Wizards of the Coast is currently developing a digital environment for their role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, which could soon make playing via the internet much easier.
The Corona pandemic made life pretty difficult for a lot of role-playing groups. Suddenly, it was no longer possible to gather around a table together every week, unpack dice and immerse yourself in a completely different world for a few hours.
So it’s not surprising that digital offerings for pen & paper role-playing games became very popular during this time. But even independently of Corona, playing via the internet is becoming more relevant for many fans of this hobby. That’s why Wizards of the Coast will soon be offering an extremely elaborate alternative.
The publisher behind Dungeons & Dragons or Magic: The Gathering talked about the future of DnD during their recent live show called Wizards Presents, introducing a digital game environment in Unreal Engine 5. You can see the trailer here:
This is D&D Digital
Back in April, Wizards vastly increased its digital line-up by simply buying the previously independent but extremely popular online tool D&D Beyond. Together, they are now moving into the future and Wizards wants to use D&D Digital to simplify the actual gameplay.
There are already digital ways for the game director to represent battles or dice rolls, for example with the help of Roll20 or the miniature simulator TaleSpire, which is available on Steam as Early Access. But with D&D Digital, life could become even easier and more spectacular, especially for DnD fans.
D&D Digital is supposed to offer a game environment completely designed in the Unreal Engine 5, where we can move around miniatures of enemies and heroes on really nicely designed battle maps. The kicker is that D&D Digital is fully compatible with the new publications for DnD.
This is an extremely favourable opportunity for fans of the system. One simply has the certainty that this tool always has the most up-to-date rules at hand for one. In addition, it should be possible to replay official adventures directly. So there will be official miniatures of NPCs. In addition, battle maps and dungeons from the official adventures can be used. This will probably soon put an end to the tedious rebuilding process.
What else was there to DnD?
Besides D&D Digital, there was a lot more news about Dungeons & Dragons at Wizards Presents. The most important was probably the announcement of One DnD. This is a kind of new rules edition. However, this time it is not an all-round renewal, as with DnD 5. Instead, Wizards wants to turn the same system into a service game. Instead of a completely new edition, DnD 5 will be expanded and optimised with new rulebooks.
It is not yet known when the digital tool will be released. However, 2024 has often been mentioned as the release year for the new rulebooks.
