LEGO Ideas 21348 Dungeons & Dragons designer 'campaigned' to join the team

LEGO Ideas 21348 Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon's Tale had one of its designers campaigning to work on it, despite their limited LEGO Ideas history.

As mentioned in our review, 21348 Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon's Tale has plenty of iconic D&D inclusions and Easter eggs. It's evident that the design team are more than familiar enough with the game and in a recent roundtable with LEGO Fan Media, designers Mark Stafford, Jordan Scott and graphic designer Johanna Wurm Jensen confirmed just how personal this project was to them. One even mentioned a specific desire to join the LEGO Ideas design team for this set, despite only previously working on 21109 Exo Suit in the theme.

"I did the instant this came up as a competition," shared designer Mark Stafford when asked whether or not he had requested to work on the set given that he's usually not on the LEGO Ideas team.

"You know, when we were going to put this out there on LEGO Ideas I was, what's the right word – campaigning? Yes, it was a campaign, a lot of trying to get on the party. I was just finishing up the Avengers Tower when this came along. It just fell into a nice little pocket and my superheroes design lead was okay with losing me for five months to do this. "

Deciding the designs, classes and more details of the minifigures proved to be more of a challenge than anticipated thanks to this personal connection and the designers didn't want to accidentally depict their own D&D characters exactly.

"I just had to fight against putting in Easter eggs that referenced my characters from years of playing D&D – the cleric can't be a War Domain cleric because that would be my first character."

Still, this didn't stop them from including a few coincidental references.

"Ironically, the cleric if you swap the head to the female version is very much like Johanna's cleric in my home game, who is a very old lady who likes healing people," added Jordan Scott. "So there are some references to certain characters which are kind of funny."

You can take a closer look at the minifigures in 21348 Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon's Tale by clicking here to read our detailed review. The LEGO Ideas set launches on April 1, 2024, for LEGO Insiders, or April 4 for everyone, for £314.99 / $359.99 / €359.99.

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