The New D&D Adventure Storyline Will Be Announced On June 2nd-3rd

WotC is holding an event, which they're calling the Stream of Annihilation, on June 2nd and 3rd to announce the new D&D storyline. Various D&D Twitch steamers have been invited to participate in the upcoming campaign, which will be live streamed along with interviews, and so on. "We’ll have folks from Misscliks, Maze Arcana, Critical Role, and Dice, Camera, Action! with Chris Perkins, not to mention international gaming groups like Yogscast's HighRollers (U.K.) and Dragon Friends (Australia)." You'll be able to watch it all live on Twitch at the time. Is this where we'll discover the identity of the mysterious Dust and Midway? Speculate away!

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Here's the announcement in full. There's more info about the hosts and the guests here.

Dungeons & Dragons loves the amazing video streams produced by our fans. This community-generated live-play highlights what’s fantastic about D&D—sitting down together with your friends to tell a grand story!


To celebrate, we’ve invited a bunch of D&D streamers and luminaries to Seattle, Washington to hang out and roll some dice on June 2nd and 3rd! This two-day event is called the Stream of Annihilation and it’s two full days of streaming that D&D fans won’t want to miss. We’ll have folks from Misscliks, Maze Arcana, Critical Role, and Dice, Camera, Action! with Chris Perkins, not to mention international gaming groups like Yogscast's HighRollers (U.K.) and Dragon Friends (Australia).
[h=3]PROGRAMMING[/h]Kicking off at 10am on both June 2nd and 3rd, hosts Anna Prosser Robinson and Kelly Link will talk to the Wizards of the Coast D&D team and learn all about our next exciting storyline coming in September. Then each group of streamers will play or share a sample of what to expect from the campaigns they’ll be running over the summer that preview the new D&D story. There will be multiple live games, interviews, new product unveils and improvised hilarity each day, starting at 10am PT and ending at 10pm each night. You’ll get introduced to the High Rollers crew delving into uncharted territory DMed by Mark Hulmes, a new Misscliks show investigating rumors called Risen, two weekly groups from our friends Satine Phoenix and Ruty Rutenberg at Maze Arcana, a new group of L.A. actors called Girls Guts Glory, and more!


Throughout the Stream of Annihilation, we’ll drop details on our expanded D&D Twitch programming, new accessories fans have been clamoring for coming later this year, and amazing board games and products from our partners. You’ll hear from Cryptic Studios about plans for Neverwinter, Curse Media for D&D Beyond, as well as WizKids, Gale Force 9, Fantasy Grounds, Roll20, and more. Plus, like any Dungeon Master worth their salt, we have a few exciting surprises to pull from our bags of holding!
[h=3]FURTHER DETAILS[/h]You’ll have to watch the Stream of Annihilation to catch it all live! Follow twitch.tv/DnD to get all the updates, then mark your calendars for Friday, June 2nd and Saturday, June 3rd to make sure you don’t miss a thing!


A full schedule, group bios and some more of the celebrities attending the Stream of Annihilation will be announced over the next few weeks. We’ll also be talking about the event on our official Twitter account (@Wizards_DnD) as well as interviewing some of the groups this month on Dragon Talk, the official D&D podcast.

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[doctorbadwolf]

IMO, neither Tyranny of Dragons, Out of the Abyss, nor Storm King's Thunder would work well in Eberron. I mean, you could squeeze them in, but they'd be poor fits.

Tyranny of Dragons relies on having a relatively large number of evil/chromatic dragons working together with a cult to summon a deity. In Eberron, dragons are mostly off on a different continent, mainly focused on interpreting the snippets of prophecy that show itself in the world, and are not alignment-coded by color. Sure, there are renegade dragons (which is mostly a nod so you can justify adventures with random dragons in them, like the Sunless Citadel), but rarely organized like this.

Out of the Abyss is heavily based around both drow (which are very different in Eberron, and generally surface-dwelling on a different continent rather than underdark-dwelling) and demon lords. "Traditional" demon lords in Eberron are mostly off on their own planes, not too bothered with the goings-on on the Material Plane, and fiendish Overlords birthed by the primordial dragon Khyber at the dawn of time tend to me more conceptual than physical, like the ones in OotA.

Storm King's Thunder has giants roaming across the land, seeking to rearrange the Ordning. Again, Eberron giants are mostly off on their own continent (the same as the drow), and there's no Ordning to rearrange.

You are missing a lot of Eberron info, on all of those. Or misinterpreting what I said. You can't plop down a specific story with all its details, but any story type works fine, and any of the APs can easily be converted.

Dragons: there are plenty of draconic organizations, plenty of which are evil. Change the god to an overlord, and it works fine. There are cults of The Dragon Below that have Dragons in them. That one is actually the easier conversion, I think. Even a story about dracoliches works easily in Eberron. Tiamat is an Overlord, btw. Dragons are easy.

Giants: this, ok I lied, this is easier than the dragons. You just tweak the details of the set up, and throw in some stuff about the ancient giant empire. That AP is already practically an Eberron AP. At most, set it in Stormreach and its environs. "another continent" doesn't mean the same thing in Eberron as it does in FR. You can have an adventure in Stormreach, and the next in Aerenal, and the next in Sarlona, and it's not that weird. There are airships, and regular ships with elementals to make them go fast.

Drow. Wrong again, this one barely needs even the details changed. Plenty of Drow live underground, and are part of strange Khyber Cults. Probably just as many as live in jungles (and worship scorpions) or Giantish ruins (and worship fire, more or less). Khyber (underdark) Drow can quite easily fill the same role as FR Drow in a story. Or, you could just use a creature other than Drow to tell the same kind of story. Hell, the Spinner of Shadows is an Overlord of Treachery attended by Drow and Hezrou.

