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]

You seem to be implying that since you haven't encountered it before . . . . only a few truly find it problematic, and we don't really need to worry about it. I hope I'm misunderstanding.

Not at all. I brought up not having heard it before to encourage an explanation, and to point out that it isn’t as black and white and ”accepted fact” as the poster I was replying to tried to make it seem.

 

[Dire Bare]

Not at all. I brought up not having heard it before to encourage an explanation, and to point out that it isn’t as black and white and ”accepted fact” as the poster I was replying to tried to make it seem.

Good. I'm usually in tune with your posts, but you came across as dismissive of the idea to me. Glad I did misinterpret.

Asian-Americans are, of course, hardly a monolith all living the same experience. Some think having the samurai as a discrete option is a great idea, others find it extremely problematic, others don't even register it as an issue. Asian-Asians come from a completely different lived experience.

But increasingly, more and more voices are asking folks to recognize the institutional bias Western culture has to orientalize (exoticize) Asian tropes like the monk or samurai. It's a difficult and fraught discussion, and too many Western gamers would rather dismiss the issue, which of course, is part of the problem.

Terms like knight, paladin, and ranger are equally culturally specific to Europe . . . . but D&D is a game that springs from European myth, folklore, and literature. How we incorporate elements from other cultural regions deserves more mindfulness than the community has traditionally given in the past.

And . . . . I'll step down from my soapbox now.

 

[squibbles]

Also, regarding the samurai sub-tangent from which the shaman sub-sub-tangent branched--more Wikipedia:

In Japanese, they are usually referred to as bushi (武士, [bɯ.ɕi]), meaning 'warrior', or buke (武家), meaning 'military family'. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning 'to wait upon', 'accompany persons' in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau. In both countries the terms were nominalized to mean 'those who serve in close attendance to the nobility', the Japanese term saburai being the nominal form of the verb."​

So, it's worth keeping in mind that, while there is a vast amount of culture packed into the term, samurai are straightforwardly warriors who are attached to an important person's retinue.

I don't think the subclass is remotely needed, or even a good addition to the game, but it also doesn't do that much violence to what samurai basically are.

Expecting more cultural specificity to be in the subclass is, on one hand, kind of wierd--why demand that the warrior tradition of one nation be represented in ethnographically authentic whole, when no other nations' are--but, on the other hand, kind of necessary. After all, why would you name the subclass samurai if you didn't intend to meaningfully represent that specific tradition?

There are multiple reasonable points of view here, I think.

---edit---

Seems like the first point on this tangent was pretty reasonable to begin with:

It was a cultural stereotype of the Japanese Knightly class as if it was a specific thing and not just another Battle Master, Champion, Paladin, etc.

By making it its own thing it makes it seem like all Japanese-inspired Fighters “have to be” Samurai. Its part of the same problems that the game has to grapple with regarding the Monk.

How do we make the classes big hat and inclusive without creating pigeonholed culturally insensitive subclasses while also capturing important tropes that are more prominent in genres like Anime, Jidai Geki, Wuxia, martial arts films, etc?

I think we do them by making more generic subclass names that are applicable but not pigeonholed. It’s why we have Assassins and Way of Shadow Monks, but no Ninja. It’s why we have Harengon and Pallid Elves but not Soratami.

I basically agree with all of that... and probably should have read more than the first 5 and last 5 pages of the thread.

 

[Filthy Lucre]

Also, regarding the samurai sub-tangent from which the shaman sub-sub-tangent branched--more Wikipedia:

In Japanese, they are usually referred to as bushi (武士, [bɯ.ɕi]), meaning 'warrior', or buke (武家), meaning 'military family'. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning 'to wait upon', 'accompany persons' in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau. In both countries the terms were nominalized to mean 'those who serve in close attendance to the nobility', the Japanese term saburai being the nominal form of the verb."​

So, it's worth keeping in mind that, while there is a vast amount of culture packed into the term, samurai are straightforwardly warriors who are attached to an important person's retinue.

I don't think the subclass is remotely needed, or even a good addition to the game, but it also doesn't do that much violence to what samurai basically are.

Expecting more cultural specificity to be in the subclass is, on one hand, kind of wierd--why demand that the warrior tradition of one nation be represented in ethnographically authentic whole, when no other nations' are--but, on the other hand, kind of necessary. After all, why would you name the subclass samurai if you didn't intend to meaningfully represent that specific tradition?

There are multiple reasonable points of view here, I think.

If you solved this problem by saying "Ok, D&D is specifically only going to represent European myth/fantasy" you'd then catch flak for NOT including other cultures. Exclude them -> You're racist; Include them -> you're racist.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

If you solved this problem by saying "Ok, D&D is specifically only going to represent European myth/fantasy" you'd then catch flak for NOT including other cultures. Exclude them -> You're racist; Include them -> you're racist.

No. Just plain, no.

If you don't include them, you're being exclusionary and short-sighted on what the fantasy genre at large can contain. If you do include them, and do so in an offensive or problematic way, you're also called out. If you include them in a manner that is respectful and representative of the culture you're including (likely by using Sensitivity Readers and Cultural Consultants), that's good.

 

[Filthy Lucre]

No. Just plain, no.

If you don't include them, you're being exclusionary and short-sighted on what the fantasy genre at large can contain. If you do include them, and do so in an offensive or problematic way, you're also called out. If you include them in a manner that is respectful and representative of the culture you're including (likely by using Sensitivity Readers and Cultural Consultants), that's good.

In our current culture, you'll never win the "please everyone" battle since people have a vested interest in being offended. It's a waste of effort. People say "be respectful" but they never really give explicit/actionable/objective methods of achieving that.

ALSO... I don't believe that "exclusionary" is always bad in every incident. If it is, do you consider Motherlands to be exclusionary? Are you saying that every game has to cater to every conceivable ethnicity? sexuality? political orientation? This entire argument is so ham-fisted.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

In our current culture, you'll never win the "please everyone" battle since people have a vested interest in being offended. It's a waste of effort. People say "be respectful" but they never really give explicit/actionable/objective methods of achieving that.

Ah. You're whining about "cancel culture" nonsense? I'm done with this argument, then.

 

[Filthy Lucre]

Ah. You're whining about "cancel culture" nonsense? I'm done with this argument, then.

I'll mark that down as a win since you've decided to demonstrate my point.

 

[Azzy]

The specificity isn’t a bug.

As for the Cavalier fitting a mounted Samurai…where is the mounted archery, just for a start. What in the subclass speaks to the cultural expectations in Japan of a Samurai warrior?

It depends on what era the samurai is from—the primary weapon of the mounted samurai early on (from the late Heian period onwards) was the bow, but closer to the Sengoku era, lances/spears (yari) became more prevalent during the Muromachi period. For what it's worth.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I’m glad to hear you’re good. Kindly be good without getting in the middle of a discussion between people who do care about the subject quite a lot.

I care about the topic quite a bit. I also feel these concerns are leading to a dearth of fiction, where only certain people are allowed to tell certain stories, and you're a monster if you're not ashamed of your childhood favorites.