LEGO 21348 Dungeons & Dragons’ adventure transformed the set
Designing LEGO 21348 Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon’s Tale alongside its adventure was a unique task, transforming each item piece by piece.
Ahead of its launch early next month, 21348 Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon’s Tale designers Jordan Scott, and Mark Stafford as well as graphic designer Johanna Wurm Jensen sat down with LEGO Fan Media including Brick Fanatics in a roundtable interview.
One of the many topics discussed was what it was like designing a LEGO set with a tie-in adventure composed by experienced D&D designers Chris Perkins, Kyle Brink and more. That’s not something that can be said for many models aside from 21348 Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon’s Tale. Note that this story will include minor spoilers for the Red Dragon’s Tale adventure.
“When we first had the first call with Wizards of the Coast with the design team we thought it would be amazing if we had a story to go with this,” shared Scott. “Obviously, people will make up their own but if we had one, great. Then Wizards of the Coast offered to write one.
“Myself and the lead team went to Seattle to show them the set, I think it was around 75-80% done at that time, to kind of get final approval on the overall look and feel. We were hesitating about what accessories to put in because we wanted to hear what was going on in the campaign. So Mark [Stafford] just made me a bag of minifigure accessories for fantasy stuff and I took that with me.”
While pitching the adventure proved to be easier than possibly expected, making sure that the set reflected the adventure and vice versa proved to be more challenging, until the team were led through the set much like a Dungeon Master guides players through a D&D adventure.
“Kyle sat us down and he told me the story in an interactive way so we didn’t roll dice or anything, but we all took a character and we went through the story,” continued Scott. “There were compromises from the model side and compromises from the story side, it worked both ways. One of my favourite examples is the Dragonborn, Alax. He was originally called Alax Redscales but the Dragonborn is green and the name didn’t make much sense so they changed it to Jadescales.
“Then when we were going through the story, Kyle described the staircase to get to the prison cell and there’s not a staircase in the model. It might have taken a bit of brickwork or structural changes to make it work but we could add a ladder in the back and he agreed. That’s one that we changed in the model to accommodate the campaign.
“My favourite one was when he described a silver mirror floating in the air – it was obviously in the Gelatinous Cube. We don’t have a mirror, but we have this frying pan, which looks like a mirror and Kyle decided to change it to a silver frying pan. It’s much funnier. It was so funny to play through an interactive story while changing parts of this campaign or the model to fit and accommodate each other.”
Designing 21348 Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon’s Tale sounds like more of a challenge compared to other similarly-massive models as the adventure adds another layer of details to pay attention to throughout the process. As mentioned in our reviews for the model and the book though, the hard work has paid off.
LEGO Ideas 21348 Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon’s Tale launches on April 1, 2024, for LEGO Insiders, or April 4 for everyone, for £314.99 / $359.99 / €359.99.
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