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.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

Honestly, I've always felt Dark Sun's "problematic" status to be largely overblown.

I see no reason the supposedly integral element of slavery cannot be heavily toned down if not removed entirely - it's admittedly been a while, but I don't recall slavery being brought up much, if at all, in the 4e Dark Sun release, certainly not in any prominent way - and the various genocides committed by the Sorcerer Kings can be buried in the fog of history easily enough.

I don't think it would be nearly as hard to make a version of Dark Sun that WotC would be comfortable publishing while still being true to the setting as people make it out to be.

Really, I feel like the lack of a solid foundation for psionics in 5e has been holding Dark Sun back more than anything.

 

[Quickleaf]

The woman on the lower-right is Drelnza, Iggwilv's daughter from S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, as I recall.

Totally baseless rampant speculation...

Drelnza has an unknown father & was somehow turned into a vampire. One of the Dragon articles suggested Iggwilv was looking for a way to revive her daughter.

What if Vecna were involved as the daddy, vampiric sire, or a minion were her vampiric sire, or he holds the secret to restoring life to one who was once undead?

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Sure, but we here in America just can't top Canada in this regard.

Giant phallus-shaped iceberg floating in Conception Bay surprises residents of Dildo, Canada

A phallus-shaped iceberg hovered off the coast of Dildo, Newfoundland in Conception Bay before collapsing.

www.livescience.com

The CN Tower is the great Phallic symbol of Canada

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Honestly, I've always felt Dark Sun's "problematic" status to be largely overblown.

I see no reason the supposedly integral element of slavery cannot be heavily toned down if not removed entirely - it's admittedly been a while, but I don't recall slavery being brought up much, if at all, in the 4e Dark Sun release, certainly not in any prominent way - and the various genocides committed by the Sorcerer Kings can be buried in the fog of history easily enough.

I don't think it would be nearly as hard to make a version of Dark Sun that WotC would be comfortable publishing while still being true to the setting as people make it out to be.

Really, I feel like the lack of a solid foundation for psionics in 5e has been holding Dark Sun back more than anything.

If your going to blandify the setting, just don't touch it, just as minor references here and there and add the remaining races like Muls to FR (actually the hybrid rules largely cover Muls).

 

[billd91]

Totally baseless rampant speculation...

Drelnza has an unknown father & was somehow turned into a vampire. One of the Dragon articles suggested Iggwilv was looking for a way to revive her daughter.

What if Vecna were involved as the daddy, vampiric sire, or a minion were her vampiric sire, or he holds the secret to restoring life to one who was once undead?

I can't see it being particularly compelling. Iggwilv already has one of the most notorious relationships in Greyhawk. She doesn't really need another of that pedigree.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Lieber was a big influence on the urban fantasy genre as a whole. Ankh-Morkpork anyone? Until Pratchett came along I can't think of anyone else setting fantasy stories in cities. So any D&D city adventure can be traced back to Lieber, even if not directly.

I would go further than that -- I think nearly every fantasy city since Lieber has a lot of Lankhmar's DNA in it. (There are exceptions, but they're few and far between.) Both the Free City of Greyhawk and Waterdeep, for instance, started off as Lankhmar with the serial numbers filed off.

The first half of his Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser stories especially are foundational for fantasy RPGs and deeply rewarding reads, even now.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

If your going to blandify the setting, just don't touch it, just as minor references here and there and add the remaining races like Muls to FR (actually the hybrid rules largely cover Muls).

I don't feel that downplaying the presence of slavery and/or leaving the deep history of the setting (and the Sorcerer Kings' roles within it) a bit less explicitly defined comes anywhere close to "blandifying" the setting.

Dark Sun has way more going for it than that.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

All those potentially problematic elements from Dark Sun can be removed easily if after the Vecna event the D&D multiverse is going to be rebooted, but there are also other questions, about the player options to be allowed, as classes and PC species. For example let's imagine a psiartificer, the psionic version of artificer is published. Should be it to be allowed in the Athasian tablelands? Or the shardminds, living constructs who don't need food and water to survive, broking the balance power. Of if there is a return of the martial adepts, then a player could ask a warblade PC who started fighting as gladiator.

Or there are published in DMGuild other zones of the planet or the wildspace to can place the new psionic PC species.

And what if there is a survival videogame set in the Athasian Tablelands? Or maybe after the reboot the geography has changed, and now the Tablelands are bigger, not only the size of Northamerica but Asia. Why? Because like this is easier to add all possible new elements.

And Dark Sun needs the psionic powers, and these needs a lot of playtesting and feedback. I suspect the new psionic powers are going to be designed to can be easily adapted into spells to be used by no-psionic-manifiester characters, the classical spellcasters.

 

[overgeeked]

Honestly, I've always felt Dark Sun's "problematic" status to be largely overblown.

I see no reason the supposedly integral element of slavery cannot be heavily toned down if not removed entirely - it's admittedly been a while, but I don't recall slavery being brought up much, if at all, in the 4e Dark Sun release, certainly not in any prominent way - and the various genocides committed by the Sorcerer Kings can be buried in the fog of history easily enough.

It was definitely mentioned in 4E. Maybe it's rose-colored glasses or it's been some time since you read the 4E book.

A quick scan shows several sidebars and references throughout the book. Because it's integral to the setting. Almost like it's one of the defining features. It has an entry on the table of contents, it's mentioned in one of the eight characteristics of Athas, it's mentioned as something the PCs can fight against, it gets several paragraphs in the social order section, it's part of several races, it's referenced in the name of one of the paragon paths, it's mentioned several times in the character themes, it's a background, it's called out in various write ups of NPCs and locations and the history of the setting, it's also given several paragraphs in the running Dark Sun section, along with a call-out box detailing slavery and alignment.

I don't think it would be nearly as hard to make a version of Dark Sun that WotC would be comfortable publishing while still being true to the setting as people make it out to be.

If they made it explicit slavery is evil (which it is), and restricted it to evil NPCs, and focused large parts of the inevitable AP around freeing slaves and ending slavery as a practice it could work. WotC is far, far to conservative as the industry leader with a now much wider audience to have to spine to even try. There's an almost infinite number of ways to publish Dark Sun that would result in a huge backlash...while there's maybe 2-3 ways to publish it that wouldn't. And just about all of those involve reworking the setting to such a degree that the actual fans of the setting would be more likely to reject it. We've had a handful of threads on this exact topic since WotC said they'd never touch it.

Really, I feel like the lack of a solid foundation for psionics in 5e has been holding Dark Sun back more than anything.

All 5E is missing is the full psionic class. Though admittedly the existing psi subclasses don't really scratch the same itch. MCDM has the Talent now. Might be worth looking into.

 

[Azzy]

What if Vecna were involved as the daddy, vampiric sire, or a minion were her vampiric sire, or he holds the secret to restoring life to one who was once undead?

It would be difficult to have Vecna be the baby daddy—he became a lich over a thousand years before Iggwilv was even born.