D&D (2024) 3,000 Player's Handbooks Available At Gen Con

At Gen Con (August 1-4), there will be 3,000 copies of the Player's Handbook available. These copies will include a gold foil D&D logo and a commemorative bookplate.

RENTON, WA – July 18, 2024 – It’s a banner year for DUNGEONS & DRAGONS! Coming off the acclaimed film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, and the smash hit video game Baldur’s Gate 3, D&D is celebrating 50 years of the WORLD’S GREATEST ROLEPLAYING GAME. More than 64 million D&D fans love rolling dice, slaying monsters, and envisioning themselves as the amazing heroes they all are inside. This year at Gen Con 2024 in Indianapolis, Indiana, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS will be debuting the 2024 Player’s Handbook making D&D more accessible than ever before. Wizards is bringing 3,000 copies of the 2024 Player’s Handbook hot off the presses to Gen Con 2024 – each of which features the 50th anniversary logo in gold foil, along with a commemorative "Gen Con 2024" bookplate making it even more exclusive and distinguishing it from other first-run copies.

"The energy at Gen Con is always electric. Being able to put copies of the 2024 Player’s Handbook, fresh from the printer, directly into players' hands on the floor of the convention is something truly special,” said Jess Lanzillo, VP of D&D Franchise and Product at Wizards of the Coast. “We can't wait to see the excitement as our fans dive into the possibilities contained within!”

The Player’s Handbook goes on sale everywhere on September 17, 2024, and fans can pre-order the D&D Beyond Digital edition and/or bundlenow for character sheet bonuses: 10 frames, 5 backdrops, and 12 digital dice sets—one for each class!

Pre-order the core rulebooks bundle now on the D&D Beyond Marketplace to receive the Dragons of D&D digital art book, D&D BEYOND Gold Digital Dice set, and a 50th anniversary digital Gold Dragon mini in the upcoming 3D sandbox. Fans will learn how to sign up for the closed beta at Gen Con!

How to Purchase the First Publicly Available 2024 Player’s Handbooks

Gen Con attendees will be the first fans to have an opportunity to purchase the 2024 Player’s Handbook. Here’s how:

Where to Buy

The 2024 Player's Handbook will be available at Lucas Oil Stadium, Northwest Concourse. It will be in a shared sales area with the USPS D&D Stamps.

Sales Dates

August 1: 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM EDT
August 2/3/4: 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT

Pricing

The 2024 Player’s Handbook is $49.99 plus tax. Credit card sales (Discover, Mastercard, Visa) only.

At 7:00 AM EDT on each sales day, tickets to reserve an opportunity to purchase will be released in the Gen Con event ticketing system as an event. The event will be listed as a free ticket and will be titled “D&D 2024 Player’s Handbook Early Release Sale.” A Gen Con attendee may claim one digital ticket for that day, subject to availability. The digital ticket serves as your access to purchase for that day only.

Once you have your digital ticket, you will show up at the sales location during the sales hours listed for that day. Sales will not be processed outside of those hours. You must be in line by the end of the sales window to ensure you are able to purchase for that day.

Rules and Restrictions

Only one digital ticket will be redeemable per person per day. Upon redemption, we may issue a wristband to denote that you have been checked in for your purchase, even while in line - this means you no longer need to show your digital ticket. There will be no sales to non-ticket holders (e.g., no "walk ups"). One book per redeemed ticket only; all sales are final.

 

[Mistwell]

Zero evidence like Hasbro's CEO saying D&D is going 100% digital?

He never said that

 

[Mistwell]

It's likely coming, or at least becoming boutique. Print is expensive and does not serve the shareholders the way digital and micro transactions do.

"The CEO said X" is not in any way the same as "I suspect some day, due to expenses, we will end up with X."

 

[Kor - Orc Scrollkeeper]

I'm one of the lucky few that got it on the first day. One of many things that made my trip from western Canada worthwhile

I have been playing D&D since 1st edition and have always looked forward to a new edition. While I was very underwhelmed by 4th edition, I sort of feel like my current reaction is about halfway between my disappointment with 4th, and my excitement with 5th.

This version (which in my opinion is 5.5) introduces many new rulesets which you can easily plug and play with 5th edition. There are a lot good ideas and improvements with this version, but there are a lot of elements which I find are just silly or unneeded. I think everyone's reaction to the book is going to be different, and depending on a person's preference, they will likely have similar mixed opinions.

The design team seemed so focused on making rules that were fun, that they decided to not worry about whether they make sense or not. However, I fully understand that many of the things that I don't like, that there are probably many people that like them.

Some of the immediate examples which come to mind are class abilities like weapon mastery where you can change your selected weapon on a long rest. This is just plain silly to me. I spend some time twirling an axe around, and now I have found the sweet spot and gain the mastery benefit. However, tomorrow, I am going to swing my sword around to change up my specialization, and completely forget about the axe. This is just a silly mechanic in my opinion -- it really doesn't add much, so I wish they would have just either allowed you to switch specialties when you level up, or instead just give you all weapon specialties in 1 type of weapon (i.e. melee weapons / ranged weapons).

Another example of something that doesn't sit well with me is the Barbarian, Pact of the World Tree. When a barbarian is raging, you can grant another creature temporary hit points? Why? Because somehow when in a rage, you now have the ability to magically augment another creature. In my opinion, due to the unique nature of rage, any special effect you get from rage should only benefit the rager -- and ideally shouldn't be magical in nature.

For my last example, is the 2nd level spell Arcane Vigor which allows arcane casters to heal themselves. I just don't understand why there was a need for this spell. Healing spells, once the domain of divine classes only, have already branched out further than they should (in my opinion) and now even more classes have access to healing.

While there are many new rules that I do like as well, I still can't get onboard with removing species ability score adjustments (which I realize was first introduced in the later half of 5th).

Anyways, I do realize that the above are just my pet peeves, and likely most players won't see any issues with any of them. While I admit I was getting bored of 5th edition and was hoping 5.5 was going to rejuvenate my interest -- I have to say that it hasn't. What it did do though, is inspire me to start creating my own system -- something sort of half-way between Dungeon Crawl Classics and 5th edition -- and on the plus side, there are a few useful bits of crunch from the 5.5 PHB, which I will also use for inspiration.