Wizards of the Coast have just released their first-ever Dungeons & Dragons Direct filling it with information on what fans of the popular Tabletop RPG can expect on the horizon. Not only was their discussion of the tabletop game itself, but also of tabletop games, video games, and new Miniatures and tokens for players who enjoy playing with such tools. All of these announcements come hot off the heels of the purchase of D&D Beyond, as well as successful book launches like The Wild Beyond the Witchlight and Fizban's Treasury of Dragons. Below we've run down all of the information that you'll need to stay on top of the Dungeons & Dragons news you're most interested in organized by topic, as opposed to announcement order.
Dungeons & Dragons Direct - Tabletop Game
Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel
Ajit George and Wes Schneider appeared to speak about the next adventure book releasing for Dungeons & Dragons 5e, Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel. After it's reveal last month the Co-Writers are back to talk about everything that the anthology has to offer. This book offers up a series of adventures levels 1-14 all written by authors of color who each share part of their own cultural history or experiences through these adventures. As a series of one-shots or a combined adventure DMs can drop the Radiant Citadel into any pre-written campaign where you'll be able to explore all kinds of foreign realms. In this presentation, the level 5 adventure Wages of Vide, level 14 adventure Orchids of the Invisible Mountain, and the level 4 Fiend of Hollow Mine were all highlighted.
Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel will be released on June 21st.
Spelljammer: Adventures in Space Campaign Setting
A blast from the past for some comes in the form of an announcement of the Spelljammer Campaign Setting. Last year Wizards of the Coast announced their excitement at the roadmap for Dungeons & Dragons going forward and how they were looking to introduce some returning settings. The Spelljammer setting is one first introduced in the 2nd Edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and focuses on adventures that a party might have exploring a fantasy version of space, often leaning slightly more in comedic directions. This campaign will come with three different books creating the basis of Spelljammer knowledge; The Astral Adventurer's Guide, Light of Xaryxis, and Boo's Astral Menagerie. This collection not only includes an adventure book, but also a parallel to the Players Guide and Monster Manual of the base Dungeon's & Dragons setting.
Some of the new player options within the Astral Adventurer's Guide include the following new player races:
- The Astral Elves
- Auto-Gnomes
- Hadozee (Flying Monkey Race)
- Giff (Hippo Race)
- Plasmoids (Ooze Creatures)
- The Thri-kreen (Insectoid humanoids).
Purchasing the Book Set will include the three listed books as well as a map of the main town that the Light of Xaryxis adventure will take place in, as well as a DM screen with information specific to your campaign. You'll be able to quickly lookup information suck as randomized ship cargo, and how to calculate the damage of a crash.
Talking with Chris Perkins about Spelljammer he was eager to tell us all about how excited he was for players to be getting out to the Wildspace and Astral Sea. The choice to make this set a three-book decision was a choice to allow DMs to be able to refer to not only the adventure in the book in front of them but also have stat blocks open in a separate book. The actual ship, the Spelljammer, isn't going to be brought into this series of books but Perkins is excited to maybe explore that further in the future. For those fans of the original Spelljammer mechanics, such as air envelopes, a lot o those concepts still exist and are returning. Perkins noted that in earlier products, like Dungeon of the Mad Mage, you can find a Spelljamming ship, that you can find. There have been these teases of Spelljammer for many years but it's only been gotten to now because there were other things that they wanted to get done first.
Spelljammer: Adventures in Space will be releasing August 16th, 2022 for $50 via D&DBeyond or at your local game store. For those who can't wait until August, there will be a free prequel adventure called Spelljammer Academy released in July. Ten monsters from Spelljammer will also be available through Volume 1 of the Monstrous Compendium. It will be free for all with a Wizards or D&D Beyond account.
D&D Starter Set - Dragons of Stormwreck Isle
For new players looking for a fresh way to get into Dungeons & Dragons a new Starter Set was announced called Dragons of Stormwreck Isle. Included in this bundle aspiring new DMs will find a condensed ruleset, blank and pre-made character sheets for 2-6 players, a set of dice, and a level 1-5 adventure book. Much like the previous Starter Kit and Essentials Kit this is a Dungeons & Dragons campaign in a box that players can immediately get started with.
Talking with Shelly Mazzanoble and Natalie Egan after the event they were able to confirm that the characters on the box are references to the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. This adventure is being specifically designed to help new players and DMs learn the ropes. Working from feedback on the previous Starter Kit WOTC have also addressed concerns with how complicated the character sheets were working within the new set to create an easier to understand character sheet.
Dragonlance Campaign Setting Tease
One of the biggest announcements for the stream is the tease of the Dragonlance setting finally being visited as part of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. This campaign setting first appeared in 1982 and might almost be better known nowadays for the series of novels that take place in this setting. Aside from a teaser trailer very little is revealed about Dragonlance except for the name of the first Adventure Book, Dragonlance Shadow of the Dragon Queen, and that it's releasing in Late 2022. Unfortunately, these teases don't even come with book art.
Talking with Ray Winninger after the event he explained that this new adventure will take place within the world of Dragonlance that everyone loves, but won't get in the way of any of it. If you're a fan of those books too then you might run into some familiar faces. Dragonlance will consist of a traditional Adventure book as well as the Battle Game that will allow you to play out large military battles in the world of Krynn. You can also purchase these two products together as a bundle. You can play the campaign wholly on its own, but they're being designed in such a way that you can play the two together. Instead of letting the military battle happen on its own, you can import your characters to the board game to play out those epic battles together.
