D&D’s revised core rulebooks will help grow better players and more Dungeon Masters

polygon.com:

Dungeons & Dragons has gone mainstream. Nearly 50 years after its invention, more people than ever before are rolling dice with their friends. Meanwhile, major media crossovers like Stranger Things and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves are making sure that even the long-held stigmas attached to the game are falling by the wayside. But, in many ways, the game’s development team at Wizards of the Coast has fallen a bit behind, and now it’s time for a revision. A new set of core rulebooks is on the way… just be careful not to call it 6th edition.

Following the launch of the game’s 5th edition in 2014, Wizards spent the better part of a decade tinkering with and iterating on its winning formula. That process culminated in early 2022 with the Rules Expansion Gift Set: three volumes titled Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, and Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse. Now, developers say, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and formally integrate what worked in those three new books into a full-fledged update of 5th edition D&D. That means new versions of the original three core rulebooks, a triad known to fans as the Player’s Handbook (PHB), the Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG), and the Monster Manual (MM). Along the way, Wizards said it will also endeavor to make those books richer and more usable than ever before — all while retaining continuity and compatibility with every 5th edition product that has come before.

“For so many people, those books are their introductory experience to the game,” said game design architect Chris Perkins in a group interview with press earlier this month. “Those books are denser than some of our later books, the monsters aren’t as easy or as fun