D&D 5E WotC's Kate Welch Hints at Celebrity-Written 2020 Adventure Book

Well, now, this is interesting; this seems to suggest a collection of smaller, new adventures, and the people involved are exciting: True Blood's Deborah Ann Woll and Critical Role's Marisha Ray.

According to comicbook.com "...An upcoming Dungeons & Dragons book will feature adventures written by actresses Deborah Ann Woll and Marisha Ray. Earlier this week, D&D designer Kate Welch announced that Woll and Ray were working on an official D&D product, which will come out in 2020. No details were given about the theme of the upcoming book, but Welch noted that the book would feature work by many writers who hadn't had adventures published by Dungeons & Dragons before. Welch also noted that neither Woll nor Ray had written a published adventure before, but both submitted exceptional work."

Full Twitch broadcast is at "Spoilers and Swag".

 

[eyeheartawk]

Strikes me as gimmicky to put it charitably. Seems like a book that's being made simply because some C-tier celebrities publicly enjoy D&D. Nothing against them personally, but I highly doubt any other previously unpublished authors would get an official WOTC D&D release like this. I'm also guessing this would count as one of the four main releases a year, which if true seems like even more of a waste.

 

[Sadras]

Access is fine and even more mainstream, but those aren't signs of that so much as simply tacky. And in the case of an all women book that debiliteately excludes male (or trans) writers sexiest.

"Sexiest you say," Mr. Bond reiterates, eyebrow raised, before returning pipe to mouth.

 

[Parmandur]

Strikes me as gimmicky to put it charitably. Seems like a book that's being made simply because some C-tier celebrities publicly enjoy D&D. Nothing against them personally, but I highly doubt any other previously unpublished authors would get an official WOTC D&D release like this. I'm also guessing this would count as one of the four main releases a year, which if true seems like even more of a waste.

The book will also include work by a host of DMsGuild writers, per the stream.

 

[Parmandur]

Access is fine and even more mainstream, but those aren't signs of that so much as simply tacky. And in the case of an all women book that debiliteately excludes male (or trans) writers sexiest.

No particular reason to believe that it is an all-women written book, just two contributers are known.

 

[Raunalyn]

Joe Manganeillo comes to mind, if it's just celebrity authors. The guy seems to eat, sleep and breathe D&D nowadays. I'd suggest Matthew Lillard, too, but I dunno if him being one of the execs of Beadle & Grimm's would disqualify him or not.

I would agree about Joe. IIRC, he was with Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman at the WoTC Headquarters a while back, and according to Tracy, there was some super-duper, ultra secret meetings occurring between the lot of them. Speculation amongst those who were not Weis, Hickman, or Manganeillo was that there was a screenplay involved, but it could also be a revival of a certain campaign setting

 

[jmucchiello]

Joe has made no secret of the fact he wants to make a Dragonlance movie.

 

[Magus Darkwind]

I would agree about Joe. IIRC, he was with Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman at the WoTC Headquarters a while back, and according to Tracy, there was some super-duper, ultra secret meetings occurring between the lot of them. Speculation amongst those who were not Weis, Hickman, or Manganeillo was that there was a screenplay involved, but it could also be a revival of a certain campaign setting

I know he wrote a screenplay for Dragons of Autumn Twilight, but I don't think it went anywhere. However, I was just reading through Art & Arcana for the first time, and there's some hints that we may see Dragonlance return eventually. I can definitely see him, Weis, and Hickman all being heavily involved in a DL revival of some sort.

 

[Parmandur]

I would agree about Joe. IIRC, he was with Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman at the WoTC Headquarters a while back, and according to Tracy, there was some super-duper, ultra secret meetings occurring between the lot of them. Speculation amongst those who were not Weis, Hickman, or Manganeillo was that there was a screenplay involved, but it could also be a revival of a certain campaign setting

Why not both...?

Seriously feel like something Dragonlance is coming sooner, rather than later...

 

[Urriak]

Access is fine and even more mainstream, but those aren't signs of that so much as simply tacky. And in the case of an all women book that debiliteately excludes male (or trans) writers sexiest.

If you actually bothered to watch the stream, Welch says that Deborah, Marisha, Jeremy (I assume Crawford), Chris Perkins and herself all wrote adventures for this book. So it definitely doesn't exclude men, and it's pretty interesting that this mini-announcement spawned this idea that this book is automatically written only by celebrities and women.

What Welch said on the stream is they asked for a bunch of submissions across the community, and she personally asked Marisha/Deborah (and that what they submitted was very very good). But she also said that some of the material submitted that will be published is from creators on the DMsguild.

Overall based on the stream I'd expect the content to be very good, regardless of who is writing it. And I doubt we are getting more "celebrity authors," otherwise they would have mentioned them too.

 

[Parmandur]

If you actually bothered to watch the stream, Welch says that Deborah, Marisha, Jeremy (I assume Crawford), Chris Perkins and herself all wrote adventures for this book. So it definitely doesn't exclude men, and it's pretty interesting that this mini-announcement spawned this idea that this book is automatically written only by celebrities and women.

What Welch said on the stream is they asked for a bunch of submissions across the community, and she personally asked Marisha/Deborah (and that what they submitted was very very good). But she also said that some of the material submitted that will be published is from creators on the DMsguild.

Overall based on the stream I'd expect the content to be very good, regardless of who is writing it. And I doubt we are getting more "celebrity authors," otherwise they would have mentioned them too.

It kind of sounds like a Dungeon Delves style book, based on the light tease here.