Reddit Posts and Comments from WOTC Staff for the 2026-05-23 to 2026-05-29

Previous Week: https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/240036-reddit-posts-and-comments-from-wotc-staff-for-the

Sources:

• https://www.reddit.com/user/WOTC_BrianPerry/
• https://www.reddit.com/user/WOTC_Zac/
• https://www.reddit.com/user/WOTC_Cody/
• https://www.reddit.com/user/WOTC_Randy/
• https://www.reddit.com/user/DnD_CommunityTeam/
• https://www.reddit.com/user/WOTC_Elliot/
• https://www.reddit.com/user/latiajacquise/
• https://www.reddit.com/user/GrandPyromania/

Post:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/comments/1toi4rf/whats_new_on_ddb_changelog_5262026_and_100_bugs/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/comments/1tpbz52/whats_new_on_ddb_introducing_journals_never_lose/

Comments:

latiajacquise: Homebrew classes are something that we can begin to investigate after the game platform rebuild. Right now, there’s no ETA.

Per our article on the subject: "This multi-phase project will take time to complete, but you'll begin to see benefits with releases this year." This isn't something we can put a definite timeline on, but we will continue to deliver updates on it throughout the year.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/comments/1toi4rf/comment/oo26ygh/

WOTC_Zac: TBH, this is why we haven't done it yet. It's easy to slap a grid on a map, it's hard to get that grid exactly how you want it. But I'm always open to learning more about what works well and what doesn't, and maybe it gives way to some clever solutions.

---

We show a grid when you upload a map to help with token sizing - but showing the grid is not the hard part. Getting the grid aligned exactly how you want it usually is. :) But I'm always open to learning more about what works well and what doesn't - sometimes there's some insight that gives way to some clever solutions.

---

Yep, understood! That will set up the size of the gridlines, but won't necessarily line them up with the art. That's the part I'm expecting could get a little finnicky.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/comments/1tk4kwi/comment/on9jbyc/

WOTC_Zac: I love the idea of offering the Dungeon Masters soundtrack!

As u/perringaiden said, it's definitely one of those "nice to have" add on features that is outside our core focus. And as other users have mentioned, other VTTs offer this with varying levels of user satisfaction.

We don't have a lot of experience running a music streaming service (it's also why we don't want to do integrated video chat - we don't have a lot of experience running a video chat service), so we'd like to tend to defer those who do.

That being said, I do know exactly how I would build this feature, if we did decide to do it....

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/comments/1tnec0x/comment/onzleig/

On Activating Rage for Barbarians

WOTC_Zac:That's one of those frustrating limitations of the extremely old underpinnings of the site, and a great example of something that will be so much easier with our new game engine rebuild project.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/comments/1toi4rf/comment/oo7ldg7/

WOTC_Zac: We're pretty bearish on Dynamic Lighting. It's not a "never", but I've each of the other implementations I've seen have been borderline-painful to set up, and the experience of playing with them can be very fragile and finnicky.

We've occasionally prototyped what our own take on it would look like, but nothing that's really nailed it yet.

As for Chat - we don't have any plans to integrate Chat right now - our research has found that most groups who want chat are already using a chat system (often Discord). We'd have to invest a lot of resources to build a chat system with sufficient features to be better than Discord.... and that's time and energy we're spending on things that aren't making a better VTT.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/comments/1tpbz52/comment/oofmgt1/

WOTC_Zac: Maps has only been around for 2.5 years, so we are still pretty new. But we're making fast progress, and we have a product vision (Honda Accord, not F-16) that guides us into making a simple, intuitive experience so anyone can sit down and immediately know how to use.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/comments/1tpbz52/comment/oofmys1/

Regarding: https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/s/niOjtHDtjp Mobile Formatting after clicking into links in the Rules Glossary.

WOTC_Zac: The mobile team has a different release cadence. I know they're aware of this issue, and I believe they have been working on it. We'll get it out when we can!

