Now D&D's 2024 rules revamp is almost finished, I've been visited by the ghosts of TTRPG past, present, and future to help me predict the next 5-10 years

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Cover art from the D&D 2024 Player�s Handbook.

Dungeons & Dragons just had both its 50th anniversaryandits next edition release—wait, hold on, I’m getting a message on my Sending Stone—it’s not actually an edition, it’s a “revamp”. Instead of doing like Wizards of the Coast typically does, and reinventing the wheel, its best team of rules lawyers has instead drafted up a 2.0 of sorts. ‘D&D 5e the Sequel’, now with flames painted on the side.

This is unusual. Typically, a new edition comes along every five to 12 years. Third edition came out in the year 2000 (though 3.5 was 2003), fourth edition came out in 2008, fifth edition came out in 2014—this’ll mark the first time D&Dhasn’thad a major rules overhaul in a similar timeframe. All this to say, we were overdue a reinvention, and if forecasts continue on their current trajectory, it’ll be another few years before Wizards of the Coast even considers it.

The Past: It’s been one hell of a decade

Several adventurers, including the famous Drizzt, shelter using magic from the rime breath of a white dragon in the D&D 2024 Player’s Handbook.

Fourth edition, while I did have a good bit of fun with it, received a lot of criticism for being too ‘videogamey’. But when fifth edition came out to fix those issues, Critical Role and its contemporaries were hot on its heels as basically perfect advertising for the whole endeavour. Lightning struck the bottle for Wizards of the Coast, and stayed there for a decade.

Mercifully, theoutrage was so loud that the companybacked the hell off but, make no mistake, it sure tried. There’ve also beenAI scandals aplenty, and that one time WoTC, uh, hired thePinkertonsto go after someone withaccidental early access Magic: The Gathering cards.

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I suppose that’s what has defined an otherwise incredible decade for Wizards: A bounty of gold that it’s been scrambling to pick up off the floor, like a feral Scrooge McDuck. Hasbro and Wizards have been trying to capitalise voraciously, not just with the OGL attempt, but with a movie (that was pretty decent, all told), Baldur’s Gate 3 (which was extraordinary, even more told) and a horde of other licensing deals for videogames. Plus its ownVirtual Tabletop, which doesn’t get to eliminate its competitors via OGL shenanigans anymore, yippee.

The 2024 rules revamp, then, marks a final thrust at setting D&D, and Wizards, up for another decade of success. It struck gold, and so it’s invested heavily in making ‘Gold: The Sequel’ taste just like the original recipe, so that it may continue to persist in its eternal cultural zeitgeist and make a bajillion moneys. But was that the right call?

The Present: It’s just like the past, but better

Several adventurers bicker and argue about how to cross a river in Dungeons & Dragon’s 2024 ruleset.

I’ve been very cynical about Wizards of the Coast’s big stinkers over the past 10 years—and with good reason, I mean, the Pinkertons?Seriously?—but I do want to say that I’m largely positive on the work that’s been done with the 2024 revamp, and it’s not even technically complete.

For context, the 2024 rules revamp has resulted in updates to thePlayer’s Handbookand theDungeon Master’s Guideboth. These are, pretty conclusively, the most important parts of it, seeing as the revamp is backwards-combatable with the 2014 edition, so you can just keep using those monsters until February. The books we have now are the majority of the important rules that tell us what D&D 2024 is actually like.

One must give due credit to the coat of paint: It is fresh. Weapon Mastery properties for martial characters—your fighters, rogues, and barbarians—are the big draw here, finally giving them something to do on their turn besides attack a couple times. Otherwise, classes have been revamped and retooled in a way that’s tightened the loose bolts. Blade Ward is even semi-decent, now! It only took ‘em 10 years.

The Dungeon Master’s Guide is also a big upgrade, going from 2014’s basically useless hunk of paper to a pretty good, if basic, instruction book on how to run, build, and craft ideas for a campaign. I think they could’ve done more, because I’m a big old grump, but the whole exercise of the rules revamp has achieved most of its stated goals.

A Dungeon Master’s Screen, as featured in the D&D 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide.

Things are looking a bit weird with Hasbro at the helm, though.Sweeping layoffshit the D&D team hard, including alot of people responsiblefor Wizard’s most sensible move of the past 10 years, Baldur’s Gate 3. Speaking of,Larian’s moving on to other things, leaving Hasbro scrambling tofind a developer who can make Baldur’s Gate 4—and let’s be honest, no one does it like Larian, right now.

Then there’s Critical Role, which has grown so thoroughly big in its boots that it’s made two TTRPG systems of its own,Candela ObscuraandDaggerheart, plus its own currentanimated seriesand upcomingvideogame. Not to mention, the live campaign’s starting to close out its third season, standing at over 338 episodes total—and, jeez, I wouldn’t be shocked if Matt Mercer & Co. want to maybe play something else for a bit. If their average session length is four hours, then that’s 1,352 hours in the same system. D&D might be about to lose its most visible champions, for a while at least.

