Dungeons & Dragons not too long ago held a D&D Direct. The occasion was an opportunity for the corporate to share information about new objects coming from the franchise and there was lots. I’ve included the whole video beneath and might be doing my finest to summarize it earlier than then. What had been your takeaways from the occasion and what has you essentially the most excited?
First, it was introduced that Minecraft is getting new D&D DLC. This will enable Minecraft gamers to decide on a category like barbarian and wizard and then discover 5 places from the Forgotten Realms like Icewind Dale and Candlekeep. There, they’ll find a way tofight basic monsters and even go on an unique journey which “allows players to customize their characters’ stats and roll 20-sided dice to determine how to proceed in fully-voiced dialogue.” In quick, it feels like they’re working to make D&D inside of Minecraft.
Continuing with video video games, the favored MMO Neverwinter has a brand new enlargement. R.A. Salvatore has created the enlargement titled Menzoberranzan which is the twenty fifth Neverwinter enlargement. You can get pleasure from the brand new enlargement which brings the harmful metropolis to the sport on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox (affiliate hyperlink) now.
Moving into bodily merchandise, the workforce teased some new toys from Hasbro, their mother or father firm, that will be talked about through the Hasbro Pulse Fanstream. WizKids additionally shared some new objects just like the 20” mimic and 11” child owlbear figures.
The present additionally included some particulars about Joe Manganiello’s upcoming documentary about D&D set to launch in 2024 to rejoice 50 years of the sport. Some extra teases for upcoming merchandise had been dropped by Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford as effectively. Magic: The Gathering can also be getting a D&D: Honor Among Thieves Secret Lair drop with six playing cards primarily based on characters from the movie. Those pre-orders are dwell now. Finally, there was the factor that was most enjoyable for me and many others: a glance at the upcoming D&D digital tabletop.
This was very thrilling. We’ve recognized for a bit that an official VTT was on its manner and it was good to see some pre-alpha footage. It was additionally good to listen to {that a} playtest is at present deliberate for later this 12 months. That might be out there by way of D&D Beyond. The VTT appears to be like nice general and in case you already use D&D Beyond, it sounds prefer it’s going to be completely incredible. I do take problem with a quantity of issues not directly associated to this VTT although.
First, Kale Stutzman was exhibiting the brand new VTT off to us and the hosts of the D&D Direct and that wasn’t an issue, however he did say one thing that rubbed me the fallacious manner. He talked about there are tons of methods to play D&D on-line, however then implied that these methods don’t hit three key areas: enjoyable, comfort, and authenticity. The implication is that this new VTT is the one method to have enjoyable, handy, and genuine D&D, regardless of the heck meaning. You can have enjoyable D&D on-line with any software and VTT actually. Convenience is a matter of perspective and might be completely different for each desk. What the heck is “authenticity” alleged to imply? Is it solely genuine if I take advantage of the official D&D minis? Or perhaps I’ve to make use of the official D&D adventures and campaigns to be genuine. That line is such advertising and marketing bullcrap, I abhor it!
My second problem is said to all of the cool options it presents. The new VTT will function awesome-looking miniatures, animations for issues like a creature coming out of the bottom, built-in cube, and so forth. This is all cool. However, again when D&D was in scorching water for the OGL debacle, they tried making a VTT coverage that corporations must comply with that will not enable them to make use of animations and different varied issues. The thought was that these animations and options would make the VTT an excessive amount of like a online game and D&D needed to guarantee that there was a distinction. Thankfully, they walked that again, however this footage additionally exposes the truth that their protection was fully bogus. The cause why they needed to say no animations and such was as a result of they needed to be the one ones that did it. The pre-alpha footage appears to be like extra like a online game than some other VTT I’ve seen. You roll the cube and you then see floating harm numbers and the like. There are all types of deep and intentional animations. It’s cool, however actually paints a foul image for D&D but once more for my part. From their now canceled VTT coverage:
What isn’t permitted are options that don’t replicate your eating room desk storytelling. If you exchange your creativeness with an animation of the Magic Missile streaking throughout the board to strike your goal, or your VTT integrates our content material into an NFT, that’s not the tabletop expertise. That’s extra like a online game.
So the VTT is a online game?
What did you suppose of the D&D Direct?
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