What D&D Beyond's Purchase Means for the Future of Dungeons & Dragons

Wizards of the Coast's purchase of D&D Beyond primes Dungeons & Dragons for its next edition. Earlier today, Hasbro announced plans to purchase D&D Beyond, a popular digital toolset that serves as a rules compendium, character builder, and more for Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition ruleset. D&D Beyond and similar digital toolsets were one of the contributing factors to D&D's current success – by streamlining character creation and character sheet management into an easy step-by-step process that provided instant access to rules from any Internet-connected device, D&D became infinitely more accessible than when it was managed through the use of physical character sheets and rules spread out over multiple rulebooks. 

It was not exactly a secret that Wizards of the Coast was preparing to either acquire or develop its own digital toolset as it prepares to launch a new "continuation" of Dungeons & Dragons in 2024 to coincide with the game's 50th anniversary. Several recent surveys asked fans and players of the importance of a digital toolset, with one survey even showing a D&D Beyond-generated character sheet as an example. Wizards of the Coast has also posted several job listings related to "Dungeons & Dragons Digital" which reference a new digital product. Given that up to 80% of D&D players have played the game online, it made sense that Wizards of the Coast wanted a digital toolset that it had tighter control of, especially as the digital aspect of the game becomes more prominent. 

Wizards of the Coast has not historically had the strongest record with in-house digital toolsets. Dungeons & Dragons 4E launched with its own D&D Insider digital toolset back in 2007. Due to tragic circumstances, the toolset was never fully completed and was eventually shut down in 2014, with D&D Beyond serving as an unofficial successor. By purchasing D&D Beyond outright, Wizards of the Coast now has a toolset available to either shape future editions of Dungeons & Dragons around or that can provide seamless support that can evolve with the game in the coming years. 

Both Wizards of the Coast and D&D Beyond have both said that D&D Beyond will continue to receive support indefinitely. However, many questions remain about the toolset's future. Now that D&D Beyond is owned by Wizards of the Coast, many players are hoping that future D&D books will have some sort of code to unlock that book's content on D&D Beyond, or at least receive a discount for that product. While that seems like a logistical nightmare (digital codes are easy to "steal" from physical copies at stores), we could see some sort of expansion in D&D Beyond's subscription service in which physical copies of books are mailed to subscribers. There's also the matter of future D&D Beyond functionality. The aforementioned Wizards of the Coast surveys mentioned a virtual tabletop system, something that D&D Beyond currently does not have. Given that D&D Beyond already has built-in Encounter Builders, it seems like a natural next step to create a virtual tabletop system that subscribers can use to pre-load encounters from adventures or use to build their own adventures. 

For now, D&D Beyond users shouldn't expect much change. The sale itself will not become official until later this year, and it will likely be even longer before Wizards of the Coast's intended direction for the toolset becomes clear.