This year’s DnD release schedule is stuffed with some of fifth edition’s most exciting launches. 2024 and 2025 see the release of three new core rulebooks, plus a handful of campaigns and sourcebooks inspired by classic D&D. This guide lists the upcoming Dungeons and Dragons books that are due to release in 2024 and 2025.
This guide includes the latest news and reviews for the year’s new DnD books. Some give a major overhaul to your favorite DnD classes, DnD races, and more. Meanwhile, others offer expanded lore or full campaigns to play in the Forgotten Realms.
2024 and 2025 DnD release schedule:
Upcoming Dungeons and Dragons books
2024 Monster Manual
Release date: February 18, 2025
This book is actually arriving in 2025, so it may be a bit inaccurate to call it the 2024 Monster Manual. But until next year is upon us, we think the name will do. This is the final title in the One D&D revamp, and it’ll kickstart the first full year of a new ‘edition-ish’ of Dungeons and Dragons.
So far, we know very little about the new book. It definitely includes at least 80 new DnD monsters, so we’ll have plenty of new encounters to test once we’ve got to grips with the rules updates.
We’ve also been promised (by lead designer Jeremy Crawford, no less) that all monsters have been rebalanced for the power levels of the new 2024 classes. If battles feel easy with your new character, the 2024 Monster Manual will apparently make sure encounters hit you “like a truck”. And honestly, we’re pretty excited about that.
A handful of new monsters have been teased, such as the Arch-Hag and the Blob of Annihilation. The already-released 2024 rulebooks also share a handful of spoilers for the new Monster Manual. We’ve also got a wish list of classic monsters we’d like to see in the new book, so fingers crossed Wizards makes them come true.
Dragon Anthology – Summer 2025
Once the core rulebooks have all released, Wizards of the Coast will launch an as-yet-untitled ‘DnD Dragon Anthology‘. This will feature ten short adventures that share a common theme – fighting dragons in dungeons.
Wizards makes a good point that not enough players have actually fought a dragon in a dungeon in their D&D games. However, we’re a little disappointed by how unoriginal this idea is.
New Starter Set – Fall 2025
The 2022 starter set doesn’t feel all that old yet, but Wizards of the Coast already has plans to release a new DnD starter set. We don’t know too much about it just yet, but apparently it’s set in a place called ‘The Borderlands’. There will be three core locations: the Borderlands Keep, the wilderness, and the “Caves of Chaos”. Hopefully this book turns out better than the Borderlands movie did.
Forgotten Realms Player Guide – Late 2025
Wizards of the Coast is publishing its first setting-focused book in what feels like ages. And it isn’t just publishing one – the Forgotten Realms Player Guide is one of two tabletop sourcebooks focused on D&D’s primary setting.
When the Forgotten Realms guides were announced, Wizards told us to expect plenty of new character options in the player-focused book. That means all-new subclasses, feats, spells, and more. Given how much work Wizards put into re-designing subclasses for the 2024 Player’s Handbook, we’re keen to see what the next totally-new character options look like.
Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide – Late 2025
Following the player guide is the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide. We don’t know a huge amount about it yet, but it will present info and advice for running games in Faerûn’s most famous locations. Expect to visit Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, Calamshan, and the Moonshae Isles, among other places.
2024 DnD releases
The Book of Many Things
Release date: January 5, 2024
The Book of Many Things was originally meant to release in November 2023, but issues with production quality forced Wizards of the Coast to delay the full launch. Physical copies of the book could be purchased as part of a bundle that included a printed Deck of Many Things, the wondrous magical item that served as a theme for the book’s contents.
Some of these decks still sadly arrived defective, even with the delays. The contents of the book itself were unaffected, though. This was a grab bag of magic items, settings, and standalone game mechanics that you could port into your campaign. We loved the structure of the book, which Wizards rarely plays with, but we found the contents to be hit-and-miss – stellar in some places, but dull in others.
Read more in our Book of Many Things review.
Descent into the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth
Release date: March 25, 2024
Descent into the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth revives the classic first-edition adventure, Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. It’s a single-session dungeon-crawl that’ll evoke the feeling of an adventure module from 50 years ago – complete with a tournament scoring system to see how well you fared.
Wizards released Descent into the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth on March 25 as a free, 3-4 hour adventure on DnD Beyond, complete with six pre-generated DnD character sheets for ninth-level characters, specifically designed for use with this module.
The story sees your party explore the titular caverns, where the infamous Witch Queen Iggwilv once made her home. She was a notorious ally to DnD demons who created all manner of havoc with her magical experiments – we don’t want to spoil the content, but adventurers should expect to battle the unpleasant after-effects of her meddling.
Wizards says this is the first of several modules in the DnD 50th Anniversary Play Series, a set of new adventures and play events it’s promoting via partnered local game stores, as well as for digital DnD sessions via online game-finding service PlayGames.