I can't offer specific timelines for releases - too many things can happen to push things back. But I know they're planning out the next release now.

I do know they were actively working on it last time I checked in with them. They were aware of the issue for a while, but didn't know enough about how to replicate it. Your feedback was the missing piece about what was going on for them to know where to investigate and start to work on a fix.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/comments/1toi4rf/comment/oo3jit9/

WOTC_Zac: There's a lot of UX love that needs to happen to support Maps on Mobile. It doesn't not work right now - it will load and you can interact with things. Some things, at least. But there's definitely a lot of broken parts too.

I dream of the day we'll be able to support Maps on Mobile. Ideally we'd optimize for Mobile, not just do "Maps, but smaller." Just a capacity and prioritization blocker for now...

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/comments/1tqb28w/comment/oogmb26/

Journals Feedback

On Search Functionality:

WOTC_Zac: Definitely something on the Journals roadmap! We didn't want to delay the initial launch to implement it because... well... it'll take a little while before people have enough sessions to search through. :)

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/comments/1tpbz52/comment/oo7pa6l/

WOTC_Zac: If it's too early for you, I totally understand! In our internal testing, we found DMs getting huge value out of the feature as-is.

So for people who were interested and willing, we wanted them to start benefiting from it as soon as they could.

And second, it's an opportunity to get real world feedback extremely early in the development process. A ton of research and testing went into this, but that's all theoretical until a large population is actually using it. So there are assumptions, future prioritization decisions, and tradeoff decisions we've made about future features of Journals that I would love to re-evaluate before we build the future feature, instead of after we build and release it.

Good software development practices have you releasing early and often. Something that is deep but narrow - it can do one thing really really well. Then next, it can do two things really well. Then three things, etc etc.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/comments/1tpbz52/comment/oofnzsx/

WOTC_Zac: We'll have more granular tools to create new sessions in the future. Right now, we start a session the first time you start taking notes for a day. Then if it's been a few hours since your last note, we'll prompt you if you want to create a new session or keep taking notes in this session. Then if it's a new day, we start a new session.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/comments/1tpbz52/comment/oo90tmw/

WOTC_Zac: 

Access Beyond Maps. The Character Sheet and the Campaign Details pages are the two main targets. They're built on a different tech stack and maintained by different teams, so it'll take a bit longer to get Journals over there, but it's definitely something I hope to see! That being said, those teams are pretty heads-down right now with a lot of important work in rebuilding the game engine, so it might be a minute.

Player-Only Notes.
Ultimately, we think the visibility into what the players are remembering/paying attention to/how they interpreted certain events is more valuable than preserving the edge case of the players wanting to hide something from the DM. If they do want to hide something from the DM, they can use a private group chat or some other mechanism - theoretically whatever they're using today - so we're not preventing them from doing so.

We briefly considered making it an option, but it got real complicated real fast. Is the entire journal private? Just today's? Just the one entry? How do you mark it as private? How do you communicate to other players it's private? Can other players mark it as public once it's private? Does the DM know there's a private entry they just can't see, or is it completely secret?

It adds a ton of complexity to a feature whose raison d'etre is "Fast, simple, then get out of the way."

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/comments/1tpbz52/comment/oo91fol/

WOTC_Zac: See my reply here.

That being said, we are also aware lots of people play fully in person, but still want access to digital support features. We're looking at more and more ways to make that a thing...

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/comments/1tpbz52/comment/oo9257c/

WOTC_Zac: The problem we are solving isn't "I don't have anywhere to take notes" - it was the ease of taking those notes.

I did approximately 60 hours of interviews with DMs leading into this and a few other related projects, and one of the most consistent things we heard was "it's hard to remember what happened last time, which makes prepping for the next session harder." If DMs took notes during the session, it was frequently 3-8 bullet-point length notes. DMs cited cognitive overload as the main reason why they weren't taking notes - they're already managing too many things.

