D&D 5E WotC Announces An Impending Announcement: New Setting, Storyline

Early this week, WotC announced on Twitter that today there would be some kind of announcement on their Twitch channel. Those who heard that announcement and tuned in were treated to an announcement that the new storyline will be announced at a live event in June.

The press release announcing the impending announcement also mentions a new setting, as well as the storyline, so it sounds like it might not be set in the Forgotten Realms (or maybe is in a new region - to 5E - of the Realms, such as Icewind Dale). The adventure and the setting might be the same thing, or they might be completely different things. Recently, WotC has released a bunch of settings: Eberron, Ravnica, Wildemount, and the upcoming Theros.

Fans of D&D will learn all about the new setting and storyline

The new storyline specifically will be revealed at 12pm PST (8pm GMT) on Thursday, June 18th.

The June event will raise money for Comic Relief, and will feature celebrities including Brandon Routh (Superman), and will preview the brand new storyline. It takes place June 18th-20th. Other names involved include Felicia Day, Deborah Ann Woll, Amy Acker, David Harbour, Matthew Lillard, and more.

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 PRESS RELEASE

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RENTON, WA – May 21, 2020 – People all over the world continue to stay safe by staying home, but that doesn’t mean the adventuring has to stop. Dungeons & Dragons is more popular than ever because it allows people to weave compelling stories together even when they’re physically apart through online videoconferencing. Now, Wizards of the Coast brings the stars to this virtual table with D&D Live 2020: Roll w/ Advantage. An amazing cast of characters led by expert storytellers preview the latest D&D storyline with live gaming sessions, all while raising money for Red Nose Day to help the most vulnerable children across the US and around the world, who have been so affected by the COVID-19 outbreak.The adventure begins 10:00am PT on June 18, 2020 and will run through June 20, 2020 at dungeonsanddragons.com.

D&D Live 2020: Roll w/ Advantage features big personalities playing elves, wizards and fighters to accomplish quests using their imaginations. Funny people like Brian Posehn, Kevin Sussman and Thomas Middleditch will work together to solve problems or, more likely, cause some hilarious new ones. WWE ® Superstars Xavier Woods ®, Tyler Breeze ®, Ember Moon ®, Alexa Bliss ® and Dio Maddin ® will contend with beefcake destroyer Jeremy Crawford, a.k.a. Principal Rules Designer for D&D. Deborah Ann Woll will lead a group of actors in improvising a way to help people in a fantasy world not that different from ours. And principal D&D writer Chris Perkins takes players

Fans of D&D will learn all about the new setting and storyline as well as accompanying new products plus tons of unique gameplay available on June 18, 2020. D&D Adventurers League has four new short adventures everyone can enjoy. By donating a small amount to Red Nose Day, fans will have access to sign up for D&D sessions with players around the world! During #DnDLive2020, fans will also be able to choose the character best suited to help the region through Reality RP, a mashup of fantasy storytelling, community engagement, and reality television.

 

[Mercurius]

Why would the 2020 campaign be necessary to "set the stage" for 2021?

And planar content is a lot more developed than the psionic content, which they're still making major changes to.

It isn't necessary. I just don't think we're going to see Manual of the Planes/Planescape/However-they-do-the-planes this fall. I hope so, but would be rather surprised.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I just don't think we're going to see Manual of the Planes/Planescape/However-they-do-the-planes this fall.

I am one of the people who thinks we will get Xanathar's 2.0/Planescape this year, but it is unlikely due to possible delays from the pandemic.

 

[Mercurius]

I am one of the people who thinks we will get Xanathar's 2.0/Planescape this year, but it is unlikely due to possible delays from the pandemic.

So you think we're getting it, but it is unlikely? I'm confused.

I think what you mean is that "Planescape" is up next in the queue after "Icewind Dale," but we may not see it until early 2021. Yes?

The problem with predicting when some sort of planes product comes out is that we have pretty much nothing to go on. There might be hints if we read into certain things at the exclusion of other things, but WotC has been really good at covering their tracks in the past. We can retro-actively look back and see the signs of various products, but they're mixed in with a lot of other stuff, so it would have been reasonable to assume any number of things for any given product.

That said, the biggest clue might simply be the lack of a planes product, and the near-fact that a planes product is an inevitability. WotC has touched upon most of the major tropes of D&D history, with the glaring omissions being the planes and psionics. Given the problems with psionic playtests, it is logical to think that the planes are up first, so...

I think the most we can say with some degree of confidence is that we're going to see a planes product of some kind, at some point relatively soon - and almost certainly before we see psionics. But what "some kind" and "relatively soon" mean...well, we don't know. It could be November 2020, or it could be 2022. I personally think 2021 is the most likely. It could be Xanathar 2 with planar rules, or it could be a true MotP (probably by a different name), or it could be a setting-theme sourcebook like Shemeska's Guide to Sigil and the Planes.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

So you think we're getting it, but it is unlikely? I'm confused.

It is what I think is the most likely book to come out after the "Icewind Dale" book. I think it's fairly unlikely that we'd get a 4th book this year, but if we are, it's this book.

