The real reason 5e revolutionized D&D — according to former creative director Chris Perkins

[ad_1] The fifth version of Dungeons & Dragons shall be remembered as probably the most profitable within the recreation’s historical past. Spurred by a versatile rules-light system, a renewed give attention to storytelling, and the mainstream success of precise play reveals like Important Function and Netflix’s hit Stranger Issues, 5e catapulted D&D into new peaks of recognition. To me, nevertheless, the true secret behind 5e’s success is in a side of the sport that doesn’t typically get the highlight: the adventures.

In a video interview with Chris Perkins, the previous D&D artistic director at present working at Darrington Press to develop Daggerheart marketing campaign settings, he shared vital perception into the conceptual work behind 5e’s most vital merchandise.

Rime of the Frostmaiden, a 2020 journey that Perkins authored, has a really peculiar construction the place each chapter serves a unique goal. Chapter 1 focuses on Ten Cities, a free aggregation of settlements, and is extra quest-driven. Chapter 2 expands the journey’s scope, presenting a collection of places scattered all through the Icewind Dale area, free for the gamers to discover. Chapter 3, Sunblight, focuses on one massive dungeon. Chapter 4 focuses on one cleverly designed battle in opposition to a selected boss-like monster, maybe probably the most unique a part of the e-book. Chapters 5, 6, and seven are “endgame content material,” presenting gamers with a collection of high-level challenges they'll deal with after finishing the primary quest. Perkins confirmed to Polygon that the design purpose was to have each chapter cater to a unique sort of participant and their wants.

“We weren't presenting a sourcebook on Icewind Dale the place we simply described the places after which left the DM to provide you with the story,” Perkins stated. “We have been attempting to create a brand new sort of marketing campaign setting that's written like an journey. So that you're studying every thing you should find out about Ten Cities and Icewind Dale by happening the journey.” He added that, along with former D&D Recreation Director Jeremy Crawford, he was attempting to rethink how the staff outlined marketing campaign settings, which generally simply described a area and the individuals dwelling inside it. How may they enhance how a sourcebook delivers that info?

<div class="responsive-img image-expandable img-article-item" style="padding-bottom:64.6875%" data-img-url="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20039422/Icewind_Dale_5_rgb.jpg" data-modal-id="single-image-modal" data-modal-container-id="single-image-modal-container" data-img-caption=""Image: Olly Lawson /Wizards of the Coast""> <img width="1650" height="1068" loading="lazy" decoding="async" alt="A ship trapped in the ice flows. A blizzard rages." data-img-url="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20039422/Icewind_Dale_5_rgb.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2" src="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20039422/Icewind_Dale_5_rgb.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2" class="img-brightness-opt-out"/> Picture: Olly Lawson/Wizards of the Coast “Nowadays, quite a lot of DMs haven't got the time to take a marketing campaign setting e-book and construct their very own marketing campaign round it,” Perkins stated. As a substitute, they introduced this marketing campaign setting as an journey, nearly akin to a strolling tour the place characters expertise the world firsthand. And so, in Rime of the Frostmaiden, gamers are introduced with causes to go to every city the place they work together with the inhabitants and the quests introduced to them. In that approach, the setting naturally involves life via the distinctive issues that every city is coping with and the way the gamers work together with them.

However as a result of it is a lengthy marketing campaign, it couldn’t current the identical model of journey all through your entire e-book. “Each DM who picks up this marketing campaign goes to be drawn to sure varieties of play or encounter design,” Perkins stated. “The Sunblight fortress, for instance, was designed for explicit DMs and gamers who like dungeon crawl experiences. Everyone can discover their model of play inside this one journey marketing campaign.”

Nonetheless, selection isn’t the factor that Rime of the Frostmaiden has going for it. This module stands as a testomony to what made 5e nice. I like conventional marketing campaign settings, however Perkins and his staff actually developed the unique idea of an journey module for D&D with this. Journey modules have been typically brief, self-contained tales with a “railroad” strategy that focuses on linear exploration and fight. 5e's “adventure-campaigns” developed that mannequin by making it extra just like what each D&D participant goals of: a protracted marketing campaign. Earlier than that shift, long-form play typically required an skilled DM with the time and confidence to construct a complete world from scratch. Adventures like Rime of the Frostmaiden, Curse of Strahd, and Storm King’s Thunder lowered that barrier, making sprawling, months-long campaigns way more accessible. Within the course of, in addition they established a template that grew to become central to 5e’s success.

