Beginning with the upcoming sourcebook Bigby Presents: Glory to the Giants, physical Dungeon & Dragons books will now cost 20% more, Wizards of the Coast announced today. Going forward, physical copies of Dungeons & Dragons books will cost $59.95 instead of $49.95, representing the first price increase the game maker has announced in nine years.
Citing rising costs involved with creating new books and a desire to ensure future projects are the best they can be, Wizards added that the price change will not impact physical books that were released prior to the upcoming giants expansion. It also won’t impact any digital versions of sourcebooks, which will instead retain their current MSRPs indefinitely.
Though Wizards confirmed that upcoming products, like the Planescape expansion slated for an October 17th release, will carry the new pricetag, it wouldn’t comment on the revised core 5E rulebooks planned for 2024.
The impact on an expensive hobby
With dice, miniatures, accessories, and new rulebooks coming out regularly, the price of the tabletop hobby is already at a premium — and that’s without recent subscription services like D&D Beyond asking for players to pay every month for access to digital goods and services. This price increase to future physical books is likely to raise the barrier of entry on cost-conscious players and game masters.
When asked about how the price increase might impact the game’s accessibility, Wizards said it expects continued backwards compatibility with existing 5E materials after the 2024 update and unchanged digital prices to help.
“The new price will only be for new products going forward and the ability to carry forward existing books helps. Also, digital prices aren’t increasing,” a Wizards of the Coast spokesperson told IGN.
While the cost of the hobby is always a hot button issue within the D&D community, the price increase may come as welcome news to third-party D&D content creators who are understandably hesitant to increase their prices beyond what Wizards charges for its books. The new price will likely make it less controversial for D&D’s partners to raise prices on their products to reach parity.
The dominance of 5e
Though a wide variety of tabletop RPGs can be found in most hobby shops around the world, Dungeons & Dragons and especially the Fifth Edition rules the game uses utterly dominate the space, serving as an accessible stepping stone into collaborative storytelling for the vast majority of players. For that reason, many 5E third-party creators and even competitors look to D&D as the arbiter of pricing TTRPG products, wary of raise prices beyond what the industry leader charges.
D&D’s dominance is likely to continue as Wizards prepares a whole host of new content for later this year, and a massive update to all of its core rulebooks in 2024.
Disclosure: This news story was obtained during a recent Dungeons & Dragons event hosted by Wizard of the Coast. The cost of IGN’s airfare and lodging was paid for by Wizards of the Coast as part of the event.
Travis Northup is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @TieGuyTravis and read his games coverage here.
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