D&D (2024) Wizards Presents Live Coverage

Hello, Darryl here standing in for Morrus with live coverage of the Wizards Presents live stream! This post will be updated throughout the presentation with news updates for Dungeons & Dragons. The event hosted by Jimmy Wong, Sydnee Goodman, and Ginny Dee starts at 9:00 AM Pacific and, while live-streamed, was pre-recorded and expected to last about an hour.

Over the weekend in advance of the stream, this placeholder pre-order page popped up on Amazon for a “Dungeons & Dragons 2022 Release Hardcover" with a retail price of $49.95 and release date of December 6, 2022. It’s highly likely this is Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon hardcover sourcebook that, along with the large-scale battle game Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn, was announced back in April for a release this year.

The stream is now archived on the D&D YouTube channel for those who missed the stream.

The pre-show featured a comedy sketch about working in the Wizards of the Coast offices with Magic: The Gathering characters terrorizing their co-workers.

The show starts proper with Magic: The Gathering news with the Middle Earth crossover in Universes Beyond.

The Dungeons & Dragons news starts with Jeremy Crawford introducing the new initiative called "One D&D". Chris Perkins reiterated what was said back during "D&D Next" playtests in 2013/2014 that there won't be any new "editions" of D&D but that the 2024 version will refine 5th Edition by building on that rules framework. All three core rulebooks will get a refresh, with Chris Perkins saying he's restructuring the DMG to be more friendly to new players. The "three pillars" of One D&D will be:

• D&D Rules. This takes what we love about fifth edition and updates the rules of the game to reflect the feedback we have heard from players and where the game is today.
• D&D Beyond. This will be the platform for your digital D&D collection, content, and tools.
• D&D Digital Play Experience. In early development, D&D Digital will offer an immersive player experience, rich creation tools for Dungeon Masters, and a connected space for DMs and players to get together and play D&D.

The new VTT will be in Unreal Engine 5 using 3D models of...well, models. All the footage is of the pre-alpha build, but the tabletop looks like a tabletop with minis and terrain thanks to tilt shift camera technology. The idea is to sell adventures with pre-built dungeons that you can play as-is or disassemble into parts for use your own games.

Playtesting begins today on the new rules system with a FAQ already live on the D&D Beyond website covering all three pillars and announces that the first digital/physical bundle will be Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon.

Not mentioned on the stream, a full one-hour video about the playtest for the Character Origins popped up on the official D&D YouTube channel:

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More Magic: The Gathering news about tournaments and the 30th anniversary celebration including in-person events. So a chance for the D&D fans to catch their breath.

The 35th anniversary of Drizzt Do'urden will see reprints of all 39 books in the series with new covers both in print and digital format. There will also be a new "visual dictionary" released on March 7, 2023 (pre-order link on Amazon). From the product description:

A visually stunning exploration of a legendary fantasy world

The Forgotten Realms offer D&D players an endless array of secrets to uncover, foes to fight, and treasures to be taken. But there is one name that has always stood out from the rest: Drizzt. Drizzt Do’urden.

This legendary drow elf ranger has been adventuring across the Forgotten Realms for decades, whether through New York Times bestselling fantasy novels or award-winning video games. Now Drizzt will take readers on a spectacular journey through his world.

This book showcases Drizzt and his travels through the Forgotten Realms in never-before-seen detail, with the glorious artwork produced by Wizards of the Coast put center stage. From the glaciers of Icewind Dale to the teeming cities of the Sword Coast, and the sinister shadows of the Underdark to the chambers of Mithral Hall, fans can explore the Realms through Drizzt’s eyes as never before with this immersive, extraordinary guide to their favorite fantasy setting.

Finally, there will be a new Legend of Drizzt webcomic on Webtoons featuring Briennelle Zaharina, Drizzt and Catti-brie's daughter, who will take her father's sword Twinkle and go out to prove she's just as much of a hero as her parents.

Back to M:TG with more tie-ins...it was previously announced one of them would be Warhammer 40000 but there will be a live stream on September 12th announcing details. The big announcement: Doctor Who for Commander formats.

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The stream reminds us of this week's release of Spelljammer: Adventures in Space with an animated commercial. The cartoon features a Spelljammer space hamster mother telling a scary story to her child of a frightening "hooman", who she says is too strange to be real before drawing a dagger and doing battle with a beholder.

Now, Dragonlance! "This is D&D telling a war story." Lots of art previews from Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon, which will be set in the War of the Lance telling side-stories outside the events of the novels. Kender confirmed as a playable race, along with the Knights of Solamnia and Tower of High Sorcery plus many new feats. Pictured above, Lord Soth will be on the alternate cover. The setting is built to work alongside the Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn board game as a mass combat optional rules set you can play on its own or add into Shadow of the Dragon Queen as a rules expansion.

