After last year’s Stream of Annihilation that previewed Tomb of Annihilation, it was clear that WotC has embraced streaming of live play D&D. This weekend, WotC is repeating the streaming idea with many of the same streamers as last year, and many new faces.
Streaming Streams Everywhere
There are far too many streaming games for me to watch. Many are on Pacific time, which is a big difference for Easter time, three hours. They tend to start at 7 PM my time or later, and many run 3 or 4 hour sessions. While I enjoy watching some live play, and seeing how other DMs do things, I can’t watch a lot of streaming shows. There are so many streaming shows that there are more shows than one person could watch. I know a lot of streamers, and have tried to watch all of them, just to see what they’re doing. Personally, I’d much rather play or run a game than watch a game. With “everyone” starting their own stream, since Twitch and other platforms make it so easy, there is a glut of material. Those hoping to make it big need a high quality presentation and present their story and play in a way that stands out.
WotC’s Streaming Method
What I like about WotC’s efforts using the streaming weekends to showcase their forthcoming products is that they show bits and pieces of introductory material, and how different DMs and players jump in. They also talk about related things with partners, or share the news about the upcoming book about some of the iconic art from the earliest days of D&D.
The Announcement
The new product coming in September is Dragon Heist, set in the city of Waterdeep in the Forgotten Realms. A dragon is a type of gold coin. It is a large amount of treasure that the bad guys seeking it will put to furthering their evil machinations, should they get it first.
There are four major NPCs the DM can choose to be the BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy). Players can acquire a tavern, with downtime to deal with running it, built in to the story. I missed part of the description, but it will have rules for city adventures.
They mentioned that DMs can ignore the story and just use the setting. That’s how we do it old school. Use what you want/need, toss the rest. By toss, it could mean set aside for later use.
It has a modular and flexible design so the DM can move stuff around and replace major NPCs with your own without breaking things. The city is a character. Each DM makes it their own.
OSR Sentiment
There were several times that WotC D&D designers & editors flat out said the rules are optional, and that you only need to use what works for you and your group. This hearkens back to what Gary Gygax was saying before he was focused on running a business that needed to sell rules books. With city rules and an adventure setting that is modular, plus tables to help fill in gaps/get ideas. I am interested to see what this is when it is released, as I collect ideas from many systems to help inform and flesh out what I do in my own campaign.
If you want to run a city based campaign, or like city base campaigns, this might be for you.
NOTE: This is my 700th post! Wow!
UPDATE: I missed the announcement that Dragon Heist is for levels 1-5, and a second book, Dungeon of the Mad Mage, which is a megadungeon taking players to level 20. So far, there isn’t anything about it on the WotC site. Christopher Perkins tweeted about it.
