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

 

[Artamo]

Every company is capable of lucking into one-off successes. BG3 and DaDHaT are currently those. Will they be followed up by more successes? Or failures? We shall see. DDB is also a one-off success but not really by WotC at all (they just acquired it) that hasn't improved all the much since it launched (I'm not saying it's nothing, but we're talking small iterative changes, no really good overhauls etc.). If they succeed, great, but expecting it is wild.

My understanding is that Maps VTT has been fairly well-regarded as part of the bigger whole within D&DBeyond, i.e. it gets the job done well enough.

Also, WotC bought D&D Beyond in 2022. BG3 and Honor Amongst Thieves were both released in 2023. It’s not like they were years apart. At what point do these stop being one-off successes?

 

[Scribe]

My understanding is that Maps VTT has been fairly well-regarded as part of the bigger whole within D&DBeyond, i.e. it gets the job done well enough.

Also, WotC bought D&D Beyond in 2022. BG3 and Honor Amongst Thieves were both released in 2023. It’s not like they were years apart. At what point do these stop being one-off successes?

Well, they bought D&D Beyond, BG3, they didnt make it, and HAT...was a movie they also did not make.

Nobody is arguing that the IP is weak, it clearly is not. Is it Wizards, that makes it great?

 

[Artamo]

Well, they bought D&D Beyond, BG3, they didnt make it, and HAT...was a movie they also did not make.

Nobody is arguing that the IP is weak, it clearly is not. Is it Wizards, that makes it great?

I guess that’s my point - if their strategy is about licensing their IP and getting the bulk of their revenues in that way, then they don’t really care if everything they do in-house is a big success or not. It’s like the BG3 show that just got announced - if that does gangbusters and becomes the next big show for HBO, Hasbro/WotC are gonna call that a win, right? Doesn’t matter that it’s done with a studio and Craig Mazin’s help.

 

[OB1]

DDB kinda, maps absolutely not. DDB and Sigil were at war literally from before DDB was acquired by WotC. In the great OGL 2.0 debacle, on thing that leaked was how aggressively opposed the leader of the 3D VTT team was to acquiring DDB. The way WotC handled them internally


Maps a mediocre and limited version of a 2D VTT with really only technical (rather than disability) accessibility and "It's effectively free" to recommend it (which isn't nothing!), a thing that has existed since the 1990s. Even on accessibility it's beaten by things like Owlbear Rodeo. It was never in competition with the 3D VTT and isn't an impressive feature, especially given how slowly it's developed as compared to their initial goals.


No. Absolutely not. Not in any area of life or work.

You have to look at consistency.

Every company is capable of lucking into one-off successes. BG3 and DaDHaT are currently those. Will they be followed up by more successes? Or failures? We shall see. DDB is also a one-off success but not really by WotC at all (they just acquired it) that hasn't improved all the much since it launched (I'm not saying it's nothing, but we're talking small iterative changes, no really good overhauls etc.). If they succeed, great, but expecting it is wild.

Guess we just have fundamentally different views of how goods product Maps is. You see it is a limited and flawed piece of software, I see it as a game changing tool for the way I run and play D&D online. I went from hating prepping for online play with Roll20 to it being a breeze. And also am able to improvise on the fly in a way I never could before. The product has also been steadily and noticeably improving for the last 18 months.

And I still stand by my statement that if not for Maps, WotC would still be trying to make Sigil work. Because of Maps, they were comfortable killing the project.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I have used both versions. I do not like a lot of the change for the sake of change items.

Whereas i do not see any of the changes that way at all.

For instance, changing beast types to fey or new invisibility.

They should have done 6e or optional adds like the way feats were handled in 5.0.

Gods above no. I am very glad they didnt do this.

I just do not see much good in 5.5. I may use a few things like the new healing spells but I feel 5.0 is a more solid game.

I dont get it, but fair enough.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Guess we just have fundamentally different views of how goods product Maps is. You see it is a limited and flawed piece of software, I see it as a game changing tool for the way I run and play D&D online. I went from hating prepping for online play with Roll20 to it being a breeze. And also am able to improvise on the fly in a way I never could before. The product has also been steadily and noticeably improving for the last 18 months.

And I still stand by my statement that if not for Maps, WotC would still be trying to make Sigil work. Because of Maps, they were comfortable killing the project.

