To kick off PAX Unplugged the 50 Years of D&D Panel showed four key members of the Dungeons & Dragons team getting together to talk about the state of the game, what is in store for the anniversary, and revealed some never before. Amanda Hamon and James Wyatt, Senior Designers, were joined by Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford, the Game Design Architects for Dungeons & Dragons.
Introducing the panel Hamon explained that some time would be spent highlighting important adventures from the past 50 years of Dungeons & Dragons before they would talk about some adventures that will be released in 2024 to coincide with the 50th anniversary.
The panel began with each member introducing themselves and where they were first introduced to Dungeons & Dragons. These anecdotes range from the standard picking up the game to play with friends after watching high fantasy films, whereas Jeremy Crawford first saw a 1st Edition Monster Manual next to adult magazines.
The last 50 years of D&D Adventures
The first half of the panel was a trip through memory lane. The panel highlights began on Short Adventures such as those found in the Dungeon Magazine. It was compared to the recently released Journeys Through The Radiant Citadel. Both allow for players and DMs to explore different settings, be able to pick up adventures on the fly, and not need the same level of commitment that comes with a campaign that’s months, or even years long.
Moving on from Short Adventures to Adventure Campaigns Tyranny of Dragons, 5th Edition’s first campaign was mentioned as well as City of the Spider Queen, Wyatt’s first published adventure. These adventures, tying in with novels, magazines, and now even TV Shows and Movies highlighting these worlds.
Dungeon Crawls like 1st Edition’s Tomb of Horrors was also discussed. Designed with convention play in mind this adventure isn’t meant for you to be too attached to your characters. Hamon added that there were even tournaments built around playing the Tomb of Horrors. Perkins shared his shame playing this adventure where, as a druid, he would summon creatures and send them into the traps.
Other Story-Based adventures that were highlighted include Ravenloft and Shadows of the Last War. Each of these don’t just highlight an important story, but also teach players so much about the world offering tools for DMs to change things up.
The final category that the panel wanted to highlight was Expedition to the Barriers Peak. This adventure lets the party ride around in a spaceship while fighting all of the weirdest enemies and even find firearms. This challenged the perception of D&D always being High Fantasy. This weirdness continues until this year with the release of Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk.
From there the discussion swapped to Dungeons & Dragons in 2024
Dungeons & Dragons In 2024
Descent Into The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth was the first title to be announced. Crawford explained that in 2024 they were be releasing a series of short adventures that they call Events. This is a distilled version of the classic Lost Caverns fo Tsojcanth that you can run in a single session of play. There is also a tournament scoring system so you can see how you compared to other groups.
Vecna: Eve of Ruin will be released on the 21st of May, 2024. This book will feature all kinds of iconic D&D characters that appear in the journey’s path. This adventure is meant to be a thrilling multiverse spanning story but specifically a 50th anniversary special. You will not only revisit places that have already appeared in 5th edition, but also ones that haven’t appeared in D&D for many years.
Quests From The Infinite Staircase is a new anthology series that will release on the 16th of July 2024. It will be similar to Tales from the Yawning Portal. Not too many details were announced about this other than they weren’t wanting to spoil who it was on the cover, but that it would be a collection of historic adventures remade for 5th Edition.
While not an adventure a historical recounting of The Making of Dungeons & Dragons will be released on the 18th of June 2024. This book will collect together the history of Dungeons & Dragons from 1970-1976. This has been created by John Peterson and includes correspondence with the original creators and a replica of the original manual. This book will be 500 pages long.
Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Core Rulebooks Release Date Announced
The Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master Guide, and Monster Manual will release on the 21st of May, 2024
The Player’s Handbook will be the largest in terms of pages as well as 48 sub-classes (8 for each classes), new spells, and new equipment. For the first time some of the pages were shown off including the Fighter artwork. Each class will feature art for every subclass.
Every release of the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition refresh in 2024 will be forward and backwards compatible across all built characters and adventures. Your friends can continue playing their old characters even if you want to move to a 2024 version. Many of the new options players have already seen through Unearthed Arcana.
The background section for the Players Handbook was also shown off. There was a decision to depict these all artistically so that players building their character can easier imagine where their characters came from to help inform their decisions.
Backgrounds in the 2024 refresh will be what determines what your starting stats are, as well as what starting abilities you’ll have like feats, skill and tool proficiencies, as well as equipment. Every weapon is also in the PHB to give people the idea of opening a “fantasy catalog”.
There are two more core books coming in 2024, the Dungeons Master Guide as well as the Monster Manual.
Crawford explained that at PAX and other conventions they’ll talk about it more but wanted to briefly talk about the DMG. People have struggled with the 2014 DMG so they’re taking strides to make the refresh much more usable and accessible. The book has been reorganized and also includes a complete campaign setting and a few adventures.
Wyatt explained the chance to reorganize the DMG […] was a big part of the redesign but they also wanted to make sure this was a document that people would return to. The DMG will also include the magical items from the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon.
There will be over 500 monsters in the Monster Manual including many more high CR creatures. This was something that they saw was a need for. The Blob of Annihilation, a CR 20 Ooze, is one of the new monsters that was mentioned. Perkins advised “you DO NOT want to be covered by this.”
In the process of building new threats like the Arch Hag there is new art for the monsters, new NPCs, but also a revisit to every monster to tune them up for the 2024 refresh. These monsters will work in the way you expect, while also offering alternative gameplay mechanics. High CR monsters have also been refined to be more applicable for the CR they’re listed at, this is similar to the update that monsters received in Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse.
Ending the panel Perkins teased that there’s more videos, artwork, features and discussions that are going to be shared in 2024 and extend into 2025.
