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).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That's fine for a standard Horror campaign, but for a Cosmic Horror/Lovecratian style campaign? They don't work well.

If you're going for a Lovecraftian campaign, IMO, you probably should be playing a system built around that style of play. D&D is always going to be better at its own take on "traditional" fantasy than it is on other styles of play.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I did. There was a whole big thread I started about it last year.

Sorry. I did not mean specific "you" . Should have used "One".

The different approach being "we don't need to put any thought into organization" approach?

If you're making it hard to find useful stuff in your book -- that again, you're charging customers at least $30 for -- you might as well not put it in there.

Again. Not customers. I understand that. I speak about "content" creators.

The folks in charge at WotC -- the same people in charge there now -- were not kids who'd never published a book before. The bad organization, which makes finding content in it hard to find, to the point that it's common for DMs to not know the content is in there, is 100% that team's fault.

Yes. People make mistakes. Especially under pressure.

The only thing a content creator has to do is create content that enough people find valuable enough to make it worth their time to create it. Given how popular Ginny D is, I don't think most people are concerned that she didn't read the 2014 DMG cover to cover.

Not reading it cover to cover is totally ok. I answered to "content creators admitted that they did not read it". I took that as "at all".

Cover to cover it was a hard read indeed. And actually I did not read it cover to cover either... at least not in that order. But probably most of it and skimmed over the remainder.

 

[tetrasodium]

If you're going for a Lovecraftian campaign, IMO, you probably should be playing a system built around that style of play. D&D is always going to be better at its own take on "traditional" fantasy than it is on other styles of play.

Hug you are going for literally any campaign adventure or event where horrors sanity madness and so on are important though, it's still incredibly generous to say that existing rules for they are able to raise to a level of merely being "lacking" or "don't work well". The fact that players can simply write down to the aspect and literally ignore it with no recourse for the gm to make it matter short of fiat or puppeting a players PC is pretty clear evidence of that.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Hug you are going for literally any campaign adventure or event where horrors sanity madness and so on are important though, it's still incredibly generous to say that existing rules for they are able to raise to a level of merely being "lacking" or "don't work well". The fact that players can simply write down to the aspect and literally ignore it with no recourse for the gm to make it matter short of fiat or puppeting a players PC is pretty clear evidence of that.

If those campaigns are going to do more than just D&D with extra tentacles, they should probably be run in a different system instead.

It's been decades now that people have tried to inject this stuff into D&D. This isn't ever going to be something D&D is going to be really good at.

But we're not exactly hurting for Lovecraftian RPGs nowadays that are almost universally much better at delivering that sort of experience.

 

[Selas]

If those campaigns are going to do more than just D&D with extra tentacles, they should probably be run in a different system instead.

It's been decades now that people have tried to inject this stuff into D&D. This isn't ever going to be something D&D is going to be really good at.

But we're not exactly hurting for Lovecraftian RPGs nowadays that are almost universally much better at delivering that sort of experience.

The Cthulhu Mythos supplement for 5E is actually pretty decent if you want to play that style while still using a D20/5E system. However, if not in that kind of setting, the old DMG14 rules are more appropriate.

For example, in one of my recent sessions the DM used the DMG14 rules to make one of the PCs develop short-term hallucinations of all party members looking like spiders due to fey magic, and for 1d10 minutes the PC was frightened, had disadvantage on ability checks and was unable to understand what the party said. It's situations like these that Van Richten's rules don't really cover, and why a dread/madness mechanic is still needed and should be included.

Now, we should probably stop hijacking this thread to talk about this, even if the rules in question are related to the original topic.

 

[Imaro]

If those campaigns are going to do more than just D&D with extra tentacles, they should probably be run in a different system instead.

It's been decades now that people have tried to inject this stuff into D&D. This isn't ever going to be something D&D is going to be really good at.

But we're not exactly hurting for Lovecraftian RPGs nowadays that are almost universally much better at delivering that sort of experience.

Honestly I don't think most people are looking for an authentic lovecraft experience from D&D).... run away/go insane/die just aren't the stuff of fantasy, even stories like some of Howard's where Lovecraftian entities make an appearance. I think if you're running a Lovecraftian game in D&D you probably want a game where the protagonists can fight back and even score a victory... even if it's pyrrhic.

EDIT: If I could point to a Lovecraftian influence that aligns much closer to D&D it would be much closer to Lovecraft Country than the original stories

 

[tetrasodium]

If those campaigns are going to do more than just D&D with extra tentacles, they should probably be run in a different system instead.

It's been decades now that people have tried to inject this stuff into D&D. This isn't ever going to be something D&D is going to be really good at.

But we're not exactly hurting for Lovecraftian RPGs nowadays that are almost universally much better at delivering that sort of experience.

I haven't seen anything to suggest that the new subsystem will be unquestionably better, but I can't imagine it's possible for it to be worse

A useless mechanic taking page space that could be dedicated to providing one that does fit the system is even worse. The 2014 madness and sanity subsystems are very much in that spectrum as they very obviously depended on a push mechanic Mearls once mentioned during a garycon(?) panel titled 5 generations of d&d.

It may not be something I really wanted and wotc has so far demonstrated little to interest me as a GM, but who knows

 

[mikeburke]

I was expecting to hear the word 'Downtime' mentioned but I don't think I did? I suppose it's not really a 'tool'.. but I don't think I've heard the word mentioned once in the DMG content so far. Given the focus given to it in Xanathar's (and Acq Inc), part of me had expected to hear it mentioned at some point by now. I guess we'll see.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I guess they aren't going to use Stress as something to explain what's happening to a character when their player isn't present for the session, but the character is still with the party at the time.

I sort of feel that supernatural gifts should be grouped with magic items in the DMG, but I realize not every group wants to deal with them.

 

[Parmandur]

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.

Honestly, I'd be cool if this were mostly old material with a reorganization...because a fresh organization of the info is worth the price of admission.