D&D’s next iteration needs to keep it simple — but that’s complicated

0One of the main reasons that players stick with Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition is because publisher Wizards of the Coast is always trying new things — new locations and new kinds of adventures, to be sure, but also new character classes, spells, and magical items. Along with that evolution comes a natural growth in the game’s complexity. For example, characters of the 2019 Artificer Class can create magic items in a matter of minutes. They can cast spells and make magic hand grenades. The Artificer is a much harder character to control than the Fighter from the original. Player’s Handbook (2014).

Jeremy Crawford is working on a new version of 5th Edition rules as the wildly-popular tabletop RPG approaches its 50th Anniversary next year. The challenge lies in knowing how to handle the complexity, Crawford told Polygon. But it’s equally important to know when to hold back.

Paul Scott Canavan/Wizards of the Coast

“I love intricate character options when I’m playing,” said Crawford in an interview with Polygon at this year’s Gen Con in Indianapolis. “But sometimes when I play, I’m like, Today, you can bet I’m going to be swinging a saber.. One of the beauties of D&D — going all the way back to the 1970s — is that it provides not only different narrative options through its various character classes, but different gameplay options.”

Crawford says that it is essential to keep a balance between simple and complex options, particularly when designing. Player’s Handbook (2024), which will become the single most widely read entry point into the wider world of D&D for its next generation of devoted fans. And to get that fuel-air mixture just right to maintain the game’s explosive growth, Crawford is using the best tool at his disposal: hard data.

The 5th edition of D&D was unique when it launched in 2014 because of how it was created — through a yearslong set of user playtests called D&D Next that the company ran with its most devoted fans. Some 120,000 of them returned surveys back to Wizards, and their feedback was instrumental, Crawford said, in making D&D what it is today. Now he’s doubling down on the model, and he says the results are astonishing.

Wizards released a robust series of playtest packs called Unearthed Arcana. Crawford utilizes these UA materials to show off new character classes and abilities as well as changes in combat. His team has collected more than 500,000 player surveys based on the time they spent playing with the UA. Employees at Wizards are analyzing every word.

“10 years ago, I had one designer working full time going through all of the feedback,” Crawford said. “This time, because of the volume, we have three.”

In these surveys, the fans are free to say what they please. There has been some very elaborate trolling. Survey responses have so far included long sections of books now in the public domain — including the works of Edgar Allan Poe, for instance — which definitely gave Crawford’s team a chuckle. Even the sincerest of responses shouldn’t be accepted at face value. This data should be backed up with additional evidence.

“When I was a web developer […], one of the things that was always critical for us was to know there is a difference between what people say about their behavior and what are they actually doing,” Crawford said. “Anyone in any industry who has done focus group testing, surveying, [and]Humans are often able to perceive things in a certain way, and then say that we did X. But we often do something else. It is important to be critical when you analyze. [what you think a large group of people] want, to validate what they’re saying with what they’re doing.”

Case in point is the Champion subclass for D&D’s Fighter template. It’s among the least appreciated classes in survey responses, but data validation tells a different story.

When D&D Beyond, D&D’s digital toolset, launched in 2017, one of the deals that Wizards cut with its creators was to have visibility into how people used it. Even before Wizards bought the software company in 2022, it was drinking from a firehose of data — including what kinds of characters people actually like to build and play.

“The Champion — in terms of actual use — is one of the most used Fighter subclasses, because many people — and we learn this anecdotally, whether it’s from discussions we read online, or people telling us at events like [Gen Con] — they love playing the Champion because of how simple it is.

“For us, it’s always important to make sure we are looking at all of this [information] so that we can appeal to as much of our vast audience as possible,” Crawford said. “Part of our commitment in our [revision] of 5th edition was to have this big tent where a heavily invested person who’s been with D&D for decades, and who loves really crunchy options — we want to make sure we have things for them. But we also want to make sure that the person who’s never played before has a welcoming foyer to walk into when they get to D&D. And we also want to make sure that those of us who have been playing this game for a long time also have simple options for when we just want to kick back and do something simple.”

Crawford suggested that this simplicity may be the pet peeve of the highly motivated and highly engaged Wizards of the Coast survey respondents. But new players and casual players love it” so it’s just as important to keep the Champion subclass around as it is to create the next Artificer.

Revised versions of the three Dungeons & Dragons core rulebooks — including the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual — are said to be rolling out throughout 2024. You can read more about what’s expected inside each of them in our feature story. Jeremy Crawford will be continuing our discussion with us throughout the rest of this week, as we celebrate Gen Con.