Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide

Written by Randy Kalista on 11/25/2024 for MOB   PC  

What a Tangled Web DMs Weave

Being a Dungeon Master is a big job, but the last thing you want from a DM’s Guide is a reminder of how daunting it can be. The 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide embraces this challenge, with 384 pages of tools and inspiration: gameplay basics, game theory, running adventures, building campaigns, exploring the multiverse, loot (both magical and otherwise), player bases, maps, history, and even a dive into the Greyhawk campaign setting. It’s a lot—but it’s presented in a way that makes a DM’s job more fun, not more intimidating. That’s excellent news if you’re approaching the game for the first time, returning after a hiatus, or if you’ve been playing your whole life.

Venger, Warduke, and Skylla roll initiative on the cover, bridging nostalgia and innovation. These iconic villains—from the ‘80s D&D cartoon and a line of action figures—unlock core memories for Gen X roleplayers while signaling a return to some classic themes. Meanwhile, the alternate cover, exclusive to game stores, features Lolth, the Demon Queen of Spiders—a perfect metaphor for the tangled webs DMs weave.

This pairing of old and new reflects a broader truth about D&D: much has changed over the past 50 years, yet much remains the same. Wizards of the Coast continues to refine the game while striving for greater inclusivity in language and art. While some feared an overabundance of "hopepunk" in the new Player’s Handbook, the Dungeon Master’s Guide strikes a different tone. The artwork emphasizes tension and danger: traps springing, villains looming, and heroes facing relentless threats. It’s a reminder that the DM, while not an adversary, thrives on creating challenges that bring the world—and the game—to life.

After a decade-long wait since the 2014 edition, the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide strikes a balance between honoring tradition and evolving 5th Edition for modern players.

New Tools and Ways for Players to Make Their Mark

Tracking Sheets, introduced in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide, are a handy new tool for organizing campaigns. Nine different sheets are scattered throughout the book, covering areas like travel planning, NPCs, settlements, campaign journaling, and even bastions. While DMs running published adventures might not need all of these—since much of that information is already in the adventure text—Tracking Sheets become most effective when things go off the rails or when running homebrew content. They centralize key details, making them especially useful for DMs who blend published and original material into their campaigns.

The inclusion of bastions in the DMG is both exciting and curious. These player-focused strongholds add a layer of depth for adventurers looking to establish roots and gain passive benefits like crafted items or magical gear. Starting at level 5, bastions grow as players level up, culminating in special facilities like demiplanes or war rooms. While bastions are primarily player-facing, the DM’s role in integrating them into a campaign is key, making their placement in the DMG understandable. For campaigns like Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen, bastions could provide a home base worth fighting for, though their relevance depends heavily on the campaign style.

New Combat Encounter Difficulty vs. The Online Encounter Builder

Combat Encounter Difficulty in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide puts the control firmly in the DM’s hands, using a simple scale—low, moderate, or high—to gauge how much pressure to put on players. This system seeks parity with D&D Beyond’s online Encounter Builder but, in practice, can escalate to “deadly” encounters with surprising violence. Based on the new guidelines, even experienced parties might find the difficulty overwhelming.

Take the Curse of Strahd adventure, Death House, infamous for its brutal level 1–2 encounters. For six level 2 characters, fighting big groups of Ghouls and Shadows is what already gave the Death House its challenging reputation. Yet, according to the new guidelines, keeping this encounter difficulty high would balloon the monsters from four Ghouls to six, and from five Shadows to twelve. That’s a recipe for a Total Party Kill. While the designers warned these standards would be tougher, they overshot the mark—at least at low levels.

No Longer Requiring 5 to 10 Years’ Experience

The chapter Running the Game has moved up from Chapter 8 in the old Dungeon Master’s Guide to Chapter 2 in the new one, right after the introductory chapter The Basics. This change acknowledges that for many new Dungeon Masters, the DM’s Guide might be their starting point—not one of the three similarly named boxed sets (Starter Set, another Starter Set, and Essentials Kit). The 2024 DM’s Guide recognizes it often serves as a DM’s first “starter set.”

The most significant shift is in tone, particularly around the concept of "fun." D&D acknowledges there’s really only one wrong way to play: if no one’s having fun. This is a departure from the 2014 DM’s Guide, which emphasized the Dungeon Master as a master of worlds, adventures, and rules. The new guide, however, embraces the inevitability of mistakes and the learning curve of being a DM. Trial and error is part of the process—and that’s okay, as long as fun remains the goal.

One of my players, with over a decade of DM experience, often says, “I still learn something new every day.” This book seems designed to reassure both new and veteran DMs of exactly that.

This is Where the Magic Happens

Easily the largest chapter in the book is for magic items. There are over 400 of them, up from 358 in the 2014 DM’s Guide. Nearly every page of Chapter 7: Treasure is festooned with magic items, with very few not receiving their own unique artwork. In D&D, adventures are the things you do in between the looting. When the treasure tables (and the DM) are in your favor, magic items are sprinkled into every hoard. Sometimes a DM wants to make their players work a little harder for their magic items, however, and not just have them pop out of the next monster kill. Sometimes a DM makes a player invest time, energy, and resources into crafting magic items.

While the Player’s Handbook introduced the basics with potion and scroll crafting, the DM’s Guide builds on this foundation, enabling players to craft nearly every other magic item. The process is straightforward: a character uses the Arcana skill, an appropriate toolkit, and the relevant spell to imbue the item. Of course, the most elusive resources are time and gold.

That last part—time—is a sticking point. In the whirlwind of most campaigns, particularly those tied to fast-paced published adventures, time often feels like the scarcest resource. This adds a layer of realism to the crafting system but can also limit its practicality without careful planning.

