Here I am in the D&D product seminar. Hosting are Mike Mearls, James Wyatt, and Rodney Thompson. James is talking novels, Rodney tabletop, and Mike RPG.
NOVELS
Neverwinter: Gauntlgrym, Neverwinter. Charon’s Claw next year.
Abyssal Plague, Gates of Madness, Mark of Nerath, Temple of the Yellow Skulls, Oath of Vigilance, Eye of the Chained God, Sword of the Gods, Under the Crimson Sun, Shadowbane (only as an ebook).
Ebooks: they’re releasing three backlist books per week. The latest was Salvatore’s Cleric’s Quintet.
BOARD GAMES
They had a game called Dungeon of Dread that they cancelled. Based on playtests it wasn’t good enough to release.
They are releasing a new game next year: “Lords of Waterdeep”. It’s a Euro style game where you send adventurers on quests and try to rule the city. Coming in March 2003. Volos Guide to Waterdeep was used as a source.
ROLEPLAYING LINE
At the con: lots of Neverwinter stuff. Neverwinter fortune cards. Lost Crown of Neverwinter encounters. Game Day: Gates of Neverdeath. Neverwinter campaign setting book.
Coming soon: Gardmore Abbey. Many encounters have noncombat options. Getting away from linear adventures. More sandboxy. Contains Deck of Many Things. four 32 page books, 2 maps, dungeon tiles deck, monster tokens.
Mordenkainens Magnificent Emporium, returned to schedule. Core exclusive, available at gamestores only. The book has items, character options, followers, mundane items. Basically everything you can buy not just magic items. (No rituals though.)
Lair Assault, a new form of organized play in September. Combat puzzle aspect. you build your own character. The DM has a menu of monsters he can place, so he can try to make it as difficult as he can. Each time you play it can be different. It’s adversarial, for power gamers. The first Lair Assault is Forge of the Dawn Titan. The second adventure is pirate themed [but i missed the name]. The third is Explore the Talon Claw [I think] and involves defending an island against dinosaur attacks.
Limited edition set of chromatic dragon collectible minis.
heroes of the feywild book.
fury of the feywild fortune cards.
dm encounters season: Beyond the Crystal Cave. There is a focus on roleplay in this season.
The book contains a new pc race that can fly. what fey race could that be?
Also contains a new barbarian build. dual role. Striker when raging, defender when not raging.
New dungeon tiles: Shadowgast Manor in december. Haunted house theme. Next set: Cathedral of Chaos. Contains Gygaxian diagonal corridors.
New product type: map packs. same price as dungeon tiles.
Book of Vile Darkness. Player support and DM advice for evil campaigns. Contains 32page facsimile of BOVD, plus 96 page players and dm book.
players option: Power of the Plane below. Contains Essentials version of sorcerer.
fortune cards: spiral of tharizdun
dnd encounters season: Elder Elemental Eye. focus on investigation.
Undermountain adventure. 80 encounter areas. Open-ended dungeon crawl. Contains a random dungeon generator for when you go off the map. Plot hooks for using the dungeon. poster map of dungeon. April.
Stay tuned for a final announcement after the Q&A!
Q AND A
BOVD will not be as hardcore as third edition version.
No rituals in mordenkainen. they think people are not using rituals much and are thinking about new ways to price the to make them more attractive to poor heroic characters and meaningful to high level players.
e-books in three formats for kindle, nook and sony e-reader.
Heroes of Feywild builds: barbarian; bard build, focused on wandering skald storyteller; druid build. New themes like Agent of Unseelie Fey. Fey Lord: Gives you permanent companion character.
Not ready to talk about the next campaign setting. they think that, in the past, they have been showcasing things before it was ready. but they are planning a setting for August.
Virtual Table: Still in beta. They don’t want to get ahead of themselves.
DDI. New stuff coming out. kara tur, etc. digital content has quicker turnaround than print. digital will be like small paperback disposable style and physical is more deluxe. in the eighties you bought a 32 page adventure and now that would be online.
Abyssal plague RPG products. DDI articles are already out about it.
They have talked about making monster tokens for older monsters.
October Dragon issue. kanji runepriest build.
Support for seeker? people are not playing it. They want to think about changing it to make it more exciting. Magazine is driven by submissions, and there are less submissions for the seeker.
New feywild builds use at-will powers and encounter powers but there are some twists. we don’t want to make a seeker with a totally different power structure. Classes with less support get more traditional essentials versions.
books like Feywild which tie into encounters season get books, not gimmicky box sets.
Next campaign setting is not Dragonlance. it is not just a setting but a way to play. It gives a new twist on play. “Twist is a good word,” said one of the developers.
new fey races: hamadryad, satyr, and pixie. Pixie is the race that can fly. Support for a variety of other fey races.
Elemental classes: Sorcerer build focuses on one element, like the pyromancer build did. Sha’ir wizard build. That is based on a wizard with a genie familiar in al-qadim.
What’s up with Mike Mearls’s legends and lore articles? where is mearls going with that? Mearls says he is just experimenting and doing R and D – there is no 5th edition 
If there are any major changes to the game you can’t surprise people. Mearls worries that fourth ed lectured people about how they should play. He wants to have a dialogue, not dictate. wants to regain trust.
They are looking at ways to do digital distribution.
Looking at ways to do a mass battle game.
Not planning to do different D&D eras like Modern. They want to concentrate on D&D.
feywild is mostly arcane plus a little primal.
early in the summer, Steve Winter asked in the forums, what is not working? that is our to-do list. They are increasing playtesting, and decreasing books.
Investigative theme of Elder Elemental Eye. Skill challenges. Might be designed slightly differently but not using brand-new mechanics.
Ideas like third edition swashbuckler should be done as themes or powers. we have enough classes for now. let’s focus on support.
No new races in elemental book because they don’t want to proliferate races.
Republishing old editions? cant say anything yet, but there are plans.
They are struggling with how to price pdfs.
More support planned for dnd for kids.
Madness at Gardmore Abbey will have some randomness: which encounter is influenced by which cards. which patron is evil.
eberron themes are planned. on Mearl’s to-do list is to email Keith Baker about it.
D&D atari license? They are working on more games but can’t talk about it.
James Wyatt said that they had offered a year access to ten Eberron third edition books for ten bucks. Bart Carroll remided him that that was for next year and it hadn’t been announced yet.
FINAL ANNOUNCEMENT
Miniatures line redesigned. Turns out that roleplaying gamers don’t like randomized miniatures. (applause) Product coming out next year: noncollectible minis in themed sets.
Creating a new minis boardgame that uses warbands based on these new minis sets. Tactical diceless game that uses action cards. Some luck based on what cards you draw. Uses dungeon tiles that interlock with puzzle edges. 8 by 8 tiles. Minis sets will come with their own action cards. some new sculpts, some old.
There will be a public open playtest of the minis rules, well in advance, where you can print out cards and try out the game. You don’t have to be a ddi subscriber to do the free playtest. From now on if we try something new we want to start trying open playtests.
Jason from the Gygax Memorial Fund website and I saw some pretty sweet costumes, but this guy’s Gygax-themed tattoo was the most hardcore. The only cost was the psychic toll of being in the presence of so much badassery.
