Top Of The Table – Dungeons & Dragons: Storm King’s Thunder

Just like ongoing video games such as World of Warcraft or Destiny, tabletop role-playing games are in a constant state of evolution and change.

Just like ongoing video games such as World of Warcraft or Destiny, tabletop role-playing games are in a constant state of evolution and change. For no project is that truer than Dungeons & Dragons, the game that single-handedly led to the role-playing revolution that occurred in both video and tabletop games over the last 40 years. While numerous revised versions have released over those four decades, the designers at Wizards of the Coast have been rolling out content for the new 5th edition of the game for a couple of years now. I chatted with two of the leaders of that development team about the game’s next big release – Storm King’s Thunder.

Between the two of them, Mike Mearls and Christopher Perkins determine a great deal about how D&D’s ongoing world and story are developing, as well as how the D&D brand reaches out beyond the core role-playing game and into video games, miniatures, board games, and more. Perkins is the principal story designer, focusing on the narrative and story bibles that guide ongoing development. Meanwhile, Mearls is the senior manager for design development, a role in which he works on the big picture of D&D, and how its stories and individual projects continue to develop the game and broader brand.

Storm King's Thunder is a huge 256-page adventure heading toward release this September. In our extensive conversation, we discuss the inspirations for the new mega-adventure, D&D’s ongoing attempts to address branching narrative, and even whether we might one day see new official campaign settings for the game. Along the way, Wizards of the Coast also has offered up a sneak peek at some of the gorgeous art that will be included with the book. Enjoy the interview!

And as always, reach out to me via Twitter or email to let me know what other tabletop games you’d like to see featured next.

What is the Storm King’s Thunder adventure all about?

Perkins: Storm King’s Thunder is really an attempt to talk about giants and how giants affect the world of the Forgotten Realms. There are key iconic monsters in D&D that have been around since the earliest editions. And you can't really imagine a D&D world without them. Dragons, of course; we’ve dealt with an eternity of dragon stories. The time has come around now to figure out what the giants of Faerûn are up to.

Mearls: A lot of what I shepherd are the limits of potential stories and making sure that we focus on something that is very iconic, and then Chris will often pitch ideas and then we’ll talk about how that might work in an MMO, how would this work as a tabletop adventure, how is it going to be different from everything else we’ve done. What are the key things you need? And then how does it tie into what we did last year, and how does it set up what we’re doing for next year? With this storyline there’s this idea that the reason the giants are being driven out into the world and wreaking such havoc is because their gods, including Annam the All Father, are especially disappointed in them. Their ancient enemies, the dragons, reentered the world [in the Tyranny of Dragons storyline], and the giants essentially sat on the sidelines and watched tiny little humans deal with the threat. And to the giant gods, that was an affront to their honor.

In the last couple of years, you’ve rolled out content for the new edition that seems like it’s part of an ongoing timeline, even if it’s a pretty loose one. Is that fair?

Mearls: Yeah that is definitely how we see it. Especially in the context of the Forgotten Realms, it’s a living world, and so we don’t want anything to feel disjointed. Whether we’re talking about the visuals we use to represent monsters, the locations, or the narrative events of each of each story. Anything can happen. You’re not trying to make everything canon that could possibly happen in the game. But what we want to do is pick up that thread that forms the backbone of the story and say “here is what we considered that happened in the past.”

Tell me more about the story you’re exploring in Storm King’s Thunder.

Perkins: When we did the Monster Manual, in the giants entry we reintroduced the concept of the Ordning, first seen in the second edition Forgotten Realms book called Giantcraft. The Ordning is the structure that is imposed upon giant society that sets forth certain rules. Those rules dictate that storm giants are the most powerful, hill giants are the least powerful and there is a caste system or a social structure that defines how giants interact with one another

As a consequence of the giant inaction, the gods have shattered that Ordning, which means that giants can now go out into the world and chart their own destinies and try to win the favor of the gods. So cloud and frost giants want to be at the top of the Ordning, and they are all going out and trying to impress the gods in weird and wonderful ways. And often to the detriment of the civilizations that currently occupy what used to be a vast sprawling giant empire called Ostoria , which now includes places like Waterdeep, Neverwinter, Silverymoon, and Everlund.

The characters start off at very low level, and so the presence of the giants is an overwhelming threat to them. The theme of the story is these small folk who basically stand no chance of surviving this threat, stepping up, going out, confronting the threat and becoming figuratively giants in their own right. Eventually the characters do become powerful enough that they can stand toe to toe with these giants, look them square in the eye and say ‘knock it off!’ That’s really is what the story is building towards: There is a giant within you; you’ve just got to unleash it.

And what are some of the individual confrontations we can expect?

Perkins: The story introduces a number of new giant adversaries. Each of them has a plot that they’re pursuing, a goal that they’re chasing. The scale of the story is quite enormous. You have a frost giant jarl named Storvald who is trying to find an artifact that can freeze the world. You have a fire giant duke who is trying to rebuild this ancient dragon-slaying colossus. They’ve all got these huge plots that you have to deal with and you can confront them in their lairs and deal with them on an individual basis.

But the story also picks up threads from earlier stories. Obviously, there are dragons in the world, they have concerns about what the giants are doing, and the characters can interact with a number of dragons in this story, all of whom have agendas of their own.

Next Page: The inspirations behind D&D's newest adventure, and the mystery of rune magic