D&D (2024) D&D Mysteries of the Multiverse Reveal

The last segment of today's D&D Direct presentation featured Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford, both D&D game architects. They talked about what adventures to expect the rest of this year, what's coming next year, and beyond, all centered around the D&D Multiverse.

After a recap of the adventures to date, Perkins and Crawford showed some art from Bigby Presents: The Glory of the Giants, coming this year. Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk will explore the mysterious obelisks that have been appearing in adventures over the last nine years and connects to The Lost Mines of Phandelver.

That will be followed by Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse, which will lay groundwork for a major adventure in 2024. Lastly for 2023, they'll delve into the chaos-causing Deck of Many Things, and the story behind the legendary item.

A major D&D villain will be making his return in 2024. Vecna's true cosmic horror will be unleashed in 2024 with a world-hopping adventure that will celebrate D&D's 50 year history and reveals deeper plots for years to come.

But Vecna is just one-part of D&D's interconnected storytelling. A lot more will be revealed in the next five years. For example, the Red Wizards of Thay will be featured in a 2025 adventure, and Venger from the D&D cartoon will return to be the main antagonist in another future adventure. The League of Malevolence, introduced in The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, will seek power across the multiverse in stories to come.

All in all, Crawford and Perkins teased many more adventures to come, some of which will interconnect, building a big story that plays out throughout the D&D Multiverse.

 

[Fandabidozi]

Vecna did it first.

Dr Strange waves from 1963.

 

[Omega9999]

If in vecna's world hopping adventure, we don't go to Oerth. I swear I'll start playing PF2.

 

[Ghost2020]

If in vecna's world hopping adventure, we don't go to Oerth. I swear I'll start playing PF2.

Lol is that a punishment or a threat?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think people find a way to read an online source in the car these days...

The goal of marketing is to make it easy as possible to turn a potential customer into an actual customer.

"I think they can figure it out for themselves" is the sound of lost sales.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The goal of marketing is to make it easy as possible to turn a potential customer into an actual customer.

"I think they can figure it out for themselves" is the sound of lost sales.

I did not say that. You can have a QR code pointing to the exact website with that tie in thing.

Printing out an uncertain numbers of books these days is unnecessary logistics. A flyer does this.
And I'd say it is easier to read something on your smart phone on the way home from cinema when it is possibly dark than reading a book...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If in vecna's world hopping adventure, we don't go to Oerth. I swear I'll start playing PF2.

I mean, I have that would be kind of fair as a response. Yet skipping the actual origin-world of a character because it's not part of the marketing strategy would be incredibly on-brand for current-era D&D. I suspect they will visit Oerth, albeit briefly though.

However, I have very mixed feelings about D&D acquiring a metaplot. Especially one that presumably revolved around Vecna. My '90s self is torn in half on this. Half of me wants to say "OH GOD NO! No more metaplots!", and the other half says "Metaplots were kind of cool, dude, don't be such a downer!".

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It seems like there will be a metaplot, but I am not sure how they would "impose" that. I mean there have been many a D&D plot and meta-plot before and none of it has ever affect my games. I really can't imagine how they can change anything in my game, even if they wanted too.

The main people the metaplot impacts are people who tend to like official adventures/settings.

If you, like me, tend not to use official adventures, and make only some use of official settings, metaplot is rarely a huge problem unless it results in ruining a setting and future products for it/versions of it (c.f. Faction War). But if you're someone who likes official adventures, and it seems like a fair number of people are, then a metaplot can have a big impact.

My personal feeling is that the reason they're adding a metaplot is sales.

Already with D&D 5E, it seems like most official adventures are written primarily to be read, rather than played. We've had this discussion a lot of times and it is debated, but when you compare the way WotC structures adventures and presents information to both older adventures, and 3PP 5E adventures that very much are explicitly designed to be played, not read, this seems fairly obvious/unavoidable. Certainly regardless of intent, a significant proportion of adventure sales are going to people who don't, in practice, run those adventures - I suspect it might even be the majority of sales. But whilst each adventure is contained, there's no specific reason to buy the next adventure WotC puts out.

But if you add in a metaplot, that changes. We very much saw this in the 1990s and a bit in the 2000s with multiple different companies running metaplots (White Wolf, FASA, Palladium, etc.). We know that people buy adventures and other books specifically because they advance the metaplot. People do this, even if they're not actually advancing the metaplot in their home game - they want to know what happens with the metaplot. How strong that draw is varies from game to game (Shadowrun's metaplot was so convoluted and weird that it lost most people I think, for example), but the draw is there. Thus if D&D has a metaplot stringing all the major future adventures together, this would apply there too.

