New Edition? Depends on Who You Ask
But it's a far cry from saying that someone is actively considering what a 6th Edition would look like to claiming that 6th Edition is right around the corner, and there are good reasons to think that 6th Edition, whatever it looks like, isn't just right around the corner but probably isn't coming along for quite some time. In other words, I believe that the 'gap' between 5th and 6th Editions will likely be larger than the gap for nearly every other set of editions of D&D, with perhaps only the gap between AD&D (2nd) and 3rd Edition D&D being greater. - Me, eighteen months ago
So, eighteen months ago, I criticized god-emporer of character optimization Treantmonk for arguing that a new edition of D&D was, in his words, "right around the corner." Now, eighteen months later, WotC has announced that a new Player's Handbook, featuring a number of already existing changes to the rules (such as the character creation rules in Tasha's Guide to Everything) plus new adjustments to the rules will be published sometime in 2024. This makes me wrong, and Treantmonk right, doesn't it?
In a way, it doesn't. If you go by the timeline for D&D editions posted on Wikipedia, the gap between 2nd edition AD&D, released by TSR in 1989, and Third Edition D&D, released by Wizards of the Coast in 2000, you find that my prediction, that the gap between editions currently will be shorter than the gap between 2nd and Third Edition ends up being accurate: AD&D 2E and D&D 3E had an eleven-year gap, while 5E and whatever we end up calling the new edition will have a ten-year gap. You can quibble with my use of the word 'only' in that prediction, though, because according to Wikipedia, the gap between AD&D 1st and 2nd editions was even longer, from 1977 to 1989, and is, according to Wikipedia, the longest gap between editions in D&D's history. Of course, that twelve year period saw the release of three different versions/editions of 'Basic' D&D, which helps to confuse the issue somewhat.
In another way, it does, since Treantmonk's point was that a new edition of D&D was "right around the corner" and here we are, eighteen month's later, looking at a playtest document of the 'character origins' portion of the new edition. Even though I gave myself an 'out' by claiming that it would be shocking if someone, even Jeremy Crawford, weren't thinking about what a new edition of D&D would look like and when it would make sense to release it, I still gave the impression that the actual timeline for that sort of release would be some distance away. Since then, however, circumstances have conspired to make things look a lot more favorable for releasing a new edition.
Ironically, one of the circumstances that make a new edition reasonable is in the very book I tried to use as evidence that a new edition would be some distance away on the timeline: Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. At the time, Tasha's was the best selling D&D book according to Amazon (which means it was also the best selling RPG book, period, on Amazon, beating out the recently released Pathfinder 2.0 books by a ridiculous number of ranking slots). This, to me, suggested that the business model being used for Fifth Edition was still strong, and was a pretty powerful piece of evidence against changing things up with a brand new edition. However, it also introduced new methods for character creation, which is a topic normally handled in a core book; if the designers felt that the new method was good enough that it should actually become the new standard method for creating characters, that's one point in favor of updating the core books to incorporate the new material, effectively creating a new edition.
And in yet another way, it doesn't, because Wizards of the Coast are making a heroic (pardon the pun) effort to not call the upcoming revision a 'new edition': they refer to the process of making this update as "One D&D", and no less a personage than Chris Perkins says in the intro video, "[w]e are no longer in the position where we think of D&D as an 'edition'; it's just D&D." So WotC, at least, won't be calling the new books Sixth Edition or even '5.5', which might be something of a rules-lawyerly point to make, but when arguing with a character optimizer, rules-lawyerly arguments are frequently the best arguments to make, so I'll make them.
Ultimately the big question isn't "was Treantmonk right or was I right?" but instead "are the changes going to be good or bad for the game?" I'm not sure we can answer that definitively yet, since we only have playtest material available for one portion of the game's revised rules, but I'll take my shot at reviewing those rules and give my feedback whether the proposed changes look to be good or bad for the game.
