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D&D Ideas — Evolution of D&D

Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is the evolution of D&D, which we discussed in our weekly live chat. We hangout every Monday evening at 8 p.m. EST on Nerdarchy Live to talk about D&D, RPGs, gaming, life and whatever nerdy stuff comes up. Speaking of evolution our own creations are evolving in a new direction too! We’re taking our popular Character Build Guides and mashing them up with our wildly successful Out of the Box encounters. For this exciting evolution we’re taking CBGs to the next step by crafting dynamic encounters around the creatures and NPCs inspired by the player character guide. You can get the Nerdarchy Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy plus snag a FREE GIFT by signing up here.

Nerdy News

Pick up where the week that was left off! Travel the multiverse, plunder a dragon’s treasury and bookend your game sessions like a boss plus a new live chats and game play rounds out this week’s Nerdy News. Check it out here.

Delving Dave’s Dungeon

Who’s ready for D&D 5.5? I know the Dungeons & Dragons team and Wizards of the Coast aren’t calling it that but the rest of the internet dubs it so. We talked about it on our live chats. We’ve started to see several of those changes in the last few products that came out.

The changes to races showed up in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything as optional rules. Things like ability score adjustments, languages, weapon, skill and tool proficiencies are all kind of interchangeable now. Anything perceived as coming from a culture instead of inherited via genetic traits are now up for the player to choose. There are some specific rules for it but it offers more options than ever before.

In Mythic Odyssey’s of Theros and Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica we see non-humanoid races get introduced into 5E D&D. In the last few Unearthed Arcana documents the D&D team has further experimented with non-humanoid types for races.

With classes it started with Xanathar’s Guide to Everything in my opinion and The Hexblade Otherworldly Patron for warlocks. The classes seem like they’ll have less spread across all the ability scores and be more focused on one or two of them. Not only this but we got a reworking of the Beastmaster Ranger Archetype in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything.

Candlekeep Mysteries gave us a peek into a new approach to monster stat blocks. Several of the monsters started showing off what monster stat blocks might look like when it comes to spellcasters in the next evolution of D&D. Nerdarchist Ted and I even discussed how those changes might affect certain elements of the game like counterspell. Check out our video D&D Spells: Counterspell Fixed or Ruined?

When the core books are rereleased we’ll see if the Dungeons & Dragons team reworks any of the core classes. We know the races will most likely be getting the full on Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything treatment. I also wonder if they’ll scrap the core Beastmaster ranger for the Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything optional version.

The other thing I wonder about is if the D&D team will start adding in more creature types as playable races as they’ve hinted at recently with product and Unearthed Arcana releases. This makes me wonder if they’ll need rework spells to take those kinds of changes into account.

The changes so far seem mostly like tweaks. I’m sure there will be those who disagree but the great thing about this hobby is we can choose to play the games at our tables the way that best suits us and our gaming groups. To this day there are still gamers playing first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and enjoying it. So if you don’t like the changes there is nothing to stop you from enjoying the game the way you and your friends like.

From Ted’s Head

Evolution of D&D — man, this is a hot button topic. I started playing D&D in 1991 with second edition AD&D. I played this version for so long and at the time I really did not think there would ever be a change. I was young and foolish. Here we are 30 years later and I have played every edition since. But it begs the question — what did I like best and what do I miss from those earlier editions?

Second edition was my first game. I learned and screwed up so much. I was a beginner and while I played I am not even sure I was aware preprinted adventures were even a thing. The game, at least as we played it back then, was more brutal and character death was a much bigger thing. So I am not really sure there is anything from 2E AD&D that has not been incorporated into 5E D&D. There is so much nostalgia in where my passion for this hobby originated and I would love to experience that beginning again.

Third edition and 3.5 I feel gave rise to the number crunchers and the power gamers. To each their own. While I do like feeling like my character is effective I am not concerned with making the ideal choices on race/class/weapon/spell to be the maximized effectiveness. What I will say I miss was a defined magic item making system. Magic items are something I absolutely love making as a Dungeon Master and as a player I love getting them. I certainly was the guy with the stack of books spread out all across the room trying to see what I can build as a player or a DM. I made one creature that if I recall correctly was a CR 71 because I stacked every template I could on something obnoxious to begin with. But this was just a challenge to see what I could do.

