Why Dungeons & Dragons Isn't Putting Out a Campaign Book in 2025

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Wizards of the Coast is not putting out a Dungeons & Dragons campaign book in 2025. Despite adding two more books to its D&D release schedule, there are no plans to release a new full-length campaign book. During a press event at Wizards' headquarters, EN World asked about why the D&D design team had chosen to skip over a campaign book for first time in a decade. "

"This year we have focused on providing, rather than one large adventure, many adventure options because you'll actually see there are more sort of discrete adventure options than we typically do in a year," said Jeremy Crawford, lead rules designer for Dungeons & Dragons. "So you're going to have not only the 10 adventures in Dragon Delves with three possible campaigns, you also have the adventure options in Eberron, you have the adventure options in the Starter Set, and you have a bunch of adventure options in the Forgotten Realms Adventure Guide. So in many ways, we are flooding you with adventure options."

Crawford added that the D&D design team is always experimenting with their releases and that yearly campaign releases didn't always allow players to finish up the previous campaign. "So we're looking at tempos that map to how people actually play," Crawford said. "And we find that often, especially with DMs who like to create their own adventure material, they often have a greater need for sort of micro material that they can swap around. They can build things the way they like. That's what we're doing this year."

Finally, Crawford noted that one of the advantages to continuing Fifth Edition rather than launching a brand new edition meant that players could continue to use existing campaigns. "We have a whole library of epic campaigns that people can play, including last year's Vecna: Eve of Ruin, and those are all playable with the new core books," Crawford said. "And so we've embraced that for 2025, that there's a whole bookshelf of these epic campaigns that people can pick up and play, and we know there are among those campaigns surely one or two that even the most dedicated 5e group hasn't played yet."

However, Crawford noted that the D&D team wasn't moving away from campaigns forever. "For the life of 5th edition, we've never believed in there's like only one way to do it and that's how we do it every year," Crawford said. "Just because there isn't a campaign book this year doesn't mean we're not doing them."
 

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Christian Hoffer

Christian Hoffer

Heck, even 4e had some measure of "you can assemble a campaign from individual adventures" stuff. Many of them were released through Dungeon magazine, but a few were published books too. A number of these adventures were really quite well-received.

It's honestly been so strange that, amidst the "less is more" philosophy of 5e, the one thing where it's always been "more" than previous editions is BIG STONKING massive campaigns that pretty much have to be played as a chunk.
I assume DMsG and 3pp at large have taken over the role of the magazine adventures.

Print magazines in general have a hard time, chances are a new Dragon / Dungeon magazine reboot would have a hard time too
 

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Heck, even 4e had some measure of "you can assemble a campaign from individual adventures" stuff. Many of them were released through Dungeon magazine, but a few were published books too. A number of these adventures were really quite well-received.

It's honestly been so strange that, amidst the "less is more" philosophy of 5e, the one thing where it's always been "more" than previous editions is BIG STONKING massive campaigns that pretty much have to be played as a chunk. LMoP even has a super-open narrative structure, totally ready to receive inserts at various points (which Hussar did, to great effect!)

I honestly can't say why they did this. Anyone have theories?
Im guessing a combination of Critical Role and Paizo adventure paths. Many players want that type of adventure package now. Its also likely easier to work on one big project instead of several smaller ones at the office and as a product to sell for WOTC.
 

Im guessing a combination of Critical Role and Paizo adventure paths. Many players want that type of adventure package now. Its also likely easier to work on one big project instead of several smaller ones at the office and as a product to sell for WOTC.
I wonder how true that is going forward. No big adventure this year, but there is an anthology. Maybe there is a shift happening.
 


Maybe, or the new releases took up a lot of time and effort from the team and they are about to redirect back into campaigns.
I would be surprised if there wasn't a big Realms campaign early in 2026, set somehwere besides the Sword Coast, to capitalize on the November books.

But then, I am constantly wrong about WotC's book releases, so...
 


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