D&D General Dungeons & Dragons Sneak Peek at Gameholecon: 50th Anniversary Adventure, Rod of Seven Parts, The Endless Stair, Tsojcanth, Barrier Peaks?

I was leaving a panel at GameHoleCon when Chris Perkins walked in and then Justice and Bill and then quite a few other WotC folk! So I stayed.

I'm glad I did because what started as a very funny trivia game challenge to the WotC folk and some of the audience soon turned into a discussion about things they are working on. Cool things. Oh and some of those questions were by Jon Peterson and were hard! I pride myself in getting a couple correct! Iron Rations for the win! Chris Lindsay talked about the DMSGuild too, and strongly hinted to me about the Manual of the Planes. I just wasn't on the same plane.

Anyway they discussed things that have already been covered, but I think with a bit more detail on particular things. This was more of a conversation than a presentation after all.

• Ron Lundeen discussed the internal playtests and that he liked it when he would see similar things discussed in the same ways in both public and private testing.
• Bill Benham discussed Jaquaysing the maps and adventures and how they are taking that more to heart. I think she was on everyone's mind at the panel, see this thread if you would, she could use our help.
• Ron also dicussed how he learned that scrolls are a secret magic item table of power and rarity for magic items generally. That's a nice hint I'll have to take a closer look at.

And then Chris talked about how their adventures take this fine line of between having too much and overwhelming new people yet also having to satisfy old hats like myself.

• The new core books will have an update to format and art like the more recent books.
• Gateway to new players was a term they kept using for the new PHB and even the DMG.
• Oh and they mentioned Tasha’s Bubbling Cauldron as a new spell, which Hollie will be delighted with.
• All three books will have mostly new art from new artists too, like from two concept artists from Obi Wan and the Avatar shows.

Then they went on to the DMG and how it'll talk about what a DM does, what are the parts of the game, the books and even how to use the DM Screen in play.

• It'll have handouts and tools to help you organize and build your notes and show you a campaign setting designed to be customized as a tutorial to make it your own and eventually build one from scratch.
• There will be new magic items to fill in more rarity niches and more cool common ones too.
• And finally we'll get the 1980 cartoon series magic items, something Chris seemed almost giddy about.

The Monster Manual will have more high level creatures and they noted things they'll put in stat blocks that were missing before, like proficiency bonus.

'Romp around the multiverse', I don't think that's a new book title, but it's a new kind of anthology book that revisits all the things they've done in D&D, a '50th anniversary book'. Chris Perkins actually ran the Ravenloft adventure at the convention, I wish I'd captured the events he ran because I'm guessing the title and a few details are in that entry. Anyone here play in his games? Care to share?

And then Chris started to display cool secrets. I'm not sure if any of these are separate books or part of the above mentioned book, but I think they are separate books the way Chris was hinting. I must also offer an apology. There was no way I could get all of these images. I was caught off guard and in a bit of awe. The last one especially is just killing me, it was wonderful and Chris refused to show me after the panel with that wry smile of his.

So here is the only clear image I got. What do you see? Give me your guesses and I'll later give you what the jokes were they made. I even got a laugh out of the crew with one!

However the missing last image was my biggest regret. It was a cute fluffy bunny on a stump...... Oh the agony! I got a selfie with Chris as a consolation prize!

OK I’ll spill more. I’m not sure but they indeed seemed to be talking about multiple books and this new book for the 50th. I think they intentionally obfuscated things.

• The key to me is that the 50th book is a visit to all the 5e adventures and the stuff that isn’t from those are either for the story to tie them together or are from other books
• The bunny was undead, a Sheep in Wolfs clothing. It was a brand new painting and I didn’t recognize the artist.
• My joke was that the Rod would fall apart way to easily, as they tried to hint what it was.

So from what they were taking about I think.

• A D&D 50th Anniversary book
• An Endless Stair book
• A Rod of Seven parts book
• And Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
• Oh and Tsojcanth

Please note those are all guesses by me. Oh and Tsojcanth.

Chris did say that the D&D 50th book had been announced but I can’t find anything on it.

 

[JEB]

Why in the world would WotC use Greyhawk as the 2024 DMG setting when they could do something new that actually resonates with their core customer demographic?

Why create something original and creative, that might not work, when you can continue to exploit the IP you already have? (Answer, because that might fail just as hard with modern audiences, no matter how much you tinker... but don't expect corporations not to try.)

 

[Parmandur]

that is what I meant by 'Hung together somewhat better' but still, if you wanted to, you could easily turn this into a more integrated AP with some small changes. They again did nothing to integrate the adventures (see SlyFlourish's posts on how he did it), they just picked a stronger theme.

