WZ – Mike: Can you talk about the online initiatives, since we talked about adapting it to the digital age?
Chase: What’s important to us is making sure we’re using the tools that are available to everybody. We’re in the 21st century, people have all sorts of ways to connect digitally. The first step that we took was Dungeons & Dragons Insider, DDI, and that’s actually taking the content that we put in the books and putting them into a digital form. And that means that our flagship product in there, the flagship tool, is the character builder. And that has all the content that you find in the books, just in a tool that allows you to seamlessly and effortlessly create a new character. We’re adding more tools to that, we just added the monster builder, which does the same exact thing, and we’re gonna be adding more and more tools to make it easier for both players and DMs to facilitate a game.
A new tool that we’re working on right now that just went into beta, we’ve been in alpha for a while, is the Virtual Table. That is a tool that’s gonna allow people to play virtually over the Internet. It’s not an adjudicating tool, it’s not taking any gameplay that you have, it’s just digitizing it and allowing people who are playing in different states, or friends in groups that broke up, being able to get back together and play digitally on the table, using the books that they have at home to be able to communicate.
And with this, we have built-in voice chat, so you can put on your headphones, talk to each other, you have a die roller, be able to roll dice right into system.
WZ – Mike: You guys always have such top notch, unbelievable artwork for every little thing you guys put out. Where’s the pool that you’re tapping that talent from?
Chase: We’re constantly looking for new talent, like even at this show, we put out the cards and make sure people can do art submissions. We have our art directors go out to shows like Comic Con to make sure we’re bringing new, fresh talent as well. It’s not just a question about the quality, it’s also making sure we’re reinvigorating, making sure that we’re bringing new approaches to it, because we don’t want to be stale. We want to make sure it’s always exciting and dynamic.
We just released a new product called Fortune Cards and these are kind of neat, because they give an advantage back to the players trying to compete against the hardcore DMs that are always trying to kill them. These are randomized mini-buffs that can come up through the game. So players have about ten of these at any one time, they can buy a booster pack that has eight, shuffle them up, they’re ready to go. So now I get +2 movement, or I get a +2 to attack, or something they’re not totally in control of, but give them a little bit of help.
This came out of something we’ve done in the Encounters program. On the Wednesday nights, people would go in and play in the stores. We were doing these twitter buffs. So every hour, on the hour, we would tweet out, “here’s the buff that everybody in the party gets.” People really liked that, and we were like, “how can we put that into a product that gives that kind of random, unexpected feeling?”
WZ – Mike: So how about the visual push, I know there’s a lot more with the tiles, how did that come about?
Chase: We’ve been doing tiles for a while, that’s something we did in 3rd Edition, when we went to certainly a more tactical system. And it adds more visual aspect to the game, it adds a little more of a tactical aspect to the game, and we’ve found people really enjoyed that and liked that.
WZ – Mike: Even like the more old school, hardcore players, have they taken to it?
Chase: There are people who certainly prefer older editions, (AD&D) 1st Edition and 2nd Edition, a lot of that theatre of the mind. I’m a 1st Edition player, and I remember somebody had to be the cartographer in the book. Like, “ok, someone’s going to be drawing the map!” So right now, in 3rd, and most recently with 4th, we went a little more tactical, a little less theatre of the mind, a little more visual with things like miniatures and tokens. It adds a little more complexity.
WZ – Nicole: It also makes it more accessible for a generation of kids who’ve been playing Magic: The Gathering and Munchkin, they need to be very hands-on.
WZ – Mike: what about the comic books, are those still ongoing, the line of comics?
Chase: Yeah, actually we have a new partner with IDW who actually has released a core Dungeons and Dragons comic book that’s doing really well, it’s getting fantastic reviews. We just relased a Dark Sun edition of it, and this fall we’re going to have Neverwinter, which is actually being co-written with R.A. Salvatore, as well as bringing Drizzt in. So later this year, we have Neverwinter, which you’re probably familiar with Neverwinter Nights , the third is going to be released this year for PC. And it’s going to be a part of a larger initiative where we’re going to have another board game coming out, Legend of Drizzt, a comic book, we’re gonna have a campaign setting of Neverwinter, Fortune Cards for it, and of course, another new R.A. Salvatore novel.
WZ – Mike: What about the ways the comics interact with the games? Like the scenarios you could use, at the end they would give you a monster or something you could use in your campaign.