Demons. There's all kinds of demons in Eberron, not just the demons and devils of Shavarath. Also there are the Rakshasas and other fiends who serve the Overlords, and who formed The Lords of Dust. They are literally fiends (demons and devils) who interfere in the world of Eberron.

Definately standing by my previous statements. Those stories are all natural fits for Eberron.

 

[Ath'kethin]

Yes it does.

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The Multiverse existed in D&D long before Planescape went all 90s grunge on it.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

The Multiverse existed in D&D long before Planescape went all 90s grunge on it.

Of course. But if they were to do a Multiverse-related story today, it would involve Sigil. Because $$.

Personally, I'm not familiar with Planescape. I probably read some of those supplements back when they came out, but if I did, I remember nothing but the trade dress.

 

[Mercule]

I'm not sure if we are having two different discussions here…

A: people who want adventures with hooks and fluff that are clearly set in non-FR campaign settings (and those that disagree with them)
B: people who want campaign settings books that are not FR (and those that disagree with them).

Potentially. Personally, I'll participate in either. I really enjoy the majority of other settings. I never got much chance to play in, say Dark Sun, but would kill for a good 5E adventure that pulled me into the setting, at this point in my life. Ditto good for most of the others, too, even the ones I didn't really love (Planescape). Maybe I'd end up sticking with our returning to one of them, or maybe not. I'd still get a kick out of the tour. One of the biggest joys of D&D, IMO, is the different worlds promoting this is an end in itself.

On the other hand, I was unimpressed by the original gray FR boxed set. The best a Realms product (that I've looked at) has been is mediocre -- with the exception of the 3E FRCS, which was possibly the best setting book ever created, unfortunately wasted on a dung heap of a setting. The lore is mediocre. The best of the fiction published would embarrass any self-respecting fifth-grader (not that any gaming fiction is great, but the Realms has so much of it that it matters to the lore). I'm genuinely amazed the setting made it beyond the first printing of the gray box. I honestly just want the setting to go away.

 

[Mercule]

I think that I see it more like Comics. At the moment they're focusing heavily on Metropolis, doing Superman stories and Supergirl stories and the like. Metropolis is a useful place, it's got name recognition and a nice pairing of generic vibe with highly specific flavour when you drill deep down. So they can have lots of stories there. But they also have other cities available - Coast City got its own story, and that was well received and had its own flavour. So soon they'll head to Gotham, have some stories there perhaps, and in the process make it clear that, hey, there's a road between Gotham and Metropolis - this isn't a totally different place, it's all connected.

Which is great, I guess, a long as they don't spend so long in Metropolis that people get sick of it. There's also only so long that Batman fans or those who think Superman is a self-righteous twit will hang around waiting on a half promise that'll never come.

So the multiverse is not Planescape in a narrow sense, though yes Planescape is a part of the multiverse.

True. Even though Planescape was never really my "thing", it would be a lot better axis for the multiverse than the Realms.

 

[Queer Venger]

I don't think your point counters his in any way. He's only suggesting that a one-world focus is unimaginative, which is a fair point.

The rest of it is still pretty imaginative. IMO, 'natch.

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Okay so what part of Multiverse are all of you not getting??

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Okay so what part of Multiverse are all of you not getting??

Who's not getting what? A one-world focus could be considered unimaginative, were that what they were doing. I think they are only using a one-world focus as a first-phase thing, and it will be expanding drastically soon. Not soon enough for some people, obviously.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Who's not getting what? A one-world focus could be considered unimaginative, were that what they were doing. I think they are only using a one-world focus as a first-phase thing, and it will be expanding drastically soon. Not soon enough for some people, obviously.

I have a feeling that this is the case as well. If the September product doesn't utilize the D&D Multiverse (either via Planescape or via a different setting world), I would almost bet that one of the 2018 products will.

One thing to note is that Dungeonology specifically name-checked (and briefly described) both Greyhawk (as a setting) and Sigil, instead of focusing solely on the Realms (which would be expected if they had a totally FR-centric focus for the foreseeable future), so those mentions would seem to me to be possible hints on what we may see in the (relatively) near future.

 

[Queer Venger]

Who's not getting what? A one-world focus could be considered unimaginative, were that what they were doing. I think they are only using a one-world focus as a first-phase thing, and it will be expanding drastically soon. Not soon enough for some people, obviously.

You want official 5e material for Eberron, or Greyhawk or Dragonlance, or Spelljammer; we get it. Forgotten Realms is the default official campaign so far and its not your preferred; I get it. I hope to see Dark Sun too, but I am a big fan of FR and see no reason why WotC should start churning setting material at this point in the infancy of 5e; maybe in a couple of years. Until then dust off your immense shelf of Greyhawk or Eberron setting material and don't let anyone stop you from having fun.

Its what Im doing

 

[Queer Venger]

On the other hand, I was unimpressed by the original gray FR boxed set. The best a Realms product (that I've looked at) has been is mediocre -- with the exception of the 3E FRCS, which was possibly the best setting book ever created, unfortunately wasted on a dung heap of a setting. The lore is mediocre. The best of the fiction published would embarrass any self-respecting fifth-grader (not that any gaming fiction is great, but the Realms has so much of it that it matters to the lore). I'm genuinely amazed the setting made it beyond the first printing of the gray box. I honestly just want the setting to go away.

Your opinion is the minority
FR is a qualified and certified success for D&D, the brand has garnered Wizards millions; its smart of them to use it and its obviously working. Alas for you this setting will not go away...

Sorry they couldn't make YOU happy.