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We got a trailer for a new starter set for Japan that seems to lean heavily on isekai tropes with three normal people hauling a cart before they're surrounded by magical flames and attacked by zombies. They transform into their characters and defeat the zombies just as a large dragon shows up...moving back to the table to show everyone playing at the table. The set is coming this winter.

Now for the entire year of 2023 Dungeons & Dragons releases (well, almost the entire year as Jeremy Crawford clarified in Twitter this was just "some of the products" coming):

• Keys from the Golden Vault, a heist anthology adventure collection coming in Winter 2023
• Bigby Presents Glory of the Giants, a collection of lore about giants set to be the "definitive" book on giants coming Spring 2023
• Phandelver Campaign will expand the setting of Phandelver from the original Starter Set into a full campaign coming Summer 2023
• Book of Many Things draws from the iconic magic item coming in Fall 2023
• Finally...Planescape (!!!) coming in Fall 2023

And the stream closes out on Magic: The Gathering news for Dominaria United and other big releases for 2023.

PS. Thanks to @darjr for grabbing screenshots of the presentation while I was frantically typing to keep up.

 

[Shardstone]

First level feat confirmed. Feats will "have a level" just like class features, broken up into various groups based on levels. "First-level" feats don't include a +1 ASI, but some higher level fears will. Premade backgrounds come with pre-selected feats. Sailor gets Tavern Brawler, Criminal gets Alert are two examples. Alert confirmed to have 'new functionality'. New backgrounds, too! Including stuff like 'cultist' or 'pilgrim'. I wonder if we'll get more background features to do the whole 'build-a-background' thing? Here's hoping.

- By the way, I get all this from a guy on reddit. Thanks u/SomewhatMystia!

 

[Mezuka]

I'm only interested in Warriors of Krynn.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

No crits for monsters? Sigh. Yuck. Seriously, monsters are boring and predictable as it is.

Jesus, just let the players narrate how they win at this point. 5E combat by and large sucks as written using the sadsack critters in the monster manual.

 

[Scribe]

They need to remove the penalties for being small, since it seems several races can choose to be small or medium. There's no advantage for it, so lets ditch the thing that disallows heavy weapons (which only impact a select few builds anyways). If someone wants to be a halfling barbarian great weapon master, let em. It's not like a halfling hitting someone with a longsword deals less damage.

Yeah no thanks. I'd like to see benefits for being small, restrictions, limitations.

Distinction.

 

[reelo]

I mean, orcs and humans are actually different species, not different ethnicities (which is a social construct).

Are you saying that the differences between, say, a Scandinavian and a Polynesian islander are just a social construct?

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

I'm going to have to see this. My gut reaction is unpleasant, but it seems Tiefling may be improved at least?

The implication from what I've heard thus far (still watching through the video) is that Ardlings are a more "bestial" variation on the "celestial planetouched" thing, letting people play up ties to celestials like hound archons, guardinals, asuras, and some eladrin whatever the CG celestials are now.

They're not replacing Aasimar outright, so much as Aasimar are being more strictly tied to "angel planetouched", which is essentially how 5e has always treated them anyway, while Ardling is picking up the broader celestial panoply and getting the "choose your planar origin" thing mirroring what they're doing with Tiefling.

 

[rooneg]

First homebrew rule for me will be to remove this. "I seduce the lich." "You can't..." "I got a crit!"

I mean, if it's not possible you just don't let them roll the skill check.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I have to say I'm not keen on the name "One D&D" lol because like, everything I've ever come across where it was "One X" has been politics related and er... BAD. But I think that's just what happens when things to focus-grouped and corporate and people don't apply common sense but I guess we'll see. RPG Twitter is going to be hilarious tonight.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

You guys realize that this new spell list ideas means we're going to get a Psionic Spell List one day, right?

Now they just need to add Occult! And steal PF 2's 3 action economy. (not kidding on either)

 

[Zaukrie]

This seems sort of confused lol. Make crits weapons only, okay, makes sense. Then make crits do way less damage and make it so there's no reason to care about them really. Like, pick a lane lol.

I get that it's playtest but wow come on. Maybe they just need to bring back crit multipliers and crit chance differences on weapons.

Oh wow they brought back Arcane/Divine/Primal as spell types/lists. That is BIG. Forget Mike Shea lol.

Players love big, giant, crit bonuses. A crit that doesn't do much is not worth even having rules for.