The new Dungeon Master's Guide hopes it's no longer the D&D book nobody reads
The new Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide, coming November 12, is putting a lot of lessons learned into one place. It inserts new ideas that there wasn't the time, money, or manpower to do when 5th Edition released in 2014.
Publisher Wizards of the Coast wants this book to be "a Dungeon Master's best friend," the book a DM finds indispensable. An excellent aim. Countless Reddit threads have formed over the past decade of people with questions already answered in the DM's Guide, if only we would've read it.
Wizards wants this to be your go-to handbook for developing and running adventures. I may only be in that second group: the one running adventures. Because if my most recent foray into the old 5e DM's Guide is any indication, building a game world is hard.
I have faith that the new book will be more accessible. If it's anything like the new Player's Handbook, there will be all new art (that's relevant to the text), chunkier sections, better arrangement, and a refreshed set of eyes figuring out what's most and least important to a Dungeon Master.
Here's what's new that wasn't in the old 5e DM's Guide at all:
- Five short sample adventures.
- A complete campaign setting for the OG D&D world of Greyhawk.
- A lore glossary.
- The bastions chapter.
I'm down for all of these things. Even though my players have never expressed an interest in shorter adventures, I'm interested. Even though they've never once brought up Greyhawk, I'm interested. While none of them spent even an hour of in-game time researching lore in an in-game library, I'm interested. And while they could care less about a place to call home, one of the only things I've ever wanted to do on the player side is build a castle.
To hook players on a new Player's Handbook, Wizards of the Coast had to revamp every character class, buff up every skill, feat, spell, and magic item, etc. But to hook Dungeon Masters on a new DM's Guide, they had to give us a new world, new stories to tell, new (and old) lore dumps, and...get lucky figuring out that DMs want nothing more than for their players to have a permanent effect on a campaign setting.
The five short adventures (and by "short" they mean half a page) are outlined in a way that Wizards believes DMs will want to outline their own future adventures. These adventures are intentionally "skeletal," because it's meant to emulate the smaller amount of pertinent information that is valuable to a Dungeon Master within a session or two. These shorts aren't meant to be played over the course of a couple years like published D&D adventures that are a couple hundred pages long.
Also, they're pushing campaign creation much later in the new book, instead of opening with it like they did in the 5e DM's Guide. Why? Because creating a world is hard, I said. This time around, they're tutorializing dungeon mastering by having you do smaller things that add up your know-how with world creation—rather than just throwing you into the deep end and saying, Okay it's time to draw a province map, country map, and continental map now, kiddos.
One of the things that struck designer Christopher Perkins about the world of Greyhawk (back when he was first introduced to it in 1980) is how customizable and open-ended Greyhawk is. He got the feeling that the designers back then wanted young Chris Perkins to take that world and make it his own. That's why they start with the city of Greyhawk on a big foldout map, and then give you the vast surrounding nations around Greyhawk on the other side. Even though Greyhawk is deeply embedded in the DNA of D&D, they want to you make it your own. "Greyhawk is yours."
The Lore Glossary is meant to resurface people and places from throughout D&D's 50-year history. Names like Mordenkainen, Iggwilv, and the Raven Queen.
Not every campaign is built for Bastions. A campaign that is spanning continents—or is planet-hopping through the multiverse—may not have the time and space for players to keep coming back to headquarters. But Bastions are also meant to be a thing that builds and grows while you're out adventuring. You don't have to sit there and watch the bricklayers lay down every brick. Bastions are meant to happen off-scene, in a sense. I would be thrilled if my players expressed an interest in building a keep or a tower or a forest glen. While is requires your DM's permission to be able to create a Bastion, it's meant to be controlled by the players. That's a fun irony of including Bastions into the DM's Guide. The Dungeon Master's control is meant to loosen or stop at the Bastion's walls.
I also got a laugh when they said, "Every dungeon is a Bastion that went wrong."
Welp, they hooked me again. I'm helpless. Start the countdown clock to November 12's launch date.