Interestingly, the book encourages players—not just Dungeon Masters—to invest in a DM’s Guide. Since the recipes for high-level crafting are contained within its pages, players are invited to bring crafting ideas to their DM. This is a surprising shift, subtly reframing the DM’s Guide as a resource for everyone at the table.

One notable restriction: Artifacts remain untouchable. These legendary items defy even the most skilled artisans, their recipes lost to time. It’s a reminder that some treasures in D&D are meant to be found, not forged.

A Page-Turner of a Lore Glossary

The Lore Glossary is a much-needed repository for the game’s sprawling 50-year history. This section consolidates essential characters, locations, and terms, offering context often absent in previous editions. From iconic figures like Acererak and Tasha to legendary materials like mithral, the glossary ensures Dungeon Masters have a reliable reference for their campaigns.

Highlights include nods to deep lore such as Ashardalon, a soul-eating dragon with a Balor for a heart, and the Raven Queen, a 4th Edition deity who endures in the modern game. The glossary also bridges gaps in player knowledge, linking terms like adamantine to its uses in crafting armor and weapons.

Beyond merely cataloging facts, the Lore Glossary balances detail with mystery. It leaves room for Dungeon Masters to reinterpret elements like Elder Evils or obscure gods, embracing D&D’s elastic storytelling. By gathering decades of lore into one accessible resource, it transformed this very readable textbook into a page-turner I couldn’t put down.

Areas for Improvement—Even if It’s Fascinating Reading

Chapter 3: DM’s Toolbox is a smorgasbord of topics, slotted into an early portion of the DM’s Guide. The designers know it’s a weird chapter. The only options were to leave this potpourri of details scattered throughout the entire DM’s Guide—or organize them alphabetically into their own chapter. That’s why you’ll go right from discussions on Alignment into Chases. You’ll be reading about Curses and Contagions then turn the page to look at a detailed examination of Doors.

All in all, it’s a fascinating mix of practical tools and quirky oddities.

This isn’t just filler. Each topic gets detailed treatment. For instance, the section on Chases explores subtopics like mapping and running chases in urban versus wilderness settings, making it a go-to reference for DMs seeking dynamic encounters. The chapter also tackles deeper subjects, like handling character death, including the emotional impact of a Total Party Kill (TPK). Other than informing me of how to conduct Death Saving Throws, I’m not certain I’ve read that type of advice anywhere else.

Dungeons, a quintessential part of the game, also get their due. Tables for quirks like dungeon origins, condition, and themes help breathe life into these iconic locales. Dungeons aren’t confined to castles or caves—they could be inside a dead beast, atop clouds, or even in an extinction-level comet, as designer Chris Perkins once imagined. It’s hard to imagine why a game with “Dungeons” in the name has relegated a table of “Dungeon Quirks” and advice on “Mapping a Dungeon” into a chapter so randomly presented. But Dungeons are admittedly given greater attention than any other location you could come across in D&D.

Greyhawk as an Anything-Goes Campaign Setting

Helping celebrate the game’s 50th anniversary is the inclusion of the Greyhawk campaign setting, a first for a DM's Guide. Originally created by D&D cofounder Gary Gygax, Greyhawk debuted in 1980 as a simple, lean setting designed to inspire Dungeon Masters rather than dictate their worlds. This spirit of flexibility is preserved in the 2024 DM’s Guide, which introduces Greyhawk starting small—with the city of Greyhawk itself—and expanding outward into its surrounding nations.

The foldout map included in the book highlights key locations, while leaving more distant points of interest intentionally vague, inviting DMs to shape the setting themselves. Player character backgrounds can easily tie into Greyhawk’s history and politics, deepening their connection to the world.

The Greyhawk section packs in everything from deities and Big Bads like Iuz and Elemental Evil to seafaring and supernatural adventure hooks. It also marks iconic locations on the map like the Tomb of Horrors and White Plume Mountain. Greyhawk feels quintessentially D&D—accessible, adaptable, and filled with possibilities—without the paralyzing weight of more heavily detailed settings like Dragonlance. This makes it a sandbox for DMs looking to craft their own tales while paying homage to D&D's storied past.

Adventure Time

Chapter 4 offers a refreshing take on adventure creation with five short, straightforward adventures to inspire Dungeon Masters. These half-page to one-page scenarios show that crafting a memorable session doesn’t require creating a 200-page epic like Curse of Strahd. Instead, they emphasize that even the most engaging campaigns can start small, with manageable, bite-sized adventures designed to fit a single session.

The included adventures range from level 1 to level 7 and offer a variety of challenges—from battling a (wyrmling) red dragon in The Winged God at level 3, to navigating a jungle temple in Horns of the Beast at level 5. Tied to the Greyhawk setting, these adventures connect seamlessly with the foldout map and tie in with material found in the new Player’s Handbook. Simplicity can still spark rich storytelling.

By balancing practical advice with hands-on examples, Chapter 4 demystifies adventure writing while making it accessible. This feels important, since the 2014 DM’s Guide says it’s important to start small when world building, but immediately spins you off into the cosmos, trying to cobble together a pantheon of gods that hardly anyone in your party will care about. Whether you’re building a campaign from scratch or need an engaging one-shot, these short adventures in the 2024 DM’s Guide highlight the fun of DMing without overloading your prep time.

Where It Stops, Nobody Knows

The 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide doesn’t just provide tools—it offers a fresh perspective on what it means to be a Dungeon Master. By balancing nostalgia and innovation, depth and accessibility, it transforms a daunting role into one of creativity and connection. Whether crafting epic campaigns, weaving personal character stories, or embracing the chaos of the DM’s screen, this guide is fun while teaching and evolving. After 50 years of D&D, this edition feels less like a rulebook and more like a celebration of what makes the game—and its Dungeon Masters—magical.