UA to Become Weekly! Pendleton Ward Helped On New AP!

WotC is currently at Gamehole Con, a convention in the US Midwest. According to a GameholeCon attendee at one of WotC's D&D panels, featuring Jeremy Crawford, Chris Perkins, and Mike Mearls, Unearthed Arcana (Mike Mearl's monthly rules column) is going to become a weekly column. Not only that, Sage Advice will be pausing for a while while Jeremy Crawford joins Mearls on the UA columns. There will be a new Unearthed Arcana every Monday, with the next being three new barbarian options.

WotC's Chris Perkins also said that "The next D&D story is *not* based on Adventure Time. However, Pendleton Ward did help us create it." Ward is, of course, the creator of the US cartoon Adventure Time.

Photo courtesy of @BasementofDeath
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[Sorcerers Apprentice]

I doubt it will stop people from whining about a lack of options or support. If it's free it doesn't count, it needs to be in a hardcover so we can complain about how pricy the books are.

It's not the price that turns people away from using the UA options, but the deliberate lack of quality control.

 

[Cyber-Dave]

The UA options don't lack quality control. Rather, they are part of the quality control process. If they are ramping up the speed with which UA articles are coming out, more likely than not, they are in the process of putting together a splat book and are stepping up the playtest feedback turnover... just saying.

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

I would be happy with a new UA article every week from now on even if they are more smaller and more niche. Even if the end result doesn't show up in a printed product until two years down the line, it is good to keep ongoing development front and center in terms of game evolution. I wish it had been this way all along.

I am not really going to miss Sage Advice during this time. At this point, they have addressed 99% of the concerns that people had in the first year so the last few batches seemed to be struggling to look for problems that may have only cropped up in one or two groups from overly literal rulings. Offering quick adjudication on Twitter followed by a once every six month roundup probably is more appropriate for this edition anyway.

 

[Parmandur]

AWESOME, just saw "Over the Garden Wall" recently, another of Ward's cartoons, so his involvement is exciting; also suggests the next AP is going to be very, very strange

 

[Corpsetaker]

Ugh!

I can't stand Adventure Time so Pendleton Ward doesn't really hold my interest. I don't really care who they got to write the next AP because I am sick of AP's period. There does come a time when you "run it into the ground" and I think Wizards is on their way.

Amazing how they seem to ignore that part of the survey that said most people tend to create their own campaigns instead of use AP's.

 

[Plaguescarred]

Cool to see more experimental stuff being released!

 

[Parmandur]

Ugh!

I can't stand Adventure Time so Pendleton Ward doesn't really hold my interest. I don't really care who they got to write the next AP because I am sick of AP's period. There does come a time when you "run it into the ground" and I think Wizards is on their way.

Amazing how they seem to ignore that part of the survey that said most people tend to create their own campaigns instead of use AP's.

I imagine the AP will have ample opportunities for humor. Very exciting!

 

[Azzy]

I don't really care who they got to write the next AP because I am sick of AP's period. There does come a time when you "run it into the ground" and I think Wizards is on their way.

I think you need to accept that APs are pretty much here to stay. I'm ambivalent about them myself, and haven't purchased any so far, but they seem to move well and Paizo has had great success with them. (Wow, what a run-on sentence.) As someone that used to subscribe to Dungeon magazine, I'll note that prefab adventures (including APs) can easily be looted for one's own campaigns and don't need to be run as written.

Fortunately, though, adventures are not the only thing they're releasing.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

The UA options don't lack quality control.

The UA Ranger says otherwise.

Amazing how they seem to ignore that part of the survey that said most people tend to create their own campaigns instead of use AP's.

Actually, that's probably why they include so much lore content in the AP's. If they stripped all the lore out of OotA, CoS & SKT, then they'd be very thin adventures. All that extra content gives DM's a lot of means to run things their own way, or completely separately from the campaign in the book.

 

[gyor]

If you want APs you'd be better off converting Pathfinder APs. I'm not big on WotC's APs for the most part. And APzls shouldn't be hard cover.

I think the next full splat book will be Unearthed Arcana, like finished Unearthed Arcana book, not just internet playtests.