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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[Manalishi66]

Sometimes I wonder if there are maybe a dozen or fewer conversations that happen on EN World, with just endless variations and starting points, yet all threads eventually morph into of the (Un)Holy Twelve (or whatever number it is).

That aside, I really don't get the Realms hatred. I mean, I get that Elminster is annoyingly smarmy, Drizzt's kewl factor peaks at age 12 and declines steadily from there (and at an increasing rate of decline once one gets laid for the first time), and that there are many other great settings in the D&D canon. But the hate? It seems so unnecessary.

I also don't get the cries of "bring back Greyhawk!" These folks are, quite frankly, living in the past. There is a reason that WotC has put their chips behind the Realms and not Greyhawk, and it probably has something to do with the difference between the words "Verbobonc" and "Sembia." I have many fond memories of Greyhawk, in a similar way that I have fond memories of Galaga, acid-washed jean shorts, and fanny packs (OK, not really the latter two). They were fun at the time, but aren't coming back. For whatever reason, the Realms feels less anachronistic, more timeless, and perhaps a bit more palatable to a wider number of folks. This isn't saying that one is better than the other in some kind of absolute way, but that one is better than the other for the purposes of WotC. In other words, it makes perfect sense why WotC sets their story arcs in the Realms, and it is also rather easy to adjust them to your homebrew setting, or another D&D world.

To be clear, I don't run in either world. I haven't played much D&D in recent years, but when I do DM, I always homebrew, because I probably like world-building and playing with ideas as much or more than actually playing. But I like setting books; in fact, they're my favorite type of RPG product - whether for mining (stealing) ideas, reading of far-off places, or just scanning demographics of cities and wondering why Calimshan had two million people in one edition, and 200,000 in the next. And you know what? I'd buy either a FR or GH setting book, or any setting book WotC publishes. But what I'd like to see more than anything is a new setting. Bring something new to life, even if it is just going back to Nerath and properly developing it, or digging up the runner-up in the setting contest from bygone ages or (preferably) building something fresh.

I doubt it will happen, but I can see valid reasons why it would be a good idea. In fact, I'd love to see them publish something like the "Tales from the World Serpent" mentioned up-thread, and a massive story arc to bring them all together, then put all those older worlds on the back-burner, and focus on creating something new. Why do we always need to go back and re-hash the past? This is a cultural trend, and I get why it is done - it is safer to re-introduce Captain Kirk again, than give Jenna Blazethorn and the Cosmic Wayfarers a movie. But it is, well, creative cowardice. Why not explore new worlds?

Without saying it more direct like you did. That's what I'm saying. Do a book for each realm, not a continuous line of products specific to the world in question. Tough an adventure or something that ties them all together would be interesting. Create non-specific adventures tied maybe to the creators own world. I have no problem, like many others, tying it into to my own world(s). I still use Greyhawk (heavily modified) because it was the first and longest running of my group (40 years). I use Forgotten Realms too, and my own. Wotc just should not throw all their eggs in one basket. Just create good non specific supplements and adventures that people can bring into their own worlds with guidelines for newbies to do so. Because if we get a peak into other creators worlds, maybe new ideas will come of it. This includes creating new and non-standard worlds for people to play in, not lines of crap tied to a specific world or barely different from the others.

 

[blakesha]

ok, I'll bite

What i would personnaly see me buying is a campaign setting. Not an adventure yet again, coz between dmsguild, adventurer's league, other publishers we are pretty well cattered for already. Now, when I say a campaign setting, I am thinking either an old one (basically any old setting except birthright which I don't like), or a completely new one (with a marked preference on this). That's one product. We assume for the moment that there will be two big product untill the end of the year, as a choice for the second that would be the rumored add on product with UA content. (I personnaly don't think we'll see it this year, and I think the big adventure they have planned will be a two parter. I have no proof, of course just a feeling on this.)

Well there are third party - non-WotC campaigns that are being or have been created. I think WotC strategy is right on the money. WotC creates FR stuff (with a light smattering of their other material over the years) but leaves the creation of other settings to third parties - for example the recent Kickstarter for Midgaard by Kobold Press. Pathfinder is an interesting one, a lot third party campaigns have dwindled and died for that rule set, to the point where they have had to create Starfinder to revitalise the company (IMO).

