News from Gencon!
Hello, all!
I’d like to put out a quick new roundup from GenCon and the internet. Many people save their big announcements for this time of year. Even when they aren’t making the announcement at GenCon, they make their big announcements right around the same time. If you have a lot of news, people are more likely to stop by your booth to talk.
This isn’t a comprehensive news roundup, but these are the announcements that are most near and dear to my heart.
Brennan Lee Mulligan Returns to Critical Roll (Or Matt Mercer Quits!!!!!)
If you’ve been to YouTube, you’ve probably seen the clickbait headlines. “Matt Mercer is DONE.” “No More! --Matt Mercer...”
And the like.
But the real headline here isn’t just provocatively saying that Matt Mercer finally gets to play in a full campaign on CR (Forever DM no more...). The real headline is that my favorite DM, Brennan Lee Mulligan, is taking time away from his passion of making custom shoes for American Girl Dolls, and has agreed to run Season 4 of Critical Role.
Here’s coverage of the news by Bob the World Builder.
I, for one, am delighted. The original Crown of Candy on Dimension 20 is the single greatest actual play campaign ever run. I loved Brennan’s short Exandria stuff.
I look forward to him running a CR campaign where destroying a city isn’t a requirement.
This time, he gets to do it for fun.
Daggerheart
Daggerheart is everywhere right now. People love it. People are up in arms about its license. People are ecstatic. They are raging.
But mostly, they like the game itself.
I haven’t decided if my group will like it. It’s very narrative-driven, and I have a lot of roleplayers, but mechanics that require a lot of improv give them fatigue. We had this problem when we played FFG’s Star Wars. It can be hard to come up with an interesting narrative twist on most of the rolls you make in the game.
But we’ll see. I look forward to seeing Brennan run it in the AP. Maybe that will help me and my group decide. I know at least one DM who intends to ignore the narrative improv aspect of the dice system. That, too, might be a good solution.
Here’s Bob the World Builder (again) on his take on Daggerheart.
Cyberpunk Red
I am an OG Cyberpunk player, dating back to the 2013 days (that’s the year of the setting; it was released in the 80s, for those who don’t know). Tomorrow I get to play a netrunner again at a tabletop game for the first time in...40 years, maybe? Anyway, Cyberpunk Red has announced some upcoming books. A Single Player Mode book, allowing us to play CPR solo. A Night City sourcebook for 2045, and a 2077 campaign book for those who’d rather play in the era of the Project CD Red computer game.
All very exciting news! Here’s the announcement.
Enter the Big Dog
We had plenty of announcements from the D&D event at GenCon. The most reassuring statements have come from Dan Ayoub, the new head of the D&D franchise.
For more on this item, see the article on DNDBeyond.
The Head of the Franchise
Dan is still working to rebuild trust with the community after the OGL debacle, and he should. We, as a community, benefited from the fallout when WotC put the SRD into the Creative Commons, but there are still plenty of hard feelings. Dan is doing a great job of stopping the buck right where the buck is meant to stop. His theme is centered on building with the community, rather than for it.
Updates to the SRD
They announced that they will be updating the SRD on a rolling basis and adding monsters, options, and other content. This is excellent news. The last two SRDs were rarely updated (I can’t remember if the first one was ever updated. We can’t directly use the Artificer, and although they are not the most natural fit for Echoes, anyone who says gnomish Artificers don’t belong in the setting is a goddamn liar.
The new take on the SRD, along with its CC license, has been great. If you’re still using the OGL at this point, it’s just because you like a whole lot of legal text on the last page of your book. The Creative Commons provides a more reasonable framework. For instance, in our first Adventure Seed, A Knife in the Dark, there were several points where things could break into a chase. In the new 5e-specific version I just released, I’m able to footnote the chase rules from the DM’s Guide, instead of being oblique about them. Previously, we weren’t allowed to mention anything not in the SRD, even to indicate compatibility. That’s why Aasimar haven’t been mentioned in Echoes before now, even though they are quite the elephant in that room.
Maps for Everyone!
However, the best news is that they are making Maps free for all on September 16th. For those who don’t know, Maps is the 2D VTT for DNDBeyond (as opposed to their 3D VTT). Right now, if you own the DMG on DNDBeyond, you can’t use the included maps inside the Maps program unless you have a Master Tier subscription. As of September 16th, you’ll be able to use Maps with any book you’ve purchased digitally on DNDBeyond. I get to play (as opposed to DM) D&D again for the first time in a while when Heroes of the Borderlands comes out. Now I know that we can play it on Maps if the GM doesn’t want to run it on Foundry. (An inexplicable decision, of course, but more options are still more options.)
The Table
Wizards announced a new initiative called The Table. The Table will be an advisory group of people, like content creators or 3rd party publishers. The members of the table will rotate out over time. We don’t have a lot of details, but I believe they will use this to gauge community opinion, gather trusted insights from people on the ground, and the like. I know as a publisher, it’s very easy to get blinders. You are so caught up in your issues that you often miss what’s happening in the marketplace around you.
The Table would have told them the OGL fiasco was a bad idea. That came from Hasbro, so it might not help, but at least we would have had people in contact with them when they went radio silent on the matter for two weeks.
Spotlighting 3rd Party Content
You might have noticed more third-party content appearing on DNDBeyond. Part of that is the company being more open to bringing in 3rd parties who aren’t Darrington Press. But now they intend to branch out. For instance, Nerd Emersion, a YouTube content creator, has done several videos on Maps at this point. Recently, WotC reached out and asked if they could use clips from his videos in some of their promotional materials. Win/Win.
Return of Drow
Drow statblocks are returning to 2024 in the upcoming Forgotten Realms books. As a designer, I understand why they wouldn’t want stat blocks of PC species. As a DM who runs D&D...yay!
3 DLC, Astarion’s book of Hungers
Todd Kendrick, who was laid off from WotC recently, still gets to do YouTube interviews with the WotC staff. Again, yay. In a video he released this week, they spoke of the three DLC-style downloadable products for the new Forgotten Realms books. One of them is Astarion’s Book of Hungers, which illustrates why this new model benefits us as customers. That information would never make it into the main, published book. Imagine the reaction of most people to find a massive section on Vampires in the middle of the Forgotten Realms stuff. It would be disproportionate based on its actual relevance to the setting. People might be led to think that the Realms were primarily about vampires. Which they aren’t, of course.
But you put it in its own book and theme it around a popular Baldur’s Gate 3 character, and it comes off as what it is, an interesting set of side rules with a dash of fan service: something people might want, but nothing they need for the core Forgotten Realms experience.
Partnering with Paizo
The most significant development in the industry is the partnership between Wizards and Paizo. There is a deep rivalry between D&D players and Pathfinder players. Then, one day, we open D&D Beyond and find Abomination Vaults for sale at the top of the Marketplace. Not the Pathfinder version either, but a 5e version.
Honestly, I don’t feel like the rivalry existed between the design teams. When I backed the Kingmaker Kickstarter a few years back, I specifically bought the add-on that allowed you to play Kingmaker in 5e. I love that story, but I’d rather run it in D&D. It was clear that the Paizo people had no issue with people running their stories in 5e. But now we have proof that this sentiment runs both ways.
And that feeling of community. That feeling that this is all a collaborative effort, that’s what this whole hobby is all about. So give us your Table Advisory councils. Give us your collaborations between Critical Role and Dimension 20. Give us 3rd party spotlights. Most of all, give us collaborations between Wizards and the other large publishers out there. We don’t want division.
We want to play these games. Together.
