D&D (2024) "The Future of D&D" (New Core Books in 2024!)

The online D&D Celebration event, which has been running all weekend, comes to a close with The Future of D&D, a panel featuring WotC's Ray Winninger, Liz Schuh, Chris Perkins, and Jeremy Crawford, hosted by Elle Osili-Wood.

D&D is exploring the multiverse
Revisiting classic settings. 1st of 3 settings (Ravenloft) released this year. Next year, the other two major classic D&D settings come out. Both in formats they've never published products before.

Plus a "little peek" at a third classic D&D setting - a cameo.

In 2023, yet another classic setting is coming out.

Evolving D&D
Because of new players, they're always listening. Exploring new styles of play (like no combat needed in Wild Beyond the Witchlight). Also presentation of monsters and spells. New product formats. More adventure anthologies.

Making products easier to use. Ways to create the best experience. Experimenting and looking into technology.

Approaches to Design
Wild Beyond the Witchlight has interior design and tools to make running the adventure easier. Story tracker, guidance.

Beyond the books, they want to make different and varied products - packaging and form factor. Things different to hardcovers and boxed sets.

A blog post is coming soon detailing some of the changes, with more to come in future posts.

50th Anniversary in 2024
They've begun work on new versions of the core rulebooks. Recent surveys tie into that. They're still making plans, but expect more surveys. More will be said next year.

They will be completely compatible!

New experiences in the digital arena.

January Gift Set
Rules Expansion Gift Set -- Xanathar, Tasha, and a new book: Mordenkainen Presents Monsters of the Multiverse. All in a slipcase. Was intended for the Holidays, but global production issues mean January instead. There's also an alternate cover version.

D&D 5E - A Closer Look At January's D&D Rules Expansion Gift Set

WotC earlier announced a D&D Rules Expansion Gift Set for January, which includes three books - Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, and the new Mordenkainen Presents Monsters of the Multiverse. These were intended for the holidays, but the global production issues...

www.enworld.org

Mordenkainen Presents Monsters of the Multiverse
A treasure trove of creature related material from previous products compiled into one book and updated.

Opportunity to update material with a feel for how the 50th Anniversary books will be.

Improvements based on feedback, rebalancing, new and old art.

Over 250 monsters, and 30 playable races. All of the setting agnostic races that have been published outside the Player's Handbook.

Some content from Witchlight, Fizban's, and Strixhaven was influenced by Mordenkainen's.

Available first in the gift set, but separately later in the year.

Monsters alphabetized throughout rather than using subsections.

D&D 5E - Zooming In On Monsters of the Multiverse [UPDATED!]

Earlier, WotC announced Mordenkainen Presents Monsters of the Multiverse, a new D&D compilation of monster material from previous products updated to a new format. These screen grabs are as good as I could get them. They're not terribly clear, but you can make more out than in the original...

www.enworld.org

Stat block changes --

Spellcasting trait is gone. Spellcasting action, slimmed down. Spellcasting monsters need less prep.

Spell slots are gone for NPCs. Regular actions that would have once been spells.

It was too easy for a DM to use spells which result in the monster having a too low effective CR.

Monsters can be friends or foes, and some magic will help rather than hinder PCs.

Where are we going?
More adventure anthologies. Another classic setting fairly soon.

Two all-new settings. Completely new. In development stage, an 'exploration' phase, testing the viability of them. They might not see the light of day.

Retooling nostalgia and blending it with new concepts. A blend of things that you know, and things that they have never done before.

In the short term -- more news next month about a new product for 2022 which goes into a new scary place we've never been before.

Boo the miniature giant space hamster
Below is an sketch from Hydro74's alt cover, which features Boo the miniature giant space hamster.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

No, but in the case of The LEGO Movie, critics and audiences agreed that it was pretty darm good.

proving both can be wrong (I mean a movie with characters made from Legos, it's an auto fail).

 

[Urriak Uruk]

proving both can be wrong (I mean a movie with characters made from Legos, it's an auto fail).

Lego Movie: Makes ton of money, critics love it, audiences love it.

Naysayer: See? Proof that everybody is wrong, and I'm right!