So we built this feature to offer a low-overhead way to take those notes, integrated with where they're already playing. That means you can be role-playing with your players, then without looking at your computer, press J, type a short note, and hit enter - all without breaking character.

https://www.reddit.com/r/onednd/comments/1tpdif0/comment/oob6q5i/

WOTC_Zac: I talk about this more here, but a huge part of what we're solving for here is speed and ease of taking notes. To quote a user on a different Reddit thread who nailed it better than I could: "Ease of entry is KING. so i'm glad to see that was your first MVP feature."

https://www.reddit.com/r/onednd/comments/1tpdif0/comment/oob71p7/

WOTC_Zac: Thanks! We really wanted to focus on making it fast, easy, and frictionless. Our win condition was "can be roleplaying with your players and can take a note without looking at your computer or breaking character."

In our internal playtests, DMs who don't traditionally take notes during play were able to do that almost immediately, without the players noting a difference!

https://www.reddit.com/r/onednd/comments/1tpdif0/comment/oob79bi/

WOTC_Zac: There's a lot more coming too. One thing the article didn't really touch on and got cut from my video - we have a lot of metadata when you take a note - for example, we know what map you're on.

A future feature will be automatically adding headers for what map you're on to help keep things organized.

https://www.reddit.com/r/onednd/comments/1tpdif0/comment/oob7kb5/

WOTC_Zac: Right now, we're looking to keep it as just a single shared player journal for a few reasons:

1. There's usually, if you're lucky, one player who takes good notes. Then the other players (and often the DM!) is riding off their good nature/Type-A personality (I say this as the person who always takes notes and literally just built a note-taking feature...). If everyone had different private Journals, the party will suffer by losing access to that shared resource. (Of course, the hope is Journals makes it so easy other people start contributing too...)

2. The raison d'etre of this feature is speed and removing friction. As soon as there are any options in the Quick Jot modal - which journal to write to, formatting, etc - it encourages more mucking around while writing. That's a distraction from playing the game, and we start to get further from that goal of "you can take a note while roleplaying without looking at your computer or breaking character."

It is absolutely an opinionated feature. There are some drawbacks to that - but also a lot of advantages.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/comments/1tpbz52/comment/oobaf9w/

WOTC_Zac: We'd love to have Journals in the Character Sheet in the future too! But that's a different team, and our older tech stack, so it might take a minute.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/comments/1tpbz52/comment/oobaoy4/

WOTC_Zac: That was absolutely the goal! Fast, easy, frictionless. Can take a note while roleplaying without looking at your computer or breaking character.

https://www.reddit.com/r/onednd/comments/1tpdif0/comment/oob7nl8/

WOTC_Zac: We're trying to ride the line between "offering helpful formatting options" and "a formatting bar the size of the kitchen sink." A quick rundown of the current plan - although this is one of the things we're hoping to learn through our new iterative release strategy:

• Bold/italics/underline: Yes

• Header styling: Yes

• Bulleted list: Yes

• Numbered list: Yes

• Colors: Yes, limited to 4

• Hyperlinks: Yes

• Font changes: No

The handwritten notes thing is fun, but we'd probably push you towards the Custom Reveals feature when that's finished, and just show them an image of it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/onednd/comments/1tpdif0/comment/oofh0rq/

WOTC_Zac: Exactly - for people who are in love with their current system, awesome! Nothing breaks if you don't use Journals. But in our testing, people who used it loved how seamless it was compared to what they were doing before (often alt-tabbing to another program).

There's a lot of functionality we're excited to add, Journals being one of them, and we've been making progress very rapidly since Maps came out just 2.5 years ago.

