Wizards of the Coast launches official Dungeons & Dragons Actual Play show

Dire Bare · May 6, 2026

JLowder said:
The not-so-abbreviated version:

When the Ravenloft fiction line was added to the schedule, management/marketing dictated the first book had to involve Strahd and cross over with the Realms. The second book would cross over with Dragonlance by showing Soth becoming a darklord, as the character had been all but abandoned in the DL fiction. Soth becoming a darklord was also part of the planned RPG boxed set.

I was brought on very early as series editor for the RL fiction line, working with the game design team closely. (That's how I was asked to contribute to Darklords, for example.) From the start, I was not a fan of moving Soth the Ravenloft, as I was pushing for the fiction I was editing to feature more creator-driven characters and plots. (For Vampire, some existing Realms characters were floated by management as potential foils for Strahd, but I got them to agree to a new character, so long as Strahd was there. Christie's creation, Jander Sunstar, showed that was the right move.) I could not get management to budge on Soth.

As series editor, I first offered Knight of the Black Rose to Margaret and Tracy, through a phone call with Margaret. It was the first time we had ever spoken, I think. Margaret said no, for reasons I certainly supported.

I then ran open auditions for Vampire of the Mists and Knight of the Black Rose. First-time author Christie Golden got the contract for Vampire. A first-time author named Mike Cullen got the assignment for Knight. (I only mention the name because the book was originally solicited to the public with his name attached, so it's still out there as public info.) I was acquistions and develop editor for both projects.

The original author for Knight left the project during the first draft stage, fairly early on. When that happened, I tried again to get the book killed or at least Soth replaced as the main character, to no avail.

I ran a second, emergency round of auditions for a replacement author for Knight. Most of the authors invited were people with published fiction credits, some through literary agencies. None of the submissions worked. There was some good writing, but every proposal messed with Soth's character and changed him significantly. Everyone was trying to put their stamp on Soth. Since we had no clear frontrunner option from the new auditions, I tried once again to shift the novel's focus, but by then we had the very cool Caldwell cover and the book has been solicited to the book trade as focused on Soth (to a lot of enthusiasm). While I had not convinced management to replace Soth as a protagonist, I had convinced my boss Soth should remain unchanged in the novel so that he could be reclaimed, intact, by Tracy and Margaret for DL if they came back as writers and wanted him.

So the book had been announced, and we were running out of schedule time. Mary Kirchoff, who ran the Book Department and had edited my first novel, called me into her office and suggested I write Knight, as I was the best option at hand for someone who got Soth and Ravenloft, and had a clear idea of how to do the book in a way that did not undermine the character. I very reluctantly agreed.

My editor on Knight was Pat McGilligan, who was the primary DL editor at the time. Margaret and Tracy could have reviewed the draft if they wanted, but, again, they said no for reasons I absolutely support. (I did eventually pass along all my continuity notes about Soth to Margaret, as the existing DL material, even in 1991, had inconsistencies.)

I wrote the book so it is about Soth's interaction with his existing story, like showing his perspective of the fight with Tanis from the existing DL novels. I also built in the mechanism tied to him correctly remembering and affirming his story so he could escape the domain, should Margaret and Tracy come back. That was there from my first plot outline on, explicitly. Margaret and Tracy did not force that. It was my idea from the start, to be used or not as needed.

Other notes:

For newer RL fans who think WotC is being "woke" for pushing back on the tropes of Vistani as inherently villainous, that was happening as far back as 1991, as with the heroic Vistani character Kulchek the Wanderer I created for Knight. Magda was supposed to be the center of reader sympathy in Knight, too. She is not evil.

I was the original contracted author for the Soth-centered game product When Black Roses Bloom. The memory mirrors thing, with its focus on Krynn's history, is from my intial pitch and plot. But I ended up parting ways with TSR and was on pretty bad terms with the company by 1994/1995. (Lawyers were involved, though it never made it to court.) Lisa Smedman did a terrific job with the module.