Backgrounds, not races, now give stat bonuses
Over the past eight years, a lot of energy has been expended in pointing out how the D&D rules reinforce ideas of genetic superiority/inferiority by assigning attribute bonuses (and in prior editions, penalties) to characters based on their 'race'. A related but different issue was that, due to these inherent bonuses, certain races were 'naturally' more suited for certain classes that made use of the stats in which they received bonuses. So even though it was possible to make a dwarf that has a higher Dexterity than the average elf, it wasn't really possible to make a dwarf that was more dextrous (or even as dextrous) as a fellow adventuring elf, which means that your dwarf rogue wasn't going to be quite as good at being a rogue than an elf would be. The updated character creation rules in Tasha's were one attempt to update the system to try to avoid these problems, but the playtest document for One D&D goes a step further: now, instead of being assigned to race options, ability score bonuses are tied to backgrounds, giving a +2 bonus to one score and a +1 bonus to a second score (or, alternately, a +1 bonus to three different scores).
This choice does solve the 'elves are better rogues' problem noted above, since both an elf and a dwarf can take the same +2 bonus to Dexterity and have identical starting Dexterity scores (assuming we're not rolling dice for stats, which admittedly doesn't have the same connotation -- if I roll an 18 in Dex for my elf and you roll a 16 for your dwarf, that's not an indication that I'm better at Dex because I'm an elf, after all). However, it does something weird to the superiority argument -- instead of an argument for nature, you now have an argument for nurture. Though the playtest rules make it plain that the assumed default is that players will build their own backgrounds and assign ability scores based on their character's needs, the rules also include 'default' backgrounds for players who just want to pick a background and go, and those backgrounds carry the same kinds of assumptions when used to assign ability scores as races once did: for example, all farmers are hardy (+2 Con) and wise (+1 Wis), all nobles are charismatic (+2 Cha) and intelligent (+1 Int), and all urchins are nimble (+2 Dex) and street-smart (+1 Wis). Instead of race being a marker of superiority, now (social) class can be! What an improvement!
Inspiration is no longer (strictly) a role-playing tool
When originally introduced in Fifth Edition, the Inspiration mechanic was a mechanical benefit (Advantage on a d20 roll) which was awarded by a DM for non-mechanical reasons. If a player did something particularly cool or memorable, or 'in character', the DM could award Inspiration for that action. In a sense, this made Fifth Edition D&D closer to a true role-playing game than any of its predecessors.
However, part of the problem with defining Inspiration that way is that traditional DMs from earlier editions weren't familiar with the idea of giving out mechanical benefits for role-playing, and many just didn't do it. In fact, in the four games of D&D I played at GenCon in 2022, including one run by Greg Marks, the Content Manager of the entire Adventurer's League program, not once did a player character receive Inspiration from the DM for something that character did during the session. The designers of D&D seem to realize this, and as a result have significantly modified how player characters can get Inspiration awards.
The big one is that Inspiration is now a reward for rolling a natural 20 on a 'd20 Test', the new term that combines 'ability check', 'attack roll', and 'saving throw' into a single keyword (more on this trend later). Personally, I think this is an error, and am wholly on board with those who argue that Inspiration should actually be an award for rolling a natural 1 on a d20 Test (so long as that roll isn't re-rolled or otherwise ignored via some other mechanic, like Inspiration itself); giving Inspiration on a 20 is basically just an 'I win more' mechanic, since rolling a 20 gives Inspiration which then gives a better chance of rolling a 20 on a later roll, providing more Inspiration, etc. Awarding Inspiration on a 1 would help provide a 'floor' under a player character's results, giving the player more chances to burn through a run of bad luck and get back to a more normal distribution of results.
However, Inspiration is also awarded to Human characters whenever they complete a long rest (which makes humans in all campaigns work like pretty much all characters do in Adventurer's League, who get Inspiration at the start of an adventure, and those adventures rarely last long enough to require a long rest).