<img width="825" height="545" loading="lazy" decoding="async" alt="Dungeons and Dragons Tomb of Annihilation cover artwork" data-img-url="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8717983/ToA_cover_RGB.jpg?q=70&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=1" src="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8717983/ToA_cover_RGB.jpg?q=70&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=1" class="img-brightness-opt-out"/> Picture: Wizards of the Coast Perkins confirmed that he, Crawford, and the remainder of their staff have been delicate to the truth that DMs could be intimidated by a marketing campaign or not have ample time to do the work wanted to deliver it to life. “These forays, Rime of the Frostmaiden, Tomb of Annihilation, Curse of Strahd, and so forth., have been all makes an attempt to avoid wasting the DM time and create tales and areas for them to make it their very own,” Perkins stated. “That meant that every of those adventures needed to have a lot of dimensions and multifaceted tales simply to arm the DM with concepts, inspiration, and instruments they might use to create no matter marketing campaign expertise on this house that they wished.”

Sadly, given the present slate of D&D, it’s unclear when or if the sort of e-book would possibly seem sooner or later, and it’s an enormous design loss. In Frostmaiden’s second chapter, “Icewind Dale,” the gamers set off out into the broader space outdoors of Ten Cities and are introduced with 14 “locations of curiosity.” Perkins did not simply embrace “14 quests” or “14 brief adventures,” however as an alternative targeted on the locations first. “As soon as we obtained the places, then the quests have been written, and we got here up with the rationale why the gamers needed to go there,” Perkins stated. “The places come first, after which the explanations to go there and the issues to do there come second.” This stands in stark distinction to the boring commonplace of mini-adventures introduced in latest D&D merchandise, a mere sequence of duties to finish and monsters to kill.

Lengthy adventures might now not be the usual, however books like Rime of the Frostmaiden stay a crowning achievement of Perkins’ time on the helm. He traces this strategy again to his beginnings. “I am very lucky, as a result of I got here up via journey design,” he stated. “Once I began taking part in D&D, the very first thing that sparked my creativeness have been the brief adventures that TSR printed for D&D again within the day, after which later Dungeon Journal, which I absorbed. I've been immersed in adventures for thus lengthy that by the point that the fifth version got here round, and I used to be in control of delivering journey content material, I had years and years of expertise.”

<div class="responsive-img image-expandable img-article-item" style="padding-bottom:48.598130841121%" data-img-url="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/perkins-crawford.png" data-img-desc=""Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford during a 2025 interview with Todd Kenreck"" data-modal-id="single-image-modal" data-modal-container-id="single-image-modal-container" data-img-caption=""Todd Kenreck via Polygon""> <img width="825" height="401" loading="lazy" decoding="async" alt="Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford during a 2025 interview with Todd Kenreck" data-img-url="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/perkins-crawford.png?q=70&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=1" src="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/perkins-crawford.png?q=70&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=1" class="img-brightness-opt-out"/> Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford throughout a 2025 interview with Todd Kenreck Todd Kenreck through Polygon An vital lesson he realized is that DMs need to discover one thing inspiring that they'll plunder and make their very own. “My guideline has at all times been: design one thing that I, as a DM, may plunder and make my very own, and that guided me via the fifth version period,” he stated. “It's my hope, not just for the great of D&D, however for the great of D&D gamers all over the place, that these large marketing campaign adventures can begin up once more, if there are individuals creating them who actually have a way of what DMs want and need.”

Perkins identified that whereas adventures historically don’t promote in addition to player-focused books or marketing campaign settings, they’re actually vital as a result of they display to gamers and DMs alike how the sport works: all of the items of the sport are embedded in an journey. “Adventures drive the sport: they're the gasoline that propels the engine,” he stated. “It was an honor and a privilege to have the ability to work on all of the fifth version marketing campaign adventures. And I hope we by no means see the top of them.”