D&D (2024) Are you going to buy the new 2024 D&D Core Books

[cbwjm]

For me it’s about supporting the hobby and the game. If you’re playing D&D 1 or 2 times a month+ it’s already the cheapest hobby you’ll ever have.

If you’re a self professed non-customer who will never spend a penny on DND 5e or any future editions then you can’t expect WotC to care much for your opinions.

If you’re on the fence about adopting the new ruleset then that’s cool but be prepared to be slowly but steadily left behind. As a general principle it’s better to change by choice after detecting which way the winds blowing than by being forced.

Yeah, I feel like I have been left behind. It's a little sad but also not since I'll just move onto osr/earlier editions. I don't even think there'll be much of an impact on 5e with people switching to earlier edition, 5e is still gonna do fine without me and a few others.

 

[dave2008]

I voted "Yes," but the real answer is most likely. I will wait until I get a chance to look at them (at least for the PHB and DMG, MM is a definite buy for me). I'm not waiting for other reviews, I will judge for myself.

 

[dave2008]

Considering the new D&D core will probably be 0% open content, it might be better if I don't buy them or read them, you know?

Well that is nearly impossible as the new core is already 90+% open content. On top of that, WotC has said they will make any changes open as well. You can not believe them on that part, but there is nothing they can do about all the bits that are already open!

I am wondering if you are not up to date on the state of 2024 D&D?

 

[dave2008]

As a GM I've yet to see anything worth shelling out money for, To be completely honest that's largely because I'm no more impacted by packets [1-4] &6 than a couple extra subclasses & magic items would cause. By extension that has a pretty massive impact on if my players do.

As a DM I like what I have seen with regard to the MM (and what they have said), but I can wait and see. I will likely pick it up for the art alone which is all I really need. No one (WotC, Paizo, MCDM, any 3PP) has made monsters better for me and my group than I can do.

I have also liked what they have said about the 2024 DMG and will likely pick it up if it holds true. I don't need, nor did I ever expect, to see it in a playtest. I do have reservations about them changing the monster builder as I really like the one in the DMG. I am also concerned that they haven't said anything about optional and variant rules which I would like to be a big part of the DMG. But if they just deliver on what they have promised I will likely pick it up.

 

[TheSword]

Yeah, I feel like I have been left behind. It's a little sad but also not since I'll just move onto osr/earlier editions. I don't even think there'll be much of an impact on 5e with people switching to earlier edition, 5e is still gonna do fine without me and a few others.

I honestly don’t think it will make a huge difference to playing 5e currently in the short term. It seems almost certain that Adventure Paths and even a lot of splat books will still be compatible - even if it does require a bit of jiggery pokery.

But I think the broader point is that eventually there will be a 5.3 and 5.5 and 5.8 and 6 etc and change is inexorable. Whether it’s now or later eventually DND will leave people behind.

In the long term switching to a different system that will be supported and developed like OSR makes more sense to me than sticking with an unsupported version of 5.0. Even if OSR doesn’t match my own tastes that have changed over time.

There’s too many exciting projects on the pipeline for me to step away from 5.? even if WFRP is calling to me sweetly. Phandelver, Planescape, Historica Arcanum, etc

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I didn’t call anyone dumb. I think some people may be making a decision too hastily. I’m surprised that seems to be such a controversial take.

It's absolutely not a controversial take. It's a pedestrian one. I agree with @Umbran on a lot of things but he seems to attempting to suggest we shouldn't criticise the notion of buying a product whilst having very little idea of what's in it, and that's the controversial/"hot" take here, imho.

Indeed, the gaming world would be a better place, I'd suggest, if more people waited until they understood more about products before buying them, particularly products produced by large corporations, which relying on their brand for a lot of their sales. That's what "don't pre-order" (another totally pedestrian take) is about, for example.

Personally, if I'm being real, a lot of whether I pick the new books up will come down to art/design and what actually turns out to be in them, rules-wise. The MM is the one I think is most likely to be a non-brainer. I'll obviously wait for actual knowledge, because they could screw it up, but if they keep up recent trends in monster design it should be a straight improvement over the current MM. The DMG should, in theory, also be an improvement, but there's room to screw that up, also, do I need it? For anything? We shall see. The PHB I honestly dread because I think we'll see some uncontroversial improvements, fixes and streamlining (even if they don't go far enough - WotC's hatred of DEX Barbs, for example, is fairly senseless, and they just didn't even try to fix the Monk mechanically, they just made it more modern kind of Orientalist lol, now it's 1990s Orientalist instead of 1970s Orientalist), and we'll see some changes I find disagreeable, but that were at least obvious from the playtest, but we'll also almost certainly see a wild array of completely untested changes that have no consistent vision or ideas behind them, and significantly alter how 5E plays if they're followed. I kind of don't want to pay money for that lol.

 

[tetrasodium]

As a DM I like what I have seen with regard to the MM (and what they have said), but I can wait and see. I will likely pick it up for the art alone which is all I really need. No one (WotC, Paizo, MCDM, any 3PP) has made monsters better for me and my group than I can do.

I have also liked what they have said about the 2024 DMG and will likely pick it up if it holds true. I don't need, nor did I ever expect, to see it in a playtest. I do have reservations about them changing the monster builder as I really like the one in the DMG. I am also concerned that they haven't said anything about optional and variant rules which I would like to be a big part of the DMG. But if they just deliver on what they have promised I will likely pick it up.

Which of the six playtest packets we've seen contain the elements that you are referring to, can you cite specific page numbers or sections containing those? Saying that they want to do something and doing it are different things, packet six demonstrates the clearly.

 

[Reynard]

A lot of folks are calling getting the new MM a "no brainer" based on MotM and I'm here still feeling ripped off for buying that book. I was expecting a LevelUp or FleeMortals degree of design improvement, and it was barely a spit polish. I have a hard time grokking how folks are impressed by Wizards' work in this area.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

A lot of folks are calling getting the new MM a "no brainer" based on MotM and I'm here still feeling ripped off for buying that book. I was expecting a LevelUp or FleeMortals degree of design improvement, and it was barely a spit polish. I have a hard time grokking how folks are impressed by Wizards' work in this area.

I think very few people have seen the Flee Mortals! or Level Up monster books, sadly. I nearly got Flee Mortals! recently but it was £33 (£ not $!) and also it sounded very, very, very goblinoid-centric, and I just have no use for/interest in goblinoids (I know, I know I'm the weird one but they're so yawn).

I'd say the MotM changes represented more than a spit-and-polish, though, but rather a fundamental change of direction in monster design for the better. Is it as good as the best? No.

But here's the thing - a lot of the monsters in the MM are very bread-and-butter monsters or D&D-specific monsters like Beholders, and other sources aren't necessarily able to or interested in covering them particularly (I presume Level Up did cover the bread-and-butter ones - I could and should pick that MM up at some point).

So to have those monsters roundly improved, by at least the amount that MotM did, and hopefully more, would be a very good thing. Would it be as good as someone like Matt Colville redesigning them? No. But that's not on the table.

I will await for news of whether that actually happened though. It's possible WotC might revert to bad design re: monsters - unlikely, but possible.

 

[Corinnguard]

Level Up's Monstrous Menagerie offers up a lot of useful info for the narrator with regards to building up to a monster encounter.