The following is a reproduction of an exclusive interview with Liz Schuh, Head of Publishing and Licensing for Dungeon & Dragons, and Laura Tommervik, Senior Brand Manage for D&D. It was published on ICv2.com, on August 6, 2013. This is the second of a 2-part series.
In this exclusive interview with Liz Schuh, Head of Publishing and Licensing for Dungeons & Dragons and Laura Tommervik, Sr. Brand Manager for D&D, we talk about the Sundering event, and in particular how it’s affecting organized play for Dungeons and Dragons, and why. In Part 2, we learn more about changes to the D&D Encounters program for The Sundering, the associated miniatures, the book schedule, and the T-shirt. Turning to Dungeons & Dragons Encounters (for information on how the program is changing, see "Changes to 'D&D' Encounters"), there was some reaction from retailers that the old Encounters program provided play materials that were free as part of the program and now you need to buy specific product in order to run Encounters. Can you talk about that change and the rationale for making that change? Schuh: The Encounters program has always been about providing a great play experience for players and that is still the emphasis and, in fact, what we’ve been able to do by shifting the adventure content out of the kit, is to beef up the contents of those kits and make the in-store experience a very unique and premium experience. People who play through the adventures at their local Encounters store will get access to augmented items, posters, maps of Baldur’s Gate, some special limited edition dice, all things that really beef up the experience and make it truly the best place to experience the adventure.
By the same token, we’re also making sure that players have access to the adventure even if they don’t have access to an Encounters store. We know some of our players don’t have nearby stores that they can easily access on a regular basis, and they’ve been asking us since the program started, if they can get their hands on the adventure content so they can play along. Now we’re able to offer that to players but still keeping the real premium experience at retail.
So you’re playing the same thing as you’re playing at Encounters, but the Encounters play involves these extra materials? Schuh: That’s correct, so for those who want to play it home because they don’t have a store nearby, they still can. They can participate in these Sundering adventures. But people who play in an Encounters store, we know that the retailers really provide that extra special experience.
We’ve heard some reactions that the old Encounters adventures used to be more stand-alone and now players have to be more involved in a more sustained way. Can you discuss the rationale of involving people in a more engaged way over a longer period, as opposed to more stand-alone? Schuh: I think it goes back to the same idea that we’re providing a great entertainment experience and we really want them to enjoy their play at store. It’s really a whole experience for them to go through week by week. I don’t see a huge change there.
This is the first campaign that we’re aware of that is announced as being compatible with 3.5E, 4E and Next rules. Can you explain why you expanded the types of rules that can be used with the Encounters program, and are those all in the book or are those in separate materials? Schuh: We really wanted to make sure that all D&D players could engage with this great adventure story and so we know that some people are playing with the playtest rules, some are diehard 4th Edition players, and we also wanted to open it up to people who may still be using 3.5 rules. We think it really expands out the audience and lets all D&D players enjoy the fun.
A big part of this is shifting our emphasis away from the rules we’re delivering to the great stories that we’re delivering. This is a great Sundering adventure; it lets people participate in the future of the Forgotten Realms; and for us, whatever rule set is their favorite rule set, that’s great and we don’t want to get in the way of that decision. We want them to participate in this great story.
Are the different rules for this in the book itself--Murder in Baldur’s Gate--or are they stand-alone, separate materials? Schuh: They can be downloaded from our Website.
You were doing that for the Next rules before, so the change is really the addition of the 3.5 rules? Schuh: Yes, just broadening the appeal.
Will there be any interim information available from the Encounters reporting, or is this going to be one big report back to players at the end of the yearlong Sundering event? Schuh: We’ll be sharing the results along the way. I think it’ll be really neat for the D&D community to see what other players are experiencing. We also have some other great content in there. We have some wonderful video assets. We’ll be doing on-going trivia with people. People can meet and connect with other adventurers and companions and create a profile. So really it’s this really great ongoing tool to keep people engaged in the campaign through the great content that we’ll be providing. It’s really a living, breathing tool that we’re hoping that people will want to stay engaged with over the whole course of the campaign, and mostly to connect with other D&D players in the community.
This is for use by every player, not just the dungeon master or a single person for a group, but by each player themselves? Correct. We’re hoping that everybody can engage with it. We’re hoping everybody wants to. Certainly it’s open to players and dungeon masters and retailers for that matter. We really just want to hear about people’s adventuring.
