In this Dungeon Craft video, Professor Dungeon Master shares his thoughts on the recent D&D Creators Summit (where some 30 D&D content creators were invited to Wizards of the Coast to learn what the company has in store next for the popular TTRPG). The Professor was not invited to go (he wonders because of all of his recent harsh criticism of the company), so his thoughts are based on the posts and comments of others who were there.
The Summit sounds (from numerous reports, not just PDM's) like so much flinging spaghetti against a wall to see what might stick for the brand. By many accounts, it didn't seem to make a lot sense and felt a lot like a company that has lost its way.
There was an announcement for a Minecraft D&D game, Magic: The Gathering Cards with the D&D characters from the Honor Among Thieves movie, the premier of some Hasbro D&D toy figures, and similar support products.
The actual game-centric content, which apparently came later in the event, included the announcement that the new D&D would not be called D&D One (that was always a working title), but rather… [reading cue card] D&D 6th 5th Edition. There was also info about a Joe Manganiello documentary covering the history of D&D (which sounds promising).
The heart of the event was no surprise — more in-house breathless excitement over the forthcoming VTT (virtual table top) version of D&D, the direction that Wizards of the Coast has clearly staked the future of the game on. As the good Professor says, this seems deeply at odds with the reality that most people play tabletop D&D because it's an analog game and that the VTT looks to be increasingly indistinguishable from a video game (except that you have the rather incongruous act of rolling virtual dice in a digital environment in which that's clearly not necessary).
All of this seems very strange to this life-long bone roller. But we'll just have to see how it all shakes out.
