D&D 5E New D&D Hardcover To Be Announced On The 23rd (Tomorrow)?

According to this page on Amazon.com, a new Dungeon & Dragons hardcover title for May will be announced tomorrow. Users in the US see the product below (those in the UK are seeing a Wizkids miniatures set instead).

So far signs look like Ravenloft, but we’ll know for sure tomorrow.

[Update -- also mentioned by Todd Kendrick, recently of D&D Beyond].

WotC has posted the below animation, which says “The Mist Beckons”.

 

[TheSword]

This is fun, I like it a lot - it gives a reason for the domain lords to keep mixing it up a bit. Also the possibility of accidentally "re-awakening" an entire domain if those amber sarcophagi end up somewhere.

That is true. I never thought of what would happen if one got free but was trapped by the domain still. I like the idea that scholars within Ravenloft would be desperate to find knowledge about what Ravenloft is.

I think the Amber Temple could be repurposed to any Ravenloft Campaign when the party seek to understand the nature of the world. Indeed it would make an excellent reason for travelling to Barovia, which anyone else would avoid like the plague.

 

[tetrasodium]

Certainly sounds pretty solid so far! Having a zombie apocalypse domain is a good example of the kind of update to account for modern horror, rather than just sticking to the Hammer/Universal classics. And zombies can certainly be extremely Gothic, as Resident Evil shows (RE4, for example, is extremely Gothic - I mean the whole series is but that's a particularly Gothic one - looks like RE8 will be too).

definitely agree that the video makes it sound like this will be a solid Ravenloft book & interested in seeing how they do the zombie apocalypse too, books like zombie fallout & TWD offer a lot of good material for that kind of thing

 

[Faolyn]

It definitely makes sense that the powers that be in Ravenloft seem to be working at cross purposes. I would be disappointed if it was as neat and simple as "mists good, Dark Powers evil." I would want there to be multiple entities using the mists and multiple competing entities who are lumped together as the "Dark Powers." Has TSR/WotC ever given any indication that there's a "right" answer?

I think they decided it was up to the DMs, if the DMs even ever needed to actually know, which they probably won't.

So far all we know for sure is that the Dark Powers and the Mists are separate and sometimes seem to be at odds; that they can apparently cut clerics off from their gods (or at least from the warm fuzzies the gods send their clerics); they can steal and/or create copies of people, villages, and entire landscapes from other worlds; and that they can reach into places--like Athas--that nothing else can. But at the same time, they also don't seem to be able to affect truly innocent beings.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Stygian Library looks so discworld, I just have to get it!

It's very Discworld, although somewhat darker. Well-dressed mind flayers (with their serial numbers filed off) are among those who roam the stacks, for instance.

 

[TheSword]

It's very Discworld, although somewhat darker. Well-dressed mind flayers (with their serial numbers filed off) are among those who roam the stacks, for instance.

In all seriousness I love the idea that the planes (in whichever cosmology) bleed together and wear thin in places. Where sentient creatures find these conduits between planes they take the form of whatever the creature first thinks of. An academic might think of a library, a Viking warrior a great tree, a cruel assassin a river of blood. The more creature that see the conduit as that and believe it, the wider the conduit gets and the more planes that get tapped into.

Mindflayer librarians sounds pretty boss!

 

[Alzrius]

Birthright also made it a bigger part of their cosmology with it being an almost perfect analogue. They made it pretty cool to be fair. The Warlock of the Stonecrowns adventure (the only good module from Birthright) had a fortress that was part in this other world and part in the material.

No, that was different. Birthright's "Shadow World" wasn't the Demiplane of Shadow. While The Planewalker's Handbook (1996) played coy on the subject, A Guide to the Ethereal Plane (1998) openly stated that Birthright's Shadow World was, in fact, their "Border Ethereal" (as distinct from the Deep Ethereal, where demiplanes exist), and wasn't the Demiplane of Shadow.

I'll likewise note that the Demiplane of Shadow was explicitly mentioned in the AD&D 1E Manual of the Planes (1987).

Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

In all seriousness I love the idea that the planes (in whichever cosmology) bleed together and wear thin in places. Where sentient creatures find these conduits between planes they take the form of whatever the creature first thinks of. An academic might think of a library, a Viking warrior a great tree, a cruel assassin a river of blood. The more creature that see the conduit as that and believe it, the wider the conduit gets and the more planes that get tapped into.

You will definitely want to pick up Gardens of Ynn. A planar setting that puts druids and rangers in the spotlight is something I know my campaigns would find useful, when/if my current campaign finally goes planar. (It's set in Ptolus, which has no way to get out to the planes ... for now.)

 

[TheSword]

No, that was different. Birthright's "Shadow World" wasn't the Demiplane of Shadow. While The Planewalker's Handbook (1996) played coy on the subject, A Guide to the Ethereal Plane (1998) openly stated that Birthright's Shadow World was, in fact, their "Border Ethereal" (as distinct from the Deep Ethereal, where demiplanes exist), and wasn't the Demiplane of Shadow.

I'll likewise note that the Demiplane of Shadow was explicitly mentioned in the AD&D 1E Manual of the Planes (1987).

Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.

Nice, that’s interesting to know. Birthright’s shadow world was said to be a twisted variant of the real world. It sounds just like the Shadow World in 3e’s Cormyr adventure.

I think at that time they were really trying to tie everything together. So it makes sense they would group everything into the ethereal.

 

[Alzrius]

Nice, that’s interesting to know. Birthright’s shadow world was said to be a twisted variant of the real world.

Well, the text hedges its bets a little bit about how certain this is, but the sidebar in Blood Spawn: Creatures of Light and Shadow suggests that's at least partially because they used to be the same world.

 

[TheSword]

Well, the text hedges its bets a little bit about how certain this is, but the sidebar in Blood Spawn: Creatures of Light and Shadow suggests that's at least partially because they used to be the same world.

Thanks!!

My god, I love the feel of the Birthright setting. It’s very Tolkien but I really do love the feel.

Plus they had an Iron Throne at least a year or two before GRR Martin published his!