D&D 5E Iggwilv/Tasha To Join Volo, Xanathar, and Mordenkainen? [UPDATED!]

Is WotC teasing a new announcement? There have been a few D&D books named after famous personalities from the game's extensive lore - Vole's Guide to Monsters, Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. It looks possible that the next such personality might be Tasha of Tasha's Hideous Laughter fame -- which was an adventuring alias of the Greyhawk villain Iggwilv.

UPDATE -- A page has appeared on Amazon entitled Dungeons & Dragons November Title (Announced August 24). It's a hardcover, $49.95, November 17th release date.

On their Discord channel, WotC posted a short audio clip; it features some female-sounding voices laughing, and it is titled "Feather and Tart". It also has a metadata info which says August 24th, 2020, which is Monday. But in addition to that, a WoTC staff member on Reddit's avatar was changed to an image of Iggwilv.

Iggwilv was an evil magic-user, a villain created by Gary Gygax. When adventuring with the Company of Seven, she used the alias Tasha. The lore has it that the witch Baba Yaga adopted her as a child and named her Natasha, and she soon became Natasha the Dark (Baba Yaga also adopted Elena the Fair).

Iggwilv has two forms, one old and one young. You can read more about the character on Wikipedia.


What does seem clear is that WotC is teasing an impending announcement! I assume that the announcement they are teasing will be the announcement of an upcoming announcement, or I'll be disappointed.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I can see that. If they wanted a strong female wizard who was well known, though, they should have gone with The Simbul. She's been around a hell of a lot longer and in the most popular setting. Tasha has a single spell that makes people laugh.

The who?

Authorial intent.

A fair point.

Who has authorial intent in a DnD game from the beginning of DnD that morphed into a setting that hundreds used and dozens wrote in.

Including a guy, paid by the owner of the IP, to write canon for the setting?

A post by Gary Gygax on EnWorld on Friday, 2nd May, 2003, said:

LOL

I love that an actual stage magician was the inspiration for that absolutely bonkers spell (Nystul's Magic Aura) that is priceless.

 

[TwoSix]

Assuming the book is about adding lots of variants to the relatively inflexible character building rules, referencing both chaotic demons and a D&D character known for changing identities makes a lot thematic sense.

 

[Hussar]

Again, you claim that drow would be KOS. Why? Depending on when you run your campaign, no one has even HEARD of drow, let alone have any actual opinion of them. Remember, D1-3 is the first appearance of Drow in the game. They live in a small(ish) enclave under the mountains. They have had zero contact with anyone. Anyone seeing a drow would likely just mistake it for a funny looking elf. It's not like Forgotten Realms where Drow have played a major role in the history of the setting. The vast majority of people wouldn't have the first clue what a drow was.

And, as far as seeing things as being far more mixed, I would point to Sasserine and Cauldron - both major cities in the setting - have tons of humanoids wandering around. The city of Istivin in Sterich has a population of Mongrelfolk that wander around the city. The Styes is another city of mixed races living together. Scuttlecove is another city with mixed races living together. Granted, that one's largely evil.

In any case, in a setting with Yakfolk, I, again, am baffled that people draw the line at tieflings and dragonborn. It's just so bizarre.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Vecna's Handbook: For Your Eyes Only

Shouldn't that be "For Your Eye Only"?

 

[Sir Brennen]

All I want to know about the new tome is... will the Revised Ranger finally make it into an official in a book?

I mean, people are guessing this is a themed book, but what if it does include a lot of miscellany in addition to, say, all the undead themed UA sub-classes as of late. I mean, unless there's another book before the end of the year, this is the one that will likely have the new race options that have been hinted at the last few months.

 

[Morrus]

According to Barnes & Noble, the authors are Peter Lee and Rodney Thompson.

D&D Tasha's Cauldron of Everything|Hardcover

A magical mixture of rules options for the world's greatest roleplaying game.The wizard Tasha, whose great works include the spell Tasha's hideous laughter, has gathered bits and bobs of precious lore during her illustrious career as an adventurer. Her enemies wouldn't want these...

www.barnesandnoble.com

 

[Paul Farquhar]

According to Barnes & Noble, the authors are Peter Lee and Rodney Thompson.

D&D Tasha's Cauldron of Everything|Hardcover

A magical mixture of rules options for the world's greatest roleplaying game.The wizard Tasha, whose great works include the spell Tasha's hideous laughter, has gathered bits and bobs of precious lore during her illustrious career as an adventurer. Her enemies wouldn't want these...

www.barnesandnoble.com

So far as I can see, they are mostly responsible for Lords of Waterdeep boardgame (which is good IMO). Are you sure it's the same product?

 

[Sir Brennen]

Are you sure it's the same product?

I mean, have you ever known a book retail website to get something wrong?

 

[TwoSix]

So far as I can see, they are mostly responsible for Lords of Waterdeep boardgame (which is good IMO). Are you sure it's the same product?

Probably the B&N intern who entered this just cloned an existing D&D product as a template, and didn't update the author field since it's currently unknown (to them).

 

[Morrus]

So far as I can see, they are mostly responsible for Lords of Waterdeep boardgame (which is good IMO). Are you sure it's the same product?

Yeah it’s the same product. Same ISBN, same release date, same temporary title, same everything.

The author info might be wrong though. Rodney works for a video game company now (not that that doesn’t mean he can’t freelance for WotC still).

They aren’t just responsible for the LoW Boardgame. They’ve both worked plenty on D&D. Check the credits in your PHB! They were on the core design team, and have worked on multiple D&D books since. And their D&D work predates 5E too. Both very experienced D&D designers.