Dungeons and Dragons Free This Summer

Wizards of the Coast recently announced the release schedule for their upcoming new Dungeons and Dragons edition (mentioned here), and now they’ve expanded on the initial announcement with word that Basic D&D will be a free download. Nice!

When the D&D Starter Set* is published in July the Basic D&D download will cover character creation for twenty levels, meaning that a lot of players will need only the free PDF. And the plan is to add to the free download as new titles are released, making the free version of the game an ever-updating system that should help encourage more people to give the game a shot.

I’m impressed. Giving away the Basic D&D roleplaying game shows that Wizards really has faith in this new edition of the game. Let’s just hope their experiment translates into success for the game. As I was mentioning to someone a few weeks ago, a strong Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game is good for the entire hobby game market.