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.

 

[Parmandur]

She goes back to S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.

I actually wonder now if we might see a S4-WG4-WG5 reprint on the near future, ala Ghosts of Saltmarsh, between this usage of Tasha/Iggwilv and Goodman Games bring T1-4 out next year (T1-4 were considered WG 1 & 2, and Goodman has been putting out classic reprints that fit with what WotC is putting out...).

 

[This Effin’ GM]

Def a player supplement based on the amount of UAs in the past year refining character options. Same UA trend right before Xanathars. Probably November release

 

[Seule]

It could be the name of the speculated-upon next book of player-centered stuff. If so, that might be a trend of having such books named after villains in the setting.

There will be people who claim that Mordenkainen isn't a villain. They will be wrong.

 

[Erdric Dragin]

She’s one of the coolest things to come out of Greyhawk. Loved those dragon magazine articles.

Best of all, with 5e it’s so easy to convert!

Well everything is easy to convert when you are converting to a smaller, simple-minded system. It's the other way around that sucks. Try converting anything in 5e, especially the more powerful creatures, up to like 3.5e for example and you bump into a lot of issues. Worrying about what extra abilities to tack on, what HD amount to use, what spell-like abilities, how much SR and energy resistance, and especially what ability scores to give a creature since they cap at 30 in 5e, but can go way above that in 3e.

If there was a company that converted 5e things, especially monsters, to 3e they'd get my full support.

 

[Gradine]

Does this make this a stealth announcement for a real announcement?

 

[Kurotowa]

Does this make this a stealth announcement for a real announcement?

It's an announcement of an announcement, or a teaser for an announcement. Which is a thing that's become fairly common. You plan your big announcement of a new product, but you want people to be paying attention when you do it and get those social media hype reactions, so you have to let everyone know when and where the announcement will be happening before it happens. Thus the announcement of the announcement.

 

[Dire Bare]

Iggwilv's Book of Shadows?

Iggwilv's Tome of Mysteries

Iggwilv's Octavo of the Obscure?

The Enchiridion of Iggwilv?

I feel like they are going to lean into Tasha's Hideous Laughter as the marketable and pronounceable angle, so I predict Tasha's [Adjective] [Noun].

Tasha's Hilarious Miscellany

Tasha's Unearthed Arcana

Tasha's Mysterious Treasury

Well, in-universe Iggwilv was the author of the Demonicon . . . which has been published as a real-world gamebook before . . . .

"Iggwilv's Demonicon: Expanded and Revised"

 

[dwayne]

Will have little to do with her more than not, just using a name to sell it, come see the new thing has a noticeable name but nothing to do with them. Volo, Mordenkainen both have had their names slap across various things as a way to sell a book of some odd subject. I may be sounding negative on this, but may end up buy it any way if the subject is an interesting one.

 

[TheSword]

Well everything is easy to convert when you are converting to a smaller, simple-minded system. It's the other way around that sucks. Try converting anything in 5e, especially the more powerful creatures, up to like 3.5e for example and you bump into a lot of issues. Worrying about what extra abilities to tack on, what HD amount to use, what spell-like abilities, how much SR and energy resistance, and especially what ability scores to give a creature since they cap at 30 in 5e, but can go way above that in 3e.

If there was a company that converted 5e things, especially monsters, to 3e they'd get my full support.

I can recall about 50+ books for 3rd edition, why on earth would you need to convert from 5e to 3e?

 

[Aaron L]

Coolness!

I would be very happy to see something like Iggwilv's Incunabulum of Esoteric Planes or suchlike.