Hello everyone, Darryl here with this week’s gaming news! Several new Dungeons & Dragons products announced, leaks from the D&D movie set, a new Marvel roleplaying game, big changes to GAMA, and more!
Don’t forget, you can get all the news every week with Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk! This week, Morrus and Peter are joined by Chris Spivey to talk about Haunted West.
In case you missed it elsewhere on EN World this week:
We’ve got not one but two new Dungeons & Dragons setting books on the way with The Wild Beyond the Witchlight and Strixhaven: School of Mages. The books went public on Amazon on Saturday morning, joining several previous releases who had listings up before their official announcements. That announcement came the following day with the feywild-focused The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. From the product listing on Amazon:
Since the announcement, we’ve gotten a deluge of more information including a look at the full cover without the title text and the alternate game store only cover and the announcement of an Accessory Kit. While we don’t yet know what will be in the accessory kit, previous kids have included a set of dice with a color theme to the setting along with a storage box that doubles as a dice tray and either cards or maps useful for the setting. The hardcover will be available on September 21 with a retail price of $49.95 while the Accessory Kit will be available the same date for $29.99.
The feywild isn’t the only setting getting a new book, as we have another Magic: The Gathering setting on the way with Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos. Within Magic: The Gathering, Strixhaven is a magic school located on the plane of Arcavios and is known as the most elite University in the Multiverse. The school features five Colleges each founded by an elder dragon: Silverquill (white and black), Prismari (blue and red), Witherbloom (black and green), Lorehold (red and white), and Quandrix (green and blue). The setting first premiered in the Strixhaven: School of Mages expansion released in April 2021 with a strong focus on spellcasting. Amazon doesn’t yet have the recently released cover image for the new Dungeons & Dragons book, but it does have a product description:
The official announcement came via the @Wizards_DnD Twitter account with a video featuring the planeswalker “Ellywick Tumblestrum” (played by Twitch streamer Erika Fermina) introducing the setting. As part of the announcement, the newest Unearthed Arcana features five new subclasses for each of the Strixhaven Colleges. The hardcover is scheduled for a November 16 release with a retail price of $49.95.
Flying under the radar with all the big announcements is that Wizards of the Coast has taken direct control of localizations for the Dungeons & Dragons line. New editions of the core rulebooks plus the Essentials Kit are on the way in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. This follows a long legal battle starting last year and settled this February with Gale Force Nine, who previously handled localization licensing. The announcement also stated that Wizards of the Coast is looking for new printers outside the United States and China in order to more equitably price books to European and Latin American markets. The new hardcover books will be released on September 24 for €39.99 in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, updated with the newest errata and corrections for typos and translation errors. The Essentials Kit will also be available on September 24 for the first time in foreign language markets with a price of €19.99. Finally, a slipcover edition with all three core rulebooks and a DM’s screen will be available on October 19 for €129.99.
The Dungeons & Dragons live-action movie is currently filming in Northumberland, England, and a few pictures have leaked from the set. One of the locations is Alnwick Castle, a castle originally built in the 11th century and home of the Duke of Northumberland which is frequently used as a filming location. The castle has featured in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Elizabeth, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Blackadder, Downton Abby, and over a dozen others. Of particular note are the banners hanging outside the castle, seen above. The blue banner has the Emblem of Neverwinter, while the red banner contains a sun symbol that could be a redesign of Lethander’s holy symbol, the house symbol of Abarbrent (a noble house of Waterdeep), or a completely new symbol. Some have also noticed the make-up on one of the actors appears similar to the tattoos of the Red Wizards of Thay. Not quite sure yet, but let the speculation commence!
Marvel Entertainment announced a new tabletop roleplaying game set in their comic universe, Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game. The game will use the d616 System (a joke based on the Marvel comic book continuity being set on Earth-616 within the Multiverse, as opposed to MCU which is Earth-199999 or the Ultimate Universe of Earth-1610) and will be designed by Matt Forbeck. The system is described as “a natural evolution for those familiar with the most popular tabletop roleplaying games on the market” with a list of attributes: Might, Agility, Resilience, Vigilance, Ego, and Logic. Which sounds a lot to me like “d20 System based” and “Strength, Dex, Con, Wis, Charisma, and Intelligence”. However, we won’t know for sure until the playtest game comes out in March 2022 with a full release scheduled for 2023, though Matt Forbeck confirmed in a post on his website that you will be able to create your own characters as well as play existing Marvel super-heroes.
