In the past week or so, a rather startling groundswell has started to form, one which I thought we were years away from seeing: a call for Dungeons&Dragons Sixth Edition. Some people believe the replacement of Mike Mearls as Executive Producer for the D&D team was a sign Wizards of the Coast is shifting away from Fifth Edition. Others are hailing the start of the decade as an omen of dramatic change for the game. And others still just hate 5e so much, they’ll bang this drum as loud and as frequently as possible.
While I don’t work for Wizards of the Coast, nor do I know anyone who does, I can almost certainly guarantee they’re not going to be releasing D&D 6e anytime soon. If you’re uncertain how to feel about these latest rumors or curious where my confidence comes from, let me share five good reasons why we’re going to be sticking with Fifth Edition for now.
1) Fifth Edition is Still Wildly Popular
No matter how you slice it, and whatever your personal feelings about it may be, D&D 5e has been a monumental successor to 4e and revolutionary for the TTRPG scene world-wide. Shows like Critical Role, Relics and Rarities, and Dice, Camera, Action (now called DnD Presents) are all incredibly popular TTRPG shows, and they all exist in Fifth Edition. If we want to follow the dollar signs, sales for D&D introductory materials (i.e., the Starter Set and the Essentials Kit) exploded this past year, seeing a 300% increase over the course of 2019 (Baird, 2020). On Amazon, the 5e Player’s Handbook and Essentials Kit are the #1 and #2 best selling TTRPG-related items right now, and there are no signs of that changing anytime soon.
Taking this into consideration, it’s nigh impossible Wizards of the Coast is going to abandon their cash cow for the sake of releasing a flashy new Sixth Edition. If a train is moving full-speed, who in their right mind would jump off now? New editions typically stem from a drop in public appeal (and, in turn, a dramatic decrease in sales) for the current materials. At this juncture, we’re not even sure this is the crest of Fifth Edition’s financial hill. Case in point: in the face of an ongoing pandemic, players are moving their Fifth Edition games to virtual tabletops and some of these players are likely purchasing resources (rulebooks, adventure modules, token sets, etc.) from the respective online stores.
Until the money stops flowing, Fifth Edition is here to stay.
2) Not Enough Mechanical Changes
Even if, by some freak turn of events, sales for all 5e-related materials dried up overnight, this would still be a terrible time to implement a Sixth Edition of Dungeons&Dragons for one major reason: there are relatively few design changes for Wizards of the Coast to implement. One beautiful business practice Wizards has implemented with Fifth Edition is establishing a sense of transparency in the design and implementation of new game mechanics, and this transparency has been prevalent from the start with D&D Next. For those who do not know, D&D Next was a massive public playtest opportunity, not unlike an Open Beta for an MMO, for Fifth Edition back in 2012. That’s over two years before the edition officially released, and in that time Wizards of the Coast released content to players, collected their feedback, and then incorporated that feedback for the next iteration; this cycle continued until 10 months before the game officially released in September of 2014.
This mentality still holds strong today; just look at how they’re handling the Unearthed Arcana (UA) releases. If you take the time to read through even a few of the latest materials, you’ll notice they’re not just playtesting new sub-classes or fancy magic tattoos; the development team is actively experimenting with game-wide mechanics. For example, in the latest UA about the Phantom, Genie, and Order of Scrolls sub-classes, all of the feature uses are based on the character’s Proficiency value, not an associated Ability Score Modifier. And in the Psionic’s UA, they created a whole new mechanic with the Psionic Talent die that grows larger or smaller depending on how well or poorly you roll on it.
Whether you like or dislike these mechanics, the point is that while Wizards’ is actively trying new concepts in a public forum, there is certainly not enough here to justify a Sixth Edition. With each new edition of the game, Dungeons&Dragons has a habit of drastically reinventing itself. If they continue tinkering with new mechanics like the ones described above, I would say we’ve got at least another five or six years until a new edition would be viable.