 

[doctorbadwolf]

And I very much doubt that you have played all the classes and the archetypes, and combination with races.

So what?

No, seriously, so what? I'm not ever going to play a cleric, an aasimar, or dozens of other concepts represented in the books. The game is still, however, missing things that I would immediately play upon release.

The fact I can't play enough dnd to play all of the options is completely irrelevant to the question of whether or not more stuff should come out, or if the release schedule is fast enough, etc.

For clarity, I speak as someone who would prefer they slow it back down and maybe even slow down to 3 books a year.

Don't make the mistake of thinking what's the most created character on D&D Beyond is the same as what's the most played subclass in the game. The champion is the free option. Cleric, fighter, rogue, and wizard are the free options. Fighter is the most basic of the four...and champion is the only subclass option for fighters. So of course more people make them. That has zero correlation to what people actually use at the table.

Your argument here relies on the mistaken premise that the rankings of class and subclass would change if they only looked at active characters with the PHB and/or other sources unlocked. This isn't the case. The rankings don't change at all, and so we can know that within the sample being examined, only having the free stuff available is not why the Champion is the most played fighter subclass.

And I’d scrap the culturally insensitive Samurai subclass from Xanathar’s

I've never encountered this before. What about the Samurai is culturally insensitive?

You a Swarmkeeper Ranger?

My Eberron campaign's Swarmkeeper has a swarm of flying ferrets. When he earned a boon from a primordial spirit of the woods and the transition between day and night and winter and summer, and was gifted the Stag's shed antlers, he gained the ability to turn one of his ferrets into a large flying ferret, and all his ferrets now have antlers and add his wisdom mod to damage whenever he deals damage from the swarm.

I'm not going to go too in depth, but my main gripes (mechanically) with the race are:

1. Their innate spellcasting is weaker than almost every other spellcasting race's innate spellcasting (most of the subraces only get 1 spell once per long rest, while Water and Fire Genasi get that and a cantrip, which is just straight up worse than Drow, Hexblood, Fairy, and Triton spellcasting).
2. Water Genasi are supposed to be an aquatic race, but they can't breathe underwater (strangely, Air Genasi sort of have the ability to do this). Edit: It has come to my attention that I somehow completely missed the "Amphibious" feature. Ignore this completely.
3. They just straight up get less racial features than other races (compare them to an Elf or Dwarf, and you'll see it), and a lot of them that they do get are just awful, in that they're so situational that you're almost never going to be able to make use of them (like the Earth Genasi's Earth Walk and the Air Genasi's Unending Breath).

Like I said above, the Fire Genasi is the most playable Genasi subrace. I personally would have them become Lineages, so a Dwarf, Orc, or any other non-human race could become a Genasi, but I also would like for their lore to match their racial mechanics. Nothing about the race's features connects them to their Genie parent, they're just elemental in nature. (Genies get Darkvision, Flight, and other features that the Genasi don't get, while Genasi get abilities and spells that none of the Genies get.)

You don't see how this idea makes them less unique than they currently are?

Why wouldn't a rewrite move the other way, and make them less tied to genies and more interesting and unique?

Okay, got you. Your points make sense to me, it's just that.... unplayable is a strong word. All that makes them subpar IMO, but unplayable is kind of a stretch. Maybe my table is an outlier on this, but my player is pretty happy with his air genasi stomr sorc, and never did the character feel like it was behind because of the racial choice. (of course, me letting him change his racial stats even before tasha's helped a lot)

Yeah the idea they're unplayable is just nonsense. Pretty much nothing in 5e hits that mark. In past editions, yeah for sure, but not really in 5e. Especially when it comes to races and some classes subclasses, sorcerer included. Most of the Sorcerer's power is in spellcasting and metamagic, and races just don't modify what a character does that much. Mechanically, race isn't all that important. It primarily matters for character concept.

Because the sum total of all players of D&D 5E all use D&D Beyond? Again, the usage stats for D&D Beyond are not the same as what's actually played at the table.

That isn't how sample size works. Sampling thousands of actively used characters with at least the PHB available is going to give fairly reliable data about what is being played.