Fourth edition is the controversial edition according to many. I enjoyed playing the ruleset and to be fair since starting Nerdarchy we have played games using that ruleset. However, despite the fun of the game it did not feel like D&D to our group. Everything seemed too alien or too gamist. I think with any other backdrop I might be able to get behind it but not for our favorite game. But everything has a positive side. Some of the cool at will powers are just amazing. I recall playing a wizard who had an area effect at will power alloweding the party to destroy a cavern wall full of eggs getting ready to hatch with ease and nothing like this appears in any other edition as far as I can remember. And I will certainly not leave off without mentioning how much I love the warlord class. A warrior who does not use spells and is heavy on Charisma skills and abilities is lacking in 5E D&D so I would love to see a warlord made for the current edition.

So what is next and what do I want to see? I would love to see the things mentioned above but I would also love to see the 5E D&D design team approach the game from another perspective. While it is rather a recent change to the hobby, seeing tools for those playing online I think would be great. Aside from this I would like to see even higher tiers of play and more guidance for DMs in worldbuilding. After all every tool for players and DMs is a blessing.

From the Nerditor’s Desk

Boy, the folks from Wizards of the Coast really opened a can of worms during the most recent D&D Celebration event, huh? There’s been nonstop discussion about the next evolution of D&D spurred by Ray Winninger, executive producer in charge of the Dungeons & Dragons studio. During the event he shared WotC’s plans for new versions of D&D’s core rulebooks for release in 2024.

This was the first and last official word on the topic as far as I know but it hasn’t stopped speculation and wishes for whatever this evolution of D&D means from running wild. Anyone with the even the slightest desire for this or that component of the game to fit their vision is sharing these ideas on every platform.

I believe what we’ll see is along the lines of something Jeremy Crawford expressed during a press briefing for Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. The core 5E D&D game will remain what’s presented in the core rulebooks with this new iteration building on it in a modular fashion the way this edition was intended from the very beginning. As Nerdarchist Dave mentioned we’ve already started seeing the direction D&D’s been taking and the 2024 release probably dovetails with this.

If I’m honest I could speculate all day but when it comes down to it in a lot of ways this evolution of D&D is kind of irrelevant to me. The games I participate, the people I play with and the playstyle I prefer already strays from official material quite a lot. On top of this I’m of a mind D&D is not what you find in any book but rather what takes place in your group. Players have tweaked the game with house rules and homebrew content since the earliest days to create the experience we want.

Of course I’m curious what we’ll see in this evolution of D&D and frankly I hope to discover surprising material neither I nor any other speculators imagine. However, I do have one wild idea what this could entail and it lies in the increasingly close connection between D&D and WotC’s other enormously successful property — Magic: The Gathering. (Not for nothing the recent Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons shares a tremendous amount of artwork with MTG’s Adventures in the Forgotten Realms expansion.)

It might be kind of neat to see D&D adopt MTG’s block structure when it comes to game content. Imagine after this 2024 evolution of D&D the Standard Block becomes that selection of rulebooks and everything before is considered Historic. In this way D&D could persist without a discrete edition change ad infinitum, which would make the brand very strong. Since the two games are vastly different I can imagine this concept but with more depth and include lots of guidance for players to curate their own experiences by doing a much better job presenting game content in a modular way.

As third party creators ourselves these developments bring up a lot of other issues and questions too but that’s another complex discussion altogether. At the end of the day WotC is in a strange position wherein the larger the brand grows the more challenging it is to develop. The D&D experience is not found in the pages of a book but instead among the players who engage in games together. Appealing to all of them is simply impossible and the more the player base grows the more people will express unhappiness at whatever they do.

My advice to you, since you’re obviously a discerning D&D player interested in the best commentary and creations for your games, is to keep up with Nerdarchy. We’re evolving every day! At the moment I’m most excited about developing along our new direction with CBGs offering unique new character paths and exciting creatures, followed by dynamic encounters designed around them and new character options as the cherry on top.

*Featured image — Our transition to our own D&D evolution starts with the Party Animal CBG. Elandra Faen travels the multiverse with her Shop of Dark Delights and offers adventurers all manner of unusual alchemical substances and more — for a price! Learn more here.

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