Speaking of time…
3) 5e is Relatively Young
As of this writing, Fifth Edition is only five-and-a-half years old; just old enough for Wizards of the Coast to be considering which elementary school it should attend. To gain some perspective, it took TSR, the original owners of D&D, 13 years to release an official Second Edition of the game, and then another 11 years for Wizards of the Coast to release Third Edition. In fact, one of the major gripes with D&D 4e was how soon it had been released (five years) after 3.5e (which was never meant to be seen as a full edition, only an overhaul of some confusing mechanics in the new-fangled “d20 system” introduced in Third Edition). Despite the many complaints raised against Fourth Edition, many deserved and some blown out of proportion, Wizards waited over six years to release Fifth Edition.
If history is any indicator of future actions, Wizards of the Coast would need to see 5e as a commercial and public failure right now before thinking of releasing Sixth Edition. Since we’ve already proven the opposite (see Point 1), the game’s history tells us we still have another six to seven years before a D&D 6e rulebook lands in our laps.
Which is great news because…
4) No One Wants to Buy New Books
I won’t begrudge Wizards of the Coast for slapping a $49.95 price tag on most of their rulebooks and campaign setting materials; they’ve gotta keep the lights on and make a profit for shareholders by selling imaginary worlds and stories for a forty-six year old game. I’ve already got my wallet at the ready for when Mystic Odysseys of Theros releases on July 21, so clearly they’re not charging an arm and a leg.
However.
If I knew Sixth Edition was right around the corner and would dramatically change the game’s mechanics (as experienced in the jump from 3e to 4e and 4e to 5e), I would absolutely be waiting to pick up the Theros materials in a Used Bookstore…assuming one even exists in the next couple years. The unfortunate truth is while there are consumers out there who will gladly make the jump and pay any cost to play the latest and greatest version of the game, many of us don’t have that kind of money to drop. Between all of the books I’ve purchased for 5e alone, I’ve easily spent over $200 on this iteration of the game and I don’t even own any hardcovers of the adventure modules. If I had also purchased Tomb of Annihilation, Out of the Abyss, Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat (since they go hand-in-hand), and Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, I’d have doubled my investment in this game and still not obtained all of the available materials.
For people who have stayed up to date in the game, releasing Sixth Edition now would be a major slap to the face. As someone who is just getting into running publish 5e adventures for the first time, I’d be waiting until I’ve gone through every scenario I own before even looking at the 6e Player’s Handbook. I believe Wizards of the Coast knows this, and they know pushing out a new edition now would sour their reputation for years to come.
Because, let’s face it…
5) WoTC Would Be Competing With Themselves
With the current TTRPG renaissance underway, we’re seeing new games and new editions of timeless classics coming out in droves; we’re finally part of the zeitgeist and it feels amazing. With this in mind, and bringing us shoulder-to-shoulder with Point 1 again, no game corners the market like Dungeons&Dragons. It’s got history, accessibility, and popularity rocket-propelling it into our everyday lives. You can hardly turn a corner without hearing someone mention rolling initiative or picking up a sweet +1 Sentinel Shield from their latest adventure.
That’s not to say you can’t or shouldn’t play other games (far from it actually), but realistically Wizards of the Coast has no monetary or public incentive to pivot into Sixth Edition right now. Even Pathfinder 2e, the latest iteration of a fantasy RPG system literally spawned from D&D, pales in comparison commercially. Wizards would turn an easy, gentle glide up the Profit Roller coaster into a Sisyphean marketing nightmare trying to convince people to let go of the massively popular edition they own for a new one they’d have to purchase for $50-a-book. Unless a mind-flayer casts Feeblemind on the entire company, I hate to say this isn’t likely anytime soon.
Conclusion
All of this isn’t to say Dungeons&Dragons Sixth Edition will never come out; this game will continue to grow and evolve in incredible ways for many years. And I get the excitement of discussing “what’s next,” especially if the mechanics in 5e aren’t what you want to play. There are mechanics I absolutely can’t stand in Fifth Edition, especially after playing other RPG systems, like the nebulous Difficulty Check system for Skills and its reliance on the DM to arbitrate the values and outcomes; mechanics I pray are altered in a new edition enough for me to be satisfied or just enough for me to homebrew a full workaround. As much as we might want these types of things to change, we’ve got to admit to ourselves that Fifth Edition is here to stay for quite some time.
If you’re someone who is still adamant we’re getting Sixth Edition solely for the reason of not liking 5e, have you tried playing RuneQuest yet?
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