Dungeons & Dragons' Next Storyline is Rage of Demons, Features Drizzt

[JonB]

Dungeons & Dragons' Next Storyline is Rage of Demons, Features Drizzt

The storyline will be cross-platform on the Neverwinter and Sword Coast Legends video games alongside books and the tabletop RPG.

Dungeons & Dragons has announced their new storyline for late 2015. Titled "Rage of Demons," it pits players of the various D&D titles against various iconic Demon Lords, who have been causing chaos deep in the Forgotten Realms' underdark. Players will be trying to stop the demon lords before they reach the surface and spread chaos in the world above. Heroes will team up with Out of the Abyss [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/drizzt%20dourden], which will take players from levels 1 to 15.



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After free players companion for Princes of the Apocalypse [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/tyranny%20of%20dragons?os=tyranny+of+dragons]. Beyond sharing that the book would exist and release in 2015, Wizards declined to comment on any contents it would have. Though we asked if Drizzt would have official statistics inside. As far as Demon Lords, Wizards confirmed we'd see...


Demogorgon, Prince of Demons
Orcus, Demon Prince of the Undead
Grazz't
Yeenoghu, Demon Lord of Gnolls
Zuggtmoy, Demon Queen of Fungi
Baphomet the Horned King
Fraz Urb'luu, The Prince of Deception
Jubilex, the Faceless Lord


Which is pretty much a curtain call of D&D's famous Demon Princes, minus Pazuzu, Malcanthet, and Dagon. Though I'm sure they just forgot to mention them. When I asked the D&D team what fellow Abyss-dweller Lolth, Demon Queen of Spiders and de-facto boss of the Underdark (due to all her Dark Elf followers), thought of the Demon Lords stepping onto her turf, they gave a cryptic "Lolth certainly plays an important role in Rage of Demons, but it's up to the players to discover exactly what that role is."

On the computer RPG side of things, the Neverwinter RPG's expansion will have players fighting alongside Drizzt in the drow city of Menzoberranzan during a demonic assault on the underground metropolis, doing quests written by R.A. Salvatore himself. The expansion will first release on PC, then on Xbox One.

Oh, and, here's the logo:



Anyone recognize that rune?

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[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I miss standalone D&D games. I think I'll fire up Baldur's Gate or something.

OT; I have played the Neverwinter MMO, not impressed with it. It's more of a WoW clone than a proper D&D game.

 

[Towowo]

I don't know about that, while I think it's not all that good of a game it plays nothing like WoW in terms of gameplay.

 

[Jburton9]

Hi, thanks for the heads up, this does sound interesting. I wonder if there will be a lot of comic book style cross over storyline reveal? So in order to get the whole story each product has to be covered.

Sword Coast Legends looks good but I wonder how well it will play for two players. I tried the Neverwinter MMO sometime ago and I found it initially to be fun but grew tired of the spamming powers arcade style game play. Also, for myself, I found their cash shop strategy very unappealing.

 

[JonB]

I am so fantastically bored of Drizzt in these games. I don't want to play Drizzt's cool story, I want to play my own character's cool story.

 

[Yozozo]

I am so fantastically bored of Drizzt in these games. I don't want to play Drizzt's cool story, I want to play my own character's cool story.

Ah Drizzt, the loser who every other friend wanted to re-create in high-school. At least groups at uni tended to start migrating towards more original char ideas.

I miss standalone D&D games. I think I'll fire up Baldur's Gate or something.

Every time I play BG I make sure to kill him.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

I love the Escapist, because when I saw this in the posts feed: "Dungeons & Dragons' Next Storyline is Ra" my immediate thought was that the forum was "Dungeons and Dragons' next storyline is racist".

Anyway, yes, agreed, can we please drop Drizzt? I think he's a great character, but enough is enough.

 

[Oroboros]

Ugh. I just can't get my interest up for New Forgotten Realms stuff anymore. All that Spellplague, Sundering, Lady Penitent, etc...garbage plotline developments that just sapped my interest away from the storyline.

"Neverwinter Tie-in" likewise counts as negative interest for me nowdays. That game is a constant reminder of how far the Neverwinter franchise has fallen. It's a real shame that Cryptic has been given basically sole access to both the Star Trek and Forgotten Realms IPs. What they have done with them is really gross.

I guess for me, FR just makes a better setting than a story at this point...and that setting is somewhere around 2.0-3.5 Edition.

