D&D 5E Ray Winninger mentions third project!

WotC's Ray Winninger has confirmed that another D&D release, by James Wyatt, will be released in between Witchlight (September) and Strixhaven (November). Strixhaven was Amanda Hamon's project, while Witchlight is Chris Perkins'. That assumes he's not referring to the Feywild accessory kit in September.

A lot of people are asking Qs about the [D&D] releases for the rest of this year.

Yes, WILD BEYOND THE WITCHLIGHT is the [Chris Perkins] story product I referenced in our dev blog. STRIXHAVEN is [Amanda Hamon's] project. We have not yet announced [James Wyatt's] project, which releases between WITCHLIGHT and STRIXHAVEN.

Why did we announce STRIXHAVEN so early? Pretty simple--there was no way to release the STRIX-related Unearthed Arcana without letting the cat out of the bag.

You'll learn a lot more about all of these products at D&D Live on G4, July 16 and 17. And yes, there is still a little surprise or two ahead.

D&D 5E - Two New D&D Books Revealed: Feywild & Strixhaven Mage School

Amazon has revealed the next two D&D hardcovers! The Wild Beyond the Witchlight is a feywild adventure due in September, and Curriculum of Chaos is a Magic: the Gathering setting of Strixhaven, which looks like a Harry Potter-esque mage school, set for November...

www.enworld.org

 

[Paul Farquhar]

add in some mechanic

Bottom line. How do you write a game mechanic for making a story Swords & Sorcery or Heroic Fantasy?

The main difference is the motivation of the PCs. And remember overruling the players to, say, force their character to be a mercenary, or to play a pregenerated "Hero of the Lance" is bad form.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

It's hard to see how you could write a book on "how to do nostalgia" in the way as you can write a book on "how to do horror".

I'm in my 50s, and don't have any particular affection for Greyhawk. I read it, thought it was dull, and created my own homebrew setting.

Not every Setting book has to have "how to do X" Ravnica and Eberron's didn't.

You do nostalgia threw marketing mostly.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Bottom line. How do you write a game mechanic for making a story Swords & Sorcery or Heroic Fantasy?

The main difference is the motivation of the PCs. And remember overruling the players to, say, force their character to be a mercenary, or to play a pregenerated "Hero of the Lance" is bad form.

Supernatural Gifts, Party Patrons, and Factions linked to a settings lore are great for this as you can do a huge amount of variations between settings.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Not every Setting book has to have "how to do X" Ravnica and Eberron's didn't.

Yes they do. Ravinca has an extensive guild system, with spells linked to guild standing, Eberron has dragonmarks and magic-as-tech.

You do nostalgia threw marketing mostly.

How do you market nostalgia to someone who wasn't born?

 

[Parmandur]

Bottom line. How do you write a game mechanic for making a story Swords & Sorcery or Heroic Fantasy?

The main difference is the motivation of the PCs. And remember overruling the players to, say, force their character to be a mercenary, or to play a pregenerated "Hero of the Lance" is bad form.

Introduce gold as XP.

 

[Parmandur]

How do you market nostalgia to someone who wasn't born?

Carefully.

 

[Azzy]

I'm pretty sure "bringing it back to the original" isn't what needs to be done. Deletion of Gully Dwarves (offensive stereotype), modification of kender to discourage griefing, toning down of Mormonism (doesn't sell well outside the USA), and do something about the depiction of Native American culture. Goodness know what, I think Ellmore's art is as much to blame for that as anything, as well as the skin tight female armor.

But then it's still a generic fantasy setting. It would need something more than that to give younger players a reason to buy it.

To an extent, Dragonlance's bad rep is a bit undeserved, but even an an unfair bad rep is a significant obstacle.

Most of these issues aren't significant to the setting (or even the original story) and can be changed without much fuss and still leave the setting intact. But that's regardless—if there's going to be a new trilogy, there's going to be a new DL D&D product.

 

[Azzy]

How do you market nostalgia to someone who wasn't born?

Heh.

 

[Staffan]

I think the question would be if they are still going to attach alignments to outer planes and keep the "belief-is-reality" element of the setting. Can a city in the outlands still "slip" into a LE plane? That would mean the alignments have a metaphysical reality in the dnd cosmos and are not descriptive. I can't see them doubling down on alignment int his way.

I don't think WOTC has stepped that far away from (out of?) alignment. Good and Evil, Law and Chaos still exist as metaphysical forces, and the default Great Wheel cosmology still have planes tied to the alignments. The recent changes have been more about not assigning alignments based on race for mortal creatures, and as a second step developing new racial cultures showing more diversity (e.g. the three different FR drow cultures that came up recently).

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Yes they do. Ravinca has an extensive guild system, with spells linked to guild standing, Eberron has dragonmarks and magic-as-tech.

How do you market nostalgia to someone who wasn't born?

That is a new mechanics, not a how to do X chapter like Ravenloft.