This isn’t Marvel’s first attempt at publishing a roleplaying game in-house. After the rights reverted back to Marvel at the end of the license to TSR/Wizards of the Coast, Marvel produced the Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game in 2003. The line was short-lived, only receiving a pair of sourcebooks (one for the X-Men and one for Hulk and The Avengers) before the line was cancelled that same year. It should be noted that the company producing Marvel Multiverse is Marvel Entertainment, the comic book company. Following a corporate shake-up in 2015, Marvel Studios (the company that makes the Marvel Cinematic Universe films and television shows) is a separate subsidiary within Disney.
9th Level Games announced a license to produce Return to Dark Tower Roleplaying Game, inspired by the “computer” board game from the 1980s. The original board game from 1981 featured a large tower with an early computer which provided random results from battles as players attempted to gather and supply their armies in order to take on the evil within the Dark Tower. Restoration Games Kickstarted a sequel/remake of the game, Return to Dark Tower, in January 2020. The new roleplaying game will be co-published with Restoration Games and focus on dungeon crawls with a short campaign, using the Mazes system from 9th Level (which is also currently funding a hardcover release on Kickstarter). There’s no release date for the roleplaying game yet, but the board game from Restoration is expected next month.
Game Manufacturer’s Association (GAMA) membership are voting on a massive restructuring of the Board of Directors. If approved, the Board of Directors would change from four officials for publishers, one for retail, and one for wholesalers to two representatives each from the six different membership categories: creators, publishers, wholesalers, retailers, media and events, and production. The organization hopes the changes will encourage more non-publisher categories to join, particularly new companies entering the game business. Encouraging more dues-paying members would also reduce reliance on events like Origins or GAMA Trade Show for revenue for the organization, a particular concern following the cancellation of events during the pandemic. Current voting publisher members have until July 2 to vote whether or not to approve this restructuring.
WizKids announced an expansion for the Dungeons & Dragons Adventure System board games, Ghosts of Saltmarsh. This new expansion is compatible with any of the previous Adventure System games, including Castle Ravenloft, Wrath of Ashardalon, Legend of Drizzt, Temple of Elemental Evil, Tomb of Annihilation, and Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage. In the campaign, the King of Keoland seeks to expand southward into the village of Saltmarsh with plans to annex it to become a powerful port, whether the villagers like it or not. The game features 29 dungeon tiles, eight miniatures, 148 cards, and 154 tokens and markers and will require one of the other core games to play. The standard edition retails for $49.99 and a deluxe version with pre-painted miniatures will be $89.99, both set for release this August.
The Virtual Tabletop Bundle from HumbleBundle is a godsend for anyone playing tabletop roleplaying games online. This bundle over forty-five asset packs ready for use on any virtual tabletop with city/overland maps, battle-scale maps, tokens, markers, accessories, and more with a top pledge level to get everything at only $18. This bundle benefits the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society and runs until Thursday, July 1. There’s also only a few days left in the huge Free League bundle featuring Tales from the Loop, Things from the Flood, and Symbaroum. Only $18 for the core rulebooks, starter sets, sourcebooks, adventures, and more from a trio of award-winning games. This bundle allows you to choose your own charity but you have to hurry as it will only be available until Monday, June 14.
That’s all from me for this week! Don’t forget to support our Patreon to bring you more gaming news content. If you have any news to submit, email us at news@enpublishingrpg.com, and you can get more discussion of the week’s news on Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk every week. You can follow me on Twitch to get notifications when I go live, subscribe to Gamer’s Tavern on YouTube for videos on gaming history, RPG reviews, and gaming Let’s Plays, or you can listen to the archives of the Gamer’s Tavern podcast. Until next time, may all your hits be crits! Note: Links to Amazon, Humble Store, Humble Bundle, and/or DriveThru may contain affiliate links with the proceeds going to the author of this column.
Don’t forget, you can get all the news every week with Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk! This week, Morrus and Peter are joined by Chris Spivey to talk about Haunted West.
In case you missed it elsewhere on EN World this week:
- EN5ider #395 features clockwork creations from the gnomish inventor Tabi available for rent or lease (but not for sale – keep them too long and they fall apart) to help with mundane tasks for laborers and adventurers both.
- The Kickstarter for EN Publishing’s Awfully Cheerful Engine is still going, and if you want a peek at the adventures included, you can check out the first pages of all four right now.
- The newest playtest for Level Up 5e is here, the newly updated and expanded combat rules featuring the Combat Maneuver system. You can also get a preview of the downtime activities system as well.
- Critical Role announced an all-new eight week long campaign starting on June 24 titled Exandria Unlimited.
