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

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."

 

[Starmaster]

How I long for the return of Dungeon magazine. Magazines haven't died off yet and, for a reasonable annual subscription, you could get 4-7 adventures per month for an average of around 48-84 adventures per year. Since it was mostly written by freelancers, all you need is an editorial and production staff. I doubt it will happen, but it sure would be a fast and inexpensive way to rapidly accumulate a library short 5e print adventures. The 1e and 2e adventures in old issues can be adapted, of course, but it would be nice to start accumulating issues filled with new adventures specifically written for 5e.

 

[Stormonu]

This basically confirms October's surprise book is NOT an adventure campaign.

That makes me think even more that it's sonekind of MtG Campaign Book, perhaps Tarkir or Bloomborrow or a set a book of the broader MtG Bling Eternities setting.

I'd put it more likely as a Bigby's / Fizban style book, and my money would be on Aberrations (though I'd prefer to see an Undead one myself like Liber Mortis).

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'd put it more likely as a Bigby's / Fizban style book, and my money would be on Aberrations (though I'd prefer to see an Undead one myself like Liber Mortis).

Libre Mortis was awesome! Still one of my favorite supplements for official D&D.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I'd put it more likely as a Bigby's / Fizban style book, and my money would be on Aberrations (though I'd prefer to see an Undead one myself like Liber Mortis).

Could be a Manual of the Planes style book too.

But the Tarkir and Strixhaven/Bloomborrow adventures just seem like too much to be a coincidence to me.

 

[Parmandur]

But the Tarkir and Strixhaven/Bloomborrow adventures just seem like too much to be a coincidence to me.

Having now seen the article teading new Settings for 2026 and 2027...yeah, MtG feels probable.

Other than Exandria (which WotC doesn't own), Magic the Gatheribg, the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and Eberron reflect the entirety of pre-2024 facing Settings (from Ravenloft on, they were building to the new Core books). A "Msgic the Gathering Companion" or update to Exandria (alongside the Greyhawk, Eberron, and Forgotten Realms updates) would basically bring 5E "up to date" across the board.

 

[jasper]

Not really.

Goodman Games' 5th Edition Fantasy modules go from about $10 to $18 for single adventures, which I suspect is even cheaper than the old TSR modules, adjusted for inflation: Fifth Edition Fantasy | Goodman Games Store

POD 5E adventures on DriveThruRPG appear to start at about $10 as well: DriveThruRPG

In both cases, you can get more expensive compilations that cost more but pack in even more adventures.

One inflation cal app says you are mostly right. $4.95 is $18.84 today.

 

[Reynard]

I'd put it more likely as a Bigby's / Fizban style book, and my money would be on Aberrations (though I'd prefer to see an Undead one myself like Liber Mortis).

I feel like that book would have UA evidence.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I feel like that book would have UA evidence.

Still plenty of time for UA, they might be holding off until Tarkir Dragonstorm gets released in the spring so as not to accidently release spoilers for the MtG set.

 

[Staffan]

I think this is the biggest point here, and something they mentioned in recent videos. The big reason the short adventures stopped being profitable was that so many were being pumped out in rapid succession. People didn't have time to breathe or run a module before the next three were being pushed out. If they put out one, maybe two a year (and keep them in print - perhaps only phasing out the ones that do poorly over time), they'll stand out more and there will be more word of mouth about the quality (or lack thereof..) because of more shared experiences due to the smaller pool to choose from. It's one of the reasons that the likes of the 1E modules are so well remembered - there was a limited pool of experience to draw from, and they could be mixed and matched fairly easily.

I think the main reason individual small adventures don't work commercially is that each of them has a limited audience. When I see something like Storm King's Thunder, or Curse of Strahd, or Eye of Vecna, I am theoretically in the market for them if I am considering starting a new campaign which I would then build around that book. But if I instead see something like the 3e adventure Speaker in Dreams, I'm only really interested in it if I'm already running a campaign and that campaign is coming up on level 5. Even worse, if I'm looking at something like Whispers of the Vampire's Blade, it expects me to both run an Eberron campaign, for that campaign to be coming up on level 4, and and ideally for me to have run Shadows of the Last War first. Those are much bigger asks than "Might want to run this as a campaign some day."

And since the potential audience for the adventure is small, you need to split the development costs over a lot fewer copies. That will in turn make the audience even smaller, and that cycle isn't going anywhere fast. Wizards' solution to this have been adventure anthologies, and often using shortcuts like having all the adventures being converted adventures from older editions (which helps both because, I assume, converting an adventure is less work than making one from scratch and because it might grab some customers out of nostalgia).

That said, it's good to have short adventures around, either as part of anthologies or as stand-alones. The problem is that they're not super commercially viable. To make them make business sense, you pretty much need not to treat them as stand-alone products, but as marketing for your core rules. I believe that was a big part of the impetus for the OGL and d20STL in the first place – I remember reading Ryan Dancey saying that you could basically view the whole AD&D product line as more-or-less self-sustaining marketing for the PHB, and if you could get third-party companies (who likely have lower overhead and lower profit targets) to do that it could be a win-win situation.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

How I long for the return of Dungeon magazine. Magazines haven't died off yet and, for a reasonable annual subscription

The challenge is that print advertising has cratered due to online advertising, so the cost of that print magazine will have to be borne entirely by the customer, which is why the remaining magazines you see at the grocery store go for about $15 an issue often, unless they are in a category that still has managed to hold onto some advertising revenue somehow.

And at that price point, you're competing directly with less disposable game purchases, like full-length adventures.

We've seen a lot of companies try and get this kind of thing off the ground and they all eventually give it up or go for a model where issues are crowdfunded one at a time, like Knock.

I think many of us would love to roll back the clock and get Dragon and Dungeon magazine back, but it's hard to see the economic model working unless customers are willing to shell out $15-$20 per issue.