The New D&D Monster Manual Completes a Risky Reboot. Is It Working?

Wizards of the Coast wants to exorcise the ghosts of new editions past.

The soft reboot of the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons looks like a critical hit.

Back in September, publisher Wizards of the Coast (WotC) decided that instead of releasing a whole new version of the game, as is habit, it would update the now 10-year-old fifth edition of the game by releasing a new set of core rulebooks full of fixes and features, but which is still compatible with the previous ruleset.

Immediate response to the new products indicated the strategy was off to a strong start. A week after the updated 2024 Player’s Handbook hit stores in September, WotC said it was the fastest-selling Dungeons & Dragons product in the game’s fifty-year history, and sold three times as many copies as the previous version did in the same period back in 2014. Of course, fastest-selling isn’t a very useful superlative, since it was possible all the most devoted fans upgraded right away, and the vast remainder of the customer base never would.

Now we’ve got more information, and it’s more positive news for WotC. In a recent call with press to discuss the upcoming third update of the “core rulebooks,” VP of franchise and product for D&D Jess Lanzillo said that the English language version of the 2024 Players Handbook “reached more players hands in four months” than the 2014 edition did, across all languages, in three years.

That’s a very good sign, though it’s worth parsing out a bit more, since “reached more players” isn’t the same as raw sales. Lanzillo also revealed that there are now over 19 million registered users on D&D Beyond, the game’s online toolset, where you can buy and share digital versions of rulebooks. “Master Tier” users of the site, who pay $54.99 a year, gain the ability to share their unlocked rulebooks with friends in their active game campaigns… so that means one player who bought the new book and shared with five other players could count as “reaching” six players. And for all we know WotC is also using some internal estimate to count people who buy a physical book and share it with players across a game table.

There’s also the fact that in 2014, D&D was at something of a nadir, coming off a controversial and unpopular fourth edition ruleset. So just reaching “more” players isn’t hard, since hardly anyone was playing in 2014, and a comparatively huge number of people are playing now.

But still, couched marketing language aside, reaching more players in four months than the 2014 books did in 36 months is a good indicator that many home campaigns are actually shifting their campaigns over to the 2024 rules. Anecdotally, I’m seeing significant sales among players not so much because they care about the 2024 rules changes, but because the new books have lots of other content they want, like new spells and magic items.

And that’s where the third and final update to the core rulebooks comes in. The upcoming (and increasingly anachronistically-named) 2024 Monster Manual will be the biggest in D&D history, with over 500 monsters including 85 entirely new entries and variants.

“One of the biggest goals for this new Monster Manual is just more,” Jeremy Crawford, game director for D&D and co-lead of the book, said on the press call. “There are going to be new critters, there are going to be things you’ve never seen before, but there are also going to be incredible takes on some of your favorite monsters, giving you more versatility, more gameplay, and more opportunities to use them.”

An emphasis on adding new content, and not just changing the rules, says to me that WotC knows it is enjoying an unprecedented era of D&D popularity that is not really under its control. The 2014 5th edition was a brilliantly-designed, highly accessible version of the game that made the modern boom possible, but outside elements including the rise of live play games and the pandemic really made the game take off. Now that so many new players have discovered D&D, they could easily jump ship to other tabletop roleplaying games —like Daggerheart, which is designed by Critical Role’s Matthew Mercer, and sure to get tons of press and attention when it debuts this spring.

And so WotC wants to keep feeding players what they like, instead of making a classic mistake of D&D publishing past: Trying to get people to buy a new edition because it’s different from what they already own. WotC is making the smart move, and it looks like it’s working.

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We will probably get some actual D&D sales numbers when WotC owner Hasbro announces its fourth quarter and full-year 2024 earnings sometime in February. That should correspond nicely with the actual release of the new Monster Manual, which like all D&D books these days, will see a rolling release over the course of several weeks. First availability will be on February 4th at select Wizards Play Network local game stores, and as a digital rulebook for D&D Beyond Master Tier subscribers. D&D Beyond Hero Tier subscribers get access on February 11, and finally the rest of the world gets the book on February 18, 2025.

The book does look like it has exciting new stuff for players, including the addition of what Crawford calls “apex foes,” designed to be epic-level threats for high-level characters. I’m particularly fond of the new Elemental Cataclysm, a kind of all-elements elemental that causes environmental disasters as players fight it. The Blob of Annihilation, a massive ooze with the skull of a dead god inside it, is also pretty damn cool.

WotC released a handful of new images from the new Monster Manual today, and you can get a look at them below.

