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.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Monsters are undertuned, PCs are overtuned, PC hit points are high and fully regenerate after a long rest, PC damage is high, monster hit points are low, monster damage is low, spells and spell slots are given out like candy, PCs can cast multiple spells in a round, and death is elusive unless the DM really wants a character dead. Skills are plentiful, expertise is easy to get, and skill DCs are low. There are basically no limitations PCs have to deal with short of the DM using house rules or variant rules. 5E is power fantasy superheroes with chainmail replacing spandex. To do anything approaching challenging, the DM has to throw 6-8 deadly encounters at the PCs a day, somehow prevent a long rest, and do it all again the next day...then somewhere near the end of the second day the PCs will be sweating. That’s where they’re challenged.

This is so far from my experience with 5e…it’s just wild.

Perhaps your group is significantly optimization focused?

I lack any “anti-optimizers” in my group, but also any real “power gamers”, and I’ve no issue challenging them with 1-3 encounters per day and some exploration and social challenges.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Right... The Lego Movie! Is a good, fun film. I liked it

My point was that D&D 5th Edition has become a game where everybody is awesome....in life, adversity builds character and the same might be said about roleplaying games like D&D. If everybody is awesome then there is less room for character development and the game becomes less interesting.

YMMV

Okay. This is basically the same argument as "failure is more interesting than success", you saying that powerful characters makes the game less interesting and somehow ruins roleplay.

This is wrong, because of one major reason: "failure is more interesting success" is wrong. The real, correct phrase is "Overcoming failure is more interesting than effortless success". Being flawed isn't what makes you interesting, it's overcoming those flaws that does. Being less powerful doesn't make you a better character and certainly doesn't make the game more interesting, it just makes you fail at what you try to do more often.

"If everyone is awesome", everyone is awesome. When everyone is super, everyone is super. Everyone having something doesn't suddenly make them not have that thing. Syndrome was wrong, as are you. This sounds a lot like "those dang participation trophies, sheltering our children from failure!!! shakes fist at cloud", and they're equally nonsensical. Your characters should be capable. They're adventurers. If they're not capable, they're likely to die, and stop being adventurers due to them being dead. Which is more interesting: being dead and not being able to go on adventures because of it or being alive and going on adventures and beating your enemies? The former could be cool in a game that focuses on the Afterlife, but the latter is more interesting 9 times out of 10. You need to be capable in order to be interesting and have interesting adventures, because otherwise you're not going to be an adventurer for very long.

Now, I'm not saying that players should never fail. I'm a strong believer of players having to learn a lesson every now and then if they get over their heads (try to kill a god/demigod at level 7, offend random people for no reason, murder hobos, etc). The PCs should absolutely be tested and not get too confident of their own abilities, because that can lead to their deaths just as swiftly as incapability can in a campaign. I've thrown obviously unbalanced encounters at my players' characters time and time again to make sure they know that they can get in over their heads. I've let my players' characters die or be kidnapped, I've let them fail at parts of the main plot without that ending the campaign, I've had their magic items destroyed or taken away, their abilities nullified by enemies or the environment, and so on. You can have effective and compotent PCs and still challenge them and have them fail. And you know what makes the characters and the campaign even more interesting when this happens? Them overcoming the failures. Not them failing, not them losing power, not them sucking, but them overcoming the hurdles in front of them and surviving, and becoming better characters because of it. Adversity doesn't build character, overcoming adversity does. Dying doesn't make your characters more interesting or better at roleplay, surviving and learning from it does. There are plenty of people, fictional or real, that have a ton of adversity, but aren't any more interesting than anyone else.

Character development happens because of failure, but the failure isn't the thing that makes them more interesting. Powerful characters don't get in the way of roleplay, and being a weaker character (such as a wizard with a d4 hit die, or having a lower AC, or rolling your ability scores 3d6 in order, or any other example from previous editions of players having weaker characters) doesn't mean that you're any better or more interesting than anyone else's character.

Everything (and everyone) is awesome, and characters can all be super-powerful heroes without somehow being worse characters. Overcoming adversity is what makes you interesting, not the failure itself.

 

[Scribe]

Being flawed isn't what makes you interesting, it's overcoming those flaws that does.

Exactly, bring back those -2 modifiers so we have flaws to overcome.

 

[darjr]

This is so far from my experience with 5e…it’s just wild.

Perhaps your group is significantly optimization focused?