Any other ways The Sundering is going to play out in the marketplace? Our partner Gale Force 9 (see "'Dungeons & Dragons' Miniatures") is doing a special limited edition run of all The Sundering heroes from the six novels. They are also doing a limited run of the Isteval character, the paladin that I mentioned earlier. So the people who really love the hobby of painting their metal miniatures will be able to paint up some of the key heroes from The Sundering adventures and Sundering stories.
When will those come out? Those will be coming out this fall. They’ll have a limited number of advance items available at Gen Con, but the products themselves will be launching in conjunction with the novel releases. The very first one, which is the Drizzt and Guenhwyvar minis series, will be on sale at the end of August. They’ll do a few presales at Gen Con, but it really launches at the end of August.
What is the schedule for the novel releases? It’s about every other month. Salvatore in August. In October we have Paul Kemp; in December, we have Erin M. Evans; in February Richard Lee Byers; in April we have Troy Denning; and then Ed Greenwood wraps the story up in June of 2014.
We’re also be debuting a Sundering t-shirt at Gen Con. This t-shirt will feature Drizzt and Guenhwyvar from the cover of The Companions, and it has a cool Sundering logo on it. That will be a t-shirt that carries the whole Sundering campaign through to apparel. That’s from our partner, Araca.
The following is a reproduction of an exclusive interview with Liz Schuh, Head of Publishing and Licensing for Dungeon & Dragons, and Laura Tommervik, Senior Brand Manage for D&D. It was published on ICv2.com, on August 6, 2013. This is the first of a 2-part series, with Part 2 being published tomorrow. Wizards of the Coast is launching Dungeons & Dragons: The Sundering, a transmedia gaming event that spans game and fiction products, aggressively integrates organized play and mobile gaming into product development, and incorporates a licensing stream tied to the event. The Sundering was first announced almost a year ago at Gen Con as a storyline for Forgotten Realms that would include six novels by different authors and two game products (see “The ‘D&D Next’ Keynote”). But as the full scale of the event unfolds, it’s clear that those are only two aspects of a much bigger program leading to the Next edition of Dungeons and Dragons. The first product in The Sundering, R. A. Salvatore’s The Companions: The Sundering Book 1, launches today, and the first game product, Murder at Baldur’s Gate, in two weeks on August 20.
In this exclusive interview with Liz Schuh, Head of Publishing and Licensing for Dungeons & Dragons and Laura Tommervik, Sr. Brand Manager for D&D, we talk about the Sundering event, and in particular how it’s affecting organized play for Dungeons and Dragons, and why. In Part 1, we get a birds-eye view of the event, begin to learn how D&D Encounters and mobile gaming will affect the story, and find out the role that comics will play. In Part 2, we learned more about changes to the D&D Encounters program for The Sundering, the associated miniatures, the book schedule, and the T-shirt.
The Sundering has morphed into something bigger than the fiction and role-playing adventures. Can you tell us about the overall program? Schuh: We’ve got a lot of exciting things coming up to support “The Sundering.” For us, most exciting and most current is the release of The Companions: [The Sundering] on August 6, which is the first of The Sundering novels. It’s also the latest from R.A. Salvatore. But along with that, we’ve got two great Sundering adventures. We talked about adventures coming last Gen Con, but obviously we have more detail now. The first is Murder in Baldur’s Gate, and that releases this month. It’s followed by The Legacy of the Crystal Shard, which releases later this fall, and that adventure is set in and around Ten Towns in Icewind Dale.
We’re really taking players to iconic locations within the Forgotten Realms and letting them play very exciting adventures that tie to The Sundering, but aren’t directly connected to the events in the novel. So players don’t have to read the novels; we certainly think they will enjoy the novels and it will give them a very nice overview of everything that’s going on related to The Sundering. The adventures are stand-alone stories that they can play through and really enjoy as bite-sized stories set in the time and the backdrop of The Sundering events.
