with your friends to tell a grand story!


To celebrate, we’ve invited a bunch of D&D streamers and luminaries to Seattle, Washington to hang out and roll some dice on June 2nd and 3rd! This two-day event is called the Stream of Annihilation and it’s two full days of streaming that D&D fans won’t want to miss. We’ll have folks from Misscliks, Maze Arcana, Critical Role, and Dice, Camera, Action! with Chris Perkins, not to mention international gaming groups like Yogscast's HighRollers (U.K.) and Dragon Friends (Australia).
[h=3]PROGRAMMING[/h]Kicking off at 10am on both June 2nd and 3rd, hosts Anna Prosser Robinson and Kelly Link will talk to the Wizards of the Coast D&D team and learn all about our next exciting storyline coming in September. Then each group of streamers will play or share a sample of what to expect from the campaigns they’ll be running over the summer that preview the new D&D story. There will be multiple live games, interviews, new product unveils and improvised hilarity each day, starting at 10am PT and ending at 10pm each night. You’ll get introduced to the High Rollers crew delving into uncharted territory DMed by Mark Hulmes, a new Misscliks show investigating rumors called Risen, two weekly groups from our friends Satine Phoenix and Ruty Rutenberg at Maze Arcana, a new group of L.A. actors called Girls Guts Glory, and more!


Throughout the Stream of Annihilation, we’ll drop details on our expanded D&D Twitch programming, new accessories fans have been clamoring for coming later this year, and amazing board games and products from our partners. You’ll hear from Cryptic Studios about plans for Neverwinter, Curse Media for D&D Beyond, as well as WizKids, Gale Force 9, Fantasy Grounds, Roll20, and more. Plus, like any Dungeon Master worth their salt, we have a few exciting surprises to pull from our bags of holding!
[h=3]FURTHER DETAILS[/h]You’ll have to watch the Stream of Annihilation to catch it all live! Follow twitch.tv/DnD to get all the updates, then mark your calendars for Friday, June 2nd and Saturday, June 3rd to make sure you don’t miss a thing!


A full schedule, group bios and some more of the celebrities attending the Stream of Annihilation will be announced over the next few weeks. We’ll also be talking about the event on our official Twitter account (@Wizards_DnD) as well as interviewing some of the groups this month on Dragon Talk, the official D&D podcast.

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[Kramodlog]

So the idea that throwing out a book of updated adventures is "laziness"

Using old maps that make no sense anymore and old text that haven't been updated was done because they are under [cough]lazy and take customers for granted just like when they changed rules to 4e[cough] staff. An update would be to modernize old adventure and raise them to today's quality standards. Not just copy/pasta 5e monsters on them.

Wizards continuing on their trend of trying to figure out what their audience wants and giving it to them is strange to me.

What trend? They aren't trying. The trend is just to use old adventure and set them in the FR. There is no effort to try to find what their audience wants. If they did they would have filled TotYP with a bunch of new experimental adventures. TotYP was literally the opposite.

Especially because as far as I can tell TftYP has been selling very well.

As far as I can tell it has sold less than the other APs and there is less enthousiasm and interest for it. Cue people who say they are interested in it.

 

[Scott McFarland]

So: Tales from the World Serpent Inn.<br><br>25 pages on each of the D&amp;D world settings, bringing folks up to speed on what's happening in these worlds right now. Unique classes or class options for each world, with world-specific spells, magic items, plot hooks etc. And the World Serpent Inn as a planar nexus, with a section on Sigil as a planar metropolis.&nbsp;<br><br>Sound fair?

 

[Enendill]

Seems like we get another FR-based adventure yet again.

OK, no biggie, but I'd really like to see something new for 5e, not the Realms, again.

I'll agree with the speculations on the return of Acerarak.

 

[Morrus]

Old Losers! F**k You. That includes Perkins? He's my age. Grow up. Yes FR is the default, but to tell it's creator Gygax (Greyhawk) and others that they are irrelevant, you forget the roots and ages of these pioneers. Without them, you would be playing Monopoly and Risk only!

Watch the language, please.

 

[Jester David]

ok, I'll bite

What i would personnaly see me buying is a campaign setting. Not an adventure yet again, coz between dmsguild, adventurer's league, other publishers we are pretty well cattered for already. Now, when I say a campaign setting, I am thinking either an old one (basically any old setting except birthright which I don't like), or a completely new one (with a marked preference on this). That's one product. We assume for the moment that there will be two big product untill the end of the year, as a choice for the second that would be the rumored add on product with UA content. (I personnaly don't think we'll see it this year, and I think the big adventure they have planned will be a two parter. I have no proof, of course just a feeling on this.)

