Wizards of the Coast announced today at Wizards Presents that the next generation of Dungeons & Dragons (opens in new tab) is on its way through a massive public playtest called One D&D. This includes a revision of the major rulebooks: The Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide and Monster Manual. This update comes alongside an official digital toolset and a virtual tabletop for D&D. (opens in new tab)
The new rules are backwards compatible with the 5th Edition, or 5E, the current version of the D&D Rules. These have been around since 2014 and are probably the ones you play statistically. Don’t panic, we knew this was coming. It’s not that drastic, and it’s happened before.
Wizards of the Coast doesn’t call the new ruleset D&D 6th Edition, but it is. If it doesn’t take an official name other than One D&D, players will call it 6E, or maybe 5.5. Trust me: Wizards have spent years trying to make 5E just “Dungeons & Dragons”, but we all called it 5th Edition anyway… and now Wizards calls it that. The “One D&D” thing won’t last.
“One D&D is the codename for the next generation of Dungeons & Dragons that brings together updated rules, backwards compatible with 5th Edition, D&D Beyond as a platform for your D&D experience, and a D&D digital play experience that is in early development for players and Dungeon Masters full immersion and rich 3D creation tools,” Wizards said in a press release.
“We made a smart move with the 5th edition by listening to the fans,” said D&D designer Chris Perkins, “and what came out of that process was a system that is stable, that is loved, that captures the best elements of previous editions. Now that we have that, we’re no longer in a position where we think of D&D as an edition. It’s just D&D.”
Wizards tried to be very clear in their presentation that their plans for changes in D&D were not about “taking something away” from D&D players or “changing what you love”. As a D&D veteran who went from 3rd Edition D&D to its evolution D&D 3.5, then 4th Edition to 4E Essentials, I can safely say that this is…partially true, probably.
This 5th edition update has a lot of development time and a lot of playing experience with D&D 5E. Subtle updates to the rules have happened over the past eight years, as has the game design philosophy. It will also benefit, at least in part, from the knowledge gained in those previous game updates.
But will the thing you like most turn into the official print? Could be. Fundamental core rules are changed in the first document: a natural 20 is now always a success, while a natural 1 is always a failure. That change was made, D&D’s game design architect Jeremy Crawford said, because the vast majority of people played the game that way, whether it was the official rules or not.
Which, if you’ve done this before, is actually quite refreshing.
The first playtest focuses on Race and Background, giving an evolved version of previous rules that is still quite simple and familiar. It also introduces a new celestial polar opposite of the Tiefling: the animal-headed Ardlings. It also collapses spell lists into three simple, separate Arcane, Divine, and Primal lists.
Then there are much bigger changes: Critical Hits are seemingly now only for player characters, not NPCs. That’s big! Some people will hate it.
In short?
In many ways this is the natural evolution of things. With the acquisition of D&D Beyond, Wizards of the Coast now, for the first time, has a single common platform on which to distribute digital content for D&D, including what sounds like pre-rule updates in the coming years ahead of those new core rulebooks. (And it makes an official 3D virtual tabletop tool, too.)
That was the plan from the beginning with 5th Edition, but you can forgive us for being surprised that it is still the case in the Wizards of the Coast business environment.
If you’re interested in the future of Dungeons & Dragons, you can sign up for the One D&D public playtests at dndbeyond.com (opens in new tab). Oh, they also announced the D&D release schedule for 2023, including Planescape. (opens in new tab)
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