Penny Arcade is charting a bold new course with Acquisitions Incorporated, the first D&D book produced in partnership with an outside design team since 2015. Whether it’s experienced as a podcast, a live show, or a YouTube series, Acquisitions Incorporated has been a gateway for new D&D players to discover this hobby for years. This new book, written in part by veteran D&D designers Shawn Merwin, Teos “Alphastream” Abadia, and Scott Fitzgerald Gray in collaboration with members of the Acquisitions Inc. and Acquisitions Inc.: The “C” Team casts, is made up of everything Dungeon Masters need to incorporate Acquisitions Inc. into their own campaign or setting, and everything players need to integrate their characters as full-fledged members of Faerûn’s most notorious adventuring enterprise.
Moments ago at PAX East, the Penny Arcade team revealed a host of tantalizing details about the upcoming Acquisitions Incorporated, including its scheduled release date: June 18th. The book is also available for pre-order on the Penny Arcade store at this very instant, and will be available for pre-order on D&D Beyond and at other sources by Monday 4/1. More importantly, dozens of images of the book and its art—which runs the gamut from the cartoonish Penny Arcade style to the digital paintings we’ve come to expect from D&D—and a few sneak peaks at the book’s contents were revealed to the public. Also, if you're a fan of #CriticalRoleFanArt, you might recognize the character designs of illustrator and Up to Four Players co-creator Aviv Or, whose style fits Acq Inc. like a glove!
I spoke with Penny Arcade Producer Elyssa Grant, the woman who saw this book from concept to finished product. “It’s exhilarating,” she said. “[The Penny Arcade team and I] have been talking about this book for almost two years, and working on it for almost a year and a half. I’ve been so deep in the process and the project for so long that the thought of it going out to other people is amazing.”
With two years of planning and development behind this book (about the same length of time Wizards of the Coast spends building from concept to product), I had to know what made this book so special to her, and what made it worth spending so much time creating. I asked Elyssa what fans of Acquisitions Inc. will love about this book, and how D&D players who’ve never listened to a minute of Acq Inc. can integrate this book into their campaigns. Here are some of the features you can expect from Acquisitions Incorporated when it comes out this June.
Player Options
D&D is defined by its archetypal classes. While some players like to foil expectations and create a character who defies their class’s stereotypes, many players love to dig into the high fantasy archetypes of the paladin in shining armor, the charmingly traitorous rogue, and so forth. Acquisitions Incorporated describes how characters who have been adventuring for a while can integrate their characters into an Acq Inc. franchise, and draws upon the archetypal characteristics of each class give you a few tried-and-true ways to do so.
While the book promises to include plenty of advice and “soft” character options, I know a lot of players who will be excited by the book’s crunchier options. If you watch Acquisitions Incorporated: The “C” Team, then you’re already familiar with four of Acq Inc.’s staff positions. For example, in addition to being a wood elf druid, Walnut Dankgrass is also the “C” Team’s documancer, and manages mission reports and other critical documents that must be filled out in the line of duty.
This book includes eight roles, several of which will be new, even to Acq Inc. fans. The four familiar roles of cartographer, decisionist, documancer, and hoardsperson make their return in this book, and are joined by the lesser-known (but equally important) roles of loremonger, obviator, occultant, and secretarian. The exact nature of these roles are somewhat obscure, but we do know that these roles are more than just a social feature. As you grow more and more important within the hierarchy of Acquisitions Incorporated (rising from rank 1 to 4), you also gain more traits from your role.
The occultant, for instance, gains a few bonus tool proficiencies at rank 1, as well as the ability to “Read the Kill.” The exact nature of this trait was frustratingly obscured in the images shown at the panel today, but it seems to make it easier for occultants to “determine the impact of [creatures you’ve killed] on [your] franchise’s fate.” This extra progression, independent of your class, sounds like an interesting twist on the standard faction ranks as presented in books like the Dungeon Master’s Guide and Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. Elyssa also revealed to me that the book will contain new spells—and that they may be linked to your position in your franchise!
Beyond this, Acquisitions Incorporated will even include a brand-new character race called the Verdan. Little is known about them yet—to the best of my knowledge, we haven’t even seen them in an official Acq Inc. game yet!—but I managed to learn a few choice details. The nomadic and mysterious Verdan are a new race that they tongue-in-cheek pitched to D&D Managing Editor Jeremy Crawford as "sexy goblins," and have unique powers of adaptation and evolution. Jerry Holkins (player of Omin Dran and Dungeon Master of The "C" Team) explained that the Verdan have their origins in an unresolved plot thread from season 2 of The "C" Team, when an army of goblins and hobgoblins were consumed by an eldritch power. Now reborn as the Verdan, they are emerging from the Underdark with a hunger for new knowledge, new experiences, and new cultures to adapt to.