WotC is keeping all their books in print. So the books they are releasing have to compete with the entire 5e back catalogue.
If they release two campaign settings, they are competing for sales. When new people buy a setting book, they would be choosing the second, which comes at the expense of sales of the first.

They could probably release one campaign book eventually. Could/ should. But right out the gate that will be a tricky sell, as the majority of their fan base play homebrew. That's half the audience that might not buy the book.
Fewer people are going to buy a second campaign setting, because the products are mutually exclusive. You can't run in Forgottem Realms and Dragonlance at the same time. That reduces sales for the second dramatically, for a product that was already somewhat niche.

The thing is, fans of past campaign settings already have the books. The people who want the product already have it. No one brand new to D&D is calling for Dark Sun or Mystara. For anyone curious, there's the DMsGuild. And WotC might slowly add new settings to that like they did with Ravenloft. And new books are added every week for Print on Demand, which will eventually include the various Campiaign Settings.

 

[darjr]

Tfyp is pretty awesome.

 

[DEFCON 1]

My hope is that the upcoming Big Book O' Mechanics has a multi-planar Planescapeish theme, where the background fiction of the book is us travelling across the multiverse to all the various campaign settings, getting all of the mechanics and rules for all the required bits from places like Greyhawk, Eberron, Dark Sun, Planescape, etc...

...and what would be even cooler is if the new story adventure follows along with that planar theme. Where Acererak is first discovered in Chult, but then players realize he's a multi-planar entity and then have to cross the planes following him in order to track him down and end him once and for all.

If you wanted to tie an adventure book to a big book of mechanics... that's how I'd do it.

 

[Mercule]

The thing is, fans of past campaign settings already have the books. The people who want the product already have it. No one brand new to D&D is calling for Dark Sun or Mystara. For anyone curious, there's the DMsGuild. And WotC might slowly add new settings to that like they did with Ravenloft. And new books are added every week for Print on Demand, which will eventually include the various Campiaign Settings.

So, complete disclosure: I want something other than FR published so that the "FR is the setting supported because it's the only setting people buy" thing doesn't become (any more of) a self-fulfilling prophecy. If no other setting gets shelf space, there never will be brand new players clamoring for anything besides the Realms. For that matter, there aren't any brand new players calling for Forgotten Realms, either. By that logic, WotC shouldn't have released SCAG, nor should they be using the Realms for adventures.

The whole "your old books still work" argument is a farce. The same is true of the Realms. There's no need to release any new Realms content. There's no need to bake it into every single adventure. In 3E, Greyhawk was officially the default setting. I just looked at the 3E AP (Standing Stone, specifically) and there's almost no Greyhawk content in it. No mention of any "Factions" in the story hooks. Minimal placement in the setting. You could run it anywhere. Why do the 5E adventures have more setting-specific info? I'm not saying that no adventures should be setting-specific. Just that things like putting Five Factions hooks into Curse of Strahd sucks.

Putting Princes of the Apocalypse in the Realms was pointless, other than to promote the Realms. Yes, Tharzidun can attack multiple prime worlds, but he wasn't included. It was just another uprising of the same old cults that would have been at least as well served by putting it in the original setting.

FR isn't "first among equals" or the only setting being published because it's being requested. FR is being confused with "the D&D brand" and it's being done intentionally because WotC is aggressively trying to expand beyond the table top and they see the Realms as being the most marketable setting. Personally, I think that's not the best move and it weakens the other D&D-related IP (Eberron, Ravenloft, Krynn, etc.).

Go ahead and put out a Forgotten Realms movie. Just don't call it a D&D movie (at least not in gigantic print) because that kind of closes off the option for an Eberron (for example) movie, later, because folks will be wondering where Drizzt is and why the heroes are riding on a train.

Really, what I'd hoped for, when they said they weren't going to do any setting books (including the Realms, initially) was that they might rotate through several of the settings for the AL seasons. So, Tyranny of Dragons is a double-length season and showcases the Realms. Then do PotA in Greyhawk. Return to the Realms with OotA. Do Ravenloft with CoS. Back to the Realms with SKT. Move on to an Eberron book. Etc. I'd even cycle through at least some of the Realms adventures (ToD was just bad, regardless of setting), and would be super excited both to have quality adventures for settings I love (Eberron, Greyhawk, Ravenloft) and well as take guided tours of those I never got around to using much (Dark Sun, Planescape).

 

[blakem]

Plot Twist: It's about cultists.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I suppose these big web media events are necessary these days, akin to React youtubes and SDCC panels wherein they present a product but it's 90% hype and 10% content.