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.

 

[MockingBird]

The warlock is a bridge to far for me to say that.

Did they finalize the warlock class?

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I kind of disliked all the people complaining, I would have liked more extreme changes.

 

[Parmandur]

Did they finalize the warlock class?

No, they haven't talked about results from thar survey yet. They haven't finalized anything yet, except which Species are playable.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

The warlock is a bridge to far for me to say that.

Possibly, we haven’t seen the final warlock yet so it could end up as no big deal.

However, one class doesn’t make it a deal breaker for me. Heck if all the 2024 classes were substantially different it wouldn’t be a deal breaker for me. If I can use 2014 and 2024 classes at the same table, then it is the same game to me.

 

[Plaguescarred]

WoTC Jenery Crawford saying the 2014 PHB + Splatbooks will be playable alongside 2024 PHB and has never been done before seems to forget how 4E PHB + Splatbooks and 4E D&D Essentials book were also said to be.

There's things like weapon properties that will also make 2014 martials character envy 2024's one and want the newer version of those weapons too, if they're ever published as is. So, what, like you'll have to mention this is a 2024 longsword and a 2014 flail when handing out treasure? What about Feats selected, those with same name will have to be referred by their datation? Same named game elements such as race, class, conditions, magic items etc all will need to?

 

[mamba]

WoTC Jenery Crawford saying the 2014 PHB + Splatbooks will be playable alongside 2024 PHB and has never been done before seems to forget how 4E PHB + Splatbooks and 4E D&D Essentials book were also said to be.

that was a set of different (but compatible) classes, not an overhaul of existing ones. It also didn’t change the rest of the PHB like races, spells, etc., so depending on what he means exactly, it never was done before

There's things like weapon properties that will also make 2014 martials character envy 2024's one and want the newer version of those weapons too, if they're ever published as is. So, what, like you'll have to mention this is a 2024 longsword and a 2014 flail when handing out treasure?

You hand out the 2024 ones, the 2014 classes just do not use the 2024 martial features the new properties are intended for

What about Feats selected, those with same name will have to be referred by their datation? Same named game elements such as race, class, conditions, magic items etc all will need to?

class from 2024, adjust a 2014 subclass as will be described in the 2024 books. Races, feats, use the 2024 version, conditions use only the 2024 version. Magic items, do whatever you want.

There aren’t many hard rules here, most of this seems to just be overcomplicating things. Play a 2014 class and subclass alongside a 2024 class and subclass instead of what I wrote above and it still works… do what makes sense to you and chances are it works with little issues. That is what compatibility means…

The one thing out of this list where I would not mix is conditions, everything else: knock yourself out

 

[Clint_L]

WoTC Jenery Crawford saying the 2014 PHB + Splatbooks will be playable alongside 2024 PHB and has never been done before seems to forget how 4E PHB + Splatbooks and 4E D&D Essentials book were also said to be.

There's things like weapon properties that will also make 2014 martials character envy 2024's one and want the newer version of those weapons too, if they're ever published as is. So, what, like you'll have to mention this is a 2024 longsword and a 2014 flail when handing out treasure? What about Feats selected, those with same name will have to be referred by their datation? Same named game elements such as race, class, conditions, magic items etc all will need to?

With weapons, I can't imagine you'd have to specify a version because the weapons are the same; all that has changed is the addition of masteries. So you would just have to decide whether or not you wanted to use masteries in your campaign.

I think this is much more understandable if you look at the game from the perspective of DnDBeyond, which WotC has always explicitly identified as one of the three pillars of this project (1. rules revision, 2. DnDBeyond assimilation, 3. Virtual Tabletop).

In DnD beyond, there are toggles for which content you want on or off, which books you want to use, and so forth. You can also buy specific content from books without buying the entire thing. It's a much more customizable approach to the game.