Colophon

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I’m watching: Fallout Season 1 • Last movie I saw in a theater: The Apartment • Last movie I saw at home: Blue Beetle • I’m playing: PowerWash Simulator • I’m reading: Terry Pratchett, “Mort” • The podcast I’m listening to: Blank Check, “Duel” • The music I’m listening to: Cheap Trick, “Heaven Tonight“

I’m currently working on: An investigation about a social media site (reporting) • A feature about an AR company (reporting) • Unnamed fantasy novel (researching & outlining)

Get future posts as a blog, via RSS feed, or as an email newsletter. Ludo Ergo © 2025 by David M. Ewalt is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

The Best of 2024 in Games and Media

This is what I watched, read, and played over the last twelve months. Some of it was really good.

This week’s update is a special post due to the pending new year. I’m on vacation and assiduously avoiding the news, so it’s time for the annual roundup of my year in media.

Like many obsessive nerds, I keep close track of the movies I’ve seen, the books I’ve read, the games I’ve played, and pretty much all the media I have consumed. So here are the unnecessary details and my picks for best of the year.

Quick links to each medium: Film, Television, Books, Video Games, Roleplaying Games, Podcasts, Music, Miscellaneous.

Film

This year, my biggest change in consumption was movies. In 2023, I had a full-time office job, and in 2024 not so much. So thanks to my beloved Alamo Season Pass, I saw 30 different films in an actual theater, up 36% from 22 the year before. (My all time record, set during the work-from-home pandemic year of 2021, was 45 showings of 42 different films.)

Here’s my picks for the best movies I saw in a theater:

I also watched 37 movies at home that were entirely new to me. Some of them are quite old or quite bad or both (shoutout to How Did This Get Made) but they’re still on my list. Highlights include that I finally saw Coco and it made me cry, and Conclave ⁱ was so good I regretted missing it in the theater.

Television

I watched fifteen new TV shows this year on streaming services. I consumed the entire run of the show if it was available, or the newest season if it’s an ongoing series.

I finally got to watch The Expanse after reading the entire book series ⁱ last year. I highly recommend both versions. This may be the best TV adaptation of a book series ever… and it stood in stark relief to much more disappointing new releases (cough cough House of the Dragon cough cough).

Books

I read significantly fewer books this year than I usually do, averaging about 1 every 10 days. That surprised me a little, because I assumed not having to go into an office would give me plenty of time to make a dent in my tsundoku, but instead I spent more time re-watching old episodes of Parks & Recreation, Taskmaster, and Law & Order.

Video Games

You also might assume that a self-employed, work from home writer would procrastinate by playing lots of video games, but my consumption of such dropped precipitously, dominated by just a handful of games that I obsessed over.

Roleplaying Games

This was a big year for tabletop RPGs. Dungeons & Dragons, the grandaddy of them all, updated its fifth edition ruleset after ten insanely successful years. And the booming popularity of roleplaying games in general has kicked off a new golden age of indie RPGs.

Podcasts

I listen to a lot of audio, and it’d be impossible to pick a single episode, so per my convention in previous years, here’s an alphabetical list of the podcasts that I am currently subscribed to and regularly enjoying:

Behind the Bastards, Blank Check, Bonanas for Bonanza, Cautionary Tales, Comedy Bang! Bang!, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, Doughboys, How Did This Get Made?, If Books Could Kill, In The Dark, Search Engine, Taskmaster: The Podcast, The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast, Threedom, Two Jons Dont Make A Right, When We Were Wizards

Music

Like most people my age (Old), I mostly listen to the albums that loved when I was growing up and developing my tastes. But I still occasionally manage to find new music that excites me.

Miscellaneous

So that’s it for 2024. Here’s hoping that 2025 will bring us enough amazing media to distract and enlighten us amidst what looks like it will be an increasingly chaotic and difficult time. Have a happy new year, and thanks, as always, for reading.

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Ludo Ergo © 2024 by David M. Ewalt is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Dragon Wings on the Soles of Her Shoes

Masses of merchandise, games of the year, and a very happy Life Day.

Are you in the market for a pair of Draco Scale Chunky Stomper Boots? The KOI x Dungeons & Dragons Collection, which debuted this week, has got you covered. The fashion line is “inspired by the realms of fantasy and magic,” and includes creations like the Dungeon Dice Mystic Charm Trainers, the enchanted Ooze Gelatinous Cube Bag, and “Shapeshifter Edition” Mary Jane shoes.

“Whether casting spells, rolling for initiative, or exploring the unknown, these pieces are the perfect gear for your journey,” promised a press release.

D&D’s publisher, Hasbro subsidiary Wizards of the Coast, has been in merchandising & licensing overdrive since the game started to boom in popularity during the COVID pandemic, and especially since the September release of new core rulebooks.

But none of this is new to the world of Dungeons & Dragons. As I wrote in my book Of Dice and Men, the game’s original publisher, TSR, experienced a similar boom in the late 1970s:

In 1979 [TSR] published the Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album; in the years that followed, other companies released a torrent of D&D-branded merchandise, including lunch boxes, beach towels, and action figures.

