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.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yup, and we can see how Greyhawk proper and Waterdeep are both major nods to Lankhmar. Big influence on D&D style fantasy.

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.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

These are differences between the author, not the setting. Randy Canadian Hippie vs Buttoned up Englishman. "Death of the author" isn't really a thing when it comes to campaign settings.

It's the same with real world history. You read books about the same period by two different historians and it feels like different worlds being described.

Tolkien's Catholicism and general beliefs are very apparent in the world of Middle Earth, I don't know how you're missing them.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Tolkien's Catholicism and general beliefs are very apparent in the world of Middle Earth, I don't know how you're missing them.

You are right, and I'm not. I'm just keeping it simple by using the stereotype.

 

[Parmandur]

These are differences between the author, not the setting. Randy Canadian Hippie vs Buttoned up Englishman. "Death of the author" isn't really a thing when it comes to campaign settings.

It's the same with real world history. You read books about the same period by two different historians and it feels like different worlds being described.

I would say that for Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms and for Middle Earth, the influence of the original author is very strong on the whole Setting. Part of what makes them good.

 

[Parmandur]

This is why you should use your thesaurus. Mirkwood sounds much more interesting than Dark Wood, despite having the same meaning. Using a word that means the same but has less common current usage gives a sense of age.

England has lots of weird and whacky place names because their roots lie in a bunch of different languages, none of which are currently in use.

I'm not arguing that the place names are particularly brilliant: but as an American, they are perfectly on par wirh real place names Insee on maps all the time when planning a trip.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm not arguing that the place names are particularly brilliant: but as an American, they are perfectly on par wirh real place names Insee on maps all the time when planning a trip.

Most American names are less than a couple of hundred years old. The only good ones are the ones that come from the aboriginal languages.

 

[mamba]

Most American names are less than a couple of hundred years old. The only good ones are the ones that come from the aboriginal languages.

most other names aren’t that much better, they just are in a language we do not speak, see mirkwood vs darkwood

 

[hojulation]

Greyhawk as the included setting makes sense for the 50th anniversary of the game, but in terms of scope, the Nentir Vale really provides a lot of "blank spaces on the map" for new/novice DM's to expand and populate for their games. It's a really compact "setting" that be infinitely expanded, and if they are looking for adventure ideas to mine and recycle, there are a bunch from the 4E days that could get this treatment. It would likely feel new to the influx of players who never experienced 4E as well.

I wouldn't have believed this to be even remotely possible except for the promotional video they did for the Book of Many Things where they said the book actually contains Gardmore Abbey as a possible adventure location. What's more, it apparently explains what has happened in the Abbey since the events of Madness, indicating there's at least been some thought to the evolution of the locale, if not the setting as a whole.

I think another possibility that was mentioned earlier would be Mystara. As a setting it contains a lot of classic adventures (B2, X1) but it was noted back in the early days of 5E that B10 Night's Dark Terror was a much loved adventure that was used as a framework for Lost Mine of Phandelver. An update to B10, set in its original Mystara but this time as a "new" setting make sense to me. If true, I would imagine the DMG setting content to focus on the area around Karameikos.

A further bit of evidence supporting Mystara is in the new ToFW the PC's meet an NPC named Farrow who is a Shadar-Kai from Mystara. This is the first overt reference to a character being from Mystara in an actual 5E adventure that I can remember reading about.

Then again this is all speculation! It'll be exciting to see what they end up going with regardless.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

most other names aren’t that much better, they just are in a language we do not speak, see mirkwood vs darkwood

Which is better. Obvious placenames imply a lack of age/history. Unless you want to create Newlycolonisedland, they should be avoided.

 

[Parmandur]

Most American names are less than a couple of hundred years old. The only good ones are the ones that come from the aboriginal languages.

Not quite, there is Boston or Intercourse, Pennsylvania.