I would echo this, Map is an excellent tool that does not get in the way. It is really easy to run material from D&DBeyond from it and if they add a way to prepare encounters in advance it would be close to my ideal of a lightweight map system.
I am one of those that hope that they do not add too many bells and whistles to it or at least make them optional.
This is from someone that has Used FantasyGrounds a lot.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Guess we just have fundamentally different views of how goods product Maps is. You see it is a limited and flawed piece of software, I see it as a game changing tool for the way I run and play D&D online. I went from hating prepping for online play with Roll20 to it being a breeze. And also am able to improvise on the fly in a way I never could before. The product has also been steadily and noticeably improving for the last 18 months.

And I still stand by my statement that if not for Maps, WotC would still be trying to make Sigil work. Because of Maps, they were comfortable killing the project.

Maps has the potential to be really good but it's still a long way from where it could be. Though I agree they shouldn't overcomplicate it! There's also a real danger they sacrifice usability for monetisation, but we shall see.

But I just don't agree re "trying to make work". They're different tools on a fundamental level, and had different (if overlapping) projected audiences and monetisation strategies.

What killed Sigil was ultimately that any accessible and good-looking 3D VTT to support a game as broad and content rich as 5E D&D will cost tens of millions to develop. Indeed that's exactly what Cynthia Williams essentially said some years back, when she was backing the project. But she left WotC, and after that, it seems like the 3D VTT kind of stalled out. The massive cost (probably as much as or more than D&D itself) combined with unclear and unproven monetisation,want that once the corporate champion for the project was gone, it was pretty much cooked.

No doubt some upper-mid level WotC exec got a promotion and large bonus for cancelling it! Maps existing may have made it slightly easier to sell the cancellation but even without Maps they'd have killed it off - it was simply too expensive to keep going.

 

[Belen]

Guess we just have fundamentally different views of how goods product Maps is. You see it is a limited and flawed piece of software, I see it as a game changing tool for the way I run and play D&D online. I went from hating prepping for online play with Roll20 to it being a breeze. And also am able to improvise on the fly in a way I never could before. The product has also been steadily and noticeably improving for the last 18 months.

And I still stand by my statement that if not for Maps, WotC would still be trying to make Sigil work. Because of Maps, they were comfortable killing the project.

I love the maps tool but the one massive downside. I often play most of the combats solo as a GM. I have to run the summons and companions and npcs.

I spent 30 minutes one sessions just having a battle with myself. The players could not control their own summons or companions.

 

[BenjaminPey]

Maps is excellent. As a player in both FG and Foundry games, it's the only one that, as a DM, makes me quit my Miro Board on occasions, when battlemaps, conditions and environmental trackers are really useful. The connection with the Beyond character sheets and monsters is what puts it easily above and beyond Owlbear Rodeo for me, without any questions, with the same kind of simplicity (when Owlbear was still young) I hope is here to stay (Honda Accord for the win).

 

[Marc17]

1. What are examples of features that cannot be implemented until after the Game Platform rebuild?
   I asked the team to give me a list of their top pain points and got quite the list back. Here are just a few things that are near impossible to implement today that will be possible with the rebuild.
   • Monsters or Stat Blocks that scale with your character level (for example, the Draconic Spirit from the Summon Dragon spell, or sidekicks from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything)
   • Using Hit Dice as an expendable resource (like with the Durable feat)
   • Giving Magic Items actions. For example, today, you can't roll the additional Fire damage for a Flame Tongue weapon
   • Having conditions work in the character sheet
   • A lot of UX-based things, such as being able to expend a spell slot to recharge a feature
   • The Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul's level 1 feature from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything
   • Charms/Blessings
   • Content that meaningfully deviate from the D&D 5E core rules in a non-trivial way
   • Minimum dice values (like with a Rogue's Reliable Talent feature)
   • Wider Eldritch Invocation support (like being able to target spells that aren't Eldritch Blast with Agonizing Blast)
     
     The list goes on. I’m stopping here to keep it from becoming a novel.

Wondering. If DDB becomes a large success, or continues to be one as I suspect it is already is by WotC requirements, I wonder if the next edition might change the rules to not do things that can't be done in DDB or if it can be implemented in DDB might become a consideration for new rules?