Welcome to the 2023 Unrolled! Here, we’ll highlight the achievements you’ve managed to roll up as a community over the last year.
From countless battles with monsters to the legions of new adventurers set forth on their quests, each roll of the dice has told a story. The stats you’ll see here are a collective tapestry of the intricate tales you’ve woven of companionship and adventure.
So, without further ado, let's take a journey through the stats and stories that have defined a year of imagination in Dungeons & Dragons!
Maps
2023 was an exciting year because our latest tool, Maps, was released in Alpha in September.
Even though this tool is still in development, it’s been encouraging to see all of the battles, exploration, and adventuring taking place.
While it started with a relatively small library, Maps now has fully integrated the content of 17 books. As we move into 2024 and see more tool updates, book integrations, and stable versions of Maps, we hope the core philosophy surrounding this tool, "Prep less, play more," enables players and DMs alike to spend more time adventuring with their friends!
Charity
In an epic display of kindness, over 37,000 adventurers channeled their inner heroes, supporting a cause that impacts our real world by purchasing Extra Life products on D&D Beyond.
Whether you purchase Extra Life products released on D&D Beyond in 2023, like Misplaced Monsters: Volume One and Domains of Delight: A Feywild Accessory or older Extra Life products, all proceeds go to helping sick and injured kids through the power of play. And if that’s not being a hero, we’re not sure what is!
Claimables
Well, it looks like the “Gale train” continues to chug along. Having already topped the charts as the most popular Origin character in Baldur’s Gate 3’s opening weekend update, Gale secures another accolade in being the most popular option from our collection of downloadable Baldur’s Gate 3 character sheets.
We think it’s probably a combination of his roguish charm, capricious arcane power, and, of course, those luscious brown locks.
In other news, the most popular claimable of 2023 was the Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves collection, which includes 7 stat blocks from the movie’s main characters, 5 legendary magic items featured in the movie, and a dice set featuring everybody’s favorite chonky dragon. The best part? It’s still available for free! No need to plan a heist to secure these treasures.
Characters
If living through a second (and less eccentric) D&D movie last year didn’t make you feel old, this will:
The average age of adventurers rolled up on D&D Beyond was 28. These adventurers are just old enough to go out on their own and be responsible about it, but young enough that they don’t have bad knees or back pain. Plus, if they miss a night without a long rest, they’re not cranky for the next 3 days.
While this makes sense for the all-popular human adventurer (which we cover later on), what people aren’t talking about are the juvenile dwarves and elves running around on adventures! According to the Player’s Handbook, dwarves reach adulthood at 50 and elves at 100, so if you have a 28-year-old elf in your party, you should make sure whatever they’re imbibing at the tavern is non-alcoholic.
We also found that the average level of player characters on D&D Beyond is 4.77. But, while all you poor "local hero" adventurers are wondering when you’ll get that promotion to "heroes of the realm," worry not! Todd Kenreck gave everybody a free level-up for Christmas, so go ahead and swing twice at that goblin you’re facing off against with your shiny new extra attack.
Here’s wishing you plenty more level-ups for your adventures in the new year!
Names
Maintaining his place atop the podium, Bob is the most popular name for characters on D&D Beyond for the second year running. Firmly cementing the fact that this three-letter, one-syllable name is the “John Smith” of the Forgotten Realms.
Meanwhile, “Link” has risen in popularity, a clear nod to our collective affection for heroes who are more about action than words, silent yet expressive, and probably has nothing to do with a notable sequel that hit shelves this year.
On the flip side, poor Eddie's fame has waned dramatically. Lacking the limelight that Stranger Things season 4 once provided, his popularity has turned Upside Down. Have we all forgotten about our fearless leader of the Hellfire Club so quickly? Rock on, Eddy. Rock on.
Species
Taking a look at the most popular species for characters on D&D Beyond, humans are firmly the most popular pick and, unsurprisingly, followed by the rest of the Basic Rules species except the gnome (sorry, gnomes).
