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.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Does Exandria even add a race? Or did they just use the Eberron version of Orcs with one different skill option?

There are subraces for halfings, elves and dragonborn. Pretty setting-specific though.

 

[Bolares]

You are the one exception I know of. Bladesingers are simultaneously OP at lower levels, and terrible at melee combat, and many of their later abilities suck. Battleragers are laughably bad and restricted more than Bladesingers. Many of the subclasses are very bad. The information on the setting is even lacking. It's a very short book as well, but costs as much as every other D&D 5e book.

Calling the book a failure is a bit harsh. It was far from perfect, and a lotof the criticism is valid, but bladesinger was a hit, even if not perfectly balanced, themelee cantrips are possibly some of the most played cantrips there are, swashbuckler was beloved even before being reprinted... To me the problem with SCAG is much more on the fluff side than on the book's crunch, it's an underwhelming book for sure, that does not make it the unanimous failure you say it is.

 

[Parmandur]

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".

Funnily enough, you were who I was thinking of in terms of someone complaining about the flavor for the obviously Magic subclass options in question.

 

[Bolares]

I disagree that the theros book can have subclasses that don't make sense in theros but make sense in MTG. MTG is HUGE, and almost anything in fantasy has a place in MTG, but theros is different, and they chose to put only 2 subclasses in it. No coincidence that those to make complete sense in a greek based book.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Funnily enough, you were who I was thinking of in terms of someone complaining about the flavor for the obviously Magic subclass options in question.

Then you thunk wrong. The astral monk is Jojo flavoured, and the barbarian was "we can't think of a decent idea for a barbarian subclass for Xanathar's 2 so we will throw together some random garbage instead".

 

[Parmandur]

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.

I'm sorry if it wasn't clear that I was thinking of the recent spate of Setting books in block (the timeframe between Ravnica and There's is the same as between Volo and MToF, for what that is worth. But looking at just Eberron, Wildemount, and Theros they are comparable to a whole Volo's Guide of monster options.

I was only comparing the bestiary sections, not the whole books. I like Volo and MToF quite a bit, but the lore in those books is not particularly less specific for porting into a homebrew than what is provided by Wildemount or Eberron.

Refluffing monsters in 5E isn't just easy, Ravnica itself provides quite the master class on how to do that, in addition to the new Monster blocks that, yes, can be used anywhere.

There are 4 entirely new options in Wildemount, and the first in print appearance of Aarocka and Tortles, and the first non-Adventure appearance in print appearance of Genasi. They also reprint Tabaxi, Aquatic Elves, Goblinoids, Orcs, Kenku, Goliaths, Aassamir, and Firbolg.

 

[Parmandur]

Then you thunk wrong. The astral monk is Jojo flavoured, and the barbarian was "we can't think of a decent idea for a barbarian subclass for Xanathar's 2 so we will throw together some random garbage instead".

Red Mana, in both cases. The Barbarian does very specifically tie into Theros Minotaurs, in retrospect.

 

[Bolares]

Red Mana, in both cases. The Barbarian does very specifically tie into Theros Minotaurs, in retrospect.

The concept of colored mana and color identity are completely dropped for the setting books. Ravnica and Theros are not about representing the game of MTG in D&D, but transforming some of the more popular planes in to settings. In 5e every setting book chose to print subclasses that make sense in that book, not general stuff. The priority is for them to make sense in the setting. I don't understand the argument that a subclass not being in the Theros book proves it was dropped. If it does not fit in Theros it should not be in the Theros book.

That is to me the biggest difference between a setting book and a"Xanathar 2.0". The setting book has to be heavilly themed, and it's options must stay on it's sphere of influence, a general crunch book does not have this restrictions. To me that's the main reason setting books should not replace a Xanathar-like book.

 

[Envisioner]

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".

I would strongly disagree with all of this. The Ravnica book dropped the ball significantly by not even considering the fact that MTG has a complely different magic system from D&D. Many things in D&D aren't good fits for Magic; I know because I've tried homebrewing them as custom cards and they just wouldn't work right. Many things in Magic aren't good fits for D&D; there I don't even have to do the homebrew effort, since the mismatch is patently obvious.

For an example of the latter, just look at the current Ikoria setting. In the card game, the monsters of Ikoria are able to mutate in very specific ways, based on the cards that have been printed and whether they have the mutate ability. All of that in-built logic is completely lost if you translate them into D&D monsters. Suddenly the decision of whether one monster can mutate with another is no longer in any way determined by the cards you draw, the mana you have access to, or whether there is a relevant card ability; it's all based on whether the DM wants the mutation to happen or not. It's like trying to base a D&D game on Chess and then deciding that the pawn shouldn't be restricted to just moving one square, the bishop shouldn't be trapped on diagonals of a single corner, and every piece should be able to jump like a knight. At that point, you're not playing Chess any more; you're using Chess as a loose source of inspiration for your D&D game.

I'm fine with having a D&D game that's loosely Ravnica-inspired. I'm not cool with having a D&D game that's actually set on Ravnica, but where an Orzhov wizard can cast Fireball if he wants to, where the Simic Mutant is a specific race instead of a combination of multiple races, or where the DM is free to include a classic MTG monster such as an Otyugh without in any way considering how that would impact the Ravnican ecology.

 

[Parmandur]

The concept of colored mana and color identity are completely dropped for the setting books. Ravnica and Theros are not about representing the game of MTG in D&D, but transforming some of the more popular planes in to settings. In 5e every setting book chose to print subclasses that make sense in that book, not general stuff. The priority is for them to make sense in the setting. I don't understand the argument that a subclass not being in the Theros book proves it was dropped. If it does not fit in Theros it should not be in the Theros book.

That is to me the biggest difference between a setting book and a"Xanathar 2.0". The setting book has to be heavilly themed, and it's options must stay on it's sphere of influence, a general crunch book does not have this restrictions. To me that's the main reason setting books should not replace a Xanathar-like book.

And yet they used art from a White card for the Paladin in the final books.

We'll see if any of those other options make it into a book. I doubt it.

There isn't much room for archetypes, that aren't highly specific.