I lack any “anti-optimizers” in my group, but also any real “power gamers”, and I’ve no issue challenging them with 1-3 encounters per day and some exploration and social challenges.

There does seem to be two main groups. Those that see PCs stomping everything and those that just don’t. I think it’s something worth diving into in detail. Cause I heard both sides from people I trust.

 

[Micah Sweet]

From the players’ side, there’s really no noticeable difference. Monster wiggles its fingers and mutters some gibberish and a supernatural effect happens - doesn’t matter if the monster spent an Xth level spell slot to do it, or what spells they had prepared, cause that’s all stuff you’ll never see as a player. That’s all DM-facing stuff, and as DM, I don’t really care if it “feels like a spellcaster” to me. That’d be like Oz making sure the buttons and levers behind the curtain “looked magical.”

Well, I almost always approach things from the DM side, and whether or not things "feel right" is very much an issue for me. So, agree to disagree.

 

[Charlaquin]

Well, I almost always approach things from the DM side, and whether or not things "feel right" is very much an issue for me. So, agree to disagree.

Fair enough, I suppose.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

There does seem to be two main groups. Those that see PCs stomping everything and those that just don’t. I think it’s something worth diving into in detail. Cause I heard both sides from people I trust.

Yeah absolutely. I’d love to know why some folks are experiencing that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

About half of the 5e D&D books have some form of official errata. The errata is not necessary to enjoy the books but if you want to understand the changing intent of the designers, or in some cases better wording of the original intent, you should download the errata or buy the reprinting of the material.

Volo's was errata'd yes, twice - in 2017 and 2020. The 2020 errata includes the changes made to Orcs in Eberron & Widemount, and to Tritons in Theros, alongside a bunch of other tweaks.

Curse of Strahd was errata'd in 2020 and the book with the errata worked in was what made it into Curse of Strahd Revamped.

You can find all the links to the current Errata documents in the most recent release of Sage Advice.

I've always hated referring to stuff like the recent Volo's and Curse of Strahd as errata. That makes it sound like they were actually correcting mistakes unintentionally left in the text, as opposed to changing their minds about what they wrote previously (for whatever reason) and trying to retcon their own work so people forget WotC ever thought differently than they have since 2020.

 

[Scribe]

I've always hated referring to stuff like the recent Volo's and Curse of Strahd as errata. That makes it sound like they were actually correcting mistakes unintentionally left in the text, as opposed to changing their minds about what they wrote previously (for whatever reason) and trying to retcon their own work so people forget WotC ever thought differently than they have since 2020.

The removal of the wall of the faithless is particularly...odd in this regard, but it is what it is.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That sounds like appropriation and pigeonholing the concept of a Samurai into these very narrow tropes of kiai shouts etc. At best, you're playing The Last Samurai.

Why not just have the subclass be something that can encapsulate samurai or other noble knightly orders and use a term that doesn't reflect a single real world culture?

As I said above, just calling what is now the "Samurai" a Battle Master and giving the maneuvers to all Fighters as an option would do wonders to resolve this issue. There's a reason that Ninja, Wu Jen, and Shugenja don't appear in 5e D&D, despite having appeared in past editions in various forms dating back all the way to Oriental Adventurers. There's a reason we don't have an Oriental Adventures book for 5e. There's a reason we don't have a Kara-Tur or Kamigawa book. These are all white guy's appropriations and amalgamations of various Asian cultures, to great detriment. There's a reason that Monk continues to get blowback for even existing as a class.

You can still do that trope of a non-Japanese person becoming a Samurai without WotC enshrining it in the rules. Why can't a Champion or Battle Master or Cavalier or Banneret or Psi Warrior be Samurai? Why do we need a specific "Samurai" subclass? These are legitimate issues the game hasn't grappled with because they rushed a concept by "rule of cool" without giving fair consideration to the hurtful consequences.

I'm not saying there isn't a place for Wuxia or Martial Arts film or Samurai film or Tale of Genji / Romance of the Three Kingdoms courtly politics in D&D. There most definitely is. The point is that it has to be led with respect and inclusiveness without exoticism of the source material. The Samurai subclass is an exoticism. And it should be led best foot forward by empowering AAPI game creators and letting them tell the stories they want to bring to life.

Is this really a huge issue? We have to rewrite and/or demonize large portions of fiction and popular culture? How is someone not born of a culture supposed to write about it? Or talk about it, for that matter? I really dont see how this philosophy doesnt stifle creativity by telling people they dont have the right to tell certain stories.