Vecna: Eve of Ruin
Release date: May 21, 2024
We’ve known for a while that a Vecna 5e adventure was on the way, and it finally arrived on May 21 in the form of Vecna: Eve of Ruin. This is a rare campaign – not just because it features all sorts of iconic D&D characters, but because it actually goes up to level 20.
We were promised a wild, “off the rails” campaign in this book, and it delivers on that. Eve of Ruin sends your party to multiple DnD settings throughout the multiverse, offering a taste of each in turn. The encounters are varied, and the higher your level gets, the more bombastic the fights get.
The plot is a little thin (a problem common with many of Wizards’ ‘sightseeing’ adventures that cart you from grand location to grand location). It also bothers us that Vecna is barely in the book, despite his name being on the front. However, there are enough dramatic twists and turns for experienced DMs to make something special out of.
Read our Vecna: Eve of Ruin review for the full story.
The Making of Original Dungeons and Dragons: 1970-1976
Release date: June 18, 2024
The Making of Original Dungeons and Dragons: 1970-1976 is a piece of history rather than a sourcebook. Wizards calls it a “retrospective historical book” which, thanks to the help of gaming historian Jon Peterson, retells D&D’s origin stories.
It’s over 500 pages long, and it features all sorts of original art, plus “never-before-seen correspondence between the original creators of D&D”. Oh, and it has a “page-by-page” recreation of Dungeons and Dragons in its original form.
In fact, most of the page space in The Making of Original Dungeons and Dragons is dedicated to reprinting key documents from the game’s history. As well as the original draft, you’ll see the earliest printed forms of D&D, including magazine content that helped shape the second edition of the tabletop RPG. The authors provide the odd bit of context, but the documents are mostly presented as-is for the reader to consume.
Quests from the Infinite Staircase
Release date: July 16, 2024
Quests from the Infinite Staircase updates a range of old-school D&D adventures, much like Tales from the Yawning Portal did previously. They’re tied together by the noble genie Nafas, the steward of the Infinite Staircase that loves to grant wishes – and send adventurers on quests that’ll help him grant wishes.
The Infinite Staircase is one of our favorite plot hooks in recent D&D history, as it gives the DM an easy way to tie together adventures that span different planets, planes, and locations. Similarly, the book features an eclectic and varied collection of adventures. There’s a slightly bigger emphasis on old-school combat and dungeon-crawling, but story-driven roleplayers will still find lots to love.
You can find out more in our Quests from the Infinite Staircase review.
2024 Player’s Handbook
Release date: September 17, 2024
The 2024 Player’s Handbook is the largest update to the D&D rules since fifth edition was first released in 2014. DnD 2024 backgrounds are now your main source of stats, and each of the classes has had a face-lift. Almost every spell, tool, weapon, and DnD 2024 feat has been tweaked.
The result is a rule set that, at its core, still feels like fifth edition. But the new rulebook is a more user-friendly version of its old self, with more powerful character options and more logical rules interactions. There’s still some unclear wordings that’ll probably need a rules errata later down the line, but from the early look we had, things are looking good for the future of D&D.
You can learn more in our full 2024 Player’s Handbook review.
Dungeons and Dragons Worlds and Realms
Release date: October 29, 2024
Sandwiched between the new rulebooks is Dungeons and Dragons Worlds and Realms, an illustrated, story-driven book that explores the last 50 years of worldbuilding in D&D. Short stories and narration from the famed Wizard Mordenkainen cover the mythology and multiverse that make up the most famous settings.
As far as we know, there’s no mechanics or pre-written adventure content in this book. However, if you’re joining the D&D community in 2024, this sounds like an efficient and enjoyable way to catch up with several decades of lore.
2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide
Release date: November 12, 2024
Closing out the year is the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide. Fifth edition’s first attempt at a book on how to be a DM was a bit of a flop, but an early peek at its replacement assured us that the latest DM’s Guide is more practical and readable than ever before.
Much of the advice from the 2014 DMG has been carried over, but it’s been streamlined and organized in a far more logical way. The new book also comes with a complete starter campaign, plus a butt-load of new and tweaked DnD magic items. The newest bit of content is the rules for DnD Bastions, which lets your players build their own personalized bases in the downtime of your campaign.
While this new version of the Dungeon Master’s Guide is a marked improvement, there’s still some areas we think are hit-and-miss. Bastions seem very biased in favor of spellcasters, for example, and the new advice for creating your own monsters hasn’t gone down well in the D&D community.
If you’d like to learn more about this new book before investing, check out our comprehensive 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide review.
Need more help with your DnD character builds? Here’s a bunch of handy info on DnD backgrounds and 5e feats. Or, if you’re learning how to be a DM, here are the virtual tabletops and DnD one shots we’d recommend.
Source: Wargamer
