Dungeons & Dragons Crowdsources New Rules

Nerds of the world, grab your d20s, because Dungeons and Dragons needs you. Wizards of the Coast is relaunching its original roleplaying game, and in a bid to win over disaffected fans, it plans to post the rules online for public play-testing, the New York Times reports. D&D has always been a player-crafted experience, with "dungeon masters" inventing scenarios for their friends to navigate, one Wizards exec explains. "We want to take that idea to the next level and say, 'Help us craft the rules.'"

That didn't happen the last time Wizards rebooted D&D, with the contentious fourth edition. Greg Tito of the Escapist helped test that rules set, and he says that all of his feedback was ignored—and that the game's head designer "admitted that was essentially true of all the feedback Wizards received." The resulting game bitterly divided fans, but Tito has now played the new game, and says it "feels like a pleasant amalgam of every edition," with elegant rules that let the story shine through. (More Dungeons & Dragons stories.)