D&D: WotC Steps Up Production, Three More Products This Year
In a new design blog, WotC talks about the production cycle for Dungeons & Dragons–and reveals that five total products are planned to release this year.
Earlier this year at the Hasbro shareholder’s meeting, Wizards of the Coast president Chris Cocks announced that the D&D production calendar would be ramping up, stating that they’d like to “increase the cadence of releases.” In a typical year we see 3 or maybe 4 major D&D releases, but that number, according to Cocks, will get bigger this year.
And in a new design blog, which launched with a look behind the scenes at D&D development by current Executive Producer of Dungeons & Dragons Ray Winninger, the news slipped out that a total of five major projects are in the works for this year, including the two releases we already know about, Candlekeep Mysteries and Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft. Let’s take a look.
via Wizards of the Coast
Here is how this year’s products break down:
Candlekeep Mysteries was conceptualized and led by Chris Perkins, an outgrowth of his work on Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus. While Chris was developing a chapter of Avernus that sends the adventurers to Candlekeep, he realized the legendary library-fortress might present an excellent organizing theme for an anthology of adventures.
Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft was the brainchild of horror afficionado Wes Schneider. This terrifying entry is set to arrive May 18, 2021.
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Later in the year, Chris will return with our big summer adventure, James Wyatt will deliver a substantially improved version of a concept that I initiated myself, and Amanda Hamon will close us out with a project that was jointly conceived by herself and several other studio members. As usual, Jeremy Crawford is working with all of our leads, overseeing mechanical content and rules development.
In addition to these five major products, look for a couple of additional surprises we’ll unveil in the months ahead.
And from the typical WotC release schedule we have a pretty good estimate of when we might be seeing some of these works. First up, there’s the big summer adventure, which will probably be announced in may and release in September.
And of late books like Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything and Eberron: Rising from the Last War have released in November, so we can expect a fourth book there. James Wyatt, it should be noted, works on both D&D and Magic and helped spearhead the Planeshift projects which ultimately resulted in Mythic Odysseys of Theros and Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica.
If we’re getting another setting book Wyatt, who contributed material for a number of D&D settings is a good fit for that, which leaves Amanda Hamon’s as yet unannounced project that will ‘close out the year’. We don’t yet know when these projects might be released, but this is the first year to be bigger than usual, so get ready for at least 25% more dungeons and/or dragons.
What books would you want to see get released for 5th Edition? Let us know in the comments.