The genasi are punching above their weight class by snagging a spot in the top 10. And yes, we see you, the roughly 80,000 aarakocra players. Couldn’t resist that 1st-level flight, eh?
Strangely, compared to their gold-medal showing in Baldur’s Gate 3’s opening weekend stats, half-elves finished a disappointing fifth in our 2023 round-up. Those armor and weapon proficiencies for BG3 half-elves must really make a difference!
Unfortunately for the smallfolk, dwarves, halflings, and gnomes are apparently among the least popular standard races based on our data and the opening weekend stats from Baldur’s Gate 3. I guess what they say is true: Movement speed does matter.
Classes
Looking at the most popular classes of D&D Beyond characters, it seems like the majority of players like to solve their problems with “I stab them.” Whether they’re using the tactical skill of a fighter, the precise art of a backstabbing rogue, or the pure muscle and rage of a barbarian, the simple ways are often the best.
As for popular casters, players are apparently gravitating to classes that can be prepared for anything. Wizards, who have more spells than they can shake a book at, and paladins, who get weapons, armor, shields, and healing on top of their spellcasting, were the most popular choices. It just goes to show that misty step or a high Armor Class can make you a lot more confident when your Dungeon Master asks, “Are you sure?”
Lastly, there’s the notably close race between warlocks and clerics. It looks like the majority of you listened to the devil on your shoulder instead of the angel, opting to sell your soul rather than enlist with the good guys. But we appreciate that you made the race close, at least.
Mobile App
Among mobile app users, ‘druid’ and ‘dragon’ were the most popular searches, but nobody tell ‘dungeon,’ it might hurt their feelings.
We also witnessed a staggering 7 million spells cast, and yes, it seems the age-old joke "I fireball the room" might have been more than just a meme. Who knew?
Meanwhile, 1.9 million players embraced the heart of RNG and rolled dice from the app a colossal 141 million times. That's a lot of tempting fate! We hope that number was pumped up by advantage, more than it was disadvantage.
Finally, 6 million new characters were brought to life from the app—whether by creating a custom character or rolling up a premade character, a fun new feature we added in 2023.
Top 5 Articles
From shapeshifting guides to new player tutorials, you’ve been doing your research this past year! It’s a bit troubling that one of our top 5 articles is about turning into a werewolf, but we’ll let it slide because it obviously just academic research…we hope.
Click below to check out our top 5 most popular articles from 2023:
- Druid 101: Wild Shape Guide
- How to Create Your First Dungeons & Dragons Character With D&D Beyond
- D&D Virtual Tabletop: A Closer Look
- What Is Dungeons & Dragons?
- Embracing Your Wild Side: Playing As a Lycanthrope in D&D
Looking Ahead to 2024
With 2023 wrapped up, we can’t wait to see what 2024 will bring. This next year is a very exciting one for D&D, not only is it the 50th anniversary of our beloved game, but we’ve got the 2024 core rulebooks rolling out!
Thanks for adventuring with us last year, and we’re thrilled to have you in our party for this year to come. We wish you all the inspiration, advantage on your rolls, and critical hits for 2024!
Love it! (Sea elf rangers are overpowered)
Don't forget that Wizards/ Hasbro has almost imploded Dungeons and Dragons twice in one year! Let us reminisce on your absolute and total failure to appropriately address the fervor over the Open Games License, and not to be one to be outdone, ALSO decided to fire 20% of your total work force while giving the Executive Failures who lost 21%+ market valuation over 20 million dollars in compensation!
Where's your cute charts for that? Maybe the person who would have made them was let go by the raging loser CEO of Hasbro. womp womp.
Surely the point of the info in that Children of Different Humanoid Kinds UA for 2024 is that - for players/groups who want to explore such things - a human can get "frisky" with anything now. Half-elf, half-orc, half-dwarf, half-halfling, half-tiefling, half-dragonborn, half-goblin?
