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.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The teams are different.

They're not operating out of secret bunkers with no communication between the two. It is not at all unreasonable for the D&D folks to have touched base with the MTG folks and said "hey, do our card manufacturing plans look reasonable to you?"

 

[Scribe]

They're not operating out of secret bunkers with no communication between the two. It is not at all unreasonable for the D&D folks to have touched base with the MTG folks and said "hey, do our card manufacturing plans look reasonable to you?"

I still have a few decks, that I couldnt part with. I have lands in one deck that where printed in 2001. They remain in mint condition.

From what we have seen of these cards, they would not last a year of actual use. Its just so weird to me that there is this seeming disconnect between the D&D and MtG sides of the house, not just in this respect, but ESPECIALLY in this respect.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

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

I did freely admit that it's been quite a while since I've gone through it - don't have cause to pull out my 4e books particularly frequently.

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.

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.

Due respect, but my point has nothing to do with whether the word "slave" was used - it was a product from an era where they were more willing to touch upon the subject than they are now, so it's not surprising that they brought it forward to some degree. I'm not asking "Was it there?" I'm asking "Does its presence really matter as much as people say it does?"

Because I don't feel that slavery is really all that important to the setting. There is nothing that I can think of that Dark Sun does with slaves that can't be done just as well without them. Make them prisoners from rival city-states, debtors, impoverished and undercompensated laborers. There are plenty of ways to portray the setting's pervasive tyranny and oppression without needing to resort to slavery, and claiming otherwise just seems to indicate a lack of imagination to me.

The presence of slavery in Dark Sun has never bothered me, per se - though naturally, it's not about me - but if it's a blocker keeping Dark Sun from getting an update and seems (to my eyes) to be nothing more than a superfluous holdover from past editions that can be relatively easily done away with, then frankly, do away with it.

There is far too much interesting and compelling in Dark Sun to let something like slavery be the thing that condemns it to the dustbin. If people really think slavery is integral to the setting, they can add it back in themselves - it's not hard. But I don't feel that the baseline setting really needs it.

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.

The Talent's on my list of things to pick up when I can - past several months have been rather tighter than I'm comfortable with.

End of the day though, psionics is core to Dark Sun (far more than slavery is, in my opinion), and if they ever want to bring it into 5e in an official capacity, they need a first party solution - a core "psion" class, more psionic subclasses, feats, backgrounds, etc.

 

[mamba]

They're not operating out of secret bunkers with no communication between the two. It is not at all unreasonable for the D&D folks to have touched base with the MTG folks and said "hey, do our card manufacturing plans look reasonable to you?"

or even 'which printer do you use'

 

[beta-ray]

“We learn from every problem,” Brink said, “and so that problem doesn’t happen again. We don’t make a lot of cards for D&D.”

I'd love to know how Wizards works.

Are the cards from the deck of the same quality as the cards from MTG? I have no idea so just wondering.

 

[Scribe]

Are the cards from the deck of the same quality as the cards from MTG? I have no idea so just wondering.

By the looks of it, not close.

 

[Parmandur]

Are the cards from the deck of the same quality as the cards from MTG? I have no idea so just wondering.

They are different kinds of cards, at any Raye, being Tarot sized instead of playing card sized. And in a uniform gold foiling. Dunno how much of a difference any thst makes.

 

[Charlaquin]

It seems plainly bizarre, not that it would happen, I get it they sourced it from some place new, whatever, naughty word happens, but like, MtG makes roughly 2 tribilmillions (yes) of cards on the year, like....what? You all dont just get together? Wild to me.

Again though, those other cards they make also have this problem. It’s not that they have the solution and just forgot to use it here, it’s that they’re used to being able to get away with this.

 

[Charlaquin]

I didn't mean they have zero cards with the issue, I meant they do not end up recalling / stopping the whole thing to fix the cards, and again, my main gripe is the excuse. WotC saying we have little experience printing cards is just a bit ... rich

Well, they have little experience printing cards for D&D. The experience they do have printing cards is in significantly larger runs, and where foiled cards are a relatively small portion of the run, which appears randomly and in small quantities in their product. Printing a product that contains 66 fixed foiled cards is something different, and they may not have realized that what’s an acceptable defect rate for 1 card out of 15 in a $5 booster pack is absolutely not an acceptable rate for 66 cards out of 66 in a $100 boxed set. Also, the larger size of the cards compared to what they have experience printing may have contributed as well - the foil curling issue is likely more severe with a larger surface area, and they may not have considered that this would lead to a higher defect rate than anticipated based on their experience printing standard-sized playing cards.

 

[Parmandur]

Again though, those other cards they make also have this problem. It’s not that they have the solution and just forgot to use it here, it’s that they’re used to being able to get away with this.

It could be that Innis much higher with this print run. And much higher for something like this can be "we have to replace 1 in every 900 instead of every 1 in 1000? Heads will roll for this."

Also, unlike Magic, these cards are way less compartmentalized. If yoy get a run of bin cards it's like half the deck. Woth Magic cards, it ia dispersed more and individual cards usually matter than the whole (for most products). It really quite different in design and function.