At the recent RLFM days, we were briefed on some up and coming things by the LEGO® Ideas team. They were all treated with cheers, and we can talk about the first of these tonight.
Over the last few years, LEGO Ideas have run contests based on certain prompts – Music to our ears resulted in the LEGO IDEAS Fender Stratocaster. Various Holiday and Travel contests brought us last years’ Sailing ship, and the current Ray the Castaway GWP sets, and more. I’ll hand over to the new Design Manager on LEGO Ideas, Jordan Scott:
“We will we will be briefing the first ever IP on LEGO Ideas. We are looking for Fantastic builds that celebrate 50 years of Dungeons and Dragons.Ignite Imagination, showcase your favorite elements,be they monsters, creatures, places characters, How would you celebrate 50 years of Dungeons and Dragons?
“… As a player and Game Master myself, I am also (like the cheering fan media), incredibly emotional. We expect to see a flood of beautiful creations and crazy creatures and monsters and things that will then be filtered, like we did with foosball table and the music brief, and then be turned into a real product.”
It is not hard to imagine the crossover that exists: D&D has millions of fans worldwide; LEGO Bricks have millions of fans world wide. And a lot of them like to build in a way that reflects the fantastic themes seen in Dungeons and Dragons.
Monica Pedersen, Senior Marketing Manager with the IDEAS Team continued: “This is full collaboration between us and Wizards of the Coast, which is owned by Hasbro.
“We really want to do co-creation here. So we’re not just talking about the model, which we’ve done before: we are looking at cooperation of various different things across the development process … people have different creative powers, right? Some people are brilliant at building with LEGO bricks and some are brilliant storytellers, and we want everyone to be able to participate here. So there will be various things that we will be co-creating together with whomever wants to join, but the first thing would be the model and product itself”
Here is the official word:
Join us in celebrating 50 years of Dungeons & Dragons!
We want to share news of an exciting new collaboration. Gather your adventuring party, prepare your spells, and don your gear because we invite you to join us in celebrating 50 years of Dungeons & Dragons! We, at The LEGO Group, have partnered with Wizards of the Coast to bring our two epic brands together through the LEGO Ideas platform.
LEGO Ideas is a platform where fans can share their creations and creativity, enter prize challenges, showcase their proposals for new LEGO Ideas sets and vote for awesome models dreamt up by fellow fans. Some of these incredible creations will be selected to become official LEGO sets.
We are preparing a celebration of an incredible 50 years of Dungeons & Dragons! For this, we are looking for you to ignite your imagination and showcase your favorite elements of the world’s greatest roleplaying game using LEGO bricks.
You could create your ultimate builds, based on your favorite storylines, monsters, characters, adventurers, and locations.
Once built, submit your product idea to ideas.LEGO.com where a panel of judges consisting of members of the LEGO Ideas team and members from Wizards of the Coast, will choose entries among these submissions for a Fan Vote.
Excitingly, all entries that reach the Fan Vote phase, will stand a chance of becoming an official LEGO Ideas set! A mighty reward for any fan!
We look forward to where this adventure is going to take us!
“We are continuously looking for different ways to like look at fan creativity and realize that.” – Hasan Jensen, Engagement Manager, LEGO Ideas.
This is the first time the LEGO IDEAS has posted a brief, looking for the creation of an upcoming set in conjunction with a third party IP. The fact that it is a subsidiary of Hasbro is remarkable. However, there is significant crossover in the fan base, as well ongoing growth in both fan bases following the COVID-19 pandemic.
With the 50th anniversary arriving in 2024, we can expect to see the successful submission released sometime that year – around 18 months or so, I would expect. In the meantime, Monica Petersen teased that there might be further ways for fans to be involved – but details were not clear at this point. Time will tell.
The intake period has now begun, and will continue until November 14. You can find further details here.
Does this sound like your idea of a great way to celebrate 50 Years of D&D? Leave your comments below, and until next time,
Play Well.