Posted in: Dungeons & Dragons, Games, Hasbro, Tabletop, Tabletop Publishers, Wizards of the Coast | Tagged: d&d, Dungeons and Dragons: The Immersive Quest, Eric Brouillet

D&D: The Immersive Quest Creator on Legacy Characters & Classes

Vibrant's Eric Broullet spoke to us about D&D: The Immersive Quest, bringing legacy characters, rotating classes, future, and more.

As Vibrant's Eric Brouillet is doing his part to expand the legacy of Dungeons & Dragons in a new experience with D&D: The Immersive Quest, the brand started touring with its introduction of the interactive experience in Toronto, with a successful launch. Currently, in its second stop in Plano, Texas, US fans are in for a real treat getting to live their adventure with the dedication that rivals theme parks and the most sophisticated of Live Action Roleplaying organizations, not to mention the vast resources from Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast. Brouillet spoke to Bleeding Cool about whether the experience will be the same throughout or if different templates and campaign settings will apply, the introduction of legacy characters to the experience, rotating classes, and balancing the experience to accommodate players of all skill levels, from newcomers to veterans.

Dungeons & Dragons: The Immersive Quest Creator on Working with Hasbro & Wizards of the Coast on Securing Legendary Legacy Characters, Swapping Classes & Future

BC: As far as the future goes, you're planting some impressive seeds. Are there plans to rotate campaigns to keep things fresh, or take a wait-and-see approach before expanding?

EB: The idea is we built this program to go on tour, like we did our trial launch in Toronto. We have our US debut in Plano, Texas, and we're very excited about it, but the idea you must understand is that this program is a mix of Disney-level execution. You have amazing set design, set pieces, props, actors, technology, and everything like that. What we're planning to do, and I'll tell you the level of replayability is interesting. You will never have the same adventure twice. That said, we don't expect at this point to change the main storyline, but we're going to incorporate add-ons.

We're going to move some things around, and one of the things that we did for the Plano launch is we finally got the approval to use a legacy character from the D&D universe, and it's the mighty Paladin Strongheart, who is physically here. He was an action figure in the '80s, and it's been carried over to this edition. He'll welcome you to the Waterdeep Market (from the Forgotten Realms) in the adventure. He looks astonished with his armor-clad, shield, sword, and his helmet with his wing on top. It's a strong replica of what the actual character is, and it's personified with very talented actors, so people can have a cool photo op.

My point is that we're going to add a few things along the way to keep the program fresh. Character meetups, changing the storyline, new interactive station, adventure journal, better integration with D&D, so we have the list go on and on. Now, we're studying the execution we have is an hour-long quest. We call it this, the full version, but we're in the middle of creating a medium or light version that can go in other types of conventions, like a Comic Con, or something like that. That's the thing we're currently thinking about.

What was the most difficult aspect, as far as execution-wise, to overcome that you had to conceive before it became like truly a reality and everything started coming together?

One of the difficult things was to balance the rich story of D&D and to make it like in a dish into a digestible format for an immersive experience. It's like when you're reading a novel, and you try to adapt the novel into a movie. Sometimes you need to let go of certain things while putting emphasis on others. D&D: The Immersive Experience is like the same thing. It's a channel, an outlet that the brand needs to express itself in a manner, so we want to be true to what the source material is.

We're not creating anything new; we take from the creative sandbox, but it was to balance the appeal to the core gamer. We try to bring family and non-gamers in, but also respect commercial and operational limitations, right? We had to find common ground with all three elements, but we want to make sure, most importantly, the core gamer, like the people who know, are still at home, and they're going to smile like, "Oh yeah! They did this! They did that! Oh, this idol here is the first cover of the D&D Player Handbook." That's a nice nudge, so we pay attention to the details.

For the people who don't know, they don't feel like they're excluded, because they never played a game, or they just entered the game. We're selling these mystical and magical quests that you can do with your friend. That's the selling feature, so it's really to balance all those things. With Hasbro and Wizards, we found a good common ground to make sure it's most appealing to the majority of people.

Is it possible, maybe someone can multi-class in the future if they want to play this, or is the player limited to play the classes all the way through?

For the sake of efficiency, we're going to stick with the four classes, logistically speaking, but we were thinking about sometimes rotating different types of classes. We might replace, maybe the rogue with the cleric, or something by something else, the fighter with the paladin. We might go down like the tree of the original classes, if you mean, and go down to bring something with a little bit more specificity, so that we have the total ability to do that. Right now, we need to give a solid go with the" base system" for lack of a better word.

Was there anything that you wanted to add about the experience that we didn't cover?

Well, the only thing I will say it's a magical quest, set in the world of D&D. It's fun for everyone. It's a 60-minute adventure, more and more. You've got to play somebody that's not you, but is you, and go to those missions and whatnot. It's super cool, and we're going to be there in Plano (Texas) until the end of January. After that, we plan to move to our next location. Fans, non-fans, newbies, and interested parties are all welcome to join the adventure.

D&D: The Immersive Quest is available in Plano, Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, and runs through the beginning of February 2026. For more information, you can check it out here.

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