Read more about our adaption of the Isle of Dread on DDO.com!

[Cordovan]

Read Isle of Dread: From Page to Game!

[Kza]

This was just lovely and nice read!

(Vecna and stranger things 4 haha, insane!)

So good reading stuff like this and just see how much all, developers and we who play ddo love d&d :-)

[Ganak]

Cool read Cordovan, thanks for sharing!


"After discussions with Wizards of the Coast..."


What governs when you have to engage with WotC? What is that relationship like?



Vecna looks cool!!

[rabidfox]

Nice to see what goes on behind the scenes for bringing it to the game. I hope we keep seeing cool stuff like this and the Tabaxi write-up for other packs/stuff in the future too.

[GoldyGopher]

Interesting Read. A worthy topic for DDOCast.

[Arkat]

Could have been more substantive without giving too much away.

Vecna looks cool!!

Definitely. Guessing he'll be the raid boss.

Better start figuring out how to slot a lot of Negative energy absorption!

[Annex]

Even though I feel like the Teacher just sat me down after Class, I sincerely enjoy all the recent articles on game design.

.....

* It seems reasonable that Vecna requires an immense source of Arcane Power to move the Isle of Dread between Planes. As a "Deity", that power may flow directly from Vecna. What if it comes from some other source, such as a layer of special Ore native to The Isle of Dread? What if we could raid that source, grab some, and retrofit our airships with it? That would be a neat way to turn our Airships into Spelljammer Ships.

* As almost everyone knows, an Asteroid ended to Age of Dinosaurs on Earth. That Asteroid contained an extremely high concentration of Iridium. Iridium is a metal very similar to Platinum. In fact, Iridium is sometimes used in place of Platinum when making Jewelry. (Iridium Jewelry is very valuable.) Maybe, in the ancient past, The Isle of Dread was part of the Yucatan Peninsula on Earth. When the Asteroid that ended the Age of Dinosaurs struck, it knocked a chunk of the Earth out of alignment with the rest of the universe, sending The Isle of Dread on its planar journey. Back then, it would have been a molten, fused ball of Asteroid and Earth, but since then it cooled, flattened, was repopulated by Dinosaurs, and became the Planar Arc of Vecna. The island's gigantic core of magically infused Iridium acts like a spacial-temporal dynamo, providing motive power for planar travel.

Magically infused Iridium would make a great laminate material for super powerful Armors, Equipment, and Weapons. Maybe the Dinosaur Fossil items from the Isle of Dread contain a small amount of this Iridium fallout. However, really super powerful stuff would be forged directly from the Iridium. It would look very pretty, too! Perhaps Iridium infused magical items could serve as the next set of items we acquire. As mentioned above, it could also serve as the material and motive power for a Spelljammer Helm.

Perhaps a piece of this magically infused Iridium could serve as a conduit for traveling easily to and from The Isle of Dread.

What if there are more Iridium infused Asteroids where the Dinosaur Killer came from. Could the magically infused Iridium take us to those? Who lives on those Asteroids? Maybe the Asteroids are attracted to one another. The Isle of Dread visiting Eberron might attract another such Asteroid, placing Eberron in great peril. I seem to recall some sort of Githsomethingorother that may be relevant here. Hmmm.

* What is a "Deity" in a fantasy context? After much thought, I have come to a very simple conclusion. "Deity" simply means, "I get to break the rules." Artifacts and Relics also "break the rules". The only real solution to, "I get to break the rules", is a Deus Ex Machina. Will our Characters ever get to summon a friendly Deus Ex Machina?

* The Isle of Dread was compressed to make it fit in the game world. That is very reasonable. Unfortunately, the rest of the game world is compressed for the very same reason, meaning The Isle of Dread still does not fit in the Bay south of Stormreach. (I am such a shrew.) Or maybe it does. Spaces that fit inside spaces too small to contain them are a common feature in fantasy settings. The Genie Bottle is a classic example. Perhaps The Isle of Dread is packaged in a space smaller on the outside than on the inside. It looks small from the outside, but upon passing across the bounds of the space, it is much larger on the inside. This could mean there are more islands in the chain with The Isle of Dread, and they could provide a place for further adventures.

Maybe there is a great tunnel leading under The Isle of Dread, into the very bowels of the Planeitoid (I hereby claim credit for inventing this word. ), leading to a vast underground cavern and further adventures. That would make a great place to secure some magically infused Iridium.

[spifflove]

* As almost everyone knows, an Asteroid ended to Age of Dinosaurs on Earth.

The rest, a very small minority indeed, observe that we dine on dinosaurs twice a week on average and hold a very different view on how vast quantities of fossils were formed all at once.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

I like the jewellery ... It reminds me of recent Celt findings at Bettelbühl, Germany.

[Cordovan]

Cool read Cordovan, thanks for sharing!


"After discussions with Wizards of the Coast..."


What governs when you have to engage with WotC? What is that relationship like?



Vecna looks cool!!

We can't discuss our license or conversations related, but we've been working together for a long time and things go great. The formal question about when you "have" to engage with the license-holder is: When the license requires it. But in general it is common to be more collegial about it.

[LightBear]

Saw some lore video on the youtubes the other day about Vecna.
Was very interesting, and apparently drives some characters to do dubious acts in their pursuit of power.
Rigging your own left eye out and or cutting your left arm off for instance.
But if any of the new quests require us to go after the head of Vecna I think I'm going to skip.

[gravisrs]

So the next step is to hire Gaten Matarazzo as a voice actor to DDO