It seems silly, but at the time, the words “Dungeons & Dragons” could make any product a top seller. Even TSR’s bigger competitors knew they had value: In 1980, TSR partnered with Mattel to release the Dungeons & Dragons Computer Labyrinth Game, which required players to move a die-cast metal hero through a molded plastic maze. An electronic sensor (the “computer”) beeped and chirped every time a player moved their piece. A September 1980 Forbes article described D&D as “the hottest game in the nation” and predicted explosive growth. TSR went on to post sales of $8.5 million for the year, an increase of 400 percent year over year.

Whenever I see an announcement like the KOI fashion line, I experience a real “what a world” moment —and rightfully so, because the fact that D&D is not only cool but fashionable right now is hard to believe if you were a fan of the game during its nadir in the 90s and 00s. But it’s important to keep a little bit of historical perspective here: All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.

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Read This

I talked to tech executives and venture capitalists for a recent issue of  The Information, and asked them about the video games they loved and obsessed over in 2024. Read their picks in Silicon Valley’s Favorite Video Games of 2024.

Personally, I’m still addicted to Balatro.

Watch This

Now that the holidays are upon us, you’re probably bursting with cheer and full of goodwill to men. This will put a stop to that.

Starting way back in 2000-something, when I had a very early blog on Forbes.com, I began celebrating the season by posting the worst piece of Bantha poodoo to ever soil U.S. airwaves, the famously disastrous Star Wars Holiday Special. Some call it a tradition. Others say it does to Christmas what the Death Star did to Alderaan.

Originally broadcast on CBS in 1978 —and then never shown again— the Star Wars Holiday Special was produced by George Lucas when he was riding high off the release of the first Star Wars movie, and looking to make a few extra bucks with two painfully awful hours of cornball humor, slipshod animation and embarrassing performances.

Lucas was said to be so ashamed of this program that he has systematically hunted down and destroyed every copy he could get his hands on. Despite his efforts, enterprising fans can locate low-quality bootlegs at science fiction conventions and on the Internet —like right here. Hit the full-screen button and enjoy!

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I’m currently watching: The Penguin • Last movie in a theater: Gladiator II. • Podcast: The Lonely Island & Seth Meyers Podcast, “Harpoon Man” • Reading: Dan Simmons, “Drood” (affiliate link) • Listening to: Kendrick Lamar, “GNX“

I’m currently working on: An investigation about a social media site (reporting) • A feature about an AR company (reporting) • Not going crazy doing Christmas shopping

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Someone Cast Haste On The New D&D Player’s Handbook

The Dungeons & Dragons boom, now on vinyl, and not-so-dark urges.

Dungeons & Dragons is bigger than ever. After fifty years, there’s more people playing the game, more people aware of the brand, more people consuming D&D movies and live play streams and even Broadway shows.

But all that popularity doesn’t necessarily translate into sales of the actual game. The existential problem faced by D&D’s publishers is that they’re selling a set of rules for what is essentially a game of make-believe: The rules provide guidance and color, but you don’t absolutely need them to play, and if you do buy them, you don’t ever need to buy them again.

For the first forty years of the game’s existence, D&D’s owners kept their players as paying customers by periodically issuing new editions of the game with new rules. These updates typically fixed problems in the previous system, and added new things demanded by players. The new version of the game would be incompatible with the old one, so anybody who wanted to try the shiny new features had to buy the new book.

That business model started changing in 2019, when the then-five-year-old Fifth Edition rules for Dungeons & Dragons suddenly started getting a lot more popular. (The reasons for this are complicated, and explained in detail in the newly updated edition of my book Of Dice & Men, so click that affiliate link to learn more). Instead of killing strong growth by discontinuing the edition, the folks at publisher Wizards of the Coast decided to simply update the current rules by releasing a new set of books full of fixes and fresh features, but which was still compatible with the previous ruleset.

The first of the three new “core” rulebooks for fifth edition, known as the 2024 Player’s Handbook (affiliate link), came out on September 17th. I like it a lot, but I wasn’t sure if people would actually buy it: They don’t have to in order to enjoy whatever new D&D game content comes out in the coming years… so would anyone pony up fifty bucks?

The answer, Wizards of the Coast just announced, is YES THEY WOULD. In the first week since its launch on September 17, the 2024 Player’s Handbook has been the fastest-selling Dungeons & Dragons product in the game’s fifty-year history, selling three times as many copies as the previous version of the Player’s Handbook did in the same period of time back in 2014.

(The sales numbers also surpass previous record-holder Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, which launched in November 2020, right when the D&D audience began to swell to massive proportions.)