I think what you mean is that "Planescape" is up next in the queue after "Icewind Dale," but we may not see it until early 2021. Yes?

Yes.

The problem with predicting when some sort of planes product comes out is that we have pretty much nothing to go on. There might be hints if we scope in on them, but WotC has been really good at covering their tracks in the past. We can retro-actively look back and see the signs, but they're mixed in with a lot of other stuff, so it would have been reasonable to assume any number of things for any given product.

Yeah, it's not based on much, but the planescape themed subclasses and summoning spells.

 

[Shardstone]

Bro a sub-class could have been the most ungreek thing ever, like a cyberpunk Bard, and Paramandur would still think that thing was meant for Theros. Why would Crawford specify that last year's UA wasn't all meant for the next book if all that was meant for Theros?

 

[Parmandur]

Bro a sub-class could have been the most ungreek thing ever, like a cyberpunk Bard, and Paramandur would still think that thing was meant for Theros. Why would Crawford specify that last year's UA wasn't all meant for the next book if all that was meant for Theros?

Well, the point is less Greek per se and more Magic the Gathering. And in this case, we had a whole series of very Magic options, that people at the time kept complaining about having odd flavor, or being too out there for D&D.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Well, the point is less Greek per se and more Magic the Gathering. And in this case, we had a whole series of very Magic options, that people at the time kept complaining about having odd flavor, or being too out there for D&D.

As I have pointed out numerous times before MtG = all encompassing generic fantasy = D&D. Anything that is a good fit for D&D is also a good fit for MtG. Anything that is a good fit for MtG is also good fit for D&D. D&D gave us Barrier Peaks, Spelljammer and Dungeonland. There is no such thing as "too out there for D&D".

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Focusing on the Monsters a second:

• Volo's Guide: ~127 stat blocks, 100 page bestiary (WPP is pretty consistent across 5E, from my spot checks)
• Mordenkein's Tome of Foes: 139 stat blocks, 138 page bestiary
• Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica: 73 page bestiary, would have to dig a bit to get the full Monster list count, but it is pretty sizeable.
• Eberron Rising from the Last War: a 37 page bestiary, quite dense as well
• Explorer's Guide to Wildemount: 30 page bestiary
• Mythic Odysseys of Theros: about 50 page bestiary

So about 190 pages of monsters for the last four Settings combined, versus 239 pages for Volo's plus Mordenkein's.

The combined four books only have 10 Subclasses, but they have Races and rule modules like Renkown, Group Patrons, Piety, and so on

Covers both categories, really. Double duty.

It doesn't remotely cover both categories, this is bollocks, Parmandur, I'm sorry but it is. Your take here is extremely bad and misleading, because you're throwing out all the lore and so on the the monster books as "worthless" and focusing just on page numbers in a really misleading way. The lore is a huge part of what makes Volos and so on so good. What makes them exceptional. And yet you go just by page count on the other books, where there is lore mixed in. That's outright disingenuous.

Further, you're ignoring usability - many of the monsters in setting books are ultra-specific to those settings, and have little or no value outside of those settings. Given that re-skinning in 5E is tedious and frequently pointless (unlike in 4E, where it was easy and highly effective), there's no possible justification for ignoring that. Theros does better out of this because the monsters are more in the standard D&D mould, so few are low usability. Not all of the monsters will be unusable even in other books, but a significant proportion (usually a minority) will have low or no real usability.

The "rules modules" are particularly trash aside from those in Theros. Most of them are barely even rules (Group Patrons, for example, are a joke as a "rules module") or have no general applicability (all the Guild stuff in Ravnica is trash unless you're running Ravnica - it's not even well-designed or thought-provoking).

On top of that, the subclasses have been ultra-setting-specific in some cases, and sometimes low-grade and inconsistent in quality. Certainly worse than Xanathars.

Race-wise it's been a pretty bad showing too. Theros merely reprinted a bunch of two Ravnica and one Volos one, and added two. Ravnica's ones were mostly bad takes on fantasy standards or ultra-setting-specific. Does Exandria even add a race? Or did they just use the Eberron version of Orcs with one different skill option?

And to do even this, you had to move your own goalposts, going back to 2018 to add in Ravnica, which I feel was a pretty lame thing to do when responding to a post re: the three most recent books. I pretty much knew you would do it, too, I should have said, but I thought "he's the sort of person who complains about moving goalposts, not does it". I guess I was wrong.

 

[Bitbrain]

Further, you're ignoring usability - many of the monsters in setting books are ultra-specific to those settings, and have little or no value outside of those settings. Given that re-skinning in 5E is tedious and frequently pointless (unlike in 4E, where it was easy and highly effective), there's possible justification for ignoring that. Theros does better out of this because the monsters are more in the standard D&D mould. Not all of the monsters will be unusable, but a significant proportion will have low or no real usability.

Funny, I personally find reskinning monsters and their statblocks to be the easiest part of 5e.

 

[Fenris-77]

Yeah, I don't grok the argument that reskinning is complicated in 5E. I haven't found it to be so at all.