Let's talks about 80s villains, half plate and custard damage and you’ve talked about damage to a degree there’s custard damage there are some interesting games yeah i did i did not plan for custard damage um well one never can stacy allen who did the initial design on the which light carnival introduced a pie eating contest and you take custard damage in the course of eating pies and if you accumulate so much custard damage things can go wrong but you never die from custard damage oh see now are we going to get a subclass eventually that does custard damage like you can turn like 1d8 extra custard damage like the custard ranger that would be delightful and i look forward to seeing it on dm’s guild yeah or rogue it poisons you with custard right yes yeah yes your friendly sneak attack so yeah when i saw the custard damage in the first draft is like you know this is such a wacky concept i think i’ll just keep it we’ll make it work that’s fantastic uh did it was was it natural progression with the fact that you did this carnival and again with the 80s we had some reference of a carnival uh when it comes to dnd there’s some notable familiar things in that map mainly the roller coaster is directly from the animated there are a lot of 80s stuff nestled in the wild beyond the witch light from the characters who were once action figures to the little little visual drops like for instance the 1980s cartoon roller coaster appearing in the witchlight carnival those are just little you know tip of the hats all done deliberately because at its heart the wild beyond the witch light is a story about time yeah uh the conspiracy theorist to me is thinking that you have gone back in time and now many times retroactively yes well yeah clearly uh and now that carnival was always that carnival so the they were responsible for sending all these kids to the d d universe true enough that’s how i see it now that’s that’s how you should see it you’ve altered the canon of my brain but there are some 1980s cartoon characters who are showing up uh my favorite is kellik because i am a sucker for a petty wizard so tell me about kellik kellik appeared in an episode of the original cartoon and he was also a 1980s action figure along with several others his first appearance in a role-playing game product was in a module called quest for the heart stone which was a first edition expert relax not first edition was an expert level adventure for those who are familiar with the expert box set congratulations you’re as old as i am kellik and a whole cadre of other characters including strongheart warduke skilla and numerous others were actually in that adventure as pre-generated characters you were supposed to play them there were evil ones and good ones and the whole structure of the adventure was take a bunch of good characters take a bunch of evil characters throw them together send them on a mission together and see what wackiness ensues well um i wanted to bring kellock back mainly because uh the wild beyond the witch light is a tale about time and i thought it would be good to go back in time pull some characters forward and figure out what have they been doing or what have they been up to or how has being pulled into the feywild just sort of pulled them out of time and sort of set them on a path but i also wanted nods to the the cartoon series so in the in the cartoon series calyx got a thing for unicorn horns yes well he still does yes he does in the wild beyond the witch like he’s still got a thing for unicorn horns he’s very focused indeed indeed and uh he’s also got his eye on ringlerun’s staff and so those two things combined uh sets him on a course and he brings a lot of his evil friends along and so you find him kind of in the thick of things in the wild beyond the witch light what i love about the kellik and the other characters in general is that um they may not mean anything to some people coming to this adventure right but they will add sort of a deeper resonance to those who are familiar and and have been waiting decades now for these characters to resurface in a meaningful way calc just has the best cloak he does have a pretty badass cloak with us the sort of cut at the bottom and the the big cowl yeah uh or the uh sort of like the yeah it’s kind of like the the the most uber color of all time yeah yeah it is definitely he went to the evil collar shop together and um he’s rocking the long white beard and so he’s he’s somebody that i could probably pull off a cosplay yeah yeah oh i’ve thought about it [Laughter] war duke is an interesting character i’ve always been fascinated by the fact that he just never got to the rest of his armor on one side of him yeah he does he he does take half plate to its extreme yeah that’s what he said yes and the the the short shorts are also yeah were something to behold back in the day liberating yes yes uh so we along with kellik and the other characters we gave war duke um to um sean wood who was our concept art director and then sean gave it to darken one of our artists and so darkin did a refresh on all the characters and made war duke a total badass um he’s got a little bit more armor now a little less leg showing um that’s okay it works and now he’s got his full flaming sword and display too so very good um yeah i war duke is one of those characters i had been looking for a home for for many years um and obviously one this is this is the now now is the time he’s back he’s he’s bad he’s still wearing his spooky ass helmet and um carrying a spooky ass shield yeah you were very uh you were very cheeky about the whole thing because the dread helm showed up under the uh very common magical we do that all the time yeah we seed i i knew we were doing the feywild story while we were working on xanathar’s guide to everything so putting war dukes helm in xanathar’s guide was a tip-off of something coming you https://t.co/fw1q4OSbxr pic.twitter.com/nJ2v7k7rg9
— Todd Kenreck (@ToddKenreck) September 7, 2021