I agreed to write Spectre of the Black Rose because Peter Adkison settled the problems that had dragged on from 1994. It also helped that they brought Mary Kirchoff back to run the book lines. I was originally supposed to write Spectre solo, but partway through the first draft I found out my father was dying of cancer, so I was traveling a lot between Wisconsin and my parents' place in Massachusetts. The company could not move the deadlines. The book was already partially done in draft and fully plotted when I brought in a cowriter, Voronica Whitney-Robinson, to write the remaining Inza sections to get it in on time. (It was her first pro fiction work, and she went on to write a bunch of Realms material for the company as well as other stuff, so it was a win for everyone.)

I pitched a third Sithicus RL novel, Wake of the Black Rose, which would have dealt with the domain in the wake of Soth's departure and the way his story still impacted the setting and characters. Had WotC not cancelled the RL fiction line as part of their shift in focus away from fiction, it would have gone on the schedule in the early 2000s, as Spectre sold pretty well.

White Wolf almost got the rights to do RL fiction, back when they had the game license, but WotC decided they did not want WW to do RL fiction for corporate PR reasons. I would have edited the WW RL fiction, with the goal of having Christie write a sequel to Vampire of the Mists as the first book in the new line. Wake would have been a possibility there, as well. I did get to write a lot of the Sithicus material for the WW 3E books.

Wow, that was an awesome bit of history there, thank for sharing!

I'm glad you ended up writing Knight of the Black Rose, as I really enjoyed that book!

Ah, the hard part about these history snippets is learning what could have been! Sequels to Vampire of the Mists and a third Soth/Sithicus novel? Maybe with WotC starting to put out new books with Random House again . . . .

JLowder · May 6, 2026

Paul Farquhar said:
And was not the sole creation of Weis and (Tracy) Hickman. The Krynn worldbuilding was a collective effort of TSR staffers, with Dug Niles and Laura Hickman amongst others playing a major part and penning modules in the series. I assume the modules and novels used a shared story bible so they could be worked on simultaneously.

There were no real behind-the-scenes setting bibles for TSR worlds in the 80s and early 90s. This was something of a shock when I started in Books, but it became clear quite fast. I was copyediting one of the early DL novels, Stormblade, and asked if it was supposed to be "dragon highlord" or "dragon high lord" or "Dragon High Lord" or Dragon Highlord" and was told something along the lines of "Great question! You should start a style sheet."

If you wanted to know something about the Realms outside the published material and beyond what Jeff Grubb, Karen Boomgarden, and the team were working on in Games, you called Ed, as in when I first decided to reference the Ring of Winter in the backstories for the Avatar characters. I called Ed at the library and was told the name was a placeholder, essentially, in the boxed set, so whatever I wanted to do with it was fine. After that I was free to lace it into Avatar and my novel Crusade and then move it to the foreground in the novel Ring of Winter. The ring became something people asked me about.

I agree with you about the collective nature of the setting creation, especially for game products, in ways that were not always reflected in published credits. And the continuity between games and fiction was sometimes haphazard at best. After 1993 or so, the Book Department actively stopped trying to align the fiction with games and even with some of the earlier fiction.

JLowder · May 6, 2026

M.L. Martin said:
Yes, and this is documented in one of the first looks behind the scenes, in DRAGON #91:

That wasn't a formal story bible in the typical sense, and it was not in regular circulation at the company after Tracy. I don't think I ever saw it. When I started working on Knight of the Black Rose, I went through all the existing products and created a new continuity document for Soth. It addressed the existing continuity glitches, which were already there by 1990. I eventually shared those notes with Margaret.

You would be surprised at how many huge companies still lack thorough story bibles, even for big brands.

You would be less surprised to find out TSR had a lot of dysfunctional creative practices where new folks would come in and try to pave over or remake what had gone before without a lot of regard for the earlier works. Some of us were adamant about that stopping, but management was all in favor of erasing and sometimes actively spiting people no longer with the company.

At TSR, the first real push to standardize some of the story bible-type stuff on a line level happened circa 1990. My article in Dragon #196 laying out the timeline for the then-published Realms fiction took more than a year to put together. And even then, not all the creators wanted to participate. They didn't work with specific dates and didn't want to anchor their stories in the timeline.

