The Dungeons & Dragons Quarantine Boom

I got an email from the D&D P.R. people hyping up the releases for the 2020 holiday season. I was looking through it, and had a lot of thoughts that felt blog-worthy. I decided to ust go ahead and write whatever came to mind - my rambling eventually coalesces into thoughts on the state of D&D as we know it, right now.

Just to be clear, I make money off of the amazon and DMs Guild referral links in these blogs.

Preare yourself. There is a LOT of D&D stuff coming out in the next few months. This is just a sample.

Chardalyn Dragon Mini

This miniature will be useful for when you run chapter 4 of Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden. Now that I've written the guide to that adventure, chapter 4 is the thing that sticks out in my mind the most. Handling the journey back to Ten-Towns is, to me, the potentially hardest thing to do in that whole book.

James Haeck wrote a really great article on handling chapter 4 on the D&D Beyond site.

This mini is $80. That's a lot of money to me. I feel like they should have gimmicked it up a bit, maybe have the interior light up to simulate the internal glow.

Also, one thing I didn't mention in my review of Rime is the art from the book. There are a number of images of the chardalyn dragon in Rime of the Frostmaiden. Check this one out:

I feel like none of the artists quite nailed the "grill" of the mouth of the dragon. It looks a little off in every image. I think it might have been a mistake to have the grill shaped like a smiling face. It's a bummer because the idea is very cool.

Curse of Strahd Revamped

They are releasing a deluxe version of Curse of Strahd. Check out that box. It's a coffin! And Strahd is lying in it.

It comes with a couple of booklets:

A 224-page perfect-bound adventure for characters of levels 1–10.
A 20-page booklet of new monsters that appear in the adventure.
An 8-page Tarokka Deck booklet.

This is interesting to me. Some of you younger fans may not be aware that in 4th edition, many of the adventures came in booklet form. There was one booklet for encounters, and the other booklet contained the adventure.

It does seem somewhat handy to have all the monster stats in an easily-accessible side book, but I assume you'll still need to refer to the Monster Manual as well.

Are Books Obsolete? I am sort of wondering if we are starting to come to a point where books become obsolete. Will everything be digital? A lot of problems would be solved if, in an adventure pdf, you could just click on a link in the text to get all the stat stuff you need.

I would really love for there to come a day when I never have to stop what I'm doing to find ballista stats, green slime effects, madness charts, or poison in the DMG.

Also included in the box:

Foil-stamped tarokka deck in a tuck box.
12 postcards to invite friends to play.
A DM Screen.
Poster Map.

Possible Adjustments: It says "revamped," so I assume they tweaked some of the adventure content? I haven't really looked at the original Curse of Strahd book in a long time, but the thing I had the most trouble with in that adventure was the elevator in Castle Ravenloft. I just didn't understand it.

I also felt like Vallaki was really cool, but could use some smoothing over. There was a lot going on in that town, and I had a hard time keeping it all straight.

The other thing that pops out in my mind is that the Strahd zombies are a really cool monster, and I feel like they don't get used enough.

The Changing Game: Curse of Strahd seems to be the most popular adventure for 5e. It makes me think a little bit about where we are in D&D right now.

I've seen a number of articles online talking about how D&D is booming right now in part due to the pandemic. Quarantined people are playing D&D online. Even the Washington Post wrote about it.

D&D as an Acting Exercise: I have sensed a bit of a divide growing in the community. There has always been the "roleplaying vs. roll-playing" issue with the game, and with the increasing involvement of Hollywood celebrities, WWE wrestlers, and voice actors, there seems to be a bit of a shift toward blending "acting improv" into D&D.

Apparently, some newer players go so far as to get upset when they start playing D&D, only to find that their DM can't do voices and set up scenes like Matt Mercer does.

I've always kind of straddled the line when it comes to this issue. I enjoy combat, as long as it is relevant and not "filler" (and, IMO, it often is). I also enjoy roleplaying, but not to the point where I want to play out going to shops in town or spending an hour of precious table time interacting with my fellow party members in a bar.

What do New Players Want? Honestly, I think the movie that best encapsulates what modern D&D should be is Guardians of the Galaxy. That movie was about a party of adventurers who slowly grew to care about each other and form a unit. The interaction between them was meaningful and felt right. Everybody got a chance to shine and in the end they were brave and risked their lives to save everyone.

When I was reading Rime of the Frostmaiden, I could sort of feel the very beginnings of a shift away from combat as the end-all, be-all of D&D adventures. One of the two intro adventures, the one with the chwingas, is much more light-hearted and does not necessarily involve combat.

