Does D&D 5.5E Have An Official Name? One Magic Spoiler Seems to Think So
A new magic card from An Exhibition of Adventure seems to give a new name to the new core rulebooks coming out this year. Maybe.
One of the hardest things about the transition from 5E to 5.5E is WotC’s insistence that there isn’t actually any transition. There’s no need to drop the 5E because it’s one living ruleset that just gets updated frequently. The books are just called Player’s Handbook full stop, no official 5.5E nomenclature or anything needed.
Of course this has created a lot of problems, not least of all for WotC itself as the company stumbled with a proposed changed to D&D Beyond that would update character sheets to the new ruleset – a change that has since been walked back, but one that belies the difference between the two.
Now, even Magic Cards seem to be getting in on the differentiating between the two editions of D&D books game, as revealed in a Secret Lair D&D Drop, of all things.
Is The Official Name of D&D’s new Ruleset “Revised 5th Edition”?
The picture comes from a magic card posted to Twitter by user Mike Danovich who received one of the D&D Secret Lair packs “insanely quick.”
This is the spoiler card Dark Deal, which features the Venger/D&D Cartoon Villain glow-up cover for the upcoming 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide. However, on the Magic Card, it’s referred to as “Dungeon Master’s Guide, Revised 5th Edition”. This seems to indicate that that may be how WotC is referring to the books, at least internally.
Because there is a clear difference between the two. Now whether that’s the “official” official name, or just a way for the Magic: the Gathering pipeline to print money as uninterrupted as possible, is tough to say. But it highlights one of the big issues at hand. What do we call the new edition? Revised 5th Edition feels as accurate a description as any.
And it’s better than One D&D, for sure. But we’ll just have to wait and see what sticks. Because whatever WotC may try to call it, ultimately, it’s what the community ends up sticking with that will last. So far, the contenders are 5.24 (owing to the fact that the first of these revised books came out in 2024, though they won’t be fully released until 2025), 5.5 (draws on the parallels between 3rd Edition’s streamlining upgrade to 3.5), and now Revised 5th Edition, which doesn’t have an easy two-three letter representation yet, but give it time.
Maybe it’s R5E or 5R or 5ER or REV5 or something along those lines. How would you shorten it?