So, for example, I currently have both legacy and current content toggled on: Volo's and Tome of Foes as well as the updated versions in Monsters of the Multiverse. This works fine - when building an encounter, I can choose which version of a creature I want to use (sometimes spells are handled differently). Or maybe I want to build an encounter using just creatures from Explorer's Guide to Wildmount or Ghosts of Saltmarsh, so I toggle everything but the desired book "off" when searching through monsters, etc.

Similarly, for character creation I have Critical Role content toggled "on" but Eberron content toggled off. And so on and so forth. With Tasha's, for example, all the new material was just incorporated into the game, though I have the option to turn the entire book off at any time. And the optional character rules were just added as optional rules which could be toggled on or off in character creation. With the 2024 update, I assume the rules will default to the latest version that you have purchased, with an option to toggle the old version "on." If there's a difference, you just decide which version to go with. That's what currently happens.

In practice, this is not complicated at all. Trust me, I am no genius with technology, so if it feels obvious and easy to me, it probably feels that way for almost everyone (I spent several days wrestling with the Roll20 VTT before giving up in frustration, for example. I'm an idiot). So from the perspective of a DnDBeyond user, which is a large and rapidly growing segment of the player base, and probably most new players, a lot of this feels like a tempest in a teapot.

You can do this with the print books yourself, obviously; DnDBeyond just streamlines it.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I kind of disliked all the people complaining, I would have liked more extreme changes.

I could have gone for more extreme changes with less casting and more invocations. The problem with the half-assed generic half-caster warlock wasn't the size of changes but the fact that those specific changes to the casting were just plain bad.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

The warlock is a bridge to far for me to say that.

The Warlock hasn't been finalized yet.

Edit: Late to the party.

 

[OB1]

With weapons, I can't imagine you'd have to specify a version because the weapons are the same; all that has changed is the addition of masteries. So you would just have to decide whether or not you wanted to use masteries in your campaign.

I think this is much more understandable if you look at the game from the perspective of DnDBeyond, which WotC has always explicitly identified as one of the three pillars of this project (1. rules revision, 2. DnDBeyond assimilation, 3. Virtual Tabletop).

In DnD beyond, there are toggles for which content you want on or off, which books you want to use, and so forth. You can also buy specific content from books without buying the entire thing. It's a much more customizable approach to the game.

So, for example, I currently have both legacy and current content toggled on: Volo's and Tome of Foes as well as the updated versions in Monsters of the Multiverse. This works fine - when building an encounter, I can choose which version of a creature I want to use (sometimes spells are handled differently). Or maybe I want to build an encounter using just creatures from Explorer's Guide to Wildmount or Ghosts of Saltmarsh, so I toggle everything but the desired book "off" when searching through monsters, etc.

Similarly, for character creation I have Critical Role content toggled "on" but Eberron content toggled off. And so on and so forth. With Tasha's, for example, all the new material was just incorporated into the game, though I have the option to turn the entire book off at any time. And the optional character rules were just added as optional rules which could be toggled on or off in character creation. With the 2024 update, I assume the rules will default to the latest version that you have purchased, with an option to toggle the old version "on." If there's a difference, you just decide which version to go with. That's what currently happens.

In practice, this is not complicated at all. Trust me, I am no genius with technology, so if it feels obvious and easy to me, it probably feels that way for almost everyone (I spent several days wrestling with the Roll20 VTT before giving up in frustration, for example. I'm an idiot). So from the perspective of a DnDBeyond user, which is a large and rapidly growing segment of the player base, and probably most new players, a lot of this feels like a tempest in a teapot.

You can do this with the print books yourself, obviously; DnDBeyond just streamlines it.

My experience with DDB has been very similar to yours, and I think you have it nailed for how 5.24 will work.

As for Roll20, I forced myself to learn it during the pandemic, but it's still endlessly frustrating for me. I will say that the Beyond20 Chrome extension is the only thing that remotely makes it work for me (it allows you to roll from DDB into the VTT). Did you ever try using that?