D&D 5E Ray Winninger mentions third project!

WotC's Ray Winninger has confirmed that another D&D release, by James Wyatt, will be released in between Witchlight (September) and Strixhaven (November). Strixhaven was Amanda Hamon's project, while Witchlight is Chris Perkins'. That assumes he's not referring to the Feywild accessory kit in September.

A lot of people are asking Qs about the [D&D] releases for the rest of this year.

Yes, WILD BEYOND THE WITCHLIGHT is the [Chris Perkins] story product I referenced in our dev blog. STRIXHAVEN is [Amanda Hamon's] project. We have not yet announced [James Wyatt's] project, which releases between WITCHLIGHT and STRIXHAVEN.

Why did we announce STRIXHAVEN so early? Pretty simple--there was no way to release the STRIX-related Unearthed Arcana without letting the cat out of the bag.

You'll learn a lot more about all of these products at D&D Live on G4, July 16 and 17. And yes, there is still a little surprise or two ahead.

D&D 5E - Two New D&D Books Revealed: Feywild & Strixhaven Mage School

Amazon has revealed the next two D&D hardcovers! The Wild Beyond the Witchlight is a feywild adventure due in September, and Curriculum of Chaos is a Magic: the Gathering setting of Strixhaven, which looks like a Harry Potter-esque mage school, set for November...

www.enworld.org

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Greyhawk's niche is nostologia, not genre,

It's hard to see how you could write a book on "how to do nostalgia" in the way as you can write a book on "how to do horror".

Hell, I’m in my mid-40s and I don’t even really have strong nostalgia for GH because I only every played like two games set there and neither were very memorable (more a DM issue than the setting itself, but still.)

I'm in my 50s, and don't have any particular affection for Greyhawk. I read it, thought it was dull, and created my own homebrew setting.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I thought not too long ago that someone from WotC defined each setting by a genre and they called Greyhawk Sword & Sorcery, as opposed to the Realms being High Fantasy or Epic Fantasy, I can't remember which. And I don't remember if they even gave Mystara a genre at that time.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I could easily see Io's Blood Isles and Dragon Mountain being republished ... inside the 5E Draconomicon. Give them each a page or so and a map and then let DMs Guild get to work on a fuller conversion.

Council of Wyrms, as an isolated group of islands, could be dropped into an existing world (e.g. Toril) without creating too many ripples. And, since it doesn't have the rabid change-hating fanbase of some other settings, you could retcon the PC dragons as taking the form of dragonborn, so they could adventure alongside PCs of other races.

I think it's worth noting that gem dragons are a significant part of the Council of Wyrms setting, but are completely absent from Dragonlance.

Not that I'm saying I think JW's project is a Council of Wyrms reboot, just that it's possible. In practice it wouldn't be very different from a Volo's style Dragonomicon.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I thought not too long ago that someone from WotC defined each setting by a genre and they called Greyhawk Sword & Sorcery, as opposed to the Realms being High Fantasy or Epic Fantasy, I can't remember which. And I don't remember if they even gave Mystara a genre at that time.

The DMG did. But that is just a difference in the type of story, there is no mechanical difference that you can write into a book.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You mean like what happened with the Chaos War, 5th Age, and War of Souls? If whatever changes the made, if they bring it back closer to the original series, it might actually be received better.

I'm pretty sure "bringing it back to the original" isn't what needs to be done. Deletion of Gully Dwarves (offensive stereotype), modification of kender to discourage griefing, toning down of Mormonism (doesn't sell well outside the USA), and do something about the depiction of Native American culture. Goodness know what, I think Ellmore's art is as much to blame for that as anything, as well as the skin tight female armor.

But then it's still a generic fantasy setting. It would need something more than that to give younger players a reason to buy it.

To an extent, Dragonlance's bad rep is a bit undeserved, but even an an unfair bad rep is a significant obstacle.

 

[Parmandur]

I thought not too long ago that someone from WotC defined each setting by a genre and they called Greyhawk Sword & Sorcery, as opposed to the Realms being High Fantasy or Epic Fantasy, I can't remember which. And I don't remember if they even gave Mystara a genre at that time.

Yeah, that's in the DMG discussion Setting genre: Greyhawk was defined as Sword & Sorcery, Forgotten Realms as High Fantasy (which the DMG also defines as core D&D assumptions), and Dragonlance as Epic Fantasy.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

I'm pretty sure "bringing it back to the original" isn't what needs to be done. Deletion of Gully Dwarves (offensive stereotype), modification of kender to discourage griefing, toning down of Mormonism (doesn't sell well outside the USA), and do something about the depiction of Native American culture. Goodness know what, I think Ellmore's art is as much to blame for that as anything, as well as the skin tight female armor.

But then it's still a generic fantasy setting. It would need something more than that to give younger players a reason to buy it.

To an extent, Dragonlance's bad rep is a bit undeserved, but even an an unfair bad rep is a significant obstacle.

Yep but doing that you've basically undone the setting. People here don't understand how central the Chronicles and Legends are to the setting now. Dragonlance isn't FR, a setting with a few novels. It became a novel series with an RPG setting that flickered in and out of existence.

 

[Parmandur]

The DMG did. But that is just a difference in the type of story, there is no mechanical difference that you can write into a book.

Most of the 5E Setting books are just differences in story, though: a couple of Subclassrs, add in some mechanic, but most of the Setting book is story generation material like in Chapter 5 of the DMG and Monsters. A Greyhawk book with a handful of Subclasses, some sort of Wilderness and/or Dungeoneers Survival Guide stuff, a Gazateer, tons of Appendix N gonzo character and story tables and maps, and the monsters from 1E too weird to reprint elsewhere...that's a solid book.

 

[Parmandur]

Yep but doing that you've basically undone the setting. People here don't understand how central the Chronicles and Legends are to the setting now. Dragonlance isn't FR, a setting with a few novels. It became a novel series with an RPG setting that flickered in and out of existence.

If that sort of thing is "undoing" a Setting, then WotC has demonstrated that they are more than willing to do so, and can do so successfully.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yep but doing that you've basically undone the setting. People here don't understand how central the Chronicles and Legends are to the setting now. Dragonlance isn't FR, a setting with a few novels. It became a novel series with an RPG setting that flickered in and out of existence.

It would seem so, but it might be interesting to see what you could do simply by stripping out all of Ellmore's art, and giving the characters a complete redesign. I don't think any of the characters are Native American stereotypes in the text. Remove the feathers and buckskins, make the characters ethnically diverse and realistically proportioned. Would the fans tolerate a Goldmoon who looked completely different to the original illustrations without throwing their toys out the pram? I really don't know.