Oh, and Wizards have said multiple times that the simple options like standard human and champion fighter are the most popular options in the game and always have been.

Profit and popularity are not indicators of quality.

Profit could go either way, I suppose, though it's hard to imagine something making mountains of money while being unpopular. Popularity is absolutely an indicator of quality. Maybe you're using the wrong word, in "indicators"? An indicator suggests or points to something, it doesn't prove or guarantee it. 9999 times out of 10000, when someone thinks a popular thing is garbage, they're just being a snob.

Nah. It simply means it's popular. Quality is far more difficult to quantify objectively.

Quality could reasonably be described as a "a thing that people mostly approve of". I may not like most of what's on pop radio, but I know better than to mistake preference for objective judgement of quality.

 

[Scribe]

Quality could reasonably be described as a "a thing that people mostly approve of".

I mean, I cannot see this as being a productive use of our time to go down, but in no way whatsoever is popularity a marker on quality to me.

It could be cost efficiency.
It could be brand recognition.
It COULD be quality.
It could be simply snowballing hype.

Are the transformers movies actually good? Or do they simply make money?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I fully plan to use Strixhaven to run a Murdering Evil Wizards game, so tone is pretty subjective, and up to the table.

 

[the Jester]

So, since I've never played any previous editions, I can't have opinions on them or know that settings like Planescape, Spelljammer, and adventures like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks have been a core part of D&D for decades?

Sorry, but you don't get to gatekeep opinions or knowledge based on age or experience in the game. D&D has been silly for basically forever. The Wild Beyond the Witchlight and Strixhaven don't make it any sillier than it already was.

"Next thing you know, there will be some sort of absurd Alice in Wonderland adaptation!"

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Are the transformers movies actually good? Or do they simply make money?

I'm not sure that anybody actually likes them. They just go see them anyway.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

You don't see how this idea makes them less unique than they currently are?

Nope. I don't see how letting a Dwarf, Orc, Aarakocra, Sea Elf, or any other race become/be born as a Genasi would make them any less unique than they already are. If this were to happen, you could still play a human Genasi as normal. It would just open up the race to allow for more options.

Why wouldn't a rewrite move the other way, and make them less tied to genies and more interesting and unique?

. . . Weren't you just saying that you don't want the Genasi lore to change at all? I'd even mentioned how Genasi in Exandria are just elemental-planetouched, and I thought that you expressed that you disliked that? Or am I remembering incorrectly.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I mean, I cannot see this as being a productive use of our time to go down, but in no way whatsoever is popularity a marker on quality to me.

It could be cost efficiency.
It could be brand recognition.
It COULD be quality.
It could be simply snowballing hype.

Are the transformers movies actually good? Or do they simply make money?

Again, I didn't say profit is a reliable indicator, a few of them are quite good, yeah. Of course, some folks snobbishly try to restrict the term "good" to only refer to those things which meet some academic standard of artistic integrity or whatever nonsense, but that's all BS. Good art is just art which successfully affects an audience, especially when the effect is the intended effect. Though of course, some art becomes good by accident, having failed at it's intent but nontheless creating enormous and meaningful impact upon the audience in some unforseen manner.

And no, popularity cannot be cost efficiency, and brand recognition and snowballing hype are extremely unlikely. They'll make money, but they won't generate popularity, unless you're defining popularity to include flash in the pan hype that is immediately forgotten, in which case plenty of stuff is "popular" before it is even released, making the definition entirely useless and thus false.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Nope. I don't see how letting a Dwarf, Orc, Aarakocra, Sea Elf, or any other race become/be born as a Genasi would make them any less unique than they already are. If this were to happen, you could still play a human Genasi as normal. It would just open up the race to allow for more options.

And forcing them all to be mini-genies would restrict them to a single concept, regardless of mechanical options to grab little optimized bits from other races.

. . . Weren't you just saying that you don't want the Genasi lore to change at all? I'd even mentioned how Genasi in Exandria are just elemental-planetouched, and I thought that you expressed that you disliked that? Or am I remembering incorrectly.

You are remember things that didn't happen, I'm afraid. I never said any such thing.