Wizards Direct 2022 - Where to begin?

 Wow. That Wizards direct had some big drops. Now, I consider myself both a fan of Magic (I started playing with 4th Edition) and D&D, but the real meat of today's announcements for me was all on the D&D side.

One D&D!

Backwards compatibility!

Virtual Table Top!

Planescape!

There was a lot to unpack and I will be taking the next several posts to parse what we observed. If you haven't seen it yet, check out the video:



The biggest news is definitely the release of the One D&D playtest documents (available on D&D Beyond as we speak), but if I'm being honest there was something else that got me super hyped. And it's not Planescape.

It's the complete Phandelver campaign! I loved Lost Mine of Phandelver. It was one of the best adventures I've ever run, it was an incredible on boarding experience for 5E D&D for my 4E group. I have reread that adventure at least a dozen times. It is comfort food reading for me.

It does such a good job of presenting a very classic fantasy adventure. It holds your hand, players and DM's alike, at first, but then expands allowing a good limited sandbox with some completely optional areas. This sandbox also provides multiple routes to the climax of the adventure, a well conceived and manageable dungeon crawl. I can't wait to see where they take the plots of Nezznar, the Black Spider.

I have been working on a guide to remixing Lost Mine of Phandelver with Dragon of Icespire Peak. I know this isn't an original concept but I haven't seen anyone else tie things to the Essentials Kit follow up adventures, Storm Lord's Wrath, Sleeping Dragon's Wake, and Divine Contention. I'm still going to present that guide here on the blog in the near future (so keep an eye out) even if it may become obsolete.

I will continue to discuss more of what we saw in the Wizards Direct over the next couple of days. Drop a line and let me know your thoughts!

The RPG Study

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