Although there is still a reference in the glossary definition of Inspiration that preserves the original intent of the mechanic as a way for the DM to award role-playing, the number of mechanical ways in which PCs can claim Inspiration without needing for the DM to award it means that this mechanic is no longer as strongly tied to role-play as it once was, which to me seems both unfortunate and a push in the direction of optimization (since now, you can optimize for Inspiration by building a character who makes lots of d20 Tests, both in and out of combat).
Critical Hits are much less impactful
In Fifth Edition D&D, a critical hit is defined as an attack roll that comes up as a natural 20. (There are some rules, specifically the Champion Fighter's Improved Critical feature, that can expand this definition, but in the core rules, a nat 20 on an attack roll is a crit.) Though there is a separate rule that specifies that such a roll is also an automatic success, the rule for critical hits is that the critical hit results in any dice being rolled for damage as a result of that attack are doubled. This has led to certain 'crit-fishing' builds that take advantage of bonus dice from other mechanics, such as the rogue's Sneak Attack, the paladin's Divine Smite, or even spells that use attack rolls such as eldritch blast or disintegrate. If the new rules incorporate the current playtest rule on critical hits, this all goes away: critical hits now can only be made on attacks with weapons or unarmed strikes, and only double the damage dice of the weapon or unarmed strike, so no double Sneak Attack, no double Smite, and no spells. To make up for this significant loss of damaging capacity for player characters, the rule also only applies to them; NPCs run by the DM do not get to critically hit with their attacks at all.
In one sense, this seems reasonable -- since the major balancing factor for monsters is the amount of damage they can do per round, monsters with relatively few attacks but with high damage can get a disproportional benefit from rolling a critical hit (see, for instance, the difference between a hobgoblin, a giant, and a titan), when those monsters do get crits and particularly multiple crits in the same combat, things can get scary for the PCs in a hurry. Note that healing spells, even under the current rules, have no capacity to produce a 'critical hit' result, so when monsters crit a lot, that damage is basically unaccounted for in the system's math.
On the other hand, the practical effect of removing peaks from a system is that the overall terrain becomes much flatter and more predictable, which seems as though it would tend to make combat more boring overall. In the right hands, this might actually be a net benefit, as making combat more boring when compared to non-combat options would seem to make those non-combat options more attractive. On the other hand, making combat more boring might simply lead to more energetic attempts to optimize characters for combat to return some of that interest and excitement to that portion of the game, which would further minimize role-playing in games that go that route. It's hard to predict which result is more likely, or what circumstances will make one outcome more likely than the other, so we'll just have to let some play testing help determine what kind of game results from this rules change.
Feats are now a core part of the game, and have level-based prerequisites
Another interesting part of Fifth Edition rules is basically a vestigial part of the D&D Next playtest: the idea that the core rules would be spare, and there would be a number of add-ons or rules modules that could be added to the game to make it more interesting for DMs and players who wanted that interest, or could be ignored for those DMs and players who thought the add-ons added more complexity than they wanted in their game. One example of this in the 5E Players Handbook was that feats were presented as an optional rule: DMs could allow their players to take feats whenever the character would otherwise qualify for a stat increase (and if creating human characters, to take a feat at character creation as part of the 'variant human' build), but if the DM hadn't 'enabled' feats as an option, then the rules still worked just fine without them (there was still a 'standard human' build that didn't get a bonus feat, and the ASI rule would still allow you to bump your stats even if you couldn't take a feat).
"One D&D" makes feats a core part of the game rules, likely based on the idea that most games referenced in the D&D Beyond online tools (which WotC purchased some time ago and likely use as much as a source of play data as they do for the income they derive from owning the tool), as well as all Adventurers League games have feats 'turned on', so the idea that many games would choose to not incorporate feats seems to have been flawed. I might find this view disappointing, but I can't honestly say it's wrong.
