After months of vagaries, tabletop gaming giant Wizards of the Coast has announced a veritable hoard of new releases for the coming year – chief among them the much-anticipated Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition launch products!
The D&D 5th deluge begins with the July 15th release of the Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set, at $19.99 and complete with a six-dice set, a 64-page rule-book detailing the basics of the new 5th Edition rule-set, a short adventure and six pre-generated characters. The starter set isn’t likely to set too many hearts of fire, but it will be the first chance for those desperate to wrap their heads around just what did and did not make it out of last year’s play-test.
Roughly a month later – August 14, 2014 – Wizards and digital partner Perfect World Entertainment will release a new module for Free-To-Play MMO hit Neverwinter entitled Tyranny of Dragons. This new module will coincide with a massive patch to Neverwinter, and dove-tail the end of the Sundering event in with the new edition content.
August 19 will see the co-terminal launch of the first of the essential handbooks – The Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Player’s Guide – as well as the first official adventure – The Hoard of the Dragon Queen. The two will release at $49.99 and $29.95 respectively, and will provide the first detailed impression of what the D&D 5th experience will hold for the Wizard faithful.
Over the course of the next several months, Wizards of the Coast will release The Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Monster Manual – $49.99 – 9.30.2014, The Rise of Tiamat – $29.95 – 10.21.2014, and The Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide – $49.99 – 11.18.2014. The staggered launch is somewhat against the form of previous D&D releases, but is intended to allow the creative staff to focus on one product at a time and therefore increase the overall quality of the works. Alongside the major releases will be a number of Icons of the Realms starter and booster kits – new miniatures handled by the WizKid division of WoTC focusing on both hero, enemy and most interestingly the movers and shakers of the venerable Forgotten Realms campaign setting.
Obviously this is exciting news for fans of tabletop RPGs, but one of the most interesting wrinkles of this announcement is that it seems that Wizards of the Coast has selected the Forgotten Realms campaign setting as its flagship campaign setting for D&D 5th. This move is sure to please long-term fans of the campaign setting and the extended media universe, but may come as something of a surprise to the Greyhawk and Dragonlance faithful. The motivation for the choice is most likely that the Forgotten Realms is the setting with the greatest possible audience and market penetration. From Salvatore’s ubiquitous Drizzt Do’Urden novels to Ed Greenwood manifold Elminster books to gaming giants like Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter and everything in between, the Forgotten Realms is the largest, most developed, deepest, broadest, and most marketable setting.
Interestingly, most of the major products are already available for pre-order on Amazon at a discounted rate. The author of this article does not posses this information because he has already paid in full within seconds of obtaining this information. The author will also not answer any follow up questions to the previous sentence.