What happened to you, Forgotten Realms? You used to put out a lot of books and supplementary material, and now it looks like there won't even be a FR campaign guide, you had games across multiple platforms, and had great franchises like Baldur's Gate and Neverwitner Nights. Now it's just seems like constant desperate references to the 'greatest hits' of Faerun. In addition to how eye-rolling this sort of thing can be when they roll out yet another Drizzt book or take Minsc out of the freezer and trot him around for blatant fanservice....it just demonstrates how incapable of bringing out any new worthwhile content FR seems to be these days.

 

[Kahani]

Ugh. Drizzt, the most boring Mary Sue character ever jammed into a fantasy game, and Neverwinter, an incredibly boring MMO that couldn't have less to do with D&D if it tried. Those are seriously the two main points they're talking up to get people interested in this?

 

[Phantom Renegade]

How are they even going to depict Drizzt mechanically?

Aside from its other many MANY failings the beastmaster archetype doesn't even allow for two weapon fighting on the same turn that your beast attacks.

 

[Heartsib]

Ah Drizzt, the loser who every other friend wanted to re-create in high-school. At least groups at uni tended to start migrating towards more original char ideas.

I never got the appeal, tbh. Drizzt was rarely the most interesting character of the books he starred in. Even outside of Jarlaxle, what's-his-face the assassin, and that brother of Drizzt's who was smart enough to know he was fighting someone protected by plot armor, it seemed like there were always side characters around who were less angsty and had more appeal, but of course had to die to give the narrative any emotional weight, because there was no way WotC was going to kill off their special snowflake.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

Ah Drizzt, the loser who every other friend wanted to re-create in high-school. At least groups at uni tended to start migrating towards more original char ideas.

I never got the appeal, tbh. Drizzt was rarely the most interesting character of the books he starred in. Even outside of Jarlaxle, what's-his-face the assassin, and that brother of Drizzt's who was smart enough to know he was fighting someone protected by plot armor, it seemed like there were always side characters around who were less angsty and had more appeal, but of course had to die to give the narrative any emotional weight, because there was no way WotC was going to kill off their special snowflake.

"You see that Ranger from Ten Towns? He's got curved swords. Curved. Swords."

I liked him when I read the Icewind Dale trilogy when I was young; Salvatore can write some good action scenes, Drizzt was likable and not totally consumed with angst, and he had not yet succumbed to the Forgotten Realms curse of "everything in the world revolves around me, the NPC." I can still see the appeal of the character to someone of that age, but I personally can't read the later books.

 

[Oroboros]

Lmao Drizzt. Forgotten Realms is full of so many interesting settings that have gone absolutely forgotten because WotC is just a shell that likes to cash on the few popular features of its setting over and over and over. Baldur's Gate, the Sword Coast, Drizzt, repeat.

A campaign where the adventurers get to help Drizzt the Moonslut Snowflake save the world. How exciting.

Tell me about it, I was pissed with what they ended up doing with Mulhorand and Thay in 4th. They have a tenancy to torpedo 'peripheral' areas of the realms as a cheap way of making the threat of the week look big and important. Kinda like how Worf always got thrown around on Star Trek a lot to make the villain of the episode look menacing. So Mithral Hall, Menzoberranzean, Baldur's Gate etc keep on getting a hilariously disproportionate amount of attention compared to logically more important places.

Basically, they treat Faerun as if it was MTG. But moving onto the next plane because you dropped an apocalypse on the last one and offed half of the characters and locations *just doesn't work as well* in FR.

What's even worse is that reading around, apparently they're moving to a model of giving setting info in stories and rumors now instead of an omniscient world view so that people aren't pressured to run the setting the "right way". Which is of course a bunch of horse shit, what they really want is for us to have to buy ALL of their stupid fucking atrociously written stories if we want to get anything close to a full picture of the setting anymore.

WotC is cancer and Drizzt is their mascot of mediocrity.

Yeah, I think I'll just stick with pre-3.5 so I don't get nickle and dimed to death trying to pick up all the little scraps to piece together a rough jigsaw of what the setting is supposed to look like. They made a big bruhaha of starting to undo the 4th edition changes to the setting...and then what? It's not 3.5 edition-there's still plenty of 4th edition's mess lying around-and wotc can't even seem to provide basic information like which gods are alive and which nations still exist. Why settle for a half-baked version of 3.5, when the *actual* 3.5 has been around for ages?