7 Years of D&D Stories? And a "Big Reveal" Coming?

When asked what he was working on, WotC's Chris Perkins revealed a couple of juicy tidbits. They're not much, but they're certainly tantalizing. Initially, he said that "Our marketing team has a big reveal in the works", and followed that up separately with "Right now I'm working on the next seven years of D&D stories". What all that might mean is anybody's guess, but it sounds like there are plans for D&D stretching into the foreseeable future! Thanks to Barantor for the scoop!

 

[Remathilis]

One of the reasons WotC are currently focusing on their storylines is that D&D doesn't currently have a lot of marketable characters - there's Drizzt, and Strahd, and a few others, but not many. That doesn't give them a huge amount to hang future movies (novels, games, etc) on. So by creating their storylines they create recognisable characters that they can then sell. Eventually, they may hit on one that gains significant traction, and that will give them something to license out.

(Please note: "one of the reasons", not "the reason". )

This is a good point most people miss when looking at D&D the Brand.

Marvel can put Spider-man on a T shirt and sell it. They can make a movie about Thor, a TV show about Daredevil, and an action figure of Captain America and each will sell. You can lather-rinse-repeat with DC, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, etc, etc. Each has some iconic characters, settings, villains, and stories that are the lingua-franca to those involved.

What does D&D have? Well, few recognizable heroes. Elminster, Raistlin, Drizzt, and maybe the Heroes of the Lance? None of them are really Iconic of D&D. D&D lacks a strong "stable" of heroes, that's usually because the Heroes of D&D are you and your elf, a hard concept to put on a T-shirt. So you go on to other portions. Settings? Well, D&D has an infinite number of them. Even if we just limit to published ones, you still end up with a lot of divergence. I suspect they will one day embrace the "worlds of D&D" concept, but right now, they are focusing on One World (Realms) to keep some cohesion. Villains? Well, that's a little longer list. Tiamat, Lolth, Strahd, Soth, King Snurre, Accerack, Lady Vol, The Anchromentals, Orcus, Asmodeus, all good villains. But a villain alone is never enough, and here is where you get Story. Shared Stories are the only thing D&D has to offer at the moment. People who have played recognize the Wand of Orcus, the Demon Head in the Tomb of Horrors, The sphinx riddle from White Plume Mountain, and yelling Bree-Yark in the Caves of Chaos.

Thus, the team decided the best way forward in creating a shared vision is to give us all iconic stories to tell. You and your elf go up against Tiamat and the Cult of the Dragons, it becomes a shared experience across players like the 1e modules of Olde Tyme did. No two DMs are going to do it the same way, but the players will (hopefully) be able to share the time THEIR elf stopped Tiamat.

I admit its not much for the obsessive homebrewer, but I've found (myself included) these guys rarely need much support. I do hope though we get some non-AP supplements.

 

[Morrus]

I dunno. Something doesn't have to be already famous to do well; the Iron Man movies made Iron Man the big name he is now. You can launch stuff with lesser known characters; it's just a little more of a gamble.

Plus I like seeing new stuff more than I like seeing regurgitated stuff over and over. I'd love to see new settings, rather than revisiting old ones.

 

[Jester David]

They're not planning out 7 years of stories because they want to nail down the next dozen or so APs. They're doing it to have the seeds of what they're going to feed to the video game developers and book writers and board game designers and (possibly?) movie executives to continue to build the idea of "D&D" as a franchise-able shared universe.

After all, who else plans out their story continuity 5 years or more ahead? Maybe, I don't know, enormous geek franchises like Marvel and Star Wars? While I have no clue if it's actually a good idea, I think the clues are there that they're aiming high, much higher than just the TTRPG.

I agree that they need to plan stories a couple years ahead to coordinate with the novels and video games, which have a much longer lead time.
But 7 years is too far.

You bring up Marvel and Star Wars, the former being a very good example. Marvel has announced movies *super* far in advance. How far? Five years. But they've been making movies for 6 years, and their long term planning has paid out repeatedly. And some of that was spin: announcing they were planning a movie starring a POC and a woman to offset criticism for the immediate future.
The big multiyear franchises haven't worked out well for other companies. Look at Sony and Spider-man.

