Quote from amybranch >>

The new Core Rulebooks were shaped by ten years of community play, feedback, and love for fifth edition.

This upgrade doesn’t replace the previous rules; it enhances them. It makes this beloved system more player-friendly, better to create content for, and evolve rather than replace the fifth edition books you already own.

No. The 2024 releases explicitly replace existing content. Items, feats, and subclasses that are revised for the 2024 books purposefully make the original content obsolete and non-valid for organized play. 

And the new books weren't shaped by community feedback. They were built entirely around a tiny minority of players who responded, if not took advantage of, a dozen or so online surveys.

The 2024 rules were effectively made by, and as a result made for, a small segment of the playerbase. Every player who has had player and character options taken away from them in your "enhanced" rules is fully aware of how empty these platitudes are.

 Who is preventing you from playing with the 2014 5e rules? I don't see how anything is stopping you if you don't like the update. Who has had something 'taken away'?

Great changes. Something to ask though on the Maps unlock.

If campaign materials are shared in the campaign, can you please allow the DM running the campaign to access all campaign shared materials, whether they're the owner or not? My wife wants to DM with the VTT but my account owns all the content, so you're losing a possible DM to expand the game, and she's decided a whiteboard and wooden tokens is far easier than buying double content.

This is good to hear! 

If at all possible, I'd LOVE to see some work being done with the Encounter Builder - from my experience, it helps me balance things for my players, and keeps me (mostly) focused on what needs to happen in an encounter. If it could be updated with the 2024 Encounter Building rules in mind, I (and a lot more people, I'm sure) would be extraordinarily happy for it!

I don't understand why people think they can't use the 2014 rules. I have access to legacy classes, monster, and everything in Beyond and Maps VTT. I also have the books, and it's not hard to use an old book with the new rules, and I just ran a short adventure out of Dragon Delves with the 2014 rules. Sure, they changed some of the default links to the new rules while some books still link to the old ones. You can still look up and use whichever version you'd like.

I enjoy the new rules immensely, but we are still running a campaign with the 2014 rules, so we use them as well. I even have (GASP!) a player in the 2014 campaign with the fun new stuff in the 2024 subclass because it fit his vision better. Honestly, it's not difficult to accommodate. If you want to play with the old rules, just go for it. If your DM won't accommodate it then perhaps it's not the right group.

Also, if there is something you don't like, just change it! My players and I were hyped about bastions, but the reality of it was underwhelming. So we used it as a foundation, tore it apart, and built it back the way we wanted. We all love it now, and there are no D&D police going to come and arrest us for doing it. We even like a couple 2014 rules a bit better, so we use them. I'm happy as a DM and my players are happy. Wizards just gives us a framework that we can do whatever we want with. 

It's great to see positive steps! I hope tabletp gets support. My players are really missing spell cards!

Absolutely love this direction, Dan. As both a lifelong player and a systems-focused designer working on AI-driven storytelling tools, this kind of open collaboration and renewed focus on community creation is exactly what D&D needs right now. I'd be ecstatic to advise or contribute in any way—count me in!

Quote from amybranch >>

The new Core Rulebooks were shaped by ten years of community play, feedback, and love for fifth edition.

This upgrade doesn’t replace the previous rules; it enhances them. It makes this beloved system more player-friendly, better to create content for, and evolve rather than replace the fifth edition books you already own.

No. The 2024 releases explicitly replace existing content. Items, feats, and subclasses that are revised for the 2024 books purposefully make the original content obsolete and non-valid for organized play. 

And the new books weren't shaped by community feedback. They were built entirely around a tiny minority of players who responded, if not took advantage of, a dozen or so online surveys.

The 2024 rules were effectively made by, and as a result made for, a small segment of the playerbase. Every player who has had player and character options taken away from them in your "enhanced" rules is fully aware of how empty these platitudes are.

You're allowed to feel how you feel. But that doesn't make you right. It was always very clear from the beginning that the rules would be changing but that published adventures could still be run with the new rules. They were also quite clear that you could build a PC with the 2014 rules and use them in a 2024 campaign.

Both promises were kept. No one has taken anything away from you. You're allowed to make your table whatever you want it to be.

Good to hear, especially anxious for expanded homebrew support.

I prefer the 2014 rules over the 2024 ones, instead of "enhancing" the game they make it more complicated and less interesting. Please, if you can, as the Wizards of the Coast to change them back.

How so? I’m curious as I haven’t run into this.

Dan,

I wish you the best of luck. 

Here's a proposal for you to earn you some goodwill with DNDBeyond users that both Glumalon and Perringaiden mentioned earlier. Count me in for a third vote on that. 

It appears that shared content does not work for maps and tokens unless the DM purchased the content directly. This seems to apply even if the DM has a Master Tier subscription. As you know many parties share the cost of content among their members, but if another party member purchased that adventure, the party is out of luck. That limitation can add a big cost to players and more importantly discourage the use of the map features. I hope WOTC changes that policy to allow for player shared maps and tokens in a shared campaign.  

I don't trust it... Will have to see.

All of this looks / sounds great. But I do have to say that there are some definite overall issues that need to be addressed.  Maps for everyone will be an interesting concept, but the reason I don't use Maps for my campaigns is that Wizards has given us an Encounter Builder and givens us Maps, but doesn't seem to be interested in integrating the two. 

My other issue with the "evolution" of 5th edition actually predates the 2024 rule updates.  Ever since Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes were replaced by Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse, certain monsters have been "dumbed down." Specifically, most spellcasting creatures have been severely limited. I know I can, and have, homebrew monsters to bring them back up to something that matches the CR, but we shouldn't have to do so. From a DM standpoint, character options have become stronger, and monsters have become weaker in many cases. It seems unnecessary.

