D&D (2024) The New DM Tools In The New Dungeon Master's Guide

The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide contains a 'toolbox'. The DM's Toolbox is the third chapter in the book, presented as an alphabetical miscellany of varied things to help you prep or run a game.

Each entry is 1-2 pages long and includes things like creating monsters, fear and mental stress, chases, firearms and explosives, and traps. For example, it goes in depth into chases, with details about wilderness or urban chases.

Much of the topics were already in the 2014 DMG--albeit organized differently. Some new topics include character death, and more detailed look at alignment--and how actions determine alignment and not vice versa.

Also included is a big table of 'dungeon quirks'--why, then, and by whom was it built? Examples include made by giants (with everything being larger scale), built on top of a cloud, and so on.

There's plenty more stuff--environments, a settlement tracker (Chris Perkins and James Wyatt roll up a random settlement in the video), hazards, mob rules, marks of prestige (rewards like deeds, medals, or titles).

 

[pukunui]

Full list of everything that got mentioned in the video; taken from reddit (kudos to Granum22 for the list):

1. Rules for Firearms and Explosives
2. Constructing chases
3. Traps and Hazards (includes rules for up leveling them)
4. How to deal with player character death
5. How to use alignment (emphasizing behavior dictates alignment, not that alignment dictates behavior).
6. Curses and magical diseases (magic diseases seem to be taken from Contagion spell and other sources)
7. Doors (includes HP, DC to unlock)
8. Dungeons (includes dungeon decay and dungeon quirks)
9. Environmental Effects (largely a consolidation of 2014 effects into one spot, includes planar effects)
10. Fear and Stress mechanics (Chris Perkins specifically calls out Psychic Damage as something you can apply this to. Also, this probably includes the Sanity rules from 2014. YAY!!!!)
11. Settlement and NPC Tracker
12. Poison
13. New hazards (includes Fireball Fungus (detonates like Fireball when it hits 0 HP, Vicious Vines))
14. Went through example creating settlement through the random tables
15. Rules for Mob fights
16. Marks of Prestige (alternative rewards like deeds and letters of recommendation)
17. Optional rules for NPC loyalty and mutiny
18. Supernatural gifts
19. Siege Weapons (includes new ones like Keg thrower and Flamethrower coach)
20. Creating monsters (missed this one, but was briefly mentioned at start and again at 20 min mark)
21. Rules for NPCs as party members

Edit: added creating monsters, rules for NPC as party members

Aside from things like dungeon decay, fireball fungus, and the new siege weapons, I wonder how much of this is actually new and how much is stuff that's in the 2014 DMG.

I'll also be interested to see if Stress is a new name for the madness mechanics. I understand why calling them that is now considered problematic; however, I would still like to keep stuff like that in the game (and yes, I can just refer to the 2014 DMG if need be).

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

It's like driving a car and never reading the manual. Or having a job and never reading the employee handbook.
You look up what you need when you need it. I own several editions worth of DMGs that i've never so much as opened.
Game your own game i suppose.

I think there's a difference in the fact a lot of these creators have made videos, and profits, saying 'WotC failed to address this, and so here's what I eventually had to do' to then, some years later, say 'Wow, it was there the entire time'

 

[Selas]

Aside from things like dungeon decay, fireball fungus, and the new siege weapons, I wonder how much of this is actually new and how much is stuff that's in the 2014 DMG.

I'll also be interested to see if Stress is a new name for the madness mechanics. I understand why calling them that is now considered problematic; however, I would still like to keep stuff like that in the game (and yes, I can just refer to the 2014 DMG if need be).

Why is Madness problematic? Because of the baggage behind Lovecraft?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think there's a difference in the fact a lot of these creators have made videos, and profits, saying 'WotC failed to address this, and so here's what I eventually had to do' to then, some years later, say 'Wow, it was there the entire time'

Ginny in particular has been very open about the fact that she's still a relatively new player and has had takes that she's since changed her mind on.

It's a good thing when people's views are allowed to evolve. If we yell at them for changing their minds to a point of view we agree with, we're just encouraging everyone to double down on even stupid stances. And we just have to look at the newspaper to see where that leads.

 

[zakael19]

Why is Madness problematic? Because of the baggage behind Lovecraft?

Because we generally try to be a more understanding about people suffering from PTSD/mental illness these days.

 

[pukunui]

I think it's probably long enough now that I can say that there were a number of things in the 2014 DMG playtest version that never made it into the final print version. Looking at the list, I don't think any of them have been revisited here, but it's possible.

One thing I still think they should have released on its own back in the day was their advice on how to tweak 5e to give it the feel of specific older editions. Some of the "modular" stuff that had been talked about during the playtest but was noticeably lacking in the final cut.

Because we generally try to be a more understanding about people suffering from PTSD/mental illness these days.

That and "madness" is a diagnostic term with unwanted connotations. I'd still like for there to be mechanics for "Your character has been exposed to things that have temporarily/permanently broken their mind" (e.g. the Far Realm, Great Old Ones, Demon Lords, etc). If they need to call it something else to make it more palatable, I'm good with that.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Why is Madness problematic?

People have really turned on ska music.

 

[KYRON45]

I think there's a difference in the fact a lot of these creators have made videos, and profits, saying 'WotC failed to address this, and so here's what I eventually had to do' to then, some years later, say 'Wow, it was there the entire time'

Those folks are just trying to make a living on a largely uncurated system. But that is another conversation for another forum i suppose.

 

[Selas]

Because we generally try to be a more understanding about people suffering from PTSD/mental illness these days.

I understand, and that's something that everyone needs to be cognizant of, but the mechanic itself can still be implemented in the right setting and if everyone is in agreement while keeping in mind real-world connotations. For example, Both the Call of Cthulhu game and the 5E Mythos rulebook include toneboxes with advice about using Madness/Dread mechanics while understanding real-world sensitivities.

 

[tetrasodium]

Huh? I'm just putting the list of what got covered in the video. But since you mention "glaring omissions", why don't you enlighten the rest of us on what they are?

There is a section about what to do if a player dies but not about alternative rules for what happens after dropping below 1hp as an easy example. Others might be things like optional & variant rules for resting mechanics or the various sorts of dials a GM can use in other supers ttrpgs to scale things to different power levels of superheroes, a better skill system less subject to these kinds of problems (or details of it), or any of the other subsystem replacements that regularly come up as important to the feel of other editions/styles of play like vancian casting.