D&D’s 2024 revision of 5th edition won’t be complete until 2025

polygon.com:

Wizards of the Coast has been teasing the next revision of the Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition ruleset since at least 2022. At the same time, it’s been working to temper fans’ expectations while managing multiple controversies — including, but not limited to, the OGL debacle, a particularly heinous round of holiday layoffs by its corporate owner, and a complicated recall of defective products. It also assured fans that the rules will be backward-compatible and player-focused, with lots of good guidance for novice Dungeon Masters. Also? They aren’t going to be complete until 2025.

The seminal role-playing game’s official 50th anniversary was last month, and it passed without much fanfare from its owner. Then, on Monday, Wizards shared a news briefing containing a partial release calendar for the next 12 months. Buried at the bottom is the fact that Monster Manual, the third and final book in the new set of revised 5th edition rulebooks, won’t be available as a physical product until Feb. 18, 2025 — over a year from now. That means fans won’t have the full complement of revised core rules until after D&D’s 51st birthday. For comparison, the original 5th edition Monster Manual arrived in the same year, 2014, as the other two core rulebooks.

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Making matters worse, that date further complicates the revised edition’s proposed naming convention. It, perhaps erroneously, started out being called One D&D and shifted to be known as the 2024 revision. But that’s largely academic at this point.

Here are the highlights from the announcement, including details on a few new adventures and a history book:

A high-stakes adventure in which the fate of the entire multiverse hangs in the balance. The heroes begin in the Forgotten Realms and travel to Planescape, Spelljammer, Eberron, Ravenloft, Dragonlance, and Greyhawk as they race to save existence from obliteration by the notorious lich Vecna who is weaving a ritual to eliminate good, obliterate the gods, and subjugate all