At the same time, as expansion rules have grown the number of species available for players, the adaptation of these species does not include traits for the players that exist for the npc / monsters. I've always been a strong believer that if a pc can do something, so can the monsters and vice versa. I would love to see those adaptations applied as we go forward expanding the "new" 5th edition rules 

Quote from Glumalon >>

Hoping this update will also allow Maps to function more similarly to content sharing. As a Master Tier subscriber that's currently a player rather than a DM, my group hasn't been able to use Maps so far, but our current DM would be very interested in trying it out.

Yeah- What Glumalon said!

Quote from Perringaiden >>

Great changes. Something to ask though on the Maps unlock.

If campaign materials are shared in the campaign, can you please allow the DM running the campaign to access all campaign shared materials, whether they're the owner or not? My wife wants to DM with the VTT but my account owns all the content, so you're losing a possible DM to expand the game, and she's decided a whiteboard and wooden tokens is far easier than buying double content.

 I agree with Perringaiden.  Perringaiden  for President!

I would love to see a fuller commitment to Sigil. So much development went into making what could be an awesome tool 

You want the community engaged? Create the sandbox and we'll bring the toys! Maps is great as a start but Sigil has the potential to dramatically upgrade the experience. No microtransactions just straight up dev support and ability to import our assets, minis/monster STLs etc. 

Quote from amybranch >>

The new Core Rulebooks were shaped by ten years of community play, feedback, and love for fifth edition.

This upgrade doesn’t replace the previous rules; it enhances them. It makes this beloved system more player-friendly, better to create content for, and evolve rather than replace the fifth edition books you already own.

No. The 2024 releases explicitly replace existing content. Items, feats, and subclasses that are revised for the 2024 books purposefully make the original content obsolete and non-valid for organized play. 

And the new books weren't shaped by community feedback. They were built entirely around a tiny minority of players who responded, if not took advantage of, a dozen or so online surveys.

The 2024 rules were effectively made by, and as a result made for, a small segment of the playerbase. Every player who has had player and character options taken away from them in your "enhanced" rules is fully aware of how empty these platitudes are.

 Anyone who cared about the game left feedback. If you didn't leave feedback on the roughly 10-20 minute surveys, it's because you have so little time that you probably don't play D&D anyway or you simply didn't care.

Maps for everyone is huge. Thank you!

Quote from CheddarHands >>

I don't understand why people think they can't use the 2014 rules. I have access to legacy classes, monster, and everything in Beyond and Maps VTT. I also have the books, and it's not hard to use an old book with the new rules, and I just ran a short adventure out of Dragon Delves with the 2014 rules. Sure, they changed some of the default links to the new rules while some books still link to the old ones. You can still look up and use whichever version you'd like.

I enjoy the new rules immensely, but we are still running a campaign with the 2014 rules, so we use them as well. I even have (GASP!) a player in the 2014 campaign with the fun new stuff in the 2024 subclass because it fit his vision better. Honestly, it's not difficult to accommodate. If you want to play with the old rules, just go for it. If your DM won't accommodate it then perhaps it's not the right group.

Also, if there is something you don't like, just change it! My players and I were hyped about bastions, but the reality of it was underwhelming. So we used it as a foundation, tore it apart, and built it back the way we wanted. We all love it now, and there are no D&D police going to come and arrest us for doing it. We even like a couple 2014 rules a bit better, so we use them. I'm happy as a DM and my players are happy. Wizards just gives us a framework that we can do whatever we want with. 

 100% agree. Imo you can mix 2014 and 2024 and I homebrew a lot in my games to make the game more fun. But the 2024 rules added a lot and my players feel like they can do more and that's perfect. No idea why people hate the 2024 rules that much, it doesn't make 2014 obsolete and like you said, you can change everything you don't like

Quote from NivekKevin >>

Quote from CheddarHands >>

I don't understand why people think they can't use the 2014 rules. I have access to legacy classes, monster, and everything in Beyond and Maps VTT. I also have the books, and it's not hard to use an old book with the new rules, and I just ran a short adventure out of Dragon Delves with the 2014 rules. Sure, they changed some of the default links to the new rules while some books still link to the old ones. You can still look up and use whichever version you'd like.

I enjoy the new rules immensely, but we are still running a campaign with the 2014 rules, so we use them as well. I even have (GASP!) a player in the 2014 campaign with the fun new stuff in the 2024 subclass because it fit his vision better. Honestly, it's not difficult to accommodate. If you want to play with the old rules, just go for it. If your DM won't accommodate it then perhaps it's not the right group.

Also, if there is something you don't like, just change it! My players and I were hyped about bastions, but the reality of it was underwhelming. So we used it as a foundation, tore it apart, and built it back the way we wanted. We all love it now, and there are no D&D police going to come and arrest us for doing it. We even like a couple 2014 rules a bit better, so we use them. I'm happy as a DM and my players are happy. Wizards just gives us a framework that we can do whatever we want with. 

 100% agree. Imo you can mix 2014 and 2024 and I homebrew a lot in my games to make the game more fun. But the 2024 rules added a lot and my players feel like they can do more and that's perfect. No idea why people hate the 2024 rules that much, it doesn't make 2014 obsolete and like you said, you can change everything you don't like

 It wasn't until even the most recent update that you could separate 2024 and 2014. You had to have 2024 active but could only choose to get rid of 2014.