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Neverwinter

Cryptic CEO Jack Emmert’s Gen Con Experience

By DwightMC | Mon 25 Aug 2014 09:27:01 AM PDT

The Neverwinter team recently attended Gen Con 2014, the premiere hobby game convention in the United States. Cryptic CEO, Jack Emmert, and a few lucky Neverwinter players got to sit down and play some D&D during the convention and he wanted to share with everyone his experience. Enjoy!

I love Dungeons & Dragons. I first started playing back in 1978 at an overnight summer camp, and I’ve never stopped since that night. I’ve played in campaigns from the Basic D&D box set all the way through 4th edition. I have been extremely lucky at Cryptic to be part of the Beta tests for D&D’s historic 5th edition and seen it evolve over the past months.

I’m not just a D&D fan – I’m a hard core gamer. Naturally, as part of that, I attend Gen Con every year; I think I’ve only missed one in the past 15 years. This past week, Gen Con attracted over 55,000 fans from all over the world to play and celebrate roleplaying, board, card and miniature games.

This year was a little more special because of the release of D&D 5th edition and it’s relation to one of our games, Neverwinter. I signed up to play 16 hours of D&D with the same Dungeon Master and party as part of Wizards of the Coast's special "All Access" program. Together, we all created characters and leveled them up through a series of adventures. The best of all, these characters persist through sanctioned events!

I started the game with a premade Fighter and decided to switch to a new character after the first day. Armed with the player’s handbook, I decided to create a Barbarian….Diogenes or Dio for short. I selected one of the factions to join – the Lords Alliance. The information packet explained the Lords Alliance and everything they were about. I even obtained a magic item for Dio – the Scale of Bahamut – which was also redeemable in Neverwinter! After I had settled in with my new character, we spent most of Friday and Saturday afternoon discovering the plots of the evil Dragon Cult.

Saturday night was the climax. Hundreds of players all worked cooperatively to enter the Kryptgarden Forest and take on the fortress newly built by the emergent Cult of the Dragon. Each adventuring party had one of several main goals such as, “take out the siege weapons.” Once all those groups completed that particular objective, it provided a benefit to everyone else. This also meant that once those siege weapons fell, we stopped getting pounded by ballistae from above! There was also a group of select adventurers at the front of the room who were facing off against the cult leader in order to obtain the powerful Green Dragon Mask.

The whole experience felt like a grand epic! Here were 500 or so players united in taking down this threat to the Forgotten Realms! Best of all, this was just part of the Tyranny of Dragons experience. So many of the things I was encountering in these D&D sessions were echoed in our Neverwinter expansion. That’s all been by design; Neverwinter is absolutely in synch with the great storylines that D&D is producing. But that’s not all. I noticed that Wiz Kids is also producing a whole line of awesome miniatures to go with the Tyranny of Dragons tale. This single storyline is a whole lot more than just a series of cool adventures – I can experience it digitally in Neverwinter, at conventions, in store encounters and in a brand-new miniatures game! This is only the beginning. I can’t share much, but this is the start of something really cool in D&D.

My tale wouldn’t be complete without a shout-out to the group of Neverwinter players who played with me on Friday night. Together, we solved the mystery of the Sokol Keep lighthouse and, of course, got to know each other too! Two players discovered they were guildmates and had no idea that the other was going to Gen Con! This is what Gen Con is about – bringing players together from all over to share in everything they love.

This year’s Gen Con was unforgettable. I had an incredible time playing D&D and meeting some fans of Neverwinter. I hope I get a chance to adventure alongside you too in Neverwinter! See you in-game!

Written by Jack Emmert, CEO of Cryptic Studios

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