The Long History of D&D Mid-Edition Updates
By Jason Campbell
This past weekend (August 1-4, 2024) saw a limited release at Gencon 2024 of the latest Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook from Wizards of the Coast - the book will be in wide release in September. A lot of the talk about this edition over the past few years has focused on what to call this rules update. If the rulebooks from 2014 are “fifth edition”, are these new books the 6th edition, 5.5, fifth edition/2024, or something else? Wizards of the Coast doesn’t want to label it as a new edition as they claim these rules are compatible with the 2014 version, but others insist there are enough rule changes to label this a new edition. Updates to Dungeons & Dragons at “mid-edition” (while not counting as a complete new edition) are nothing new. Let’s walk through the game’s edition history briefly. Note that this is not a comprehensive history, many others have done that with great success, but it’s worth a brief review to see how often we’ve seen a mid-edition update in the history of D&D.
Original D&D (OD&D)
The original version of the game, now commonly referred to as OD&D was released starting in early 1974 as a series of stapled digest sized paper booklets. The original boxed set included 3 booklets, Volume 1: Men & Magic, Volume 2: Monsters & Treasure, and Volume 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures. The game was popular and several supplements were later released; Greyhawk and Blackmoor in 1975, and Eldritch Wizardry, Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes, and Swords & Spells in 1976. These later books could be viewed as the first mid-edition update, but as this edition of the rules was a somewhat different beast since it was published in many digests, that’s something of a stretch.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1e)
The first hardcover D&D book was the Monster Manual, released in 1977 as part of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game. We won’t dive into the business reasons for these publications, many others have discussed those details. The Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide followed in 1978 and 1979, setting the standard of a three book system for Dungeons & dragons rulebooks. Several books followed as part of the AD&D line, with arguably the most important being Unearthed Arcana, a collection of rules updates (largely collected from Dragon magazine) published in 1985. It contained rules updates and new character classes. As it changed the game of AD&D it can rightly be viewed as a mid-edition update.
Basic and More (B/X, BECMI)
The history of the Basic Dungeons & Dragons game is a bit more convoluted, with two versions of Basic released (by Holmes, then later with an Expert sequel by Moldvay), and later a version including sequels for Expert, Companion, Master and Immortals rules. As these could be considered separate editions, many releases of a single edition, or anything in between, we’ll leave these for another discussion.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (2e)
The second edition rules were published in 1989, 10 years after the first Dungeon Masters Guide was published. There were many changes to mechanics and character creation although the game’s basic rules wasn’t largely changed from the first edition of AD&D. In 1995 the “Player’s Options'' series of books were released, covering topics such as Combat & Tactics and Spells & Magic. These modified the character rules, much as Unearthed Arcana did with AD&D first edition. Six years after the core rulebooks were released, this was another mid-edition update.
Dungeons & Dragons 3e and 3.5e
After Wizards of the Coast acquired TSR in 1997, the version known as Dungeon & Dragons 3e was released in 2000, in line with the (roughly) 10 year cycle of D&D edition releases. It was a major rewrite and a reimagining of the rules following the tradition of three core books. In 2003 a new version was released updating the rules, correcting some known issues and adding some mechanics. This is the first clearly labeled mid-edition update, as it was called “3.5 edition”.
Dungeons & Dragons 4e and Essentials
In 2007 a few “Wizards Presents” books previewed the upcoming 4th edition D&D rules, with the core rule books arriving in 2008. This was another complete rewrite of the rules. These core rules were published less than 5 years after the 3.5 books, angering some fans.
In 2010 Wizards of the Coast began publishing the “Essentials” line, which attempted to simplify the D&D 4e rules to make it easier for new players to learn. The Essentials line was different enough to signify a mid-edition update, although it did splinter the community as many players stuck with the original 4e core rules.
Dungeons & Dragons 5e and Beyond
The D&D 5e edition was published in 2014 and is the best selling and most successful line of D&D books. For a number of reasons, this edition can be seen as the longest lasting, with the books still in heavy use in 2024 (the year we’re writing this article in.) A new mid-edition update is about to be released in September, November and February (2025).
Conclusion
Walking through this brief history we can see that although each D&D version is different, they’ve all had their own mid-edition updates, although each update had different goals. What’s different with the 2024 update is that it’s taken so long to be published. Most of the previous updates appeared at around the 5 year mark, while the latest updates appear 10 years after the release of the core rules. This is a likely cause of the arguments in the D&D community over whether this is a new edition or merely an update. This is the first D&D edition that wasn’t a complete new edition after about 10 years.
What do you think? What do you think the new D&D books should be called? Let us know in the comments!
