[Note:] This document is a continual work in progress.
This web page has my notes on the fourtieth anniversary edition of D&D, as first released in 2014 from the Hasbro Games subsidiary, Wizards of the Coast (WotC). It is not intended to be a full record or history of D&D.
This is the primary adventure gaming that I do today, mainly from my interest in Critical Role. I also have a special interest in the original D&D from 1974, and Dragonlance which is where my interest in D&D began. Before the question comes up: I like playing with printed character sheets and still use them even with online accounts as the online tools often make mistakes or focus on a particular version or style of play. How a referee wants to keep track of things is up to them and their campaign.
The 2014 edition marks a return to the OGL 1a after the PR disaster of the GSL and ending of third-party contracts. It includes a gratis downloadable PDF summary of Basic Rules, which is a summary of the handbook sufficient for a player to create a character and play the game, but without all the illustrations and beautiful artwork (though there is still some there). A character conversion guide was also provided as a gratis download if coming from previous editions. With these changes, and a return to the simpler three book collection, this seems to mark a settling down period, as well as a reinvestment in third party and community involvement that had somewhat stalled after the fork to Pathfinder:
The fourtieth anniversary edition (i.e. 2014) is often called 5e, due to its being the successor to 4e. However, a version number is not provided, nor is the term 5e used, by Hasbro. Instead, the version number refers to the System Reference Document (SRD) which is 5.0, and in 2016 5.1, for this release. The fiftieth anniversary edition (i.e. 2024) is versioned 5.2.
Forgotten Realms and Eberron continued to be the primary settings for D&D until voice actor Matt Mercer began broadcasting the games that had been running for over two years in their homes on Geek & Sundry in 2015, as well as posting on YouTube and Twitch. (Recordings in audio of those two years exist for die hard completists.) This was Campaign 1 of Critical Role, and the group Vox Machina. A campaign setting book, published by Green Ronin, followed. Campaign 2 followed the Mighty Nein (a play on the German word for no) and a campaign book Explorer's Guide to Wildemount from Wizard's of the Coast (WotC), documented the setting of Wildemount in Exandria twenty years later where Campaign 2 took place. (Campaign 1 had a couple times it took place in Exandria, such as with Taryon Darrington, or the fate of the Draconia.) Darrington Press, established by the Critical Role players released an updated Tal'Dorei campaign guide with updates from Campaign 2. Finally, Campaign 3 takes place in yet another part of Exandria, documented in Call of the Netherdeep, also from Wizards of the Coast, and all under the OGL 1a:
Not including the above, following is a list of books available for the SRD 5.0 rules:
About a dozen PDF downloads also are noted during this period that did not have a print book available.
Many online websites exist for keeping track of character sheets, statistics, and even producing game play such as dice rolls. Most notable is D&D Beyond (from Curse LLC). Curse LLC was bought by Fandom, Inc. However, in 2022 Hasbro bought it, and it became the internet front for Wizard's of the Coast. This kicked off the One D&D project, and led to the second great schism of D&D (the first being with 4e and the GSL) when an OGL 1.1 was discovered by the public in early 2023 that had echoes of the GSL experience. Thankfully, this has finally stablized. The SRD 5.1 edition was additionally licensed with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0), making it compatible with the 2024 edition (5.2) license, while leaving the OGL 1a intact for the 2016 errata 5.1 SRD
In 2022, Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen was released for D&D 5.0, along with a board game. Once I've caught up converting my D&D 3.x books to Pathfinder, I intend to do the same with D&D 5.0, using the new source book as a template. I'll make notes here when I begin to do so. I intend to run a campaign at some point with Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen.