At GaryCon 2024, Wizards of the Coast, Luke Gygax, and countless luminaries came together in a storm of news, excitement, and a few reveals. This writer had the opportunity to attend, at the invitation of Wizards of the Coast, and is here to summarize the highlights of the event, along with the updates and announcements provided during the press panel.
Note: For an evaluation of whether GaryCon is the convention for you, see our separate post.
Overview
The parts of the 50th-anniversary-meets-GaryCon covered in this article include the new tournament format for anniversary events, product releases, D&D Beyond updates, and updates to the release schedule for this year’s print publications.
Anniversary Tournaments
Right out the gate, the press group was invited to play a D&D one-shot facilitated by Wizards of the Coast’s staff. Senior developer Justice Armand was kind enough to DM the table I joined, and it was a delight from beginning to end. The adventure, titled Descent Into the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth is a modified version of a Gary Gygax original adventure. This version is designed for tournament play and is available for free on D&D Beyond.
This tournament was then played at both GaryCon and PAX East, with prizes on the line for the teams that completed the most objectives, disturbed the fewest friendly creatures, and other fun challenges. The trick here, I must note, is that players do not know what will gain or lose points or even whether they are on track to completing an objective. They also do not know their score during play. This encourages players to be an interesting combination of courageous and cautious.
Wizards announced that these types of tournament games will continue throughout the year. Each event will feature unique tournament games, so you don’t have to worry about getting spoilers from playing the previously released tournament adventures. WotC also encouraged players at the event to invite their friendly local game stores to put on events with the tournament games.
Product Releases
The press team was able to meet with Chris Perkins along with senior developers Amanda Hamon, Jason Tondro, and Justice Armon to discuss the projects each of these developers had been in charge of and will release this year. These products include Vecna, Eve of Ruin, The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons: 1970-1977, and Quests from the Infinite Staircase. They further went on to discuss the upcoming releases of the second versions of the fifth edition’s core rulebooks, changes to the release schedule for D&D sourcebooks, new partner products, and expanding 3rd-party content on D&D Beyond.
Print Books and Updated Release Schedule
To reduce duplicated content here on the blog, commentary on most of the hard copy books will be reserved for the review process, but it should be noted that they will each be released early on D&D Beyond AND at your friendly local game store. This is a great update, because it encourages orders through game stores, helping to keep those resources to the community thriving. For each product, the pre-release is two weeks before the general release. I will note that this does not apply to non-sourcebooks such as The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons: 1970-1977, which has a single release date of June 18th, but it applies to all sourcebooks through 2024, and the Dungeon Master’s Guide in 2025.
New Partner Products
Alongside books, WotC previewed new partner products, including the new D&D Converse shoes, the D&D LEGO Ideas (3745), and Reyn Spooner’s line of Hawaiian-style shirts inspired by the D&D abilities.
Converse
The Converse shoes made a physical appearance at GaryCon and were impressive. Not only do they have the classic design of Converse as a base but the D&D Converse shoes include customizable designs, allowing geeks to create bespoke shoes.
LEGO
As with other LEGO Ideas products, the D&D LEGO set features a LEGO interpretation of the IP being partnered with. The initial set (3745) includes minifigures, a dragon, several scenes, and a pile of monsters including an owlbear, a beholder, and a mimic. Also teased is a set coming later in the year with minifigures designed after iconic D&D characters.
Reyn Spooner
Dungeons & Dragons and Hawaiian shirts? Yes, that’s right. For those who don’t know, Gary Gygax (father of D&D) was famous for his Hawaiian shirt collection. In fact, every year at GaryCon, there is a celebratory photo taken of everyone wearing a Hawaiian shirt on the designated day. Reyn Spooner’s contribution to this tradition is a line of shirts illustrated not with palm trees, pineapples, and flamingoes but instead features illustrations of adventuring parties and scenes from the gameplay of Dungeons & Dragons.
Other Third-Party Products
Beyond the highlighted products, we also saw more examples of partnered content either already available or available soon. Beadle & Grimm’s will have a Platinum Edition of Vecna, Eve of Ruin. Wizkids has a new lineup of anniversary merch, including minis, stuffed animals, and bag hangs. Finally, Sirius Dice has dice cups, blind packs, and more for players to collect.
Expanded D&D Beyond Offerings
Starting with last week’s surprise digital release of Kobold Press’s Tome of Beasts, the D&D Beyond team is expanding the material integrated into its offerings. Not only does this allow you to keep your digital collection in a more centralized place, it also enables you to use tools such as the Encounter Builder with these third-party sources without needing to recreate every monster stat block manually. We don’t currently know how far the team at D&DB will take this, but this writer is already concerned about the sudden influx of an extra 400 creatures that might not be balanced according to the standards that will be updated with the release of the revised Monster Manual later this year. Thankfully, if you don’t want to see these (or any other) options in D&D Beyond, it is possible to filter them out entirely.
TL;DR
Wizards of the Coast is turning their partner pipeline up a notch to help players celebrate the anniversary of (or to play) Dungeons & Dragons. A more rewarding release schedule, which incentivizes pre-orders and purchases through friendly local game stores, gives a boost to the backbone of the community. New products across the market make it easier than ever to express your player pride. It’s clear that 50 years into the game, and 10 years into 5e, the world’s greatest roleplaying game is thriving like never before.
If you want to learn more about GaryCon, check out: Is GaryCon the Convention for You?