It's also kind of a gap in the market - Paizo has some elements of metaplot in their adventures, but not really 1990s levels, IMHO - and there's a whole new generation of gamers who weren't traumatized by the 1990s metaplots, and who can thus be monetized before being traumatized once more!

(It's worth noting some people, like Brandon Sanderson, have figured out this applies way beyond TTRPGs. His whole "cosmere" gimmick, where you have to read entire other books, sometimes entire other series, of his, to figure out what's actually going on in one of his books and/or feel smug about "I got that reference!", has definitely succeeded in cross-marketing his books significantly. With a lot of prolific fantasy authors, they have "lesser" books/series that go unread (for good reason), but Sanderson ensures that isn't the case. I'm sure his bank account and his publisher both thank him for that. But it can be bad too - part of the reason I dropped the Stormlight Archive series is that approximately 15-20% of Book 3 is incomprehensible woo-woo wank with unnecessarily mysterious characters unless you've read an entire different series which I hadn't - and I was only able to find this out by Googling the characters involved afterwards. It's kinda cute when Steven King has a cross-world character or two, frankly, but 15-20% of the book being waffle solely to cross-market? I'm sorry Brandon, but you're no Steven King.

The MCU also does this a bit but so far it tends to mostly be confined to after-credits scenes outside of actual sequels. Indeed people thought they were going to do a whole clever "multiverse" metaplot, but instead we have a largely disconnected mess of seemingly contradictory/unconnected loosely multiverse-themed plots - which don't even agree on what the multiverse is nor how it works! How much that was the result of bad planning/management and how much the pandemic messing up the release order of stuff we do not know.)

 

[Frozen_Heart]

I wonder what levels/tiers the Phandelver campaign will cover. I assume 5-10?

The 1-5 Lost Mines campaign is great, but just going 1-5 doesn't give you that much time to really build up characters or incorporate backstory elements. An additional tier of play (or two if we're really lucky) will really give characters room to develop over time.

 

[Parmandur]

I mean, I have that would be kind of fair as a response. Yet skipping the actual origin-world of a character because it's not part of the marketing strategy would be incredibly on-brand for current-era D&D. I suspect they will visit Oerth, albeit briefly though.

However, I have very mixed feelings about D&D acquiring a metaplot. Especially one that presumably revolved around Vecna. My '90s self is torn in half on this. Half of me wants to say "OH GOD NO! No more metaplots!", and the other half says "Metaplots were kind of cool, dude, don't be such a downer!".

They are not necessarily talking 90's style metaplot here, because I doubt theybwill provide canonical results to the campaigns, even if they provide ongoing threads: they've done that for ten years now, with elements like the Sword Coast factions and the obelisk. Hasn't stopped the campaigns from being indeterminate in terms of a "meta" for results.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

They are not necessarily talking 90's style metaplot here, because I doubt theybwill provide canonical results to the campaigns, even if they provide ongoing threads: they've done that for ten years now, with elements like the Sword Coast factions and the obelisk. Hasn't stopped the campaigns from being indeterminate in terms of a "meta" for results.

I think that what they're describing is intended to be distinct from the mild and vague "waiting for us to decide what to do with them" stuff with the obelisks (which were truly meaningless).

As for "canonical results", I suspect what they'll do is at 45 degrees to that. Presumably all the adventures will assume the PCs "won" (a totally safe assumption), so there will be a canonical result in that sense. I don't think they'll rely on the details of the "win", and I suspect there will be an ongoing thing in the campaigns where the PCs can't actually do anything to derail the metaplot, because they're not getting to directly oppose it in any of the adventures. This is not that dissimilar to some '90s metaplots - White Wolf's ones frequently thought not always worked this way - whereas Rifts' one was something the PCs could influence, but one which Siembieda et al ignored in favour of their own canon, which was uh, a bit Nazi-apologist. Here's a hint game designers - don't make a faction look, sound, and act like the Nazis, then give them a redemption arc/excuses for their actions lol. Honestly surprised to see it from a Boomer like Siembieda, they tend to remember the Nazis sucked, it's more of a Gen-X vibe. But I digress!

It's even possible they'll do the potentially extremely irritating thing where, whatever the PCs do, that was actually part of Vecna's grand plan - i.e. you defeat the Tarrasque, well good, because Vecna wanted you to. I don't think any '90s metaplots did that, but it's been done before (mostly in videogames and cartoons).

Either way I'm certainly both concerned and intrigued by it.