Leaving Dungeons Behind: I think this is a good thing and the right direction to go in. Personally, my experience with Dungeon of the Mad Mage made it very clear that the day of the mega-dungeon is over. Going through dozens or even hundreds of irrelevant side rooms and trying to figure out how to run opposing factions occupying a small space is just not how I want to spend my time.

The one thing that makes me sort of panicky is this: If we shift to adventures that don't focus so much on combat, how am I going to fill a session?

In 4th edition, things were so easy. I had a 5 hour session, which means that if we hustle, we should be able to get through 5 encounters. I could read the adventure in 20 minutes and boom, let's go.

The drawback to that, obviously, is that the characters didn't have a whole lot of choice and the encounters felt tedious at times. Shifting to a character-driven approach is liberating, but also terrifying for me as a DM. I don't want the session to suck. The burden is on me to be able to roll with what the group is doing and to chase the fun along with them.

Rules Are Still Important: That said, we still need rules. I generally don't like rules in D&D, because I find it annoying to have to learn all this stuff. I just want to play, not do homework.

But! Rules can make things better. If you can't handle a situation in the game in a way that feels substantial, fair, and exciting, then the game suffers.

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything

This is the alternate cover, which is pretty cool. From what I understand, this book will have:

Subclasses
Feats
Group Patrons, such as an ancient dragon
Magic Tattoos!
Puzzles
Spells & Artifacts
Sidekicks
Natural Hazards

I have been going through the Unearthed Arcana playtest material for this book (which can be found in Dragon+ and other places).

Subclasses: The subclasses I saw were great. I always like it best when the very idea of the subclass, rather than the abilities, is exciting. Rogues who steal knowledge from the dead and snatch soul trinkets, genie-bound warlocks who can actually live in their own genie lamp... that's really great stuff, in my opinion.

Group Patrons: This sounds like a very cool idea. Especially if they use known NPCs. The heroes could work for Mordenkainen, traveling from place to place in his magic Tower of Urm. I would definitely use Vorkhesis, son of the Raven Queen, sending the heroes on missions to recover lost or stolen souls.

Magic Tattoos: I love magic tattoos. Love them. Always have! The ones that I saw in the playtest did all sorts of stuff, but the spell-storing tattoos are my favorite. It's just so handy. I love the idea that the tattoo vanishes when you use the spell, and comes back when you take a long rest.

Sidekicks: This one I'm not so sure about. Do we need rules for this? I've never had any trouble handling NPC allies that travel with the group (and I've used tons of them). My Dungeon Academy group has:

A flesh golem
A blink dog
A rabbit from Barovia
Strahd (long story)
An entire crew of a Spelljammer

Not an issue! Just write the stats down on a piece of paper and keep it nearby. The stats don't even come up all that much.

Dungeon Master's Screen: Wilderness Kit

This little set comes with:

DM Screen: "Includes tables for weather, foraging, navigation, food and water needs, ship speeds, and more."
Dry-erase hex map.
Laminated "Actions in Combat" sheet for new players to reference.
Illustrated punch-out cards of all 14 conditions.
9 cards to help track initiative.
4 cards featuring the rules for exhaustion and extreme weather conditions.

My first reaction to this is that this is one DM Screen too many. I mean... seriously. But then, when I read what this comes with, I got excited. This is a product to give to a young person who wants to run their school friends through a campaign.

The Golden Time: I will always remember the "golden time" of D&D when I was a kid, where you're running your first games, nobody really knows the rules, and everything is exciting. I remember one summer day when I had finished running my planned adventure, but the group wanted to keep playing, so I sat down for 20 minutes and drew an utterly ridiculous dungeon on a piece of paper and ran my friends through it.

This dungeon included a "star dragon" AND a "death dragon," both of which I pulled out of my butt.

On another day, the group decided to build a castle with their massive pile of loot. Everybody sat down and drew out their section of the castle, placing all of their treasure and how they would protect it. They called it "Moonstone Keep" and it has been the absolute center of all my campaigns since then.

Adventure: When I look at this product and what comes with it, I picture a bunch of middle school kids running characters who wander the forest in search of adventure, referring to their laminated rules sheet, and carefully mapping out their journey on the dry-erase hex map. They'll be getting into shenanigans, creating in-jokes, and laughing their asses off.

This is why I always felt lucky to have discovered D&D when I was young. I'd look at my peers and wonder, "What do they even do for fun?" Playing D&D gives you a tight-knit group of friends. The other kids at school looked sort of lost to me - people without a passion - while my friends and I were constantly ablaze with ideas. We couldn't wait for the weekend so that we could have sleepovers and play for two days straight.

Dungeons & Dragons D20 Color Changing Light

This email is huge. It just keeps going and going. I came upon a photo of a thing. Look: