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.

 

[Fenris-77]

OK, I don't find it tedious or pointless either. Tedious I guess is a matter of proficiency, taste and engagement, but pointless speaks to effect, and I have no idea why you personally would reskin, so I can't speak to that. I do it to spread the CRs of a type over more levels and to facilitate mixed groups of similar creatures (medium zombies for example, or special zombies), and/or to make the result better fit my particular campaign. YMMV.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

OK, I don't find it tedious or pointless either. Tedious I guess is a matter of proficiency, taste and engagement, but pointless speaks to effect, and I have no idea why you personally would reskin, so I can't speak to that. I do it to spread the CRs of a type over more levels and to facilitate mixed groups of similar creatures (medium zombies for example, or special zombies), and/or to make the result better fit my particular campaign. YMMV.

My perspective as someone who in 4E, basically reskinned everything all the time. Practically every monster I ran was reskinned and re-math'd to some extent (well, at least 70-80%). It was so easy, and so effective, and it was so easy to scale things. In 5E, it's like yeah, I can reskin things, but why? I do it a fair bit with humanoids, but AFAIK 5E doesn't have any nice tools to make it easy, unlike 4E did, so it feels very like I'm rooting around in a rubbish bin trying to find something okay, whereas in 4E had a beautifully arranged series of "bits boxes" I could mix and match from. YMMV as you say.

 

[Envisioner]

Why do you: "...strongly disagree with all of this." Why do you care if an otyugh appears in Ravnica or a Orzhov wizard can cast fireball? Or if someone wants to play D&D in Ravnica? More importantly, is this something you don't want personally for your game or do you think no one should be able to play this way?

I care because I like the Ravnica setting, and one of the things I like about it is the very clear identities that have been established for the guilds, and the decision to port Ravnica into D&D without porting the MTG magic system into D&D along with it has diluted that very clear identity that Ravnica had. An Orzhov being able to cast Fireball is like a Necromancer being able to cast some kind of Rainbow Sparkle Magic Love Beam from the "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" universe (I'm not a Brony so forgive me if I don't have all the details exact there). It's fundamentally incoherent with the identity that the Orzhov are defined by, as they were presented way back in 2005 when they were first created, and still as of their last appearance in the third block of Ravnica sets (I forget exactly when these were but it wasn't more than 5 years ago).

I don't want it personally for my game, and if someone else is playing a game that way, then I probably don't want to play in that campaign or in another campaign run by that same person (note the "probably", it's still subject to negotiation, but to borrow the 3E D&D term from the Diplomacy rules, my starting attitude is one step lower). I would understand if they had published the Ravnica book and said "We're not going to go into the full details of the MTG magic system, just use the base D&D spells as a proxy for now, and an upcoming book will detail how Ravnica magic really works", but as far as I noticed (I admittedly only gave the Ravnica book a fairly cursory look-through), that wasn't what they did, they didn't even pay lip service to the idea that they were doing an inadequate or preliminary job. And the fact that they're moving on and making another MTG setting part of D&D without doing any more work to acknowledge this issue, that bothers me a little. Not a lot, but a little.

The concepts of chaos, war and fire are far from exclusive to MtG. And the same is true of all the traits associated with the mana colours. They are just generic fantasy concepts that can be found in many D&D subclasses. Just look at wizards: Abjuration (white), Illusion (blue), Necromancy (black) etc. Look wizard is clearly based on MtG!!!

Not sure if the smiley indicates that you're kidding, but assuming you're not, I very much disagree. Those categories you listed only very, very loosely fit; there are many Abjuration spells that aren't White (such as Dispel Magic, which overlaps a bit with Disenchant and the like, but can also function as Counterspell which is restricted to Blue), and an absolute legion of White spells that aren't Abjurations (Armageddon, anyone?). There are several spells in D&D which I couldn't even guess at a correctly fitting MTG color for, and even D&D itself already contains a number of spells that don't properly fit into the eight Vancian schools (remind me, is Cure Light Wounds a Necromancy or Conjuration spell?). Frankly I'd likely have been happier if they dropped the somewhat ill-considered Vancian system and went full-bore with the MTG system, although I would doubtlessly still have some issues with that as well. At least that would make a little more sense as a full hybridization of the two settings under the rules created by the new ownership of the IP, rather than this very awkward stapling-together of two totally incompatible things that we have now.

 

[Parmandur]

Barbarian Berserker: red mana
War Domain Cleric: red mana
Wild Magic Sorcerer: red mana

etc.

The concepts of chaos, war and fire are far from exclusive to MtG. And the same is true of all the traits associated with the mana colours. They are just generic fantasy concepts that can be found in many D&D subclasses. Just look at wizards: Abjuration (white), Illusion (blue), Necromancy (black) etc. Look wizard is clearly based on MtG!!!

One significant difference, those weren't options being tested ahead of a Magic setting book. And again, it amuses me that your own distaste for the option is related precisely to it's Magic flavor, while you deny the Magic flavor...and in the end, what we got was a Magic book!