An image from the 2024 D&D Player’s Handbook (Jane Katsubo/Wizards of the Coast)

Wizards of the Coast hasn’t released any sales numbers, though they do add that they printed three times the number of 2024 Player’s Handbooks than the previous version in 2014, making this the largest physical first printing of a book in the history of D&D.

Of course, the audience for D&D is so incredibly big now (Wizards says “85 million D&D fans worldwide”) that maybe the huge sales are just due to a larger overall customer base, and a smaller percentage of existing players upgraded in 2024 than did back in 2014. But whether or not that is true is a lot less important than the bottom line, which is that Dungeons & Dragons is still growing crazy fast, and getting bigger and better every day.

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Some News

Watch This

This short from the YouTube channel Viva La Dirt League accurately depicts my feelings every time I try to play an evil character in an RPG.

Colophon

Currently watching: The Expanse, Season 6 • Last movie in a theater: The Substance • Podcast: Hyperfixed “Gwen Can’t Drive“• Reading: “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter” (affiliate link) • Listening to: Robots in Disguise “Get Rid!“

Currently writing: Five reported articles about AI for a private client (two down, four to go) • An unnamed heist novel (currently 2103 words) • A D&D 5E adventure module for this year’s Gamehole Con (924 words)

Get future posts as a blog, via RSS feed, or as an email newsletter. Ludo Ergo © 2024 by David M. Ewalt is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

I Play, Therefore…

Opening ceremonies, mission statements, and wizards wearing kevlar.

…I am. Or at least, I think I am. Does a writer without readers actually exist? Ever since the wave function that was my day job underwent a spectacular collapse earlier this year, I haven’t had a dedicated platform for my journalism. But the nice thing about self-employment is that I can focus on whatever new tech I think is interesting, and play whatever games I want. So now, this.

The intent is for Ludo Ergo to function something like the blogs I wrote for back in the innocent, pre-social media days of the internet. I’ll report on games, and technology, and how technology is changing games, and share links and videos I found interesting, and update you about stories I’ve written for other outlets and the various new book projects I’m working on. It’ll be an old fashioned gallimaufry!

For now, you can expect a post like this at least once a week. Follow via RSS feed or subscribe to get these posts as an email newsletter.

Some News

Now Playing

Tom Francis is my kind of guy—a former video game journalist turned game designer. His 2013 professional debut, Gunpoint, is an awesomely stylish and clever puzzle platformer, and made me an instant fan. In 2017, he released the tactical stealth game Heat Signature, and I spent many hours pounding my head against the desk as I tried to find the most funny and violent ways to complete each procedurally-designed level. Now Francis’ latest, published through his indie studio Suspicious Development, isn’t just his best yet, it’s one of the best games I’ve played all year.

Tactical Breach Wizards is a turn-based tactics PC game in the vein of the XCOM series, but with a Shadowrun twist: Players lead a team of wizards through a cyberpunk world on a quest to unravel a massive conspiracy. Each level is a puzzle to be cracked through use of your wizards’ weird and complimentary powers, which come together in delightful ways. It’s creative and silly and challenging, and generally lots of fun. I particularly love Francis’ writing, which is featured in cutscenes between missions. The dialog not only drives the plot, but it gives every wizard (and their enemies!) actual character arcs. Play it!

Watch This

It’s hard for me to believe, but it’s been 20 years since the creators of the Penny Arcade webcomic launched their own convention, and the event now known as PAX West is the largest gaming event in the US, with over 120,000 attendees in Seattle earlier this month. If you missed it, the panels are trickling onto the con’s YouTube channel, including this keynote “Storytime” conversation with Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft’s gaming division. It’s an usually frank discussion with a CEO (Spencer is actually willing to call out his own mistakes) and a nice time capsule of the last two decades of console gaming.

Colophon

I consume an almost problematic amount of media, and most of it doesn’t warrant in-depth coverage. I always loved the “colophon” section in Wired Magazine, where the editors shared quick bites of whatever they were into while producing each issue, so I’m going to replicate some of that here in every post. I also like the colophon in Cory Doctorow’s blog Pluralistic, where he updates his readers on the media he’s been creating; I think it might be a fun way to motivate myself, since I’ll be more accountable to readers.

I’m currently watching: The Expanse, Season 6 • Last movie in a theater: ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! • Podcast: If Books Could Kill, “The Anxious Generation” • Reading: Clark Ashton Smith, “The Return of the Sorcerer” (affiliate link) • Listening to: Wind Rose, “Wintersaga“

I’m currently writing: Five reported articles about AI for a private client (one down, four to go) • An unnamed heist novel (currently 2103 words) • A D&D 5E adventure module for this year’s Gamehole Con (812 words)

Get future posts as a blog, via RSS feed, or as an email newsletter. Ludo Ergo © 2024 by David M. Ewalt is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International