SothFan · May 7, 2026

JLowder said:
The not-so-abbreviated version

Thanks. I was able to find your interview which said most of this also, but there is a bit more here.

Ravenloft: Fraternity of Shadows: Home of Ravenloft on the Net

Now maybe some people here can see why people care about the fiction, as am guessing this is what they mean when they say "canon", and why this show and new book seems an "afront" after all the mess there already was with Soth.

JLowder · May 7, 2026

SothFan said:
Thanks. I was able to find your interview which said most of this also, but there is a bit more here.

Ravenloft: Fraternity of Shadows: Home of Ravenloft on the Net

Thanks for posting the link!

When looking at the range of "takes" on the material, wildly different perspectives are part of the nature of TTRPGs and material based on TTRPG settings. The whole point of tabletop RPGs is for the players at the table to be co-creators, to have their own version of the world and the characters and even the metaplots. This core concept for RPGs clashes with the incarnations of the settings in fiction and comics, especially, as those are more fixed narratives, with narrative continuity. Artus Cimber did this and then this and then this, and he talks in a certain way. It's right there in the novel.

It's a conundrum settings that originate and primarily live as fixed narratives--in films or books or comics--don't immediately face as a primary problem for new works; their problem is keeping the continuity straight, if they have a fixed continuity. (And they run into this co-creator multiverse issue as a secondary-level problem when the IP is adapted to player-participatory forms, such as video games and especially TTRPGs. What do you mean players can make Superman murder people as part of the game?) For TTRPG settings, it's a fundamental issue tied to the essential nature of RPGs and becomes a problem right away after a work is set down. That version is going to be someone's favorite version of X; those player/reader connections to the characters and lore can be strong and personal, so strong reactions to changes are also to be expected. But it's also true that there will be countless other versions originating from countless other tables out there, because of the way TTRPGs are experienced. For someone with a primarily comic DL game, Soth could be a buffoon.

This exacerbates the standard continuity issues seen when new creators come in and add to the official lines, too. I know from being the writer on Soth after Tracy and Margaret. Even though I worked very hard to keep the character true to their published works, some of their fans saw the existence of Knight as disrespectful.

On the larger issue, Greg Stafford, design genius that he was, identified this reality decades ago when he told player-fans of his baseline setting that "Your Glorantha May Vary." It's taken some of us a while to catch up to him on this.

For what it's worth, I haven't talked to Wes in a long time, but I consider us friends. He always expressed nothing but respect for my work, and I hope nothing happened to change that. If the new material--which I haven't seen--seems to come across as demonstrating another attitude, I would chalk that up more to the way in which shared world projects are put together at WotC (and elsewhere) rather than something else. I mean, I have had creators come in and pretty deliberately erase or pave over stuff I have created, so that's not unheard of. (I was told once by an exec at TSR a novel was being marketed in a certain way to prevent me from doing a sequel to a book I wrote, after I had split with the company.) But my starting assumption with Wes is this is his take and the take of the team working on the new book, not disrespect or malice; I'll have to see the content to get a more informed read on that, but that's my starting assumption.

It's also true that WotC could avoid some of the pointed criticism of new books like this if they made it a standard practice to reach out to designers still active in the field who had worked on the source products. I helped the design team fix the fate of Mezro in Tomb of Annihilation, to a very positive effect, but I heard about that project early enough that I could lobby them to allow me access. Given their recent overtures to some high-profile folks, I hope that's changing for the better.

Selas · May 7, 2026

It's more like they really don't like that WotC is bringing back Soth and Sithicus to Ravenloft, are considering this show and the new campaign book as part of the novel continuity, and can't separate the two. I hope your explanation finally clarifies this point so we can continue to discuss the merits of the show, specially with the 4th episode airing today

As I understand, Ravenloft: The Horror's Within, has been in production since early 2025, way before Weis and Hickman announced that they're working again alongside WotC for new Dragonlance material, and before the new trio of novels was announced back in March. I'd be shocked if Soth's inclusion in the new campaign book wasn't part of the talks.

