Five Big Takeaways from the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide

The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide is coming out next month and here are our first impressions. Wizards of the Coast is set to release a new version of the Dungeon Master's Guide for Dungeons & Dragons in November. EN World had the chance to delve into the new book early, thanks to a review copy provided by Wizards of the Coast. We'll have an in-depth review in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, here are some of our biggest takeaways after reading through the new core rulebook.

The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Is Made With an Eye Towards Newer Players

My immediate reaction when reading through the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide is that it makes no assumptions about the skill level of its readers. While the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide opened with a chapter on world building, the new Dungeon Master's Guide focuses on explaining all the things that a DM does during a typical session of D&D. There's also sections on how to handle disruptive players, and reminding DMs that they can show as much or as little leniency to their players as they'd like. The little tips scattered throughout the book read like a mix of common sense advice and things that most DMs learn over time as they get more comfortable with their style of play.

It's not that the new 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide doesn't contain material useful for veteran DMs, but Wizards clearly positioned this book to serve as the starting point for would-be DMs. Everything from the generic maps to the handy little campaign organization charts is meant to help players with their first campaigns. If you're an experienced DM, you may find a lot in the new 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide to be superfluous. However, I would hand this book to anyone wanting to learn how to be a DM, which is not something I would say about the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide.

A Well-Organized Dungeon Master's Guide Makes a Big Difference

The 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide receives a lot of flak from D&D commentators for a number of reasons, but it's biggest sin was poor organization. Important tools like encounter-building were buried in random chapters and the overall coherency of the book was a mess. This largely was because the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide approached being a DM from the perspective of building a campaign world and then figuring out how to run a game inside of it. This mirrors one of the biggest mistakes a DM can make - that DMs should be more concerned about world building than actually running a game their players would like.

The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide takes a completely opposite approach. The first chapter is titled "The Basics" and delves into the fundamental rules a DM needs to understand about Dungeons & Dragons. From there, it expands into encounters (covering social, exploration-based, and combat) and then standalone adventures, and finally a full campaign. All of the random useful bits scattered throughout the previous DMG is now put into one chapter called "DM's Toolbox" and organized alphabetically.

Honestly, the re-organization of the Dungeon Master's Guide is probably its biggest strength. It makes the book feel less like a meandering ramble and more like an actual guidebook. Big kudos to the editing team for fixing one of the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide's worst flaws.

Bastions Are Simple But Solid

The Bastions system is the shiny new toy in the Dungeon Master's Guide and fills a couple of major holes in D&D 5th Edition play. It fills that time-honored fantasy of building a base with tangible benefits and also provides a much needed money sink for players to spend all their gold on. The actual Bastions system is pretty simple - at 5th Level, players can create a bastion with two special facilities inside. Each special facility has a mechanical benefit that is activated by spending a Bastion Action on a Bastion turn. A typical Bastion turn is supposed to cover a week's worth of adventuring time, although there's some leeway depending on how much downtime a player has and how long it's been since their last Bastion turn. At four level intervals, players can add additional facilities and some facilities are only available at higher levels.

Other third-party publishers have covered similar ground to Bastions, but I feel like they often get too complicated when compared to other 5th edition subsystems. For example, Strongholds & Followers by MCDM was an entire rulebook of stronghold management and related systems. I enjoyed its approach but it felt like a poor mesh with how the rest of 5E worked. A lot of these systems are akin to having a $30 cocktail to go along with a meal at a diner - they work great on their own but aren't necessarily the right fit for this particular system.

Meanwhile, the Bastions system feels like a 5E system, even if it's a little more fleshed-out than others we've seen. There's a bit more than 20 pages dedicated to Bastions, which is more than I think any other non-combat system has ever gotten in a Wizards-produced 5E rulebook. I hope that Wizards continues to build out Bastions over the course of the next few years, adding new facilities and features to what seems like a promising new system.

Greyhawk Returns to D&D But as a Generic Campaign Setting

Greyhawk was one of the first Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings and was filled with a mix of warring kingdoms, regional conflicts, and magical secrets to discover. Outside of republished materials, we haven't seen any "new" Greyhawk material in over 20 years. Wizards of the Coast has brought back Greyhawk as an example campaign setting, with 30 pages detailing the world of Greyhawk and its people.

I'm not a massive Greyhawk fan largely because there hasn't been much material made for it since I started playing Dungeons & Dragons. However, the Dungeon Master's Guide states that most of the material was pulled from the 1980 World of Greyhawk guide and I don't see much in the gazetteer that really contradicts what I know about the setting.

Personally, I don't think this will lead to a resurgence of Greyhawk as a preeminent D&D world. The world is used as an example of a generic setting and there's nothing really unique about that world in the book unless you recognize some of the iconic locations from early D&D adventures. Still, I'm glad that a new generation of fans get to see Greyhawk and I'm always happy when Wizards of the Coast ventures beyond the Forgotten Realms.

