The corona pandemic has made life pretty difficult for a lot of role-playing groups. Suddenly it was no longer possible to gather together at a table every week, unpack cubes and immerse yourself in a completely different world for a few hours.
So it is not surprising that digital offers for pen & paper role-playing games became very popular at this time. But even independently of Corona, playing over the Internet is becoming more relevant for many fans of this hobby. That’s why Wizards of the Coast will soon be offering an extremely elaborate alternative.
The publisher behind Dungeons & Dragons or Magic: The Gathering has during his recent Live-Show namens Wizards Presents
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DnD Digital: Trailer introduces the future of roleplaying in Unreal Engine 5
This is D&D Digital
Already in April, Wizards increased its digital line-up enormously by simply purchasing the previously independent but extremely popular online tool D&D Beyond. Together we should now go into the future and Wizards would now like to simplify the actual playing with the help of D&D Digital.
There are already digital options for game management, fights or dice rolls, for example with the help of Roll20 or the miniature simulator TaleSpire, which is available on Steam as Early Access. But with D&D Digital, life could be much easier and more spectacular, especially for DnD fans.
D&D Digital aims to offer a game environment designed entirely in Unreal Engine 5, where we can move miniatures of enemies and heroes around on really nicely designed battle maps. The highlight of the matter: D&D Digital is fully compatible with the new publications for DnD.
The digital game environment aims to maintain the feeling of a miniature landscape and works with the Unreal Engine 5.
This is an extremely good opportunity for fans of the system. You simply have the certainty that this tool always has the most up-to-date rules ready for you. In addition, it should be possible to replay official adventures directly. So there will be official miniatures of NPCs. In addition, battle maps and dungeons from the official adventures can be used. So the tedious rebuilding will probably soon be done.
You can find out more about pen&paper as a hobby and what PC games can learn from it in our podcast:
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What digital role-playing games can learn from pen & paper
What else was there about DnD?
In addition to D&D Digital, there was a lot of other news about Dungeons & Dragons at Wizards Presents. The most important thing here was probably the announcement of One DnD. This is a kind of new rule edition. However, this time it’s not an all-round renewal, as it was with DnD 5. Instead, Wizards wants to turn the same system into a service game. Instead of a completely new edition, DnD 5 will be expanded and optimized with new rule books.
It is not yet known when the digital tool will appear. However, 2024 was often mentioned as the release year for the new rulebooks.
