All the D&D and Magic News Revealed at Wizards Presents

Don’t call it the next edition of Dungeons & Dragons—at least not to Wizards of the Coast, at any rate. WotC is calling this the “next generation of Dungeons & Dragons,” which will incorporate three “initiatives,” as per the company:

• D&D Rules. “This takes what we love about the Fifth Edition and updates the rules of the game to reflect the feedback we have heard from players and where the game is today.”

• D&D Beyond. “This will be the platform for your digital D&D collection, content, and tools.”

• D&D Digital Play Experience. “In early development, D&D Digital will offer an immersive player experience, rich creation tools for Dungeon Masters, and a connected space for DMs and players to get together and play D&D.”

Assuming “Rules” is just the basic mechanics of the game seen in the sourcebooks and which inform D&D Beyond, this makes sense to me. D&D Beyond has been a great tool for players to keep track of everything and make playing easier by dealing with character abilities and bonuses and all the mechanics that originally had always been done by pencil and paper.

Elsewhere on the site, Wizards of the Coast calls it “a digital play space” that’s “integrated with D&D Beyond.” Although this is still kinda vague, the Digital Play Experience sounds like it’s mainly for the Dungeon Master to craft their world for the players to experience as they tell their adventure story together, akin to virtual tabletop simulators.