D&D 5E (2024) Predict WotC's 2026 D&D releases

[Stormonu]

Within the past 5 years, having run both Tamoachan and White Plume due to nostalgia feelings about them (none of which my players shared) I found them both to be tricksy adventures with little internal consistency. At least Tamoachan I tied into my campaign by loosely connecting it to Chauntea, and planting the pyramid in the middle of the Evermoors. And then I made the flavor be all about Chauntea having beef with Lolth and visa versa.

White Plume was harder to logical-ize, and in fact after finishing it, I ran out of... steam and that campaign ended within 4-5 sessions.

And because I'm a nut this way, now I'm going to be running the Tamoachan group through Tsojcanth. I found the Infinite Staircase version to be WAAAAY better than the og, which I also own.

All of which to say, re-doing Giants again as a single chapter in an overall lvl 3-15 Against Lolth campaign would be great, if done well. There are some echoes though with STK and Out of the Abyss and even Descent into Avernus.

I had to do a rewrite of Tamoachan for 3E because my players were above the recommended level and I really wanted to run them through it. I ended up doing a fair amount of Mezoamerican research because of it and it gave me a much greater appreciation of the overall adventure. I think some of things I was able to explain to the PCs (one of them had a high History score and rolled very well) rubbed off pretty well and Tloques-popolocas became a campaign villain who showed up several times afterwards.

In 5E, for White Plume things took an interesting turn when I ran it, and I had to end up making and running a mini-adventure in Keraptis's Dungeon. I had a lot of fun with that (the PC initially less so, but quickly leaned into it) and is another reason I love that adventure so.

I do think, in the right hands, if each of those adventures was given an OAR-style treatment, they would be very well-received.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

In 5E, for White Plume things took an interesting turn when I ran it, and I had to end up making and running a mini-adventure in Keraptis's Dungeon. I had a lot of fun with that (the PC initially less so, but quickly leaned into it) and is another reason I love that adventure so.

Fleshing out everything with Keraptis and the surrounding region (which I gather may have been tackled by Return to White Plume Mountain) seems the obvious way to upgrade the adventure.

 

[tetrasodium]

Re: Thay, At the first D&D Direct in 2023, WotC announced a Red Wizards-focused adventure was coming in 2025 (presumably as a “timely” follow up to the movie) but the project seemed to get scrapped (possibly related to the departure of Chris Perkins) and a kinda half-baked fragment of it, Hold Back the Dead, got dumped for free on DNDBeyond in 2024. I don’t think anything is coming on that front this year.

That might have been for the best withThay. I might cry if Thay came out all bright and shiny or some cartoonishly plot armored nightmare realm one domino away from Total collapse rather than a seemingly stable and advanced nation floating atop Nietzsche's abyss already studying a useful puppet like the PC's and their strings long before players thought to stare into the abyss that has been supplying them with enchanted gear for quite a few levels now

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Fleshing out everything with Keraptis and the surrounding region (which I gather may have been tackled by Return to White Plume Mountain) seems the obvious way to upgrade the adventure.

Don't dash out to find RtWPM, I found it kind of mid to read (maybe it runs better!). But fleshing out the environs wasn't bad. Sadly, I gave it away I think, so can't even go look it up to see why I didn't like it.

 

[Stormonu]

Don't dash out to find RtWPM, I found it kind of mid to read (maybe it runs better!). But fleshing out the environs wasn't bad. Sadly, I gave it away I think, so can't even go look it up to see why I didn't like it.

Yeah, looking back at it, Return was a big F-U to the old adventure.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Fleshing out everything with Keraptis and the surrounding region (which I gather may have been tackled by Return to White Plume Mountain) seems the obvious way to upgrade the adventure.

But again I ask, to what end? Why not just write something new?

 

[bedir than]

But again I ask, to what end? Why not just write something new?

They've averaged one new-to-official D&D product a year for ten years.
The idea that they aren't doing new things can only be true when a person ignores new things.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

But again I ask, to what end? Why not just write something new?

Ideally, they do both (and in this case, they do!):

They update some classics, and they write some new stuff. It's one of the few ways we get to experience the best of both worlds.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

They update some classics

But why that one? It’s only a classic because it did the funhouse dungeon first. Lots of others have done it far better since. Outside of history and nostalgia, both of which require the original to remain pretty much as it was, it has nothing else to offer the modern gamer.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

But again I ask, to what end? Why not just write something new?

You are in a one-sided argument with everyone on the board nowadays it feels like.

I'm not advocating to do anything with White Plume Mountain. I'm saying that if one felt obligated to do so, fleshing it out and trying to make it make more sense with added context is the way to go.