I’m clamoring to learn more about them, and I hope that we learn more about their powers and their story in Acquisitions Inc. or Acquisitions Inc.: The “C” Team live games here at PAX East, or at least in livestreamed games in the weeks and months to come. If new races are being added to the Forgotten Realms vis-a-vis this book, then it's clear that Penny Arcade and their designers have been allowed a huge amount of creative freedom with the Realms. It can be hard to tell if streamed games are "canon" in the setting, but if Chris Perkins is to be believed, Acquisitions Incorporated is 100% canon within the Forgotten Realms. Will we see more of the Verdan in future D&D products?
Dungeon Master Options
Players aren’t the only people this book is catering to; Dungeon Masters will also have plenty of new content at their fingertips to challenge and reward their players with. As usual for DM-focused setting content, there’s a heaping helping of lore about the founding of Acquisitions Inc. and their mission, to help you calibrate your campaign’s expectations. This makes sense: this book is geared at all players, and while some of us have watched every single Acq Inc. live show, there are going to be people buying this book that have never even heard of Acquisitions Incorporated before.
I was surprised to hear that this book would contain a complete adventure! While the Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica setting book contained a short introductory adventure that showcased some of the world’s unique features, the adventure in Acquisitions Incorporated will cover levels 1 through 6. This adventure is more than an introduction, it’s a full-blown mini-campaign that puts the players’ budding franchise at the center of the action!
Perhaps most exhilarating of all, however, are the monster and NPC stat blocks contained in the back of the book. While she wasn’t able to spill all the details, Elyssa assured me that the beings in the back of the book would be “fan-favorite characters and monsters” from the history of Acquisitions Incorporated. It seems like a no-brainer to include characters like Omin Dran, Rosie Beestinger, Jim Darkmagic, and Môrgæn—but do we dare to hope that characters like Strix and Evelyn from Dice, Camera, Action! will be included as well? And what of the iconic monsters that have appeared in the many “A” team and “C” team games?
Only time will tell.
Acquisitions Incorporated is available for pre-order on the Penny Arcade store, and will release on June 18th, 2019. What do you hope will appear in this book?
James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and the Critical Role Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, the DM of Worlds Apart, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and Kobold Press. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his partner Hannah and their feline adventurers Mei and Marzipan. You can usually find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.
Unfortunately, Chris Perkins, Ed Greenwood, and R.A. Salvatore all seem to disagree with you. I guess you can just ignore AI stuff if you want, but that's probably only going to become harder and harder as more authors intertwine AI lore into new canon FR content. Who knows, we might even see Verdans when it comes time for the 6e PHB in like a decade.
This is why I like the way Eberron was handled. They give you the world, then declare all modules and novels to be non-canon to keep themselves and others from mucking it up.
Still, I like the Verdans as a basic concept, and while I've not watched AI, I'm sure there'll at least be some fun monsters, magic items and NPCs to pilfer from the AI book.
By not partnering with WotC, Matt has more design control over his setting. Tal'Dorei is not part of the Forgotten Realms, so it'd be unlikely to get an 'official' publication by WotC and I don't believe Matt wants to give up on his own setting. It's not about who's deserving or not, it's about people maintaining creative control and design direction over their products.
Matt does work closely with WotC, he worked on Dragon Heist, but Critical Role is his baby and I can respect that he doesn't want to tie it in with official WotC products.
I never followed Acq Inc before but this sounds really interesting, love the added classes.
It says in the article that it will be available for pre-order on DND beyond on or around April 1st.
At the risk of derailing the conversation here. There's some (i assume) Kurtz fanboy recreationist history here. If mods don't want this, i won't be bothered.
Kurtz isn't blackballed. Kurtz left AI, making it quite clear Binwin is HIS property. And if you think Kurtz would be wiling to work with Mike and Jerry then you haven't kept track of Kurtz's behavior ever.
He is "Mr. Takes Things 100% Personally". How personally? He's still so personal about it, he brought up the drama in an interview just a few weeks ago, and made it clear he had changed storylines in Table Titans and Binwin's Minions to erase AI/PA from them. For their part, Mike and Jerry have never said anything bad about Kurtz.
I think on their part, Mike and Jerry have proven they seem to be able to work with people considering they still work with literally everyone else that has ever been involved in Acq Inc, other than Wil Wheaton. and Kurtz is the one that started beef with Wheaton (because he didn't like Wheaton giving him advice). Kurtz is also the reason Kris Straub never got involved in the Acq Inc game earlier because Kurtz started drama with Straub. I think one of those 2 sides has shown a better track record of playing with other people.