AND to ensure no discrimination, every other race/species/ancestry can get frisky with any other race/species/ancestry: half-dwarf-half-elf, half-yuan-ti-half-owlin, half-fairy-half-centaur! The entire D&D multiverse is embracing a progressive getting frisky with whoever you want. (lol)
"options that start with ‘half’…The half construction is inherently racist so we simply aren’t going to include it in the new Player’s Handbook". It appears to be D&D's stance, got me but is really a weird stance to take when in the US according to the US census 10% of us are half. Wait and see if it does get included into the 6E PHB. What little I read, it doesn't exist, you get the stats from one parent, there isn't really unique now.
It just seems really evil to take that approach and remove people like me and my family. We are regressing back in time, this is bad.
Is that a joke? Please tell me that’s a joke.
If Embracing your Wild Side: Playing as a Lycanthrope in D&D was so popular, I hope they become playable options. (Like super-shifters with Underworld vibes)
And 4e Wilden. (because everything, nothing and some-things are reverting back to into the excellent but much repressed 4e now)
And robocop, er, warforged. "Come quietly, or there will be... fireballs!"
Wow...creative players. Bob... *sigh*
How about a look back at the disastrous corporate directions and decisions?
There would be a lot of bandwidth used.
the graph are not even that bad
(1) Apologies if I've missed this, but does anyone know what the new name for the 'halfling' species will be in D&D2024?
(2) I thought in one of the early OneD&D vids they said the Druid was THE least played class from the 2014PHB. Or do these charts include all the playtest material being play-tested as well? Like, were 6 million new characters created (80 million sheets opened) because there was a playtest going on or because everyone is now enthusiastically transitioning to D&DBeyond? Does that explain why the Monk is the least played PHB2014 class in the chart, because it's practically the last class to be revealed in the UA and then updated later than anything else? (and Artificer the lowest because everyone has been playtesting the new stuff?)
(3) Broken record, I know, but were almost a month through 2024, so when do we start hearing about the 50th year of D&D now that we are - you known - in the amazing 50th year of D&D? Surely, this should be a big event? Davyd Barker's article on Everything's a Dungeon was fun and all but time for the Celebration!
Does this count the site here online or just use through themobile app?
What is the top 5/10/20 spells that were cast?
Dude, they have ZERO events planned for GaryCon this year in Lake Geneva. WotC isn't doing anything for GenCon either. They fired a ton of their staff. We'll be lucky to get 6E on time. Meanwhile I keep buying 3rd party 5E content for other VTT's and getting so much bang for my buck with content that just works.
i'm surprised genasi beat out Gnome
Here's recap of 2023 for you 1st quarter, WOTC tries to kill itself with the OGL debacle. 2nd quarter, D&D movie gets released, mid reception because people still upset about OGL. 3rd quarter, Baulder's Gate III. 4th quarter, WOTC axes over a thousand employees.
Throw in some Pinkertons, and AI art into the mix.
How come you aren't getting your posts slapped like mine was?
There are other POSITIVE-to-neutral stats I'd like to see get covered, but berating Beyond Staff won't fix anything, as I have learned. At most Davyd or another mid-level staffer will pay attention:The intern monitoring these chats has no say with anyone powerful enough to fix things.
I'd like to see what spell was LEAST cast, what homebrew was rated the highest that's still up, and what was the least bought book that wasn't discontinued at some point, among other niche stats.
Does anybody know if Hasbro is selling D&D or is that just the latest unfounded "rumour" doing the rounds?
Most likely its the IP sale for video games to 10 Cent so that Larian can make the game. More than likely Hasbro is so broke from their own internal behaviors (see Ollies if you want to see the toys killing Hasbro now) they need a cash influx to make it through 2024. The economy isn't going to improve in 2025 either, so good luck to Hasbro shareholders. WotC needs to be spun off as of yesterday IMHO. It appears WotC money's is keeping Hasbro afloat. I'm starting to see Sears.