- Jim Ward is auctioning off his copy of the original manuscript to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition sourcebook Deities & Demigods, a landmark piece of gaming history (the original listing, which was over $10,000, was taken down after Ward discovered it was a photocopy and not the original and will be relisted soon with updated information).
- Charles Dunwoody reviewed the Warhammer Fantasy Role Play adventure The Horned Rat, part four of the updated version of The Enemy Within.
- Egg Embry interviewed B. Dave Walters about the Afro-futurist RPG Into the Motherlands currently on Kickstarter.
- Lewis Pulsipher’s newest Worlds of Design column talks about the importance of leadership even if you’re a monster.
- Michael Tresca continues his culinary journey through the recipes of Heroes’ Feast: The Official Dungeons & Dragons Cookbook with a halfling version of chicken and dumplings.
- Mike Myler’s Mythological Figures gives us 5e stats for the Lady with the Lamp, the woman who arguably kickstarted modern nursing, Florence Nightingale.
- Don’t miss out on the newest RPG crowdfunding projects ending soon with Egg Embry’s RPG Crowdfunding News and keep up with all the new print RPG releases with Charles Dunwoody’s RPG Print News.
We’ve got not one but two new Dungeons & Dragons setting books on the way with The Wild Beyond the Witchlight and Strixhaven: School of Mages. The books went public on Amazon on Saturday morning, joining several previous releases who had listings up before their official announcements. That announcement came the following day with the feywild-focused The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. From the product listing on Amazon:
Since the announcement, we’ve gotten a deluge of more information including a look at the full cover without the title text and the alternate game store only cover and the announcement of an Accessory Kit. While we don’t yet know what will be in the accessory kit, previous kids have included a set of dice with a color theme to the setting along with a storage box that doubles as a dice tray and either cards or maps useful for the setting. The hardcover will be available on September 21 with a retail price of $49.95 while the Accessory Kit will be available the same date for $29.99.
The feywild isn’t the only setting getting a new book, as we have another Magic: The Gathering setting on the way with Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos. Within Magic: The Gathering, Strixhaven is a magic school located on the plane of Arcavios and is known as the most elite University in the Multiverse. The school features five Colleges each founded by an elder dragon: Silverquill (white and black), Prismari (blue and red), Witherbloom (black and green), Lorehold (red and white), and Quandrix (green and blue). The setting first premiered in the Strixhaven: School of Mages expansion released in April 2021 with a strong focus on spellcasting. Amazon doesn’t yet have the recently released cover image for the new Dungeons & Dragons book, but it does have a product description:
The official announcement came via the @Wizards_DnD Twitter account with a video featuring the planeswalker “Ellywick Tumblestrum” (played by Twitch streamer Erika Fermina) introducing the setting. As part of the announcement, the newest Unearthed Arcana features five new subclasses for each of the Strixhaven Colleges. The hardcover is scheduled for a November 16 release with a retail price of $49.95.
Flying under the radar with all the big announcements is that Wizards of the Coast has taken direct control of localizations for the Dungeons & Dragons line. New editions of the core rulebooks plus the Essentials Kit are on the way in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. This follows a long legal battle starting last year and settled this February with Gale Force Nine, who previously handled localization licensing. The announcement also stated that Wizards of the Coast is looking for new printers outside the United States and China in order to more equitably price books to European and Latin American markets. The new hardcover books will be released on September 24 for €39.99 in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, updated with the newest errata and corrections for typos and translation errors. The Essentials Kit will also be available on September 24 for the first time in foreign language markets with a price of €19.99. Finally, a slipcover edition with all three core rulebooks and a DM’s screen will be available on October 19 for €129.99.
The Dungeons & Dragons live-action movie is currently filming in Northumberland, England, and a few pictures have leaked from the set. One of the locations is Alnwick Castle, a castle originally built in the 11th century and home of the Duke of Northumberland which is frequently used as a filming location. The castle has featured in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Elizabeth, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Blackadder, Downton Abby, and over a dozen others. Of particular note are the banners hanging outside the castle, seen above. The blue banner has the Emblem of Neverwinter, while the red banner contains a sun symbol that could be a redesign of Lethander’s holy symbol, the house symbol of Abarbrent (a noble house of Waterdeep), or a completely new symbol. Some have also noticed the make-up on one of the actors appears similar to the tattoos of the Red Wizards of Thay. Not quite sure yet, but let the speculation commence!
