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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[rooneg]

Without saying it more direct like you did. That's what I'm saying. Do a book for each realm, not a continuous line of products specific to the world in question. Tough an adventure or something that ties them all together would be interesting. Create non-specific adventures tied maybe to the creators own world. I have no problem, like many others, tying it into to my own world(s). I still use Greyhawk (heavily modified) because it was the first and longest running of my group (40 years). I use Forgotten Realms too, and my own. Wotc just should not throw all their eggs in one basket. Just create good non specific supplements and adventures that people can bring into their own worlds with guidelines for newbies to do so. Because if we get a peak into other creators worlds, maybe new ideas will come of it. This includes creating new and non-standard worlds for people to play in, not lines of crap tied to a specific world or barely different from the others.

WotC is not interested in bunch of different campaign settings, with one book each. They'd rather have a bunch of realms books, most of which will be purchased by the people that are interested (or at least tollerate) the realms than have a dark sun book (purchased only by dark sun fans) and a greyhawk book (purchased only by greyhawk fans) and a dragonlance book (purchased only by dragonlance fans). They've picked a core setting that's as unobjectionable as possible in an attempt to capture the largest audience they can, and since they're the ones with the actual market data on what sells and what doesn't I'm going to go out on a limb and say they're doing it for a reason. Curse of Strahd tells us that they will do occasional books for non-realms settings, but expecting that to be the common case is crazy. They're just not interested in it.

On the "non-setting specific" side of things, the problem there is that if you want an adventure that runs through 10+ levels of play (which is the common case for WotC these days) you actually need a setting. You can't get away with generics if you need to maintain 6 months worth of play, unless you're willing to require local DMs to create a whole lot of stuff out of whole cloth, which WotC apparently doesn't want to do (some of that is because they want their HC adventures to work for Organized Play and some is a calculated attempt to market to people who want to spend minimal time prepping their campaigns, which makes sense since they already know that people who are comfortable homebrewing settings are totally capable of just homebrewing adventures as well).

 

[Prism]

Question for all the grognards - is there an adventure that is a real Greyhawk adventure - something that just spans a whole bunch of areas of Greyhawk?

Original Greyhawk adventures were typically set in a single location, often dungeon based. They were also short - a single module might level you up once or maybe twice. However several were directly related to each other. Some of those were later complied into a mega module. So for example A1 - A4 were re-released as A1-4.

If you wanted a region spanning campaign you would have to join those individual modules together. For example you could run the Temple of Elemental evil T1-4 and then lead that into S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth and then on to WG4 The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun.

 

[Caliburn101]

I would guess a reworking of Return to the Tomb of Horrors, or that the title is a red herring...

 

[bmfrosty]

Original Greyhawk adventures were typically set in a single location, often dungeon based. They were also short - a single module might level you up once or maybe twice. However several were directly related to each other. Some of those were later complied into a mega module. So for example A1 - A4 were re-released as A1-4.

If you wanted a region spanning campaign you would have to join those individual modules together. For example you could run the Temple of Elemental evil T1-4 and then lead that into S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth and then on to WG4 The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun.

So if it's single locations - then is it place names? Is it subtractive qualities - like Greyhawk would *NEVER* have Tieflings or Dragonborn? Is it just a indefinable je ne sais quoi?

 

[gyor]

Why would Greyhawk never have Tieflings?

 

[Ashran]

Why would Greyhawk never have Tieflings?

Maybe because Tieflings were not around during od&d or ad&d 1st edition. (I know it's a weak reason, I would allow them, myself, but sometime, when you want to go vanilla, you go vanilla all the way...)

It all depends on the dm, anyway, I did play a kender in greyhawk, so anything is possible

 

[gyor]

I would not buy it, and yes From the Ashes is garbage (I don't use it). However, those new to D&D need to see that there is more than just FR and Wotc needs to give Gary his props as the creator of this great game!

Are you kidding me, they can't even show that there is more to FR then the Swordcoast! At least this new adventure leaves the sword coast.

 

[jamesjhaeck]

Are you kidding me, they can't even show that there is more to FR then the Swordcoast! At least this new adventure leaves the sword coast.

Your evidence seems to disprove your claim. Also, Adventurer's League loves the Moonsea region. I would love to see some Zakhara or Kara-Tur, but those settings require a very careful touch to avoid playing into outdated and demeaning orientalist tropes.

 

[darjr]

I think it was Mr Goodman of Goodman Games who said, "If you want more of this, buy this" or something along those lines. If you want more non realms stuff buy Curse of Strahd. Buy TftYP as well, because it is also a kind of non realms test balloon. Among other things.

 

[murquhart72]

Without saying it more direct like you did. That's what I'm saying. Do a book for each realm, not a continuous line of products specific to the world in question. Tough an adventure or something that ties them all together would be interesting. Create non-specific adventures tied maybe to the creators own world. I have no problem, like many others, tying it into to my own world(s). I still use Greyhawk (heavily modified) because it was the first and longest running of my group (40 years). I use Forgotten Realms too, and my own. Wotc just should not throw all their eggs in one basket. Just create good non specific supplements and adventures that people can bring into their own worlds with guidelines for newbies to do so. Because if we get a peak into other creators worlds, maybe new ideas will come of it. This includes creating new and non-standard worlds for people to play in, not lines of crap tied to a specific world or barely different from the others.

Couldn't be better said, I love this idea and wish WotC would listen. D&D was always meant to be a GENERIC fantasy adventure game, not a showcase for any particular novel series or writer/creator.