OK, try this one on for size, using the semi-secret "WG" module series amd the 1E page counts (for your amisement as well, @darjr ):

• WG1: The Village of Hommlet, low Level intro, about 24 pages
• WG2: The Temple of Elemental Evil, for charachers of up to 8th Level, about 104 pages
• WG3: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, for characters Level 6-10, about 64 pages (lotnof bestiary)
• WG4: The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun (which is literally next door to Tasha's old stomping grounds in WG3), for characters of Level 5-10, about 32 pages
• S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, for charof Level 8-12 as a campaign capper, 68 pages but based on Tomb of Horrors WotC would probably drop most of the handout material.

So, that would be 292 pages in AD&D pagination. 5E pages are more information dense, though it is hard to calculate hownl that would hash out with thw new font size and also the addition of full color art and such.

It...could work.

 

[Clint_L]

And the DMG is, by its nature, aimed at a more hardcore crowd who are far more likely to know about the Greyhawk setting, or be motivated to find out. Plus...50th anniversary. You gotta recognize it, and I don't think it will be hard to work "Including The Original World of Dungeons and Dragons!" into the marketing for the new DMG, is that is indeed the route they go.

 

[Parmandur]

And the DMG is, by its nature, aimed at a more hardcore crowd who are far more likely to know about the Greyhawk setting, or be motivated to find out. Plus...50th anniversary. You gotta recognize it, and I don't think it will be hard to work "Including The Original World of Dungeons and Dragons!" into the marketing for the new DMG, is that is indeed the route they go.

Really all that we know is that rhere is a sample Setting that comes with a poster map that has Perkins a little giddy. Could be the world of the cartoon, but...Greyhawk would fit the bill.

 

[Lidgar]

Given that the TSR-era OARs have vanished from Goodman's site, I suspect WotC has clawed them back.

There are a lot worse things they could do for the 50th anniversary than giving one or more of the OAR books a deluxe modern treatment. (i.e. not just the minimal conversions they got for Yawning Portal.)

A modernized Keep on the Borderlands in particular would be a great choice for a new treatment, maybe as the 2024 starter set adventure.

I’m betting it’s more like a “Return to Barrier Peaks” with all sorts of sci-fi shenanigans. Would be great if they leveraged the additional setting/surrounding environs material that Goodman developed.

 

[EthanSental]

Not much to add other than this is a great thread to read after a long day at work to change to mindset and having fun, thanks all!

 

[Lidgar]

The big question mark for me is Drelnza: is S4 going to be part of thebEndless staircase, or linked to S3 in a new book somehow...?

They are both the missing S modules from 5E (S1 and S2 already in Yawning Portal), and both are the oldest of old modules (1976 tournaments), written by Gygax, so good Anniversary material...

I really, really want them to revisit Tsojcanth and Tharazidun. Such a great sandbox, and some really interesting encounters.

 

[Lidgar]

There's a lot of ways this could go. In fact, yet another idea is that the Stair product is going to be Yawning Portal 2 and have a bunch of old school modules like Lost Caverns and Barrier Peaks, and these don't have anything to do with Vecna and/or the Rod. You can get to those old module locations by using the Stair (and if they're smart, connecting the Stair to the Yawning Portal to answer the question of "How do you get to all these places from the Yawning Portal?" that the YP book never clarified). Another old-school module anthology would be a very smart idea for the anniversary to celebrate the history of the game.

Given the success of YP, I could totally see that. If they did, I would love it if they took the approach that Goodman took with the OAR series. That is, to expand and flesh out those classic modules.

 

[Lidgar]

OK, try this one on for size, using the semi-secret "WG" module series amd the 1E page counts (for your amisement as well, @darjr ):

• WG1: The Village of Hommlet, low Level intro, about 24 pages
• WG2: The Temple of Elemental Evil, for charachers of up to 8th Level, about 104 pages
• WG3: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, for characters Level 6-10, about 64 pages (lotnof bestiary)
• WG4: The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun (which is literally next door to Tasha's old stomping grounds in WG3), for characters of Level 5-10, about 32 pages
• S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, for charof Level 8-12 as a campaign capper, 68 pages but based on Tomb of Horrors WotC would probably drop most of the handout material.

So, that would be 292 pages in AD&D pagination. 5E pages are more information dense, though it is hard to calculate hownl that would hash out with thw new font size and also the addition of full color art and such.

It...could work.

 

[mamba]

OK, try this one on for size, using the semi-secret "WG" module series amd the 1E page counts

I like it, feels a bit cramped though, page wise and level wise, so maybe drop WG4?

Or drastically expand S3, Curse of Strahd style maybe, since T1-T4 was kinda revisited in Princes of the Apocalypse