Wizards of the Coast faced another controversy last week, so the time is ripe to generate some good press. A conveniently timed D&D Direct might just be the answer. In the August 27, 2024 DnD Direct, the company gave one last preview of the 2024 Player’s Handbook, revealed future campaign storylines, showed some Project Sigil, and brought some surprises.
Read on to see the breakdown of each big scoop and decide for yourself if it’s enough to get you excited about DnD 2024 and Beyond.
Watch DnD Direct August 27 2024
If you want to watch for yourself, you can find the YouTube video here starting at 9am PST.
New Campaign & Anthology Books Announced
With all the talk of the future of DnD, the presenters would of course share the themes of upcoming books. Anthologies, Sourcebooks, and a Starter Set are on the way in 2025. Here are the announced books:
- An anthology about dragons. The premise is that many players say they've never fought a dragon, much to the designers' surprise. This book will feature 10 adventures centered around dragons in dungeons.
- A 2025 Starter Set. It takes place in the Borderlands and features the Keep on the Borderlands, the surrounding wilderness, and the Caves of Chaos.
- Two Forgotten Realms Guides. One is for players and will include new subclasses, feats, spells etc. The Dungeon Master book will focus more on lore and how to get various campaign themes from the setting.
More Third Party Partner Support
One brief section focused on third party creators that have their content featured on D&D Beyond. A flash of their logos showed previous partners as well as more to come. D&D Beyond later announced that Lord of the Rings 5E and The Griffon's Saddlebag Two are coming to the platform.
Project Sigil
A large amount of the video's runtime was dedicated to Project Sigil, the 3D virtual tabletop developed by Wizards of Coast. Emphasis was placed on the high quality models of characters that are made to look like detailed figurines. A level builder was also shown, featuring a drag-and-drop UI. A sample was shown of someone using wall and floor pieces to make a dungeon, then populating the area with trees and furniture to add detail. It all seemed to run smoothly, and the team promised the ability to quickly take a premade option or create one in detail yourself piece by piece.
One notable tease happened when they were going over the breadth of options DMs would have, particularly in the vein of themes. One developer mentioned the possibility of having Drizzt fight a robot, and a figure of Optimus Prime appeared briefly onscreen. Is Transformers coming to DnD? Or is it teasing a general collection of properties owned by Hasbro?
2024 Core Books Previewed, Announce International Translations
The beginning segment of the video presented stories of players making friends and creating memories through playing DnD. This created a nice segue to talk about the 2024 Player's Handbook. Developers talked while chapter openings were shown onscreen, previewing weapon mastery mechanics, new spells, and the handy alphabetized rules glossary. If you're a player looking to try out these new rules, be on the lookout for Player's Handbook Celebration sessions with our pro DMs.
The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide and 2025 Monster Manual were also featured. The DMG is said to have 100 pages worth of treasure and magic items, while the MM is bursting with art that is meant to inspire a new generation of players. All three books are supposed to get French, Italian, German, and Spanish translations in the near future.
