Dungeons & Dragons’ Next Anthology To Include Solo Adventures In Huge Departure

The next Dungeons & Dragons anthology will include several adventures meant for solo play. Later this summer, Dungeons & Dragonswill release Dragon Delves, a new adventure anthology featuring 10 adventures. Each adventure will focus on a different kind of either chromatic or metallic dragon, with supplementary material providing a look at each dragon's visual look over the course of 50 years of D&D material. One primary focus of Dragon Delves is that the book tapped a different artist for each adventure, providing the book with a unique look that skews away from D&D's standard house art style.

Recently, Dungeons & Dragons opened pre-orders for Dragon Delves on D&D Beyond. The product page included a listing of its table of contents, which revealed an interesting tidbit of information. Tthree of the adventures in the book, each of which is focused around a different kind of metallic dragon, are suitable for play with a "solo player" instead of group play. No further elaboration was provided on how these adventures are made with solo players in mind.

Why Dragon Delves' Solo Adventures Are A Big Deal For Dungeons & Dragons

Wizards Of The Coast Has Not Released Many Solo Play Adventures

Dungeons & Dragons is typically meant to be played in a group, with most pre-built encounters balanced around having four player characters. While plenty of third-party material has featured adventures meant for one DM and one player, Wizards of the Coast has released relatively few products focused on this playstyle. The D&D Essentials Kit, released back in 2019, featured optional rules that allow a player to control several Sidekicks to help flesh out a party of adventurers. These rules were later fleshed out in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything but have not been expanded upon since.

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Specifying that an adventure is suitable for solo play is a big departure for Dungeons & Dragons. Presumably, these adventures are still made for use by one DM and one other player (truly solo TTRPGs do exist, but they are typically built around a journaling experience) and focus on non-combat options. It's notable that all three adventures focus on quests that could conceivably be solved without combat. One adventure involves rescuing a gold dragon wyrmling from a cottage made of candy, while another involves finding the verses to a lost song to restore a region's farmlands.

Our Take: D&D Continues To Move In New Directions

Solo Play Is Just One Of The Ways D&D Is Pushing Boundaries

Dungeons & Dragons is certainly trying new things with the release of its revised 5th edition ruleset, and solo play seems to be another avenue for growth. One of the biggest hurdles to playing Dungeons & Dragons is trying to get a group of players together on a consistent basis, so publishing adventures that can be played with a smaller group of players is an interesting way of tackling this problem. I'm curious how these solo adventures will play out, especially as it seems like Dragon Delves will already be a major departure for Dungeons & Dragons in several ways.