Some of your friends at GamerFront attended the first ever Dungeons & Dragons Keynote Address at Gen Con in Indianapolis last night and found some interesting facts about the future of the worlds greatest game. The keynote lasted roughly an hour but helped to clear up the direction Wizards of the Coast is taking to evolve the game of D&D.
First and foremost is the news that has been in rumor for roughly six months or so now that is the reprinting of the previous editions of the game. Sorry guys but they won’t be printing all of the editions, you can however, acquire them in electronic format, regardless of edition. You heard right. Every edition. So no matter what form of the game you play, you can get your hands on at least a digital copy of even the original Player’s Handbook in high quality pdf. And while this seems to imply that Wizards is looking to the past, it is in all reality the contrary.
For those of you that have grown with the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, you will be pleased (or terrified) to know that there is another major event on the horizon to change the face of the realms forever. And as another major change, two adventures set in the realms are going to be released and WotC is going to collect the results of player’s playthroughs of these campaigns and the aggregate results will become canonical in the Forgotten Realms universe allowing, for the first time, the players to be in control of the world of the realms. The major change that is going to be uncontrollable however is going to be revealed in the new six-book Forgotten Realms novel series “The Sundering.” The series has been written in collaboration by the biggest names in the canon of Dungeons and Dragons, including the likes of Ed Greenwood and R.A. Salvadore who are writing two of the novels that will make up the series.
As many of you know, D&D Next has been in open playtest for a few months now. For the last few months, only the four classic classes have been available for play. During the speech it was revealed that two new classes will be available as of August 18th, i.e. today. The sorcerer and warlock will be added to the list of playable classes as of today.
Anyone have any issues with this new approach of “For the Gamers, By the Gamers?”, because I certainly don’t?