Hollywood actor, celebrity Dungeon Master and Dragonlance fan Joe Manganiello has teamed up with Dungeons & Dragons scholars John Peterson and Kyle Newman to produce a powerful documentary on the history of D&D. The documentary should be out later this year and will include elevated interviews with prominent fans of the game from all walks of life.
The news was announced via D&D Direct, a live stream that teased a dragon’s hoard of new releases, including the Honour Among Thieves Magic cards and a new Minecraft DLC.
Toward the end of the stream, D&D’s Game Design Architects, Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford teased the forthcoming releases for the actual game and reminded fans that the D&D Multiverse is always expanding. Perkins stated that a “D&D villain will be making his return in the not-too-distant future”, and Crawford clarified that this would be Vecna.
Not only is this jolly interesting to fans of Stranger Things, but it also ties in nicely with the forthcoming release of Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse book coming out at the end of this year. The last time Vecna turned up in Planescape’s magical city of Sigil, things quickly got jolly interesting. That happened in the adventure Die Vecna Die! published 23 years ago, but it sounds like a sequel is coming.
Toy giant Hasbro is the parent company that owns Wizards of the Coast, which is responsible for Dungeons & Dragons. Of course, this means they are now a whole range of D&D tie-in toys. In addition to action figures for the Honour Among Thieves movie, and toys based on classic ’80s TV shows, Hasbro’s Golden Archive series will also include the Beholder crime boss Xanathar, an owlbear and a version of the displacer beast based on the tentacle panther beast seen in the movie.
Drizzt Do’Urden fans should also be in for a treat this year. The conclusion to the latest trilogy of drow ranger adventures, Lolth’s Warrior, comes out this September. Wizards’ partners at Gearbox Publishing and Cryptic Studios have teamed up with Drizzt’s creator, RA Salvatore, to create Menzoberranzan, the 25th expansion for the popular MMO Neverwinter. The new expansion is available now on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation.
“It’s very different to write for a video game than writing for a novel,” Salvatore said in an interview featured during D&D Direct. “You’re going to walk down the road looking at the world through Drizzt’s eyes. When I’m writing a video game, however, the most important character in a video game to the player is the one they are playing. In Neverwinter, the work they are doing always astounds me, and the fact that they are piggy-backing on stuff I did makes me feel very good.”
Finally, fans of weird D&D-related things to put in your house (such as a bag of teeth) will be delighted to learn that, thanks to Wizkids; they can adopt an 11-inch tall baby Owlbear figure which we understand features’ Flappy Flaps’, a Tum-Tum, toe beans and a Hoot Snoot. Which is a silly way of saying it looks cute. Mimic fans will also be delighted to learn that a life-sized version of a murderous mutant treasure chest is also available for pre-order.
