D&D 5E (2024) D&D Beyond's Development Roadmap Is A Complete Rebuild Of Platform

D&D Beyond has announced its roadmap for the future, including features in active development and those planned for later down the line. These include a full rebuild of the game platform's engine, a new character builder, tools for Dungeon Masters, and more.

Over the past few months, we’ve launched a new homepage, a revamped and more sortable content library, image reveals in the Maps VTT to help DMs immerse their players more easily, and several other quality-of-life improvements.

2026 is a year of refocusing and rebuilding D&D Beyond to make it easier to play D&D your way. Three major initiatives will drive most of our work:

• Rebuilding D&D Beyond’s Game Platform
• Improving Player Onboarding and Revamping the Character Builder Experience
• Launching a Suite of Dungeon Master Tools

 

[Dire Bare]

Again though, wotc stewarded D&D is one of the only games that completely reinvents itself every release, software don't do it as a rule, scholarly books don't go with totally new information or rewrites from the ground up.

Not quite.

Certainly, the shift from the white box to AD&D, then 2E to 3E, then to 4E, then to 5E created almost entirely different games.

But there was an incremental series of revisions between the white box and the Rules Cyclopedia. All mostly compatible.

The transition from AD&D 1E to 2E was significant, but the games remained largely compatible.

AD&D 2E's revision didn't change much . . . except for the terribly ugly logo and trade dress of the new books . . .

Folks argue about it, but the shift from 3.0 to 3.5 was minor and the two games were mostly compatible. Same with the shift from 5.0 to 5.5.

Every change to the D&D rules . . . was either big or small. We've seen both throughout the history of the game. And of course, it all started with TSR, long before WotC took over.

 

[Clint_L]

5e in 2015 was already measurably different from 5e in 2014, if you worry too much about the details.

Back in the day we were forever adding homebrew, stuff from Dragon Magazine and other sources, different options from the official books, etc. I agree that a lot of the arguments come from us all wanting to stan for our favourite iteration of an ever-evolving game.

For me the litmus tests are: A) can I easily keep using all my old stuff? (yes) and B) did my players have any trouble adapting to or even notice the differences? (no).

 

[Azzy]

Again, 5.1 was Tashas.

Disputable at best. But if that were so, then why aren't you calling the revised edition 5.2? That would make more sense, especially if WotC continues to iterate on 5e.

 

[Azzy]

Again though, wotc stewarded D&D is one of the only games that completely reinvents itself every release, software don't do it as a rule, scholarly books don't go with totally new information or rewrites from the ground up.

Call of Cthulhu, one of the biggest long running ttrpgs outside of D&D... how different are its editions? The cypher system games, 1e to 2e changed armour and foci content with little else, 3e removes resource pools as hp and sorts the player options by genre.

And as I said before, in all D&D history there has only been one release that was a .5 release, it made less changes to the game and balance than 5e24 and both mode more changes than AD&D did between 1 and 2e. There is no notable precedent.

Foundryvtt v12 to v13 brought in some changes but it was not a complete overhaul that dramatically changes how it is used, Adobe software stays mostly the same year to year without stopping backwards compatibility, windows 10 to 11 is a similar deal.

Backwards compatibility is a feature, but it has a whole bunch of caveats in this case and marketing it as "5e" is the gimmick.

What does any of this to do with my assertion?

 

[J-H]

Rewriting Beyond is probably the right solution. To level-set expectations, as with almost every corporate software project it will be over budget and behind schedule by 1-2 years.

5.24 is a different ruleset, BUT from everything I have seen, it's reasonably compatible with 5e to the point where I can't call it a new edition. Content could be used side by side successfully, which is not something you can easily say with 3.0 and 3.5. All the old adventures and books are still completely compatible with minor changes.

 

[OB1]

5e.

The qualifier, when needed, goes on the older rules.

This is the way.

I’ll also add, most of the time I just call it D&D.

 

[Scribe]

Disputable at best. But if that were so, then why aren't you calling the revised edition 5.2? That would make more sense, especially if WotC continues to iterate on 5e.

Much larger number of revisions.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Rewriting Beyond is probably the right solution. To level-set expectations, as with almost every corporate software project it will be over budget and behind schedule by 1-2 years.

Yeah, this is what I'd expect. The trouble is, this isn't the first time we've heard about re-writing Beyond. As far back as 2019, which is now, bear in mind, coming up on 7 years ago (!!!), Beyond was saying "We need to do a major rebuild and redesign so we can properly add new stuff". And then even claimed that they'd done that, yet, mysteriously, couldn't, didn't and still haven't added some of the stuff they claimed that rebuild would enable.

So when they say they're doing another rebuild, I am skeptical that it will be:

A) As successful as they hope, or resolve as many issues as they seem to think it will.

B) Remotely on time.

I get that people are enthusiastic, but I think it's important to remain somewhat skeptical here, and to not expect the world, because Beyond have rarely delivered on what they've said they're going to do (the product is fundamentally extremely similar to how it was on release and the number of "we want to do X" or even "we will do X" that just haven't happened is pretty large). WotC have a multiple decades long history of easily 90% of D&D-related software projects (whether games or apps or w/e) ending in some amount of tears, whether it's the tens of millions spent (assuming Cynthia Williams was being truthful, which I think we should), but near-total failure of the 3D VTT (the second failed 3D VTT from WotC I note, the first being in 4E), or the struggles of 4E's DDI, or just the ugly breakup of WotC and Larian (which at least made WotC an enormous amount of money and got them some valuable IP, even if it could have gone a lot better). I don't expect Beyond's "upgrade" here to go much better. Let's hope it's more towards the BG3 end of the scale, i.e. mostly good, some tears.

 

[Yenrak]

One thing I wish they would make is an explicit "rules check" for characters developed outside of the platform. Something that could let you enter in your stats and equipment and tell you what you might be missing or have gotten wrong. You can do this now with the "character builder" but it's a hack. A purpose-designed checker would be nice.