D&D Direct Shares Lots of Plans and First Look at Official VTT
Dungeons & Dragons recently held a D&D Direct. The event was a chance for the company to share news about new items coming from the franchise and there was a lot. I’ve included the entire video below and will be doing my best to summarize it before then. What were your takeaways from the event and what has you the most excited?
First, it was announced that Minecraft is getting new D&D DLC. This will allow Minecraft players to choose a class like barbarian and wizard and then explore five locations from the Forgotten Realms like Icewind Dale and Candlekeep. There, they’ll be able tofight classic monsters and even go on an original adventure which “allows players to customize their characters’ stats and roll 20-sided dice to determine how to proceed in fully-voiced dialogue.” In short, it sounds like they are working to make D&D inside of Minecraft.
Continuing with video games, the popular MMO Neverwinter has a new expansion. R.A. Salvatore has created the expansion titled Menzoberranzan which is the 25th Neverwinter expansion. You can enjoy the new expansion which brings the dangerous city to the game on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox (affiliate link) now.
Moving into physical products, the team teased some new toys from Hasbro, their parent company, that would be talked about during the Hasbro Pulse Fanstream. WizKids also shared some new items like the 20” mimic and 11” baby owlbear figures.
The show also included some details about Joe Manganiello’s upcoming documentary about D&D set to release in 2024 to celebrate 50 years of the game. Some additional teases for upcoming products were dropped by Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford as well. Magic: The Gathering is also getting a D&D: Honor Among Thieves Secret Lair drop with six cards based on characters from the film. Those pre-orders are live now. Finally, there was the thing that was most exciting for me and many others: a look at the upcoming D&D virtual tabletop.
This was very exciting. We’ve known for a bit that an official VTT was on its way and it was nice to see some pre-alpha footage. It was also nice to hear that a playtest is currently planned for later this year. That will be available via D&D Beyond. The VTT looks great overall and if you already use D&D Beyond, it sounds like it’s going to be absolutely fantastic. I do take issue with a number of things indirectly related to this VTT though.
First, Kale Stutzman was showing the new VTT off to us and the hosts of the D&D Direct and that wasn’t a problem, but he did say something that rubbed me the wrong way. He mentioned there are lots of ways to play D&D online, but then implied that those ways don’t hit three key areas: fun, convenience, and authenticity. The implication is that this new VTT is the only way to have fun, convenient, and authentic D&D, whatever the heck that means. You can have fun D&D online with any tool and VTT really. Convenience is a matter of perspective and will be different for every table. What the heck is “authenticity” supposed to mean? Is it only authentic if I use the official D&D minis? Or maybe I have to use the official D&D adventures and campaigns to be authentic. That line is such marketing bullcrap, I abhor it!
My second issue is related to all the cool features it presents. The new VTT will feature awesome-looking miniatures, animations for things like a creature popping out of the ground, integrated dice, etc. This is all cool. However, back when D&D was in hot water for the OGL debacle, they tried making a VTT policy that companies would have to agree to that would not allow them to use animations and other various things. The idea was that those animations and features would make the VTT too much like a video game and D&D wanted to make sure that there was a distinction. Thankfully, they walked that back, but this footage also exposes the fact that their defense was completely bogus. The reason why they wanted to say no animations and such was because they wanted to be the only ones that did it. The pre-alpha footage looks more like a video game than any other VTT I’ve seen. You roll the dice and then you see floating damage numbers and the like. There are all kinds of deep and intentional animations. It’s cool, but really paints a bad picture for D&D yet again in my opinion. From their now canceled VTT policy:
What isn’t permitted are features that don’t replicate your dining room table storytelling. If you replace your imagination with an animation of the Magic Missile streaking across the board to strike your target, or your VTT integrates our content into an NFT, that’s not the tabletop experience. That’s more like a video game.
So the VTT is a video game?
What did you think of the D&D Direct?