Marvel Entertainment announced a new tabletop roleplaying game set in their comic universe, Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game. The game will use the d616 System (a joke based on the Marvel comic book continuity being set on Earth-616 within the Multiverse, as opposed to MCU which is Earth-199999 or the Ultimate Universe of Earth-1610) and will be designed by Matt Forbeck. The system is described as “a natural evolution for those familiar with the most popular tabletop roleplaying games on the market” with a list of attributes: Might, Agility, Resilience, Vigilance, Ego, and Logic. Which sounds a lot to me like “d20 System based” and “Strength, Dex, Con, Wis, Charisma, and Intelligence”. However, we won’t know for sure until the playtest game comes out in March 2022 with a full release scheduled for 2023, though Matt Forbeck confirmed in a post on his website that you will be able to create your own characters as well as play existing Marvel super-heroes.
This isn’t Marvel’s first attempt at publishing a roleplaying game in-house. After the rights reverted back to Marvel at the end of the license to TSR/Wizards of the Coast, Marvel produced the Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game in 2003. The line was short-lived, only receiving a pair of sourcebooks (one for the X-Men and one for Hulk and The Avengers) before the line was cancelled that same year. It should be noted that the company producing Marvel Multiverse is Marvel Entertainment, the comic book company. Following a corporate shake-up in 2015, Marvel Studios (the company that makes the Marvel Cinematic Universe films and television shows) is a separate subsidiary within Disney.
9th Level Games announced a license to produce Return to Dark Tower Roleplaying Game, inspired by the “computer” board game from the 1980s. The original board game from 1981 featured a large tower with an early computer which provided random results from battles as players attempted to gather and supply their armies in order to take on the evil within the Dark Tower. Restoration Games Kickstarted a sequel/remake of the game, Return to Dark Tower, in January 2020. The new roleplaying game will be co-published with Restoration Games and focus on dungeon crawls with a short campaign, using the Mazes system from 9th Level (which is also currently funding a hardcover release on Kickstarter). There’s no release date for the roleplaying game yet, but the board game from Restoration is expected next month.
Game Manufacturer’s Association (GAMA) membership are voting on a massive restructuring of the Board of Directors. If approved, the Board of Directors would change from four officials for publishers, one for retail, and one for wholesalers to two representatives each from the six different membership categories: creators, publishers, wholesalers, retailers, media and events, and production. The organization hopes the changes will encourage more non-publisher categories to join, particularly new companies entering the game business. Encouraging more dues-paying members would also reduce reliance on events like Origins or GAMA Trade Show for revenue for the organization, a particular concern following the cancellation of events during the pandemic. Current voting publisher members have until July 2 to vote whether or not to approve this restructuring.
WizKids announced an expansion for the Dungeons & Dragons Adventure System board games, Ghosts of Saltmarsh. This new expansion is compatible with any of the previous Adventure System games, including Castle Ravenloft, Wrath of Ashardalon, Legend of Drizzt, Temple of Elemental Evil, Tomb of Annihilation, and Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage. In the campaign, the King of Keoland seeks to expand southward into the village of Saltmarsh with plans to annex it to become a powerful port, whether the villagers like it or not. The game features 29 dungeon tiles, eight miniatures, 148 cards, and 154 tokens and markers and will require one of the other core games to play. The standard edition retails for $49.99 and a deluxe version with pre-painted miniatures will be $89.99, both set for release this August.
The Virtual Tabletop Bundle from HumbleBundle is a godsend for anyone playing tabletop roleplaying games online. This bundle over forty-five asset packs ready for use on any virtual tabletop with city/overland maps, battle-scale maps, tokens, markers, accessories, and more with a top pledge level to get everything at only $18. This bundle benefits the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society and runs until Thursday, July 1. There’s also only a few days left in the huge Free League bundle featuring Tales from the Loop, Things from the Flood, and Symbaroum. Only $18 for the core rulebooks, starter sets, sourcebooks, adventures, and more from a trio of award-winning games. This bundle allows you to choose your own charity but you have to hurry as it will only be available until Monday, June 14.
That’s all from me for this week! Don’t forget to support our Patreon to bring you more gaming news content. If you have any news to submit, email us at news@enpublishingrpg.com, and you can get more discussion of the week’s news on Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk every week. You can follow me on Twitch to get notifications when I go live, subscribe to Gamer’s Tavern on YouTube for videos on gaming history, RPG reviews, and gaming Let’s Plays, or you can listen to the archives of the Gamer’s Tavern podcast. Until next time, may all your hits be crits! Note: Links to Amazon, Humble Store, Humble Bundle, and/or DriveThru may contain affiliate links with the proceeds going to the author of this column.