The problem, as it stands right now, is one as old as the concept of the shareholder itself: The line must go up."

Other actual play staples are getting all polyamorous with their systems, too. While Dimension 20’s Brennan Lee Mulligan is so attached to D&D he tried to argue it wasn’t a combat-focused system (if there’s any chance he’s reading this—hi and I’m very sorry, I adore your work, just not that take), Dropout’s flagship TTRPG show has been mucking around with other systems for its seasons Misfits & Magic and Never Stop Blowing Up.

The problem, as it stands right now, is one as old as the concept of the shareholder itself: The line must go up—Hasbro and Wizards both have obligations to keep building their Tower of Babel ever higher, because just doing a good job isn’t enough anymore. You’ve gotta show you’ve grown. I get this eerie feeling that we’re now at the limit of D&D’s sensible expansion, and are about to round the corner on some more interesting times.

The Future: Where do we go now

Several adventurers do battle in a necropolis, letting magic fly in the D&D 2024 Player’s Handbook.

While A Christmas Carol’s future ghost has a pretty solid idea of how things are going to go, I think mine’s a little broken. Its head kept whirring around and it was speaking in tongues and portending doom—something about the sun exploding in 2029? I’m sure it’s fine.

In all seriousness, the way I’d best describe D&D’s current position is a leap to the next roof over, captured in slow motion. It’s Tobey Maguire, discovering his spider powers for the first time, legs cartwheeling through dead space over the befuddled citizens of New York. Before it lands or falls to its doom, though, some questions need to be answered.

Can D&D sustain another five to 10 years with a more-or-less identical ruleset, and are the creature comforts of fifth edition’s cosy familiarity enough to keep it afloat?"

My New Years’ prophecy

A claw wraps around a scrying orb spying on the multi-headed visage of tiamat in D&D, as part of the 2024 ruleset’s Dungeon Master’s Guide.

But Harvey, I hear you croon, like a little orphan boy in a snowy Dickensian street outside my rich and affluent manor, what’s yourtake?Well, I say, beating this laboured framing device into the ground, I’m not sure things are looking great.

To be clear, I don’t want D&D to perish, or anything. I’m a miserly old grump about it, but with the expectation that we’ll be waiting years for another revamp, I can’t help but wonder if rehashing the 2014 rules was a mistake. One of the things about this game is that the older rulebooks still exist; you can, right now, go grab rules for fourth edition, 3.5, second edition, heck, even AD&D—and have enough material to run a campaign for years. No one’s stopping you. So there’s no need to trap the modern-day game in amber.

I also don’t trust Wizards and Hasbro to not mess everything up, because it’s just the way companies work right now. We’ve seen it time and time again—there is a point of critical mass where you start kicking down doors and doing things no one wants because you’ve run out of food to feed the shareholders. Inevitably, Wizards is going to start tearing up the furniture while going “is this anything???”

If D&D does go the way of the dodo, I predict that we’ll get all feudal about it."

Staring into my crystal ball, I think one of two things are going to happen. The first scenario is that D&D just… ambles along in a boring way with some nasty bumps in the road for another decade, relatively unchallenged, before ultimately releasing a new edition at some point because it’ll have to. After which all bets are off, but there’s every chance that the world’s biggest roleplaying game continues to survive and get fat off its incredible popularity.

If WoW vanished tomorrow, there’d be more players in other MMOs, sure, but a new titan wouldn’t just slot into its place. People make new TTRPG systems all the time, yes, but none of them would have the historical staying power or structural, corporate and institutional might of D&D. If D&D self-immolated tomorrow, people would stick around to mourn and, given the effort of learning a new system, might just stop rolling dice entirely. I think they’d be wrong for doing so, but they would.

Several adventurers discuss their plan of action while a beholder lurks in the shadows in the Dungeon Master’s Guide 2024 for D&D.

No. If D&D does go the way of the dodo, I predict that we’ll get all feudal about it. You’ll have three clans of survivors—players who use the old books (because Hasbro literally can’t stop them), players who move onto D&D-likes such as Pathfinder 2e (whichI wouldn’t be that upset about), and players who start their journey through the dozens of other great, vibe-specific systems out there.

And honestly, maybe that’s all good and fine. I welcome a post-apocalyptic age of TTRPG nomads. I’ve adored my journeys through Lancer, Masks, Blades in the Dark, ICON, Dread, and Pathfinder 2e to name a few. No king rules forever, and there might not always be one to replace it, but even in a fractured world we’ll still have pen and paper. Or rocks and cave walls, depending on how bad things get outside of the Forgotten Realms.

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The Past: It’s been one hell of a decade#

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals#

The Present: It’s just like the past, but better#

The Future: Where do we go now#

My New Years’ prophecy#

The Past: It’s been one hell of a decade

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals

The Present: It’s just like the past, but better

The Future: Where do we go now

My New Years’ prophecy