Behind the Dungeons & Dragons Resurgence

Forbes contributor Todd Kenreck has published a two-part interview with some of the creative minds behind the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons (including Nathan Stewart, Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford), which focus on the role-playing game’s recent resurgence and their past experience with the game and their current work on its settings and lorebooks.

The interview isn’t quite as in-depth as I like and has a bit of a weird format, but I still think there are some interesting takeaways. A snippet:

Chris Perkins: Since the launch of 5th Edition, we’ve done a number of stories now, and what I try to do with each story is to take something that has been in D&D lore, that is part of D&D’s history and past, and bring it forward.

Nathan Stewart: Not speaking specifically of Dragonlance, but the future of other realms, as we’re always being very thoughtful about how we bring in other settings or other realms. It is a big connected inner universe. We’re always listening to the fans. We know which ones are the most popular, and we intend to be as thoughtful and deliberate about the other settings as we have been with Forgotten Realms.

Chris Perkins: In the case of the Giant’s story, for 5th edition, we found an ancient lore from an old book called Giant Craft. This idea of an Ordning, it’s sort of like the structure of Giant society. In the Storm King’s Thunder, the basic story is, well, what happens if that Ordning is shattered? The Giants basically have to go out into the world and earn the respect and favor of their Gods to create a whole new Ordning, and what that does to the small folk of the world, when the Giants are stomping around doing all kinds of bad stuff.