Want to feel really old? Seminal pen and paper tabletop RPG Dungeons & Dragons turns 50 this year. Publisher Wizards of the Coast is celebrating with new adventure releases, licensed merchandise, and revised rulebooks for the game’s popular Fifth Edition (which turns ten this year).
The celebration begins in March. Through gaming conventions such as Gary Con and PAX East as well as at hobby stores and online at D&D Beyond, players can embark on a new yet familiar adventure, “Descent into the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.” The adventure is based on the classic 1982 module, “Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.”
This year will also see the release of a new high level campaign adventure, Vecna: Eve of Ruin (pictured above). It’s a multiverse-spanning tale that takes level 10+ heroes beyond the Forgotten Realms and into other D&D settings such as Dragonlance, Ravenloft, and Eberron.
Vecna: Eve of Ruin will release on May 21.
D&D is also getting another anthology release in Quests from the Infinite Staircase. Like Candlekeep Mysteries and other anthologies, this compilation will include several smaller adventures, for characters levels 1-13. It arrives July 16.
The biggest new addition are new rulebooks. Wizards of the Coast has clarified many times that this is not a new edition (such as 6e), and is entirely backwards compatible with the popular Fifth Edition. The new rulebooks have been playtested throughout the previous year, and will include a Player’s Handbook (September 17), Dungeon Master’s Guide (November 12), and Monster Manual (February 18, 2025).
“D&D has a rich history, an exciting present, and a great future,” said Kyle Brink, Executive Producer, Wizards of the Coast. “This year we’ll be celebrating all three with the 50th Anniversary of the first publication of Dungeons & Dragons. We’ll take you through the making of the game, bring some of the classic adventures to today’s play, visit the most iconic settings in the D&D multiverse, and kick off the future of the game with the new 2024 core rulebooks that are the heart of the game. We’ve been building up to this for a while now. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
