Will Dungeons & Dragons Get A 6th Edition?

Dungeons and Dragons 5e released back in 2014. With its 6th anniversary fast approaching, many players are starting to wonder if Wizards of the Coast is going to wipe the slate clean and release the 6th edition of Dungeons and Dragons soon. Is it still worth buying books for Dungeons and Dragon’s 5th Edition, or are they all going to get replaced in the coming months?

Wizards of the Coast has released many editions and iterations to Dungeons and Dragons, and they have occasionally changed core D&D rules in the middle of editions. There have even been times that players had had trouble knowing which edition they were playing, like when D&D 3.5 and 3rd edition were both entirely supported by Wizards of the Coast.

There will almost definitely be a 6th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Still, there haven’t been any announcements about it yet, but looking at some of the reasons old versions got replaced could give insight to whether Dungeons and Dragons 5e will be disappearing soon or sticking around.

Dungeons and Dragons 3 and 3.5 Were Overcomplicated

Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 was one of the most popular versions of the game ever to release. The first books of 3rd edition were released in 2000, and the last books were initially printed in 2007, but many players continued playing the game with that ruleset long into the run of 4th edition. That said, 3.5 was popular with established adventurers but hard to introduce to new players.

When they were releasing content for 3 and 3.5, Wizards of the Coast printed 12 different core D&D rulebooks between 2000 and 2007. At the same time, they published over 50 supplements that added additional rules, features, races, and magic items to the game. This is a staggering amount of potential options for players trying to get involved in the game, and that isn’t even including extra options added by bonus content like Dragon Magazine.

This made for an environment where the game was hard to enter, as well as an environment in which it was difficult to print new content, as balancing it with all previous content was nearly impossible. Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition has been released for almost as long as 3 and 3.5 now, and only has 3 core rulebooks and 4 supplemental books in the style of 3.5. 5th edition has added some more content in books like the Mythic Odysseys of Theros. Still, those books are directly setting guides that add some setting-specific rules as opposed to complete supplements that are intended for inclusion with any Dungeons and Dragons game. This means 5e is unlikely to become overcomplicated any time soon.

Dungeons and Dragons 4e was Unpopular

There are many players whose favorite edition of Dungeons and Dragons was 4e, but for many players it didn’t replace 3.5 properly. The 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons made many large sweeping changes to the rules that weren’t popular with a large number of players. This lead to Wizards of the Coast having trouble maintaining their spot as the most popular role-playing game on the market, with Paizo’s Pathfinder equaling their sales in 2010. This was part of the reason that the Dungeons and Dragons Next playtest began a mere four years after 4e’s original launch. Additionally, Wizards of the Coast stopped making new core rulebooks two years after the launch of Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition.

Dungeons and Dragons 5e hasn’t had the same problem, with sales of the game climbing aggressively and Wizards of the Coast reporting that 2019 was the best year for Dungeons and Dragons ever. If a 6th edition of Dungeons and Dragons is coming, it won’t be because the 5th edition is unpopular.

When Dungeons and Dragons 6th Edition Is Coming

Eventually, there will be a 6th edition of Dungeons and Dragons or a transformation of 5th edition similar to what happened between 3rd and 3.5, but it doesn’t look like it’s coming any time soon. Wizards of the Coast seems to have learned new lessons every time they’ve released a new edition of the game, and have reached a place where it’s easy to think that Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition could be the longest-lived edition of D&D ever. Mechanics that are built into Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition, such as classes and archetypes, help reduce the game’s level of complexity and should also help avoid the rules-bloat that made D&D 3.5 more inaccessible to newcomers.

If Wizards of the Coast were to do anything, it would likely be similar to what is happening with the racial lineages within Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, where elements of the game are getting updated within the Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition template. Online tools like D&D Beyond make it easier than ever for Wizards of the Coast to errata rules and keep it simple for players, so it wouldn’t be surprising to have more adaptations long before there is a brand new edition of the game.

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