DnD Novels Dead?

[M.L. Martin]

The Abyssal Plague itself, both prelude short stories and full novels, is set within the core setting (PoL for those who love nicknames and acronyms), but the 5-part prelude will be printed in books from a variety of settings.

I looked at the first preview today, and it is set in the core setting, but (SPOILERS)

Spoiler

apparently during the reign of the Empire of Nerath, at least in part. It involves the Elder Elemental Eye, too. This could be a design choice to avoid stepping on gamers' toes by setting the novels in the established past. I actually thought that was the route they were going to go with the Realms' 100-year jump; did that ever turn out to be the case?

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[JLowder]

And at the same time, WotC is expanding into comics. This retraction of the novel lines is, hopefully, a restructuring and the novels (perhaps even better ones) will eventually reappear.

Wizards isn't publishing the new D&D comics, they're granting a license for another publisher to do them. They, and TSR before them, have done that many times before. So it wouldn't really qualify as an "expansion" for the company.

And while the latest staffing moves may seem radical, the company has been changing and diminishing the role of fiction for some time. A few years back, books moved from a product line in its own right, akin to a separate division within WotC, to become a subsidiary of games. That was a pivotal decision in determining where the program was headed, almost as important as the decision by Hasbro soon after buying WotC not to have Wizards publish fiction for other Hasbro properties. The current cuts are really just more steps down the same road.