While I can't teach Gen Z to touch type, I can speak to is what we've seen in our testing, which is DMs being able to jot down short 5-8 word notes about something while they're doing something else.

https://www.reddit.com/r/onednd/comments/1tpdif0/comment/oofjf34/
https://www.reddit.com/r/onednd/comments/1tpdif0/comment/oofk10r/

 WOTC_Zac: We're taking an iterative release approach to Journals. So the first few iterations are DM read/write, DM edit, Player read/write, Player Edit. Later we'll build a Search feature, and add some more Quality of Life enhancements.

I really want to bring Journals to everywhere that people play - Character Sheet, mobile, the Campaign Details page, etc. But those are all different teams with different tech stacks and different sets of priorities, so I can't promise timelines on those.

https://www.reddit.com/r/onednd/comments/1tpdif0/comment/ooflf1v/

 WOTC_Zac: 

1. I really want to bring Journals to everywhere that people play - Character Sheet, mobile, the Campaign Details page, etc. But those are all different teams with different tech stacks and different sets of priorities, so I can't promise timelines on those.

2. We're not touching the existing Campaign Notes feature for now, but we may explore a way to import your notes from that feature into Journals in the future.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/comments/1tpbz52/comment/oofn8jh/

WOTC_Zac: The next phase of Journals introduces Edit Mode in the Campaign Journal view, which lets you add new entries there, add formatting, and edit existing entries.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndbeyond/comments/1tpbz52/comment/oofo83a/

What is reddit and as it seems that is not an official site why even look at it?  Just ignore reddit.

Quote from Character77006 >>

What is reddit and as it seems that is not an official site why even look at it?  Just ignore reddit.

What is reddit could be answered with a very quick google search.

As for it not being an official site, that's irrelevant. Look at the title of this thread:

Reddit Posts and Comments from WOTC Staff for the 2026-05-23 to 2026-05-29

This thread is about official WotC staff comments on the site. Like instagram and twitter and youtube, WotC puts out information related to D&D on reddit. This thread is an aggregate of that. Even if you didn't click through the provided links, what was said and by whom was posted here. This includes Latia Jacquise (community manager) and WOTC_Zac (Maps product manager)

This is a bizarre comment to make

Quote from Character77006 >>

What is reddit and as it seems that is not an official site why even look at it?  Just ignore reddit.

 The quotes are from D&D Beyond employees, including the Product Manager of Maps, Zac Cohn.  So, sure, you can ignore it, but many people here are complaining about lack of context while the context is there.

I'm almost jealous of the fact you've managed to never hear of one of the most high profile websites on the internet.

As always Perringaiden thank you for summarising these AMA so well so that we don't have to go to Reddit

Quote from Perringaiden >>

Quote from Character77006 >>

What is reddit and as it seems that is not an official site why even look at it?  Just ignore reddit.

 The quotes are from D&D Beyond employees, including the Product Manager of Maps, Zac Cohn.  So, sure, you can ignore it, but many people here are complaining about lack of context while the context is there.

Some of us do appreciate the effort you're putting in to get all that information over here!

What i read from that entire thread is:  "our other teams are underfunded and we don't play well with them" .

Quote from Kuchimoo >>

What i read from that entire thread is:  "our other teams are underfunded and we don't play well with them" .

Way to read a thread full of very helpful information and have your main takeaway be something that is not even really supported by the evidence presented here.  The long documented reality of D&D Beyond is that Wizards inherited one giant pile of spaghetti code.  There is a reason they are rebuilding the site from scratch - it is very well known that a lot of the problems various teams are trying to fix would be better served by demolishing the existing structure.  The issues presented here are less "this team is not funded" problems and more "we handed some teams a Sisyphean nightmare of a task and it turns out they are having some trouble getting the bolder to the top of the hill."

-----

 Moving back to this thread, once again want to thank Perringaiden for their efforts--and their sacrifice of wading into the cesspool that is Reddit so the rest of us do not have to!  Truly great to see more communication from the current WotC team and am seconding that it would be great for them to do an AMA on Beyond.  I know I have a number of questions I want to ask--but not enough to post on Reddit.