Dungeons & Dragons announced One D&D which will give players many more tools to enjoy the roleplaying game for years to come.

Dungeons & Dragons Announced One D&D, Composed of Overhauled Rules, Digital Playsets, and More

Yesterday’s Wizards Presents 2022 live stream gave Dungeons & Dragons fans a lot to look forward to in the upcoming years. The biggest reveal was the confirmation of what they call “One D&D”. Basically, One D&D is the future of Dungeons & Dragons, and will change the beloved tabletop game in various ways.

Popular videogames such as Baldur’s Gate 3 are built upon D&D 5E, so it is interesting to see if these changes will influence more video game adaptations in the future.

Dungeons & Dragons Enhanced

One D&D is going to be an updated ruleset, first and foremost. It will be touching the three pillars of the game; namely the official Player’s Handbook, the Monster Manual, and the Dungeon Master’s Guide. While the full release of One D&D won’t see the light of day for quite some time (Wizards of the Coast is planning for a 2024 release), they have started granting interested players access to some alpha material.

Wizards of the Coast has also acquired D&D Beyond, a popular platform that allowed players to organize D&D play, especially online. Because of this, the publishers will now have an all-in-one tool that they can use to release online content to players. Dungeon masters and adventurers can finally rely on one tool to keep track of all their adventures and no longer need to rely on separate apps and services.

Unreal Dungeons

Lastly, One D&D will also include a full “Digital Play Experience”. This playspace is being built on Unreal Engine 5 to create a wonderful 3D representation of dungeoneering adventures. While it is early in development, the initial renders look quite good. They are making use of a technique called the “Tilt-Shift”. Making use of this perspective makes the world feel small. In fact, the figurines actually look quite miniature in scale which is the perfect feeling that they’re trying to invoke with this.

The Digital Play Experience hopes to be the perfect way to fully immerse players into the campaign. It is also worth noting that this Digital version is not a video game by itself, and will still rely on a creative DM to move things forward. Think of it as a giant, virtual tabletop set. D&D Beyond and the Digital Play Experience will both be fully integrated with one another, allowing crossover of tools.

Not the 6th Edition

However, the Wizards of the Coast team has made it quite clear that One D&D will not be called the 6th Edition Ruleset. Wizards of the Coast has also confirmed that everything being tweaked or added in One D&D will be backward compatible with all the existing 5E stories and campaigns. They simply want to call it Dungeons & Dragons moving forward.

Eager fans can sign up early for playtesting documents that can be used for existing campaigns. At the moment, they can download rules for Character Origins on D&D Beyond. The 21-page document contains all the usual rules that one would expect for character creation.

Spelling Bee

While there is a ton of content, a few updates seem to stand out. Spells are now split into three different Schools: Arcane, Divine, and Primal. Say goodbye to categories like Transmutation, Evocation, Conjuration, and all the rest. We won’t be losing spells, per se, but everything will get sorted into the new classifications.

Divine Spells will focus on the magic that centers around gods, such as things that a Cleric or Paladin would use. Arcane Spells are called upon by using the energies of the world. As such Wizards, Warlocks, Sorcerors, and Bards favor the Arcane School. Lastly, Primal Spells are favored by Druids and Rangers for their focus on the forces of nature.

A Critical Miss!

Another huge change that One D&D is bringing to Dungeons & Dragons is the removal of enemies’ ability to critically hit. As quoted in the current iteration of the alpha literature, “weapons and Unarmed Strikes* have a special feature for player characters: Critical Hits”. The rules specifically mention Player Characters as the only entities being able to perform crits.

This is a game-changing modification and might remove a lot of tension from extra-tricky encounters. But perhaps it’s for the better. Critical Hits otherwise function the same as before.

Wizards of the Coast

In other Dungeons and Dragons news, one of next year’s campaign releases will take place in Planescape. This is the location where the famous CRPG Planescape: Torment took place in. Warhammer: 40,000 Universes Beyond collaboration with Magic: the Gathering has also been confirmed to release in October 2022.

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