The company will offer the core RPG experience at the heart of D&D free of charge

May 27, 2014 09:32 GMT  ·  By

Wizards of the Coast, arguably the best collectible card makers and tabletop role-playing game crafters, has announced the upcoming launch of a free digital rulebook for Dungeons & Dragons games, available for download on the company's official website.

The free rulebook will be available as a PDF file and won't go into detail as far as the game setting is concerned, being the equivalent to the old Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia, according to the publisher.

"At the launch of the D&D Starter Set, Basic D&D will include the material needed to create characters and advance to 20th level," has revealed the company's Senior Manager for research and design, Mike Mearls.

"In August, with the release of the Player's Handbook, Basic D&D will expand to include the essential monsters, magic items, and DM rules needed to run the game, along with the rules for wilderness, dungeon, and urban adventuring," the Basic Dungeons & Dragons announcement has revealed.

The company has also mentioned that the upcoming storyline in the Dungeons & Dragons setting, called Tyranny of Dragons, will become available to players worldwide on August 14, bringing the culmination of countless hours of testing and design work, spanning over two years.

While the upcoming books and Starter Sets will make up the core of the new edition of D&D, the Basic Dungeons & Dragons PDF has been designed to cover the core of the experience, with a limited scope in mind, meant to put D&D in the hands of as many willing players as possible.

The company believes that the best way to make sure that everyone can enjoy Dungeons & Dragons is to make the Basic D&D rulebook free, in order to make it easier than ever for newcomers to the universe of tabletop role-playing games and experienced Dungeon Masters to just jump into a game and get involved with one of the greatest gaming hobbies ever created.

The Basic Dungeons & Dragons rulebook features levels 1 through 20 for the fighter, rogue, wizard and cleric classes, and it also covers the essential subclass for each of them, providing dwarf, elf, halfling and human as options for race selection.

Players who will then feel the need to broaden their horizons will be able to do so through various means, such as adding more character options through a Player's Handbook, or adding more enemies to fight through a Monster Manual.

Gamers interested in crafting large-scale, intriguing but still balanced campaigns can do so with the help of the Dungeon Master's Guide.

Wizards has also noted that, as they introduce new storylines into the game, such as Tyranny of Dragons, they will also provide the PDFs including all the rules and stats needed to run the adventures and that are missing from the Basic D&D rulebook, due in August.