One of the player races that will be added with the Dragonlance setting are the Kender. This race is currently available for players to look into with the Kender Unearthed Arcana. For the eagled eyed viewers Lord Soth can also be seen in this reveal trailer.
Multi-language Support
Dungeons & Dragons also announced that a number of their books will be released in a number of different languages. These books will be released in French, Italian, German, and Spanish. The following books are already on the way:
- Tasha's Cauldron of Everything - July 12th
- Monsters of the Multiverse - September 13th
- New Starter Set - October 4th
- Curse of Strahd - Oct 25th
Dungeons & Dragons Direct - Board Games
Dungeons & Dragons Onslaught
Wizkids showed off a new Dungeons & Dragons tactical skirmish miniatures game, Onslaught. This trailer shows off characters from the Harpers and the Zhentarim factions, as well as a number of monsters including trolls, gnolls, and a mighty dragon. Preorders for Dungeons & Dragons Onslaught are now available, but no release date was listed.
Dragonlance Warriors of Krynn
Accompanying the tease of the Dragonlance Adventure Book and the return to Krynn is the accompaniment of the Dragonlance Warriors of Krynn Battle Game. Aside from the Late 2022 release window nothing further was divulged about this upcoming tabletop game.
This is a cooperative game where the players are against the system. This will allow for a large-scale battle. There will be a number of scenarios included in the box but there's also the freedom for players to create their own scenarios and participate in battles of their own creation. This box is also designed to work in conjunction with the campaign, this will mean at certain points players will be able to import their characters into the board game and play out those large scale battles. The DM will be able to play an NPC, but the DM can also have the additional role of being able to narrate the board game to add the narrative level like that of their normal DM role. There will be cards that direct how the battle will go, but then the DM can expand on why that happens.
Dungeons & Dragons Direct - Video Games
Baldur's Gate 3 - Development Update
A brief video was shown from Larian Studios on the progress of Baldur's Gate 3 including footage of combat and exploration, as well as impressive side by side comparisons showing off a number of visual upgrades between the Update 6 and Update 7 of the currently available Early Access edition of Baldur's Gate. No further information was released on when the game will get its full release, but that it will occur at some time during 2023.
Neverwinter - Dragonlance Update
Fans of popular MMO Neverwinter can also be excited about dragon-related content coming to their game with the Dragonlance update released later this year. The trailer shows off a series of dragons describing their various motivations and reason to be raging. Players will be able to take on the mantle of Dragonslayer when the expansion releases in June 2022.
Dungeons & Dragons Direct - Miniatures and Tokens
Wizkids Icons of the Realms: Spelljammer
For those interested in high-quality pre-painted miniatures Wizkids is releasing a new entry in their Icons of the Realms series to coincide with the upcoming release of Spelljammer: Adventures in Space. These minis will cover a variety of playable races, NPCs encountered through the Spelljammer Adventure Book, monsters from Wildspace, and will even include a gargantuan model of an Astral Dreadnought.
Not only will these minis be useful for combat between your characters but will also include models of the different ships you can obtain allowing you to take on giant monsters to scale with your spaceship. These can be pre-ordered now from dndmini.com.
If you want to see what kind of quality you can expect from the Wizkids Icons of the Realms set then check out our review of the Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft Collector's Edition.
Dungeons & Dragons Creatures and Terrain Campaign Cases
If you're looking for a more utility approach to adding a physical element to your home game then the new Dungeons & Dragons Campaign Cases are likely what you're looking for. Wizards of the Coast is releasing two boxes, one for Creatures and another for Terrain pieces. These compact boxes are meant to help players create visually stimulating scenes on the table in front of their players.
Inside the Creatures Campaign Case players will find 64 differently sized creature tokens ranging from tiny to large. These flat-packed tokens can have any of the 159 different replaceable creature illustrations placed upon them to immediately become monsters for your party to face off against. Accompanying these stickers are also a series of numbers and stars to help you keep track of any boss creatures, or who should be taking what damage. The best part about these illustrations is that when combat is over you're able to peel them back off the token and put them back onto the sheet where they came from.
The Terrain Campaign Case has a set of jigsaw-like double-sided terrain pieces. Flip them over to experience grasslands or dungeon floors. Just like the Creature Campaign Case the Terrain box will also come with sheets of reusable terrain to help illustrate what's going on during combat. You can set up campfires, show cracks in the ground, or use it to place furniture around the room for your party to interact with.
The Dungeons & Dragons Creatures and Terrain Campaign Cases will be available on July 19th. No price was announced.
Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Thieves - The movie
Producers for the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons movie appeared briefly to announce their movie's full title, Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Thieves. While no footage was shown of the movie they did announce that filming had wrapped and that the movie would be released on the 3rd of March 2023.
In a little over 30 minutes, Wizards of the Coast has managed to announce multiple Adventure Books across two new settings, multiple board games, updates on video games, and even new tools to allow players new and old alike to upgrade their game. For D&D fans there's certainly enough content coming down the pipeline.