Chase: So what we’re doing is at the end of each of the comic books is we game-ify it, so you can see stats of the characters or scenarios and you can still see that as well.
WZ – Mike: Are there any other tools we haven’t talked about for the DMs and players?
Chase: Well, the stuff we talked about, the books and DDI, some other cool things we have coming up is our partnership with Atari. We’re releasing games this year, Daggerdale, you can actually do a demo of it on tabletop. It’s going to be a digital game for connected consoles and we have a bunch of other video games coming out as well. So, it’s an exciting year for D&D.
WZ – Nicole: Now when Wizards bought TSR [the original company who owned D&D], do you have all the rights to Dark Sun, Ravenloft, DragonLance, all that stuff?
Chase: Yeah, all of it.
WZ – Nicole: WHAT HAPPENED TO SPELLJAMMER???
Chase: (BIG LAUGHS) I wish Chris Perkins was here, he’s a big fan of Spelljammer, huge.
Spelljammer’s fun, we talk about it a lot. No plans to bring it back yet. Nothing that we can announce!
WZ – Mike: Actually, with the whole table that Microsoft has, have you guys officially supported that, or is that outside people making the D&D Applications for it?
Chase: Micrsoft Surface is something that’s really cool, they approached us and they asked “is it cool if we use this? Because we wanna make sure we had a really cool tech demo, we thought D&D was the most appropriate.” We said, “fantastic, go at it.” We don’t have an official partnership or arrangement. It’s just something that we thought was pretty cool, and would really suit their needs to show tech demos. But DDI’s Virtual Table is something very similar.
WZ – Nicole: How long have you worked at Wizards?
Chase: 12 years.
WZ – Nicole: How’d you get into Wizards?
Chase: I worked at a couple game stores and I worked as a tournament organizer. I organized tournaments for Magic: The Gathering for a little while, but then I worked for the Shamus family, they’re the people who do Wizards press. I worked at one of their game stores while working in New York City. And that was it, I wanted to be in the game industry. I just kind of started going to stuff and after a while I was able to move up to Wizards and have been at wizards for a while.
WZ – Mike: So I wanted to ask, what’s your favorite moment being a part of D&D, both as a player and as a part of Wizards?
Chase: Well, for me, this is a lifelong dream. I go really far back, to 1981 and I was quite young and playing with the family as well. I grew up in New York, and I live in Seattle now with Wizards. And I went back with a bunch of my family and I was talking to my cousin, and I was like, “actually, I’m brand manager for Dungeons & Dragons now,” and he was like, “no way, that’s like growing up and playing center field for the Yankees! Like, how is that even possible, that’s the ultimate fantasy, the ultimate dream!” So I just feel like I’m a steward for this awesome brand that has been around for 36 years, and it’ll be around for a long time after I’ve moved on to other things. And it’s so cool for me to be there.
For me, with D&D, I’m one of the role players. I’m the kind of person that makes you feel a little uncomfortable when I sit down, because sometimes I’m playing a girl, I’ll play a female character, I have no problem. For me, I don’t do voices, that’s not my style, but I create the character and I give a backstory to it, and I play it to the roles. I’m the person… if I have an 8-INT I’m not really smart, I’m a stupid fighter who thinks it’s a great idea to run into the middle of the room and take everybody on, i don’t know any better, I’m just really strong. I had a recent character, his name was Herbert Brown, who’s a Dragonborn Sword Mage. And his quest in life was to stop following in his family footsteps and be a haberdasher and have a small little shop. And he’s questing to find this artifact that would allow him to be human and do that. It’s very different for a Dragonborn! But he wasn’t that bright, as you can tell from what his lifelong goal was, and he’s the kind of guy who didn’t like checking for traps, or checking doors, he had a penchant for kicking open doors, whether they were locked or not. So, surprise round? We’re not having any of that. There’s a door there, kick it open! And I would really just upset most of the people in my party!
WZ – Mike: DM probably loved it though, probably loved making those dungeons!
WZ – Nicole: I think that’s part of why I haven’t gotten back into it, because when I did play, I didn’t have those inhibitions, so I would just do whatever.
Chase: It’s just about having fun, you don’t have to do silly voices, you just have to have fun!
WZ – Nicole: I started with Goldmoon, and now I don’t want to be a healer, ever, even in video games!
Chase: Well, we switched the cleric up a little bit!
WZ – Nicole: Well, thanks so much!
WZ – Mike: Yeah, thanks a lot!
Chase: No problem, guys.
