This yr’s Gen Con is being held in Indianapolis July 30 via Aug. 2. Upfront of the present, one of many greatest occasions on the calendar for North America’s tabletop gaming neighborhood, Wizards of the Coast invited press to take an early take a look at its scheduled bulletins for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying sport.
Wizards, headquartered in Renton, Wash., has printed D&D since 1997, and has presided over the sport’s meteoric rise within the final decade. Regardless of renewed competitors and several other unforced errors, D&D stays the only hottest sport within the tabletop roleplaying area, to the purpose the place it’s nonetheless usually thought-about synonymous with the interest as an entire.
Within the subsequent yr, Wizards’ plans for D&D embrace a significant model revival, a considerable overhaul to its D&D Past on-line toolset, and a brand new publishing initiative that guarantees new and upcoming tasks from a number of of D&D’s basic creators.
What may get essentially the most consideration from outdoors the interest, nevertheless, is a brand new sequence of expansions for D&D that will probably be printed beneath the banner of “Universes Past.” The primary e book for UB, approaching Nov. 17, is a D&D sourcebook primarily based on Blizzard Leisure’s long-running MMORPG World of Warcraft.
Co-created by long-time D&D designer (and WoW participant) James Wyatt, the WoW sourcebook is designed to let gamers deliver the characters, factions, and setting of WoW instantly into D&D’s mechanics, with materials that spans all the things from the earliest days of the MMO to its most up-to-date growth, Midnight.
Warcraft started in 1994 as a real-time technique franchise, constructed round a fantasy kingdom of people and elves that was abruptly invaded by orcs from one other world. The unique Warcraft was basically a fan manufacturing for the Warhammer Fantasy universe, however ended up changing into its personal unique IP.
Warcraft finally branched out into the nascent MMORPG style with 2004’s World of Warcraft, which quickly grew to become a smash hit and remains to be probably the most well-liked on-line video games within the present market. WoW has developed from its unique darkish fantasy roots right into a type of interplanetary area opera. Its present story arc, the “Worldsoul Saga,” includes the battle to guard the world of Azeroth from the void priestess who’s out to deprave it.
This contains D&D variations of trademark WoW species like tauren, dracthyr, earthen, and pandaren; a number of cases from WoW which have been translated into D&D-style dungeon crawls, together with a high-level marketing campaign set in Icecrown Citadel; and new D&D subclasses primarily based on character choices from WoW, comparable to demise knights, shadow monks, and demon hunters.
That is technically the second time somebody’s made Warcraft right into a tabletop sport, following Sword & Sorcery Studios’ 2003 Warcraft: The Roleplaying Sport. Based on Wyatt, Wizards’ 2026 e book has little to do with that earlier publication.
The Warcraft RPG was appropriate with third version D&D however was meant as a standalone product, so it had to spend so much of its phrase depend on establishing the sport’s guidelines. Wizards’ 2026 World of Warcraft e book is an official launch for D&D, so it will possibly refer gamers to the core D&D books for its guidelines and save its area for extra setting particulars.
The World of Warcraft Universes Past e book is the primary deliberate entry in what’s meant as an ongoing sequence of expansions. Within the phrases of D&D franchise head Dan Ayoub, this can lengthen “Dungeons & Dragons into much more worlds we love.” Precisely which worlds these could be, nevertheless, has but to be introduced.
Different D&D bulletins from Gen Con 2026 embrace:
One among D&D’s basic settings is coming again in 2027. Darkish Solar was initially printed in 1991 as a darkish, post-apocalyptic tackle D&D, happening on a dying desert world dominated by crazed sorcerer-kings. Wizards’ revival of the setting would be the first official Darkish Solar materials since 2010, and would be the first Wizards of the Coast product to ship with a mature content material warning.
D&D government producer Greg Bilsland launched a brand new initiative he known as “Annual Setting Assist,” the place Wizards will companion with different publishers for yearly new releases to offer further materials for D&D‘s numerous ongoing marketing campaign settings. 2027 will see a brand new Ravenloft e book made by the Australian firm Ghostfire Gaming (Grim Hole); extra Eberron materials from Visionary Productions in Canada; and a Forgotten Realms sourcebook by Kirkland, Wash.-based Kobold Press.
Wizards has employed actor and high-profile D&D fan Joe Manganiello (Justice League, Magic Mike) because the artistic director for D&D Icons. This new “content material program” marks the return of a number of basic creators to D&D, comparable to Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, and R.A. Salvatore. (Not that Salvatore’s ever precisely left, since he’s been placing out new Drizzt Do’Urden novels virtually yearly for the reason that Eighties, however you get the thought.)
Luke Gygax is working to complete a challenge left behind by his late father, Gary Gygax, one of many unique co-creators of D&D. The consequence will probably be printed beneath the Icons banner, and guarantees that Luke will “full an journey via his father’s eyes.” The result’s tentatively deliberate for publication subsequent yr.
2027 will see the discharge of a brand new journey in D&D’s unique setting of Greyhawk. Crown of the Witch Queen pits gamers towards the vampire warrior Drelnza, final seen within the basic journey The Misplaced Caverns of Tsojcanth, as “she seeks to assert her birthright.”
The forthcoming online game Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons contains a vocal efficiency from Maggie Robertson (Girl Dimitrescu from Resident Evil Village). Robertson voices one of many oldest signature characters in D&D, the archmage Tasha. A primary take a look at Warlock’s gameplay is deliberate for Aug. 25 as a part of the Gamescom convention in Germany.
D&D Past plans to revise its cellular expertise, which can make it “simpler and extra intuitive to play D&D your approach,” together with your telephone or pill as an unobtrusive instrument. It may be useful to maintain a browser window open when you play D&D, to search for guidelines on the fly, and the aim of this new Past is to make that course of as painless as doable.
Past additionally has a brand new “Searching for Group” characteristic within the works, which is designed to assist D&D gamers discover folks to play the sport with, whether or not it’s regionally, just about, or by hiring professionals to run D&D for them. (The “paid Dungeon Grasp” has grow to be a real factor lately. I do know. It feels bizarre to me, too.)