Magic Items Improved

It would be silly not to talk about magic items when discussing the Dungeon Master's Guide, especially as that chapter takes up nearly a third of the book. Like a lot of other parts of 5E play, the magic items got rebalanced and revised with the 2024 Core Rulebooks. While I could give you a list of spells I wanted to see fixed in 5E before the Player's Handbook, I couldn't say the same about magic items. That's in part because the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide (and subsequent talk about it by designers) weirdly implied that magic items were somehow an optional part of D&D. To be blunt, there are a lot of weird misconceptions about how to handle magic items in D&D and the new Dungeon Master's Guide does its best to clear this up. One of the handy campaign trackers is literally a chart showing you how many magic items to give out per tier of play, which is about as ringing of an endorsement about the distribution of magic items in a campaign as you can find.

I'll leave it to other experts to tell you what the most broken magic items are in this book, but I do like that certain generic elements like "Flame Tongue" can be assigned to any type of weapon. I also like that there's a coherent guide to crafting magic items, with players required to have proficiency in Arcana, specific type of tools, and put in specific amounts of time and cost based on magic item rarity. This isn't groundbreaking stuff, but it's better than what we had before.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

I like the idea of encouraging DMs to start small. It’s easier to do that (particularly when you’re new to the game) and then build out as a fledging campaign progresses than it is to devote all your attention to establishing an entire campaign world before turning your attention to the campaign’s first adventure.

 

[Zardnaar]

I like the idea of encouraging DMs to start small. It’s easier to do that (particularly when you’re new to the game) and then build out as a fledging campaign progresses than it is to devote all your attention to establishing an entire campaign world before turning your attention to the campaign’s first adventure.

That would be my suggestion to every new DM.

 

[Remathilis]

They’re saying that it is a mistake to view worldbuilding as more important than running a game your players enjoy. The players at your table are more important.

I've seen DMs who are far more interested in their world, or their story, or their characters (NPCs) than anything their players say or do. It would be a just world if those DMs found themselves playerless so as not to interrupt the DMs self gratification, but unfortunately there is always someone willing to sit on their hands and enjoy the DM's show passively.

 

[Epic Meepo]

I've seen DMs who are far more interested in their world, or their story, or their characters (NPCs) than anything their players say or do. It would be a just world if those DMs found themselves playerless so as not to interrupt the DMs self gratification, but unfortunately there is always someone willing to sit on their hands and enjoy the DM's show passively.

I'm not seeing what's unfortunate about players who want to be passively entertained finding DMs who want to tell stories to passive players. I haven't met players and DMs like that, so I can't speak for them, but it sounds like it should be a win-win situation when they game together.

 

[Remathilis]

I'm not seeing what's unfortunate about players who want to be passively entertained finding DMs who want to tell stories to passive players. I haven't met players and DMs like that, so I can't speak for them, but it sounds like it should be a win-win situation when they game together.

I mean, dispense with the "game" elements then and just sit around the proverbial campfire and tell stories. RPGs are communal storytelling and if the DM is going to command the spotlight at all times, remove the game and let them tell a story.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, dispense with the "game" elements then and just sit around the proverbial campfire and tell stories. RPGs are communal storytelling and if the DM is going to command the spotlight at all times, remove the game and let them tell a story.

Plenty of podcast actual plays remove the game functionally, but they still manage to get input from the other characters.

 

[Remathilis]

Plenty of podcast actual plays remove the game functionally, but they still manage to get input from the other characters.

But I wouldn't call that playing D&D. It's cool whatever they are doing, but it's not exactly what I would say D&D is. Which was kinda my point: if the game has minimal interactive elements and they players are more spectators than contributing, that's not really playing the game.

 

[abirdcall]

I mean, dispense with the "game" elements then and just sit around the proverbial campfire and tell stories. RPGs are communal storytelling and if the DM is going to command the spotlight at all times, remove the game and let them tell a story.

I have encountered a difficult situation where most people at the table want the usual D&D experience but there is a player (maybe 2) who just want to be there and experience a fun story with friends.

They end up being a problem because they aren't engaged. It would be best if they just said they wanted to watch or at least do something less involved than playing a full PC.

Helping the DM could be a place for them.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I'm talking about what I enjoy about D&D. One thing I don't do is act dismissively about the preferences of others. Obviously my priorities are different from yours, but my players still have fun, and so do I. Other people have different priorities, but I try to avoid being judgemental.

I'm not sure that you do a good job of portraying your intended lack of judgment. It's probably down to the difficulty of text communication. I tend to assume that most of us would get along in person, even if we argue on here.

 

[Greg K]

I agree about designing the setting from the bottom up but also think there needs to be a top-down approach as well, in order to get things like pantheons, basic history, general map, and so forth in place before play begins.

The part to leave somewhat undesigned is the middle, thus allowing room to add things later without contradicting things that have already appeared or occured in play.

Yeah, I like having my "kingdoms" and cultures mapped out, the pantheon set, and general notes on each that I can present to individual players. Some initial notes might include common PC classes for the culture and culture notes. Once the player decides on a culture, species and class. I like to next to provide a few major npcs, organizations, a current event or two and/or regional knowledge- things appropriate to a character from the kingdom/culture that PCs from elsewhere would not have and can help the player ground thier character and, potentially, serve as hooks or inspiration/springboards.
However, while I might have a few notes and stats on important NPCs and monsters, I am not going to outline/flesh out full adventures or locations until needed- just the location around the first adventure.