WotC has not proved they can plan far ahead. In fact, they've proved the opposite and that they're poor at completing long term plans. And they've been doing big storylines for only 3-4 years. And they seem to be working on storylines for farther in the future than we know Marvel movies.

 

[Jester David]

One of the reasons WotC are currently focusing on their storylines is that D&D doesn't currently have a lot of marketable characters - there's Drizzt, and Strahd, and a few others, but not many. That doesn't give them a huge amount to hang future movies (novels, games, etc) on. So by creating their storylines they create recognisable characters that they can then sell. Eventually, they may hit on one that gains significant traction, and that will give them something to license out.

(Please note: "one of the reasons", not "the reason". )

I'd agree with this. D&D movies do suffer from both a lack of iconic characters and familiar story, meaning books/ comics/ movies have to invent their own, which defeats the purpose of making an adaptation, and puts the product at the mercy of whomever they get to handle the screenwriting.

 

[Jester David]

I agree pretty much with everything you said, but I would bet that he is just working on the outlines of stories. Those can be changed easily.


If they are actually hiring third parties to write the APs now and store them until it is time to release them, they are mad.

What if 7 years of stories in 14 5-10 page AP treatments that can be put into production at any time?

Maybe match that up with 7 campaign settings.

Maybe only flesh them out enough right now that they could be handed to a 3rd party to flesh into a full products over the course of 4-5 months.

I'd be very surprised if they were more than outlines, even if some are more detailed than others.

It's still worrisome. It sounds like storylines are Perkin's job, which is putting everything on his creativity. A creative person could easily think of several really, really good ideas for epic campaigns... but 14? At some point you end up with lemons. I hope he's brainstorming with the rest of the team.
Regardless, we don't know what the fans will be clamoring for in 2016 or 2017, let alone 2021. Planning for that far, beyond the barest of bare bones, seems like a waste of time. Or, as worries me, like they don't care what stories we want.

 

[bmfrosty]

I'd be very surprised if they were more than outlines, even if some are more detailed than others.

It's still worrisome. It sounds like storylines are Perkin's job, which is putting everything on his creativity. A creative person could easily think of several really, really good ideas for epic campaigns... but 14? At some point you end up with lemons. I hope he's brainstorming with the rest of the team.
Regardless, we don't know what the fans will be clamoring for in 2016 or 2017, let alone 2021. Planning for that far, beyond the barest of bare bones, seems like a waste of time. Or, as worries me, like they don't care what stories we want.

He may be working on 7 years of storylines, but the order that the stories are in may yet to be determined.

 

[Staffan]

What does D&D have? Well, few recognizable heroes.

And that's why D&D is a poor fit for brand-type thinking. After all, who are the heroes of D&D? Your characters.

 

[Staffan]

WotC has not proved they can plan far ahead. In fact, they've proved the opposite and that they're poor at completing long term plans. And they've been doing big storylines for only 3-4 years. And they seem to be working on storylines for farther in the future than we know Marvel movies.

Actually, they're generally planning about 7 years ahead on Magic, and that's been working out well for them.

It's a damn shame they can't clone Mark Rosewater and put him in charge of D&D as well.

 

[Jester David]

He may be working on 7 years of storylines, but the order that the stories are in may yet to be determined.

If in four years (2019) a new King Arthur movie comes out and everyone is abuzz with thoughts of knights on horseback, crusades, Excalibur, and the like and WotC doesn't have a chivalric adventure in their planned list, then shuffling the order does nothing.
If, after five years of Realmshaking crossovers and heavily plotted storylines the fans really want a sandbox exploration adventure ala Isle of Dread, and one wasn't planned, then shuffling the order does nothing.

 

[Barantor]

I think that a lot of folks are stuck with the impression that they are only going to release stories along with the adventure path because that is what we have gotten so far. This isn't to say that we will continue to get this same type of output from them.

I think they are going to be very careful with their licensing since they have created their own competition in the past with them. I hope we do see a license soon though as that will improve the amount of material that folks can buy. I'm wondering if they are going to have something new in store and the wording will be something we haven't seen in the past.

To whoever it was that was asking if the WoTC folks play their own game.... they live-stream several employees playing it, it is on their site....