As part of Dungeons & Dragons’ future One D&D edition, Wizards of the Coast has unveiled a full “digital experience” for dungeon masters to manage their campaigns in a full, 3D environment.
Currently named the “D&D Digital Experience”, this tool will allow DMs to place digital miniatures in locations to track everything from the world of their campaigns to individual rounds of combat.
Revealed at the Wizards Presents conference, the Digital Experience is one of the “three pillars” of One D&D, a new edition of the game that seeks to break it free of the discrete, numbered editions it has been using for decades. Part of that new philosophy is a great integration of digital features, including both greater use of D&D Beyond for tabletop DM tools, and the Digital Experience.
While Wizards has stressed that this is not a video game adaptation of D&D, the Digital Experience is being developed in Unreal Engine, and makes heavy use of the tilt-shift visual effect to make everything look and feel as it would on a real tabletop. The aim is to allow DMs total control over everything from the environments they create to the NPCs that populate them.
However, it’s also being designed with the “lazy DM” in mind, which includes premade assets and even full campaigns produced by Wizards of the Coast, ready to play through the Digital Experience right out the box.
A particularly interesting aspect of this is that, if you own a premade campaign, you’ll be free to use any models, dungeons, or other assets from it in your own, future campaigns. This could provide a ton of value for even the long-standing DM who has no need of buying every campaign book and adventure that releases, but may benefit from a greater selection of tools to include in their own worlds and stories.
The Digital Experience is only one part of the wider One D&D, which will include a full rules reworking and an expanded set of digital tools for stalwart tabletop players when it begins rolling out in 2024. No date, price, platforms, nor recommended specs were announced for the Digital Experience.