One way the designers are hoping to mitigate the power-gaming impact that feats can have on the game, however, is to incorporate a level requirement into feat design. The playtest rules only list so-called 'first level' feats, which are feats that can be taken by characters at first level. (The existing playtest rules assign all characters a feat at first level based on their background, with Human characters retaining their traditional bonus feat, which must also be a first level feat under the playtest rules.) This suggests that more powerful feats will continue to exist, but will be restricted to only being taken by higher level characters, thus having less chance of unbalancing the game.
As with some of the other options on this list, this could prove to be a good or bad thing; my main disappointment is that now, if I want to restrict feats in my game, I need to do the work of finding out how to otherwise adjust the game rules to enable that decision, rather than the game rules being built to allow me to simply 'carve out' feats as an option with minimal difficulty.
Keywords begin to replace natural language
As we've discussed previously, Fifth Edition D&D has tried moving away from the idea of using 'keywords' or key phrases to represent specific meanings in-game, partly because the designers identified the huge glossary of such terms in Fourth Edition and Pathfinder as a hinderance in getting new players to try out the game. Arguably, Fifth Edition accomplished this goal by hiding its rules complexity from the players and forcing that complexity on the DM, requiring the DM to adjudicate situations that the rules didn't explicitly cover or resolve.
However, the playtest rules suggest that the designers are wavering on this commitment to a so-called 'natural language' approach to the game, based on an increase in the number of keywords used in this rule document. We've already mentioned the 'd20 Test', which is shorthand for what used to be called 'attack roll, ability check, or saving throw'. The playtest document also expands the concept of 'creature type' to explicitly apply to player characters as well as monsters, suggesting that Third Edition-like 'definitions' of common powers/abilities/effects possessed by creatures of the same type could be 'keyworded' into definitions of that type. The playtest rules also introduce a new condition: Slowed. You might think this condition would allow for an obvious simplification of the slow spell, but in fact the two have very little to do with one another: the condition requires an affected creature to spend an additional foot of movement for every foot moved, grants Advantage to attackers, and imposes Disadvantage on Dex saving throws. The spell, on the other hand, simply halves the affected creature's movement (without affecting the cost of its movement), imposes a penalty on Armor Class and Dexterity saving throws (but not Advantage or Disadvantage), and limits the number of actions it can take and actions it can make in a turn. This may mean that the slow spell is also likely to change as part of the new edition, though the spell might well provide additional effects not covered in the condition, such as how the entangle spell causes creatures that fail their saves to be Restrained, but creatures that succeed are still affected by difficult terrain while they remain in the spell's area.
What the new Slowed condition definitely means is that someone saw enough of a benefit to consolidating a number of creature abilities, spells, and the like in such a way that instead of typing out "requires an additional foot of movement for each foot moved, grants Advantage to attackers, and gains Disadvantage on Dexterity saving throws", the single word "Slowed" will work for the same effect. It is likely that the game can absorb some small number of additional keywords without becoming the glossary nightmare of Third Edition or Pathfinder 1, but steps along this path should be taken very carefully and with an eye toward only incorporating keywords that save the most effort and communicate the most information, because the more keywords are added, the closer you get to having too many keywords for new players to process them, and because, as the proverb says, "no single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood."
Ultimately, we will be seeing what is practically a new edition of D&D in 2024, regardless of what I or Wizards of the Coat might otherwise claim. The good news is that, despite a few items on this list that seem to be targeted toward making the game friendlier for optimizers and munchkins, there are other items, like adding level requirements to feats, that seem to be intended to mitigate the effects of those munchkin-friendly options. Insofar as the game has successfully grown the 'hobby' of RPGs by explicitly making itself more accessible not just to different kinds of players but different play styles, I would simply re-iterate that the more friendly to optimization the new rules get, the less successful the new rules will likely be in attracting or retaining that population of new players that Fifth Edition has brought into the RPG hobby.
That, not whether or not the new ruleset is called Sixth Edition, is what is going to ultimately determine how successful the new rules are.