Also the issue isn't "if Mike/Jerry would pay him", his problem was literally that he WOULD NOT settle for just getting paid.
Kurtz's issue, out of his own mouth, was he thought he should be an equal partner to all things Acq Inc. And keep in mind that WotC reached out to Penny Arcade and Mike was the one who thought of doing the podcasts. Kurtz literally was just a friend they invited to take part in their project. Kurtz is like a contractor friend you hired because you want to support your friends, but then he turns around and thinks he's now a partner in you entire business/project.
Could tomorrow's Encounter of the week be a Acq inc themed mini adventure like the Ghosts if Saltmarsh one?
I want to get this book, but they want $17 to ship it.
I'd love to buy it from Penny Arcade, but I can't see spending $67 on the book when Amazon will probably be letting it for for a few dollars less than $30. The going rate for new books has been $28, including my preorder for Ghosts of Saltmarsh.
I feel like Kurtz gets a bad wrap for being a jerk (a self proclaimed jerk at that) which makes people assume a lot. Kurtz referred to how he misses his camaraderie with Mike in that same interview you mentioned. Even though he did end the Acq Inc timeline he also mentioned Scott, Mike, and Jerry were still out in the world playing DnD together.
Scott didn't seem to have that much bad blood at the time Kris started doing the animation for intros and the first time they had him on. They had just started a web series together around that same time, and him and Scott had known each other for years, Scott was the main reason Kris was at PA.
I don't blame Scott for wanting to leave when he found out he wasn't going to have a share in AI. If I was sitting across that table watching AI become what it had, and being a major part of it from the get go and a major breadwinner for the franchise I would speak up too. Keep in mind the party he was speaking up to was the same one he was having to pay rent to for office space at the company he was creating content for. There is absolutely no creative control involved in putting a stat block and the mention of an already established character in a book, so I feel there is no reason to believe Scott would have issue with talking with them about it. Just because he left AI because of differences doesn't mean he hates it. And I feel like if PA decides not to include his content its because they feel it isn't worth their time which is a shame to the original fan base.
They may very well include something on Binwin, I doubt it but you never know. But if they choose not to I highly doubt they will tell us why. No party on either side of this is blameless and they have their reasons. If I was such a huge fanboy my avatar wouldn't be Jim Darkmagic, I love all the guys at AI and what they do and will continue to watch them. I just find it highly unlikely that Scott Kurtz being hard to deal with sometimes is the reason we are probably not going to be seeing Binwin in this book, and I think that is a shame.
So are "roles" supposed to be like backgrounds, or is this something completely new?
Well it's about time. Now I can be a little more outrageous with my characters.
Is this a podcast or a youtube show or what?
Yes and yes, but also live convention shows.
Acquisitions Incorporated began as a podcast in 2008, and has since been live shows at PAX conventions, a YouTube series, and a streaming series. You can check out the history of Acq Inc. in this article, or you can look at the archive on their website.
Does this mean Critical Role could be treated similarly? I know there's an independent Taldorei guide, but could there be an official dnd product?
This is beyond cool. I can't wait to expand a branch to our corner of Faerûn with my party!
just because YOU dont like him doesnt dictate whether he lives or not, dude. Wil hasnt always been very passionate about the things he loves. he is both and entertainer and a D&D nerd. put the two together and that is what you get. that being said, he is capable of chilling out a bit. if you have ever watched critical role, he played a character back in the first campaign and was very calm throughout the whole thing. the difference is the AI campaign almost bordered on parody, it was so light-hearted. in critical role, he is playing with other actors in a serious setting, so it was reflected in his character.
That is the entire idea of ALL of the d&d podcasts and live streams that have been going on these past years. D&D has never been as popular as a result. dont complain, just dont get it if you dont want it and be happy this means D&D is getting more attention and will probably see a resurgence in support via products.
Kurtz gets a bad rap for being a jerk because he IS a jerk and was one before all this business involving pay and shares with penny arcade. He chased off Wil Wheaton, who is a famously nice guy, from the show! yeah he wasnt gonna get any shares in AI stuff but how much better off is he now than he would have been had he stayed? last i checked he just plays some lame mobile phone game hosted on D&D's twitch channel. hes been relegated to being a shill for a bad mobile phone game. his mistake was thinking he was so valuable that he could go off and do his own thing. hes that guy who quits the band only to find out later that people only liked him as part of the group.