 

[dave2008]

OK, as some one who doesn't play MtG I don't see it, but I realize my knowledge and passion are limited. I just don't see the need to deny people MtG settings. There have been posts on these forums about this issue (making changes to the D&D system to accommodate colors) and I thought the general consensus was the colors have no mechanical effect on spell casting. They are just flavor.

Though I have also seen some homebrew attempts to "Magic" the D&D spell system.

I care because I like the Ravnica setting, and one of the things I like about it is the very clear identities that have been established for the guilds, a...

That was one of things I liked about the D&D Ravnica book too.

An Orzhov being able to cast Fireball is like a Necromancer being able to cast some kind of Rainbow Sparkle Magic Love Beam from the "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" universe (I'm not a Brony so forgive me if I don't have all the details exact there). It's fundamentally incoherent with the identity that the Orzhov are defined by, as they were presented way back in 2005 when they were first created, and still as of their last appearance in the third block of Ravnica sets (I forget exactly when these were but it wasn't more than 5 years ago).

That seems like a hyperbole to the determent of your argument. What your talking about is spell selection. That could be wrong or not, IDK, but that is a minor thing that can be easily adjusted if you want.

I don't want it personally for my game, and if someone else is playing a game that way, then I probably don't want to play in that campaign or in another campaign run by that same person..., ...that bothers me a little. Not a lot, but a little.

The two bold parts seem incongruous to me. Regardless, you can have your passion, I was just curious.

I like the Ravnica book, one of my favorite 5e books, but I don't play MtG or know much of the fluff (though with Ravnica and Theros I have learned a lot more of it). So I can't really share your bias, but I understand it.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I think we will have got a warlord class, but the plan for this is linked with some future strategy game, maybe linked with Birthright. I am faithfully convinced than Hasbro worries about D&D more as multimedia brand than only the TTRPGs. You know I have said several times.

I wouldn't be very surprised if WotC recovers old D&D worlds....for Magic: the Gathering, for example Jakandor or Hollow World(Mystara).

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Which is blatantly false. Even leaving aside things like Psionics and Incarnum, the Marshal class alone (renamed the Warlord in 4E) was an immensely valuable archetype, the Charisma-based battlefield commander who buffs other fighters without magic rather than fighting himself. You can make a Battle Master fighter function a little like that, and the Paladin also has a little in common with it, but you can't make a character who's anywhere near having Marshal/Warlord as his actual identify, and functioning optimally as the lead-from-behind tactical mastermind of a battle, using only the 5E rules as presented. And that's just the most immediately obvious of a dozen more archetypes I could come up with from 3E that remain impossible in 5E (at least as far as I know; I haven't obsessively studied SCAG and Xanathar's).

I know. We need a Warlord as a class, but knowing WotC, it's going to just be a subclass if they ever get around to making it a player option in 5e.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

One significant difference, those weren't options being tested ahead of a Magic setting book. And again, it amuses me that your own distaste for the option is related precisely to it's Magic flavor, while you deny the Magic flavor...and in the end, what we got was a Magic book!

The Giant Soul Sorcerer was being playtested before Ravnica, that doesn't mean that it was intended for that book.
Your argument is basically a twisted form of "Correlation = Causation", which is false in this case and literally every other. The fact that the UA for the Paladin and Bard subclasses contained in MOoT does not prove anything. Yes, they were released around the same time as the other UA, but that correlation does not mean that they were intended for that book.

You went as far to say that the Rune Knight Fighter was planned for MOot, which is false. Yes, there are giants in Theros, but they're not the classic D&D giants that we all are acquainted with. If they were going to make a fighter subclass based on giants and runes in a Theros book, they'd at least have the abilities be consistent in theme with Theros, like the Eloquence Bard and Glory Paladin are.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I don't deny that the Revived Rogue is very similar in theme to the Returned in MOoT, but that again doesn't prove anything. They could have been planning it as a way for Revenants to be played in 5e. The Revived Rogue didn't even mention a mask or anything else you would assume a Returned would have.

If the Astral Self Monk isn't for Planescape, I don't know what is. It literally has the theme in the name, which is more than most subclasses have.

 

[Parmandur]

The Giant Soul Sorcerer was being playtested before Ravnica, that doesn't mean that it was intended for that book.
Your argument is basically a twisted form of "Correlation = Causation", which is false in this case and literally every other. The fact that the UA for the Paladin and Bard subclasses contained in MOoT does not prove anything. Yes, they were released around the same time as the other UA, but that correlation does not mean that they were intended for that book.

You went as far to say that the Rune Knight Fighter was planned for MOot, which is false. Yes, there are giants in Theros, but they're not the classic D&D giants that we all are acquainted with. If they were going to make a fighter subclass based on giants and runes in a Theros book, they'd at least have the abilities be consistent in theme with Theros, like the Eloquence Bard and Glory Paladin are.

Look, you seem to be getting a bit hot under the collar about this chat, so I'm not going to keep on about this. The Giant Soul looks like it was considered for Eberron and rejected, for what it is worth. Correlation does not mean causation, but it is suggestive, particularly given the publication history of tests correlating to future products.