Spring's D&D Release Will Be Ship-Themed

So they talked about it a little bit on today's Fireside Chat. They mentioned that the full reveal are coming at a later date, but it will be a ship based product. It's almost done, but cover and title are not yet finalized.

Not much else was mentioned except some joke titles!

Not too surprising, given the UA, the upcoming seafaring comic book, the ship mini set, etc.

 

[Parmandur]

Pulp pastiche, genres were never disputed or introduced in my original thread nor does it influence my original opinion. It still doesn't feel D&D to me which is all I was trying to say. It feels more like its own genre to me.

A genre with zombies, dungeons, jungle tribes, Mindflayers, Krakens, hags, Rogues, Warlocks, Fighters, Mermaids, Ghosts, alternate planes of existence...

 

[Satyrn]

I'm starting to understand why I didn't like the Pirates of the Carribean.




. . . and starting to fear there'll never be a D&D movie I like.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm starting to understand why I didn't like the Pirates of the Carribean.




. . . and starting to fear there'll never be a D&D movie I like.

If your standard is set to "not enjoying popularly-entertaining movies derived from D&D" then it would be a bit of a barrier enjoying such a movie.

 

[epithet]

No Greyhawk love

No reason to say that: MToF was a Greyhawk-centric book.

Not enough to open the setting in the DMs Guild. Like so much of the 5e product line-up, they just pillaged The World of Greyhawk for the benefit of the Forgotten Realms. For whatever reason, that's been happening since the very beginning of the FR setting at TSR, with the Desert of Desolation and Bloodstone Pass being shoehorned into it. The Forgotten Realms is a content-sucking vampire of a setting, so I suppose it is appropriate that it slurped up Ravenloft, too.

I suppose I shouldn't complain, though. At least as long as they don't revisit Greyhawk it will remain free of Jarlaxle.

 

[Derren]

I just wonder what theme they will chose for the books.
D&D is very pulp and the most pulpish naval theme is pirates, specifically the swashbuckling Jack Sparrow style pirates. Problem is, Jack Sparrow and D&D does not mix well.
First, no cannons. Second, trigger happy mages. Third, D&D being a group game where everyone wants in on the action instead of the captain making the decision (especially trigger happy mages). Forth, a completely different combat mechanic for naval engagements. You have flying, said mages and soon players will find out that with some magic they can attack ships from below which is very risk free.
And then there are all the different races with all their different takes and technology levels for their ships (at least when you follow FR lore).

So my expectation is that any D&D nautical book will be a complete mess and requires an extra suspension of disbelieve to work. And that does not even address the problem of how to integrate ship vs ship combat where most of the time the entire party will have only one ship and thus one or two guys making the important decisions while the others are at best supporting roles into a game which spends a lot of effort on having everyone be effective in combat. That is a completely different mindset. Not to mention that naval combat usually requires several concepts D&D specifically ignores like facing.

And apart from combat a lot of problems of sailing like provisions, etc. are solved by low level spells and generally ignored for land travel anyway, so nothing you can fill a book with. This even extends to the motivation of being a pirate in the first place as money is plentiful in D&D and you get enough of it by simple adventuring. So why be a pirate which takes more effort and is not in any way less dangerous?
I would be surprised if WotC manages to solve all this problems but I do not believe it.

 

[vpuigdoller]

I want pirates, big game hunters, pygmy cannibals, cursed undead, lepored priests, massive forest covered ruined temples, voodoo warlocks, and sirens. yes Indiana Jones meets pirates of the Caribbean, sea planes are optional but black powder and sabers for everyone.

Yes please this is what I want!!!!

 

[Sword of Spirit]

If there is a return of Kara-tur we should see again old classes as the martial adepts (3.5 Tome of Battle: Book of nine Swords), the ninja, the samurai or the sohei. Al-Qadim? Maybe after the comingsoon action-live version of Disney's Aladdin.

But we already have a subclass literally named "Samurai", and the Way of Shadow Monk subclass explicitly says it represents "ninjas".

