First, thanks to +Jason Paul McCartan for pointing this out.
Legacy of the Crystal Shard: Sundering Adventure 2 (D&D Adventure) [Hardcover] is releasing on October 15th, 2013. Jason also has info that Murder in Baldur's Gate: Sundering Adventure 1 (D&D Adventure) [Hardcover] is planned for August 2013. Still, if we are getting new adventures, you can bet a bucket of dice we are getting a new edition of the game.
It would make sense.
D&D Next has been in the works for about 2 years now, was announced a year ago to the public and went into Beta shortly thereafter.
Gen Con 2013 release looks good, and with the good will and profits from the release of legacy editions of D&D on the OneBookShelf series of webstore in PDF, I expect this will be a very strong year for WotC.
Next might not be my game to play, but I suspect it will do better overall than 4e did.
Of course, time will tell.
Market Making
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*Im having a busy December in meatspace so slowing down writing - I war 2
weeks ahead so merry xmas in advance new year...
57 minutes ago
" if we are getting new adventures, you can bet s bucket of dice we are getting a new edition of the game."
ReplyDeletePossibly - but I would not put it past them to make it generic or multi-system; they could publish it as generic with a draft Next download of stats, for instance.
I'm not planning to play it either way, but it would be good to know soon as it may affect plans for my bit of the London D&D Meetup, especially the Beginner Tuesdays I started recently - I run 4e or possibly Pathfinder Beginner Box, with newbie players it will matter at what point 4e is no longer the current edition.
Although I suppose I could run Moldvay Basic or something completely different. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the spoiler info, that's some tasty speculation. I'd like to see more about the proposed NEXT basic set get discussed throughout the spring, but that would make for a fun GenCon seeing NEXT get released and premiered, especially if it continues to tack along an old-school friendly course. When is it too early to ask if there will be an open-game license? :P
ReplyDeleteThat is an interesting and likely hypothesis given that the second book is written by WotC staff. However, one of the WotC events about creating D&D Next at GenCon 2012 had a series of novels called the sundering which would be about how FR got back from a 4E rules controlled universe to a world where Next's rules influence what people can do. That set of novels would be called The Sundering.
ReplyDeleteIf it's a GenCon release, then it'll be going to print in a very short time - assuming a simultaneous launch of all three core books.
ReplyDeleteThis means no new playtest packets (other than as possible smokescreens), and no more surveys.
It might be something like the 1st 4e release, which was The Keep on the Shadowfell, which had quick-start 4e rules, and was release before the core books. Probably will have the "basic" rules that Mearls mentioned. And the core books will probably be the "Standard" rules.
ReplyDeleteToo soon, if you ask me.
Erik, I covered this a while back. The first adventure in question is also as city book and is "all editions" which I suppose will mean limited stats. At the time I was covering it, the working title that WOTC had was "Storm Over Baldur's Gate."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.gamersandgrognards.blogspot.com/2012/11/storm-over-baldurs-gate-d-next-and-osr.html
Didn't Wizards of the Coast already state that the full Next release would be in 2014 in order to coincide with the 40th anniversary?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.howlingtower.com/2013/01/wending-my-way-back-home.html has some details on Murder in Baldur's Gate: Sundering Adventure 1 (D&D Adventure) [Hardcover] it is written largely as an edition agnostic adventure. Some snip-its include
ReplyDelete... a Forgotten Realms adventure that will be published as a standalone product as well as being used as a D&D Encounters season and as the basis for the D&D Game Day adventure. It's called "Murder in Baldur's Gate," and it's very different from anything that's been published for 4E.
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The writing process was further complicated by the fact that the adventure is meant to be equally playable with the 3rd, 4th, or upcoming 5th editions of D&D. Since no one even knows what form D&D Next will finally take, we wound up writing in a way that was largely edition-agnostic....