D&D General WotC’s newly announced “D&D Icons” line wins an award before making anything

The D&D Icons line was announced a few days ago at Gen Con. It has already won an award.

The award was Gaming Trend Best of Gen Con 2026. Gaming Trend is a gaming news website, which presents a 'Best of Gen Con' award each year.

As yet, nobody knows what the D&D Icons line actually is. Dragonlance’s Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman were introduced briefly on stage by actor Joe Manganiello, along with R.A. Salvatore, creator of Drizzt Do’Urden. No products were announced, however.

[Edit--one product was announced during the keynote at Gen Con: Greyhawk: Crown of the Witch Queen, although it is unclear whether this is part of the Icons line. Thanks to Mistwell for the reminder!]

Congratulations to the winners of this award. I guess. Well done!

 

[agrayday]

I wonder if this is a situation where the marketing strategy team went on vacation, were "busy", or were kept out of these gencon planning meetings....

 

[Retreater]

I wonder if this is a situation where the marketing strategy team went on vacation, were "busy", or were kept out of these gencon planning meetings....

Business these days is "beta" testing announcements. You have a bunch of forgotten Disney and Marvel stuff that never happened. Wendy's thinking about peak pricing and backing off after the outcry. D&D announcing movie studios and video games and VTTs just to sweep it under the rug.
I don't expect much of these keynote announcements to come to much fruition. Or - like - maybe there's a new Drizzt novel that comes out. And we've had 36 of them by my count, one published 3 years ago. To me, it's not a huge deal.

 

[CellarHeroes]

No one is going to care about how the presentation went six months from now when the products themselves start appearing for the conversation.

The same way no one cares how a baseball team's April and May went when the team is in a pennant race in September and October.

I agree. Although the presentation has put these things on my radar, and has made me consider returning to Gary Con where we'll probably learn and see more.

 

[plecostomus]

Pulling from the keynote to answer if Crown part of Icons - I have 85% confidence the answer is no:

Joe: And for the first time in 40 years, [Gary Gygax]'s original fantasy setting will return to Dungeons and Dragons, as curated at his request by his son. Ladies and gentlemen, coming to Icons, Luke Gygax and the return of the world of Greyhawk!

[a few minutes later]

Luke: I'm very excited at what D&D is doing. We'll hear more about that from Justice Arman in just a few minutes.

[a few minutes later]

Theo: Like Luke said, if you're excited about Greyhawk, good news: there's more than one vision of Greyhawk coming. Now, let's welcome D&D's game design director and lead for the upcoming Greyhawk adventure book, Justice Ramin Arman!

[a few minutes later]

Justice: Between Luke's projects and Crown of the Witch Queen, Greyhawk fans are going to be well fed.

 

[plecostomus]

I think the weirder part of this presentation was R.A. Salvatore being introduced as the herald of a tease about Death Saves but he tells a story about the creation of Drizzt instead.

 

[Parmandur]

I think the weirder part of this presentation was R.A. Salvatore being introduced as the herald of a tease about Death Saves but he tells a story about the creation of Drizzt instead.

Salvatore basically just tells that story at every public event.

 

[Morrus]

I think the weirder part of this presentation was R.A. Salvatore being introduced as the herald of a tease about Death Saves but he tells a story about the creation of Drizzt instead.

I got the impression he didn't really know what to say. Sounds like he was asked to attend just a week or two before, and it didn't feel like he was up to speed on the plans. I could be wrong.

 

[bedir than]

Salvatore basically just tells that story at every public event.

He was a multi-time guest on DragonTalk and told that story each time, despite it being the same hosts each time

 

[Davy Greenwind]

I got the impression he didn't really know what to say. Sounds like he was asked to attend just a week or two before, and it didn't feel like he was up to speed on the plans. I could be wrong.

And he couldn't see the teleprompter, lol

 

[plecostomus]

I got the impression he didn't really know what to say. Sounds like he was asked to attend just a week or two before, and it didn't feel like he was up to speed on the plans. I could be wrong.

That's definitely what he said, that they called him 2 weeks before Gencon. When he mentioned he could not see the teleprompter I thought at first that it was some kind of joke, but it seems that really was the only way they were going to tell him what he was supposed to say.