One D&D: The Next Adventure

 

the adventure begins...

So... A lot of cool stuff has happened over in the D&D community since the beginning of the pandemic. The game has since rose to a greater level of popularity to new masses all over the world, with many taking in the 5th Edition Rule sets of Dungeons & Dragons as either their first introduction to the "Worlds Greatest Roleplaying Game" or a new avenue for veteran players for a more simple and streamlined player experience. We have all seen the releases of Unearthed Arcana content and subsequent supplement materials being released by Wizards of the Coast (WotC) which showcased major rules changes that could lead a new path for the future of D&D. There are two examples of this phenomenon being showcased in D&D's recent history: 

In April 2019, we have seen the release of Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos, a campaign setting which introduced the idea of classes sharing the same subclass according to their chosen college within the Academy, like the Mage of Silverquill subclass in the original UA playtest material shared by Wizards, Warlocks, and Bards; however, this concept was scrapped in favor of implementing new backgrounds linked to the new Strixhaven Initiate feat. This change of the supplements direction not only made the Strixhaven experience more universal for players not playing a Wizard, Warlock, Bard, or Druid, but also displays the intention of the D&D Dev Team to put a greater spotlight on a character's background, a character creation mechanic largely ignored by most tables and would be seen again in the playtest material we are going to dive into.

November 2020 saw the release of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, a new expansion sourcebook which paved way for greater character creation options and mechanics. Besides the release of 14 new subclasses and the D&D community finally seeing the Artificer Class once again from Eberron: Rising from the Last War since its debut on 2017, we also saw new changes to how players can design their characters to best suit them. Among them was the implementation of the Custom Lineage racial option, which allowed for players to gain full control over who their character was. Another rules change debuted by Tasha's was putting a new optional rule for Ability Score Increases in races and feats which peeled away from 5e's more restrictive rulings in the matter, allowing for players to put the +2 in Dexterity found in Elves (for example) into any other stat of the players choice. 

The direction towards more flexible and customizable character creation mechanics and options seems to be one of the major pillars being implemented within One D&D, the next edition of Dungeons & Dragons which aims to build up and update the core rules set by 5th Edition. And since the announcement of this new project, WotC has released the first set of playtest material for feedback by the community, and I am going to plunge myself into the 21 page document. The full dive will be its own article, since its a long hefty document and I will also be converting one of my own characters from standard 5e rules to the Character Origins playtest material.

Personally, I am very excited to see what major changes are to come to the game that has basically pulled me from very sad times throughout the pandemic and got me closer to new friends and communities along the way... and also hoping they update the Official Character Sheet to make it more streamlined and easy to understand for new players, because holy shit the current character sheet is mega annoying, even as a editable PDF file its annoying.

You can find the PDFs of the materials here: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/one-dnd

you can also feel free to watch a video made by Bob World Builder which inspired the next few articles I will be writing in regards to One D&D here: https://youtu.be/siZGAWdBw4s