What is The Sundering? Schuh: The Sundering is the last of a series of ground-shaking events. It really affects the whole world of the Forgotten Realms in a major way. You may remember when the Spell Plagues began, the two worlds of the Forgotten Realms, Abeir and Toril, crashed together. That created both geographic changes (the map of the Forgotten Realms and Faerun actually changed due to that collision), and also changed the way magic works. It changed the pantheon of the gods. The Sundering is all about those two worlds separating –coming apart—and the process of that separation is really the story that we’re telling over the next year. At the end of this story arc, Abeir and Toril will be separate again, and many of the things that happened when they crashed together will go back to the way they were before. So magic will be much like it was before the Spell Plague. Markings that marked spell-plagued people and animals will fade and go away.
It’s really about moving the Forgotten Realms forward, but also about bringing it around to the most beloved and most fondly remembered Forgotten Realms.
What can you tell us about the coordination between fiction and the new game products? Tommervik: One of the things that’s really exciting about this campaign is players are going to have the opportunity to impact and shape the future of The Forgotten Realms and make their stories legend. And so the way that these products all interact, the players, through their play at D&D Encounters will be able to go in and play and then report back the outcome of their play. We’re going to be collecting that data over the course of the campaign.
What does it mean to “report the outcome of their play”? Tommervik: We’re providing an online reporting tool, essentially. It’s called The Sundering Adventurer’s Chronicle. This tool will be accessible to everyone. It will provide updates on The Sundering story as we go through the course of this yearlong campaign. It will also provide players, on a weekly basis, to report what they experience at D&D Encounters, and we’ll share those results with the broader community so people have a sense of how things are evolving. And at the end of each of the Encounter seasons, we will share with all the players, ultimately, what the results of their aggregate actions were.
Is it a narrative or a form they fill out to report what happened? Tommervik: They’ll be given a series of questions, and it will be very obvious to the players based on the way that we’re posing the questions in terms of what their group experienced. These adventures are incredible. They’ve been designed in a special way such that we’re able to track this information and ultimately, at the end of the day, what the most players experienced, world-wide, will become canon. The results of that play will be reflected in future products and program offerings for Dungeons and Dragons. So essentially we’re giving the Realms back to the D&D community and allowing players to really shape the future and make their stories part of the legend of Dungeons and Dragons.
Schuh: The stories they tell in their adventures are just as important as what our authors are telling in The Sundering novels, and that some of our other partners are telling in other products that are part of The Sundering launch.
Mobile gaming and comics are two other categories that were mentioned as being involved with The Sundering. In the case of the comics, are they going to tell stories that are related to The Sundering? And what’s going to happen in the mobile games? Schuh: I’ll start with the comics. Our partner, IDW, is releasing a new series called Thieves of Calimport (a city in The Forgotten Realms) and that series is written by Richard Baker, who’s one of our fan favorite Forgotten Realms authors and game designers. So he’s got a unique and different perspective on the events of The Sundering that he’ll be telling through those comics. The series really explores another personal story with the backdrop of The Sundering events. The interior art will be by Robert Gill, and we’re still working out some of the details. We’ll be able to announce soon who’s doing the cover art and some of the other details of the release.
When is it launching? Schuh: We’re working with IDW to set a launch date, but it will definitely be within the window of Sundering events.
Which is a year? Schuh: Yes.
This will be a four or six book miniseries? Schuh: Correct. It will be similar to the [Dungeons and Dragons:]Cutter series.
What about the mobile game? Tommervik: We’re really excited about it. It’s called Arena of Warand this is the first free Dungeons and Dragons game to come to the mobile platform. It’s going to be a 3-D battle roleplaying game, and it does take place in The Forgotten Realms. It does reflect all of the current events in The Sundering, and as Liz mentioned, The Sundering happens on many levels all the way from the common adventures to all the way up to the gods, so you have a power struggle between the gods of good and evil in the events of The Sundering. And players in the mobile game will essentially be fighting on behalf of good. So they’ll go into the mobile game and be able to customize a powerful warrior and send them into battle. And because of the platform that Arena of Waris on we will, of course, be able to track player’s play and the outcomes and those will also impact the fate of the Realms that will also be reflected in later products including within the mobile experience itself.
Schuh: So it’s another avenue for players to really get involved in determining the fate of The Forgotten Realms.
Tommervik: And you’ll see a key character that we’ll be using throughout this campaign. His name is Isteval and he is a paladin who acts as a guide through the campaigns. He guides you through your quests and provides hints and tips in the Arena of War game. He also appears as an NPC in the tabletop RPG adventures, and you’ll see him popping up in videos and other venues on our Website as well.