Stick to the plan WotC I think you are on the correct path.

 

[robus]

[MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION] - I'm not a fan of FR because it's incoherent. The ecologies don't make sense (yuan-it in the Mere of Dead Men?!), many of the place names are ridiculous and there's just too much going on - vampires in cloud castles?. It's a hot mess it challenges my suspension of disbelief at every turn. That's why I'd like a change to a setting that isn't everything but the kitchen sink.

 

[Demetrios1453]

This thread will be amusing to look back upon if the upcoming AP isn't FR-centric.

(It may very well be a FR product, and then again it may not be. But the amount of people jumping the gun here, wailing and gnashing their teeth even before we know what is going to be released is, frankly, amazing)...

 

[MNblockhead]

ok, I'll bite

What i would personnaly see me buying is a campaign setting. Not an adventure yet again, coz between dmsguild, adventurer's league, other publishers we are pretty well cattered for already. Now, when I say a campaign setting, I am thinking either an old one (basically any old setting except birthright which I don't like), or a completely new one (with a marked preference on this). That's one product. We assume for the moment that there will be two big product untill the end of the year, as a choice for the second that would be the rumored add on product with UA content. (I personnaly don't think we'll see it this year, and I think the big adventure they have planned will be a two parter. I have no proof, of course just a feeling on this.)

Yeah, it would be fun to have some more non-Realms material, through I tend to buy them for lonely fun—just read them for inspiration and fun, but not use in game. I doubt they will, their current focus on the Realms seems to be doing well for them. After to movies comes out, if it does well, I expect there to be material printed about the realms that could be used in game or just for fans of the movie to read.

Instead of re-releasing old campaign settings, I wish they'd open up the IP for people to write for in DMs Guild.

 

[MNblockhead]

I won't say it won't happen, but I think WotC is well aware that splitting their base via too many campaign settings [is one of the things that] killed TSR. Their strategy makes sense; offer the old stuff as pdfs on the DMs Guild for the die-hard fans, and keep a unified setting in their main line releases. Getting greedy and creating a new glut of settings would be their downfall, like it was in the 90s.

Yep. Better to focus on one setting and let other companies design other settings. BUT why no open the old settings' IP for use in DM's Guild?

 

[Queer Venger]

I love how D&D dominates discussion on this site; Pathfinder pfft....

Acererak ftw!!
Forgotten Realms ftw!!!
Greyhawk, what's that?!? ;-)

 

[bmfrosty]

Question for all the grognards - is there an adventure that is a real Greyhawk adventure - something that just spans a whole bunch of areas of Greyhawk?

 

[Ashran]

Question for all the grognards - is there an adventure that is a real Greyhawk adventure - something that just spans a whole bunch of areas of Greyhawk?

I don't quite consider myself a grognard (never really understood that term, anyway, as english is not my first language), but WG8 Fate of Istus ( http://www.dmsguild.com/product/17363/WG8-Fate-of-Istus-1e-2e?it=1&filters=0_0_45357_0_0_0 ) does fit the bill of what you ask. I remember my dm at the time starting us on that adventure, but I have never read it and I don't know exactly how far we went along that path or if it was left in the background as we went our merry way around the lands of Greyhawk.

 

[OB1]

My hope is that the upcoming Big Book O' Mechanics has a multi-planar Planescapeish theme, where the background fiction of the book is us travelling across the multiverse to all the various campaign settings, getting all of the mechanics and rules for all the required bits from places like Greyhawk, Eberron, Dark Sun, Planescape, etc...

...and what would be even cooler is if the new story adventure follows along with that planar theme. Where Acererak is first discovered in Chult, but then players realize he's a multi-planar entity and then have to cross the planes following him in order to track him down and end him once and for all.

If you wanted to tie an adventure book to a big book of mechanics... that's how I'd do it.

This has been my thought and hope as well. And to take it one step further, perhaps since every three years we may get a big rules expansion, what if we also got a 2 part AP every three years. 16 Chapters over 2 books would allow the campaign to touch base in each of the major settings plus the feywild, shadowfell, and in the second book with the characters in Tier III and hopefully even Tier IV, a host of outer planes as well. Book 1 becomes sort of a defecto settings guide, while book 2 becomes a manual of the planes.

It would great to get a Tier IV adventure from WoTC to mine for ideas and structure.