Making alternate versions would just be confusing and annoying.

I'd hope to see something Faerun-based. After all these years, there are still VAST uncharted areas on the map.

What map are you looking at?

My read on it was that they had waited for feedback to see if they wanted to move forward with another full setting book, and now that they know they want to do it Stewart is hesitant to commit to a 2019 release. But, you might be right or he might have been imprecise (which is the danger of off-the-cuff hedge-y spoilers).

If their next planned setting book is Eberron, making sure everything is polished might get it bumped of the year, but Stewart might not be certain at this point. They did certainly succeed in getting me pumped for the year.

Hmm...

So we basically know:

- 3-4 books this year
- Adventure book in the Fall
- Nautical book (format unspecified, but not adventure) in the Spring
- Unclear whether the potential for a setting book has been relegated to the possible 4th book

This makes me wonder what the other book (Summer) is going to be. Are they really planning on two non-adventure, non-campaign setting supplements in the same year? That would be a pretty major shift in their release strategy. It would make more sense if the third book is a setting, and the potential fourth book would be an additional setting.

Of course, the mysterious book could be another D&D-related but not sourcebook kind of thing like the art books. Or a tangential product like a book of Forgotten Realms maps (which wouldn't sell well, and they'd know that, so not really.)

 

[Ash Mantle]

I would absolutely love to have a supplement detailing the different types of oceans, the denizens therein and any sea-faring rules. Also any classes with oceanic themes, give us some more storm sorcerers and their like. Also give us seafaring races as well, like the rigging-swinging hadozees!

I would also absolutely love to have a portion of that book dedicated to the deepest, darkest parts of the ocean, that would be excellent.

We also need to dedicate bits of that book to social encounters on the high seas. A shout for Parley! should be the norm for every combat encounter, followed by a swift sword stab or slash or a buckshot to the face when things go south because social norms on the high seas are only a guideline.

 

[Parmandur]

But we already have a subclass literally named "Samurai", and the Way of Shadow Monk subclass explicitly says it represents "ninjas".

Making alternate versions would just be confusing and annoying.



What map are you looking at?



Hmm...

So we basically know:

- 3-4 books this year
- Adventure book in the Fall
- Nautical book (format unspecified, but not adventure) in the Spring
- Unclear whether the potential for a setting book has been relegated to the possible 4th book

This makes me wonder what the other book (Summer) is going to be. Are they really planning on two non-adventure, non-campaign setting supplements in the same year? That would be a pretty major shift in their release strategy. It would make more sense if the third book is a setting, and the potential fourth book would be an additional setting.

Of course, the mysterious book could be another D&D-related but not sourcebook kind of thing like the art books. Or a tangential product like a book of Forgotten Realms maps (which wouldn't sell well, and they'd know that, so not really.)

The Summer book is the storyline AP, as with Tomb of Annihilation or Dragon Heist. So the schedule is:

- Spring = Kate's sea book
- Summer = Perkins storyline AP
- "Any December books we might put out"

It is then post Summer AP stuff that sounds up in the air right now.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

If that is a good idea?

Ships don't work really well in most RPGs.

IME, they work great.

This next book screams supplement, not adventure, to me. It'll probably have ALL (tm) of the nautical rules. What exactly that will involve...I don't know. Will there be new races, backgrounds, subclasses, or feats? Maybe? If this were an older edition, it would definitely include all of these things. There will probably be monsters though, that will fill half a book!

The last player options expansion book was full of races, so i'm guessing we will see mostly the sorts of things we saw in Xanathar's, but that pattern might be coincidental.

Almost certainly we will see the stuff we saw in the UA article, some new monsters, lots of ship stat blocks, probably new ship weapons, new monsters, new stuff related to exploration, and a lot of lore and advice on running nautical adventures.

I hope we get new feats, fighting styles, spells, magic items, and mundane gear, and more new downtime stuff than they presented in UA. stuff related to managing a merchant company or the like, commanding people in groups, etc. New subclasses, and maybe new subraces, would also be rad.