JLowder · May 7, 2026

Selas said:
It's more like they really don't like that WotC is bringing back Soth and Sithicus to Ravenloft, are considering this show and the new campaign book as part of the novel continuity, and can't separate the two.

Actual play will always be a reflection of the GM and players. It's at the forefront of that multiverse of co-creators reality. And WotC has made it clear they don't have a fixed continuity any longer, for good or ill. It's whatever stories work. This is very much in keeping with 21st century IP building, though it's been common in Japan and elsewhere for a longer time.

SothFan · May 7, 2026

JLowder said:
Even though I worked very hard to keep the character true to their published works, some of their fans saw the existence of Knight as disrespectful.

Yes, but TSR was doing bad things then just like WotC is now. You can be hated for it, part of me does, but not to blame for it. You did torment Soth mostly from Krynn and recreated what could be in Sithicus to mimic his life, including his book, which I thought was a nice touch.

JLowder said:
If the new material--which I haven't seen--seems to come across as demonstrating another attitude, I would chalk that up more to the way in which shared world projects are put together at WotC (and elsewhere) rather than something else.

As a fan, he could have advocared the points you made here about the controvesry so it did not look like the Dan Frasier incident. Directly copy and paste your work without credit for it like the One Ring card will be credited and compensated. They own the copyright, but it was your work and efforts to protect Soth. You deserve comoensation as a author who put more work into it that a card artist.

JLowder said:
It's also true that WotC could avoid some of the pointed criticism of new books like this if they made it a standard practice to reach out to designers still active in the field who had worked on the source products.

They really do not care. Dan Ayub just apologized to Luke Gygax, Hickman, and Weis, and this travesty deserves a direct public apology to you for plaigarism and being treated as garbage as all the former TSR employees, designers, authirs have been done for years. Espescially since you were working with them on this edition products. They know you are still alive. Wes knows you are still alive. There is no excuse.

Again, thanks for your time coming here and interesting to read the backstory on a story. As a SothFan, I thank you for your efforts on all accounts. <3

SothFan · May 7, 2026

Episode 4, I am late to watching, but I do like the "Last time on Dynasty", they added at the beginning of the video. Also the subtitles are currently auto generated. The bird now has a different name depending on which video you watch:
1,2: Solus
3: Solace
4: Solless

Poor paper bird is going to have an identity crisis, if he survives partnering with Crem.zž

Got sidetrekked with the author of Knight of the Black Rose and Spectre of the Black Rose, Mr James Lowder (JLowder), honoring us with his presence, so the episode had to wait.

Full review forthcoming.

JLowder · May 7, 2026

SothFan said:
Directly copy and paste your work without credit for it

In recent years, the credit would show up in the front matter with them listing the novels as inspiration. That is hit or miss, though, as when they left Knight off the inspirations list for the recent DL book but used Caradoc, who I created for Knight, as a major NPC. If they use the material in the new book and don't credit my RL novels in the front matter, then, yes, that's...well, fill in your favorite expletive noun.

To be clear, this is not "plagiarism," as WotC owns the content and can use it as they please, including copy and paste of text with no attribution. They tend not to do that copy and paste level stuff. If the team there is using concepts from the earlier works, they have all rights do so. It would be good if they acknowledged sources--and I certainly think they should be doing so--but they have no contractual obligation on that front.

Wes has a limited ability to get the company to talk to me about a project like this. That's a management level discussion. I've talked to WotC about this over the years. It's been a running problem for decades, exacerbated by staff turnover. There are people inside the company who want them to do better.

SothFan said:
Yes, but TSR was doing bad things then just like WotC is now.

By 1990, when Knight was started, the Book Department had increased royalty rates, bettered contract terms, and was in the process of giving creators a lot more control and agency in the fiction. Things had improved in Games, too. Yes, the company overall had some issues, but TSR was actually a pretty good place to publish in 1990, especially with fiction. That all came crashing down by 1993, as detailed in the Ben Riggs book, after a change in the person running Books, but for a while there it was making solid strides toward being a better publisher.