Thursday, March 17, 2022

D&D Supposedly Planning a Big Press Release Tuesday the 22nd

 Rumor has it (I heard from Nerd Immersion, which seems to always get this moments after it hits the internet) that Wizards of the Coast is planning to make some announcements next week. With Call of the Netherdeep out, every previously-announced D&D book has already been released (other than the stand-alone Monsters of the Multiverse, though my roommate just got the rules expansion box set, so I think I'm good on that one).

I think there are two very obvious releases that I expect will be announced or at least alluded to: namely Spelljammer and Dragonlance.

The D&D community has been begging for Spelljammer for years - maybe somewhat cheekily, given how zany and out-there the setting is. But teases of the Hydro74 art for the cover of an unannounced book with Boo, the Miniature Giant Space Hamster, as well as the Travelers of the Multiverse Unearthed Arcana post, have made the science-fantasy setting seem far more likely than before. Spelljammer hasn't been a thing since the early 90s, when fans of the game seemed turned off by its silly tone and mixing of genres. But I think that modern audiences are both far more comfortable with a silly tone and also far more receptive to bending the fantasy genre, meaning the setting is due for a redemption.

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft made a lot of changes to the Ravenloft setting - most notably dispelling the notion of any coherent, continent-like structure called The Core that gave the Domains of Dread literal physical borders with one another, and instead made each a kind of bubble-reality afloat within the Mists (a change I am about 200% in favor of - I hate the idea of the Core profoundly, and love the new concept). Thus, while I know a little about the way Spelljammer worked in the late 80s and early 90s, I think it's possible we'll see some tweaks to the mechanics and the tone.

The other book is, if anything, even more certain, given WotC's not remotely coy "Heroes of Krynn" UA post. Some longstanding legal disputes over intellectual property related to the Dragonlance setting were recently settled between WotC and the Hickmans (the creators of the setting - also actually the creators of Strahd and by extension Ravenloft). This first manifested with the design of Fizban's Treasury of Dragons - Fizban is a human avatar of the good-aligned god Paladine, which has now been explicitly confirmed to be another name for Bahamut. But Paladine is specifically the Dragonlance version of Bahamut.

I don't really know much about Dragonlance as a setting beyond the fact that there are dragons and there are things called Dragonlances that are very useful for fighting said dragons (and also useful for fighting while mounted on dragons). It was, however, I think, a very popular setting, perhaps even the most popular setting before the Forgotten Realms became D&D's kind of default setting. My sense is that it's a bit more of an epic fantasy setting with great armies and dark lords and such - in contrast with the Forgotten Realms' sort of "adventurers are a dime a dozen" approach (though I could be totally wrong).

Now, the next question is if we're due for any other announcements.

Believe it or not, but Tasha's Cauldron of Everything is now a year and a half old - meaning that a book announced next week might not come out until it'd been two years. If you look at the big setting-agnostic rules expansion and monster books, Volo's came out in 2016 (two years after 5E's launch,) Xanathar's came out in 2017, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes came out in 2018, Tasha's came out in 2020, and then Fizban's came out in 2021. So, while they didn't have one in 2015 or 2019, for the most part we've gotten a big rules-expansion book every year, alternating between monsters and general rules (Fizban's is admittedly a bit more mixed - it has monsters and races like a typical monster book but also subclasses and magic items like an "of Everything" book.)

It might not be that crazy, then, to see another "of Everything"-style book announced for release either this year or early 2023. That is, of course, getting close to 2024, when WotC will be coming out with the backwards-compatible new versions of the core rulebooks, but if they are truly backwards compatible, it might not be that bad to throw in some new options and features.

I wouldn't be terribly shocked to see a new "of Everything" book include the Undead Patron, College of Spirits, and even maybe the Way of the Ascendant Dragon and the Drakewarden, as we saw Tasha's consolidate many setting-specific subclasses into setting-agnostic rules. (The Undead Patron feels like a slam dunk). The latter two of these, of course, are not setting-specific, but my sense is that if you're a player-only enthusiast of D&D, you might feel more comfortable picking up a book with tons of new subclasses rather than a monster book with just two.

Anyway, I'm very excited to see what's in store.

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