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

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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).


 

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Stress already appeared in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft and it's a mixture between the current Exhaustion rules and a Horror check. Stress acts as a penalty to d20 Tests equal to your stress score (which goes down with recovery and up when exposed to stressors). It's possible they are expanding that further, but even that alone does make mental hardships difficult without having the character develop actual psychological disorders.
I wonder what other mechanical bits and bobs from a decade of publishing may have graduated to the DMG...
 

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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.
Hmm. Good point! The 2014 PHB had a few downtime activities, and while some of them are still in the 2024 PHB, they aren't referred to as downtime activities. I hope they haven't ditched the concept entirely.
 

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.
Might be covered in Chapter 2, the rules glossary. Chapter 3 is for weird stuff, Chapter 2 is for standard play stuff.
 



I didn't get the feeling they said everything that the new DMG covered in this video.

Is there a reason beyond "WotC does everything wrong" why people think a lack of mention in this video means something doesn't exist?

It was less than a week ago that people were insisting the content mentioned today didn't exist because it wasn't mentioned in the broadest preview video possible.
 

Hmm. Good point! The 2014 PHB had a few downtime activities, and while some of them are still in the 2024 PHB, they aren't referred to as downtime activities. I hope they haven't ditched the concept entirely.
So, in this same vein, WotC may just get rid of the term "Downtime" moving forward because of the connotation it was with some players.
 



I didn't get the feeling they said everything that the new DMG covered in this video.

Is there a reason beyond "WotC does everything wrong" why people think a lack of mention in this video means something doesn't exist?

It was less than a week ago that people were insisting the content mentioned today didn't exist because it wasn't mentioned in the broadest preview video possible.
Because the next WotC scandal just got "Worse"?

In all seriousness, there are some that try to nitpick everything in a bad way because drama sells

Edit: Oh, and because Bias
 

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