D&D: The Roadmap For D&D Beyond Is Now Open To The Public
D&D Beyond has made public their development roadmap, so that users–and interested bystanders–can see what’s in the works for them, including a few surprises down the line, like a virtual tabletop… check it out inside.
D&D Beyond is in an interesting place. Following the announcement that Curse Media (which owns D&D Beyond, among other things) had been sold from Amazon/Twitch to Fandom (of Wikia fame), users were quick to wonder about the fate of D&D Beyond. Developer Adam Bradford answered fans’ questions, reassuring them that in spite of the upcoming merger/acquisition, D&D Beyond was not going to be negatively affected by the sale. Facing skepticism, Bradford held an AMA on Reddit, and has been as transparent as possible in the dev updates, and now the future of D&D Beyond is even clearer, with the roadmap for the months and years to come now made public.
You can find a public Trello board, which tracks all of D&D Beyond’s coming updates, current projects, and long-term goals, many of which we haven’t seen before. For instance, there’s a Virtual Tabletop nestled under “long-term goals” which would bring D&D Beyond into more direct competition with sites like Roll20 or FantasyGrounds.
Again, how much of this will remain is unclear, the scheduled deal has yet to go through–it’s due to be finished later this year–but in the meantime, it provides a lot of insight into what exactly is in the works.
As you can see, currently in development is the new Encounter Builder, which is designed to help streamline your encounter balances, so you can know just how deadly you’re making each encounter; it’s being worked on alongside new looks for the Menus and a mobile-friendly Character Sheet, however also in the works is “Transition Development.” Which is the switch to being owned by Fandom.
Later down the line, highlights include confirming whether your character is legal for Adventurer’s League and integrating the AL tracking system to your characters, a Digital DM Screen, and my personal favorite a Monster Builder, which should make actually designing new monsters much easier.
You can technically design your own creatures now, but this would give you the tools you need to toss your own into the works.
Finally there’s plans in the work to bring out some kind of virtual tabletop, have temporary effects track from character to character, and so on–but details are sparse on, well, most of these.
This is a roadmap, but much of the details aren’t filled in. We don’t know, for instance, how close they are to completing these features (though you can tune in Thursdays at 9am PT for live updates)–but it feels worth knowing that for now, the future of D&D Beyond seems secure enough to lay out what they’re working on.
Check out the D&D Beyond Public Trello
We’ll keep you up to date with more news as it develops. In the meantime: Happy Adventuring!
