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I know that Dungeon and Dragon magazines will be publishing with the same regularity they were for 4e and feature much of the same types of content, but has there been any statements from Mike Mearls or from WOTC regarding what types of digital tools there will be to support D&D 5e?
I know a lot of players from 4e appreciated and loved the online tools and the support they gave.
The tools for 4th edition will stay online as long a people continue to pay for them. D&D insider will continue to be a subscription service for 4th edition content (compendium, character builder, Dungeon and Dragon mags) only.
The digital tools for 5th edition were being developed seperately by a company called Trap Door Technologies (TDT). The website for those tools can be found here (note, this now redirects to a page that discusses how they no longer have a relationship with WOTC).
The tool was called Dungeon Scape and was briefly available as a beta that included only character construction, with DM content, and a homebrew tool set releasing later.
The TDT team had been updating their blog regularly and had announced that the pay model will be a free app (on web, iOS and Android), with content coming via a la cart or bundled purchases (prices not announced).
WOTC has not announced their next move on what the future of digital tools will be for 5e, but have indicated that they do intend to develop something...eventually.
Lastly, as we've already seen, they are trying really hard to make it so BD&D is all you need to play their published adventures (or your own game). We have the BD&D players book, and the BD&D DM's book. As well as supplements for each of their adventures that includes the monsters from the Monster Manual that aren't in BD&D. This provides a searchable rules set as a subset of the full game. (The Basic rules are basically all of the PHB rules content with a subset of the classes and spells).
What Mike Mearls said over a year ago on Reddit was:
"I can't say any specific about digital tools, but we're 100% committed to making them happen. I think the easiest way to make D&D fade would be to mistake the core thing about D&D with the way it's delivered.
D&D has survived and thrived over the years because it engages the imagination and brings people together in a really unique way. It would be foolish to lose that by equating those things with physical books.
Of course, people do like physical products and there's no reason to stop those, but the reverse is also true - we aren't making book lovers happy by pissing off people who want the game delivered digitally, with a robust set of tools."
But officially digital tools for 5th edition, as well as the legacy support for digital tools for 4th edition is still "unsettled". Right now the only thing we know is that about 15% of the 5E Player's Handbook will be available as free pdf online.
P.S.: I asked Mike Mearls about legacy support for 4E online tools on Twitter and got an answer: "online tools will remain functional as long as we have enough people subbed"
The latest information we have is that D&D Insider will remain for 4e as long as there are enough people to support it.
For 5e, for now, digital tools will exist in the form of www.dungeonscape.com
