According to the new D&D 2024 Dungeon Master's Screen, you'll take 24d10 hit points of damage if you're crushed in the jaws of a moon-sized monster

There's a new Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Dungeon Master's Screen. The theme is Unity. The art is by Joy Ang. It's got a whimsical illustrative style, populated by characters posed like they're in Darkest Dungeon combat if they'd been invited to The Last Supper by a red dragon. Everyone comes together around a golden 20-sided die. 

I haven't seen them all. But I've never been blown away by any one Dungeon Master's screen. The team putting this new one together had to look at the usefulness of the information placed on the screen, its legibility, and even making sure that DMs using laptops weren't "clam shelling" their laptops in order to see the most useful info on the screen.

That is a wild consideration.

From left to right, the four panels of quick-reference information on the screen are:

• Far left panel:
  • Conditions: Blinded, Frightened, Paralyzed, etc., which happened to be scattered alphabetically in the new Player's Handbook Rules Glossary.
• Left Panel:
  • Improvising Damage: 1d10 damage when Burned by Coals, or 24d10 when Crushed by the Jaws of a Moon-Sized Creature.
  • Damage Severity and Level: 2d10 damage can be deadly to character levels 1 - 4, but 10d10 damage is only a nuisance to character levels 17 - 20.
  • Actions: Attack, Dash, and Disengage are familiar, but some like the Magic action or Utilize action are newly introduced in D&D 2024.
  • Long Jump: Can you remember what this is?
  • High Jump: Me neither. 
  • Concentration: by the way, if you die, that breaks your concentration.
• Right panel:
  • Skills: listed in alphabetical order like in 2014 character sheets, rather than broken out by the Ability they fall under like in 2024 character sheets.
  • Death Saving Throws: Hopefully something not referenced terribly often, since this is largely hidden by those laptop-using Dungeon Masters.
  • Object Armor Class: Adamantine is stronger than Mithral? The Tolkien Estate is reporting, "Shots fired."
  • Object Hit Points: A fragile, tiny bottle has about 2 Hit Points. Which is good since I allow my players to Health Grenade those bad boys like in Baldur's Gate 3.
  • Food, Drink, and Lodging Costs: It's got bread and cheese on there (that'll get you through 75% of fantasy-fiction novels, for sure), and their are six tiers of room and board.
  • Typical Difficulty Classes: From a Very Easy 5 to a Nearly Impossible 30—this hasn't changed in D&D 2024.
  • Light Sources: Mostly only relevant to the dragonborn, halflings, and humans in the party since they're the only ones without Darkvision.
  • Obscured Areas: Which goes hand in hand with Light Sources.
• Far right panel (to be honest, this was the stuff that could've been hidden behind the laptop screen. Except Cover):
  • Travel Pace: Broken down in easy-to-divide-by-6-mile-hexagon distances.
  • Travel Terrain: To include maximum pace, encounter distance, and Difficulty Checks for foraging, navigation, and searching.
  • Cover: Great if you can get it.
  • Audible Distance: I don't know about these two...
  • Visibility Outdoors: ...Because I'm basically doing to arrange everyone on the battle map the way I want to.
  • Weather: I love talking about the weather in game. I'm not even kidding.

These DM's Screens are not an afterthought. There's a lot of blood, sweat, and tears going into their design, too. I'm not that into the cartoon illustration style of this one, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate the Unity concept. And the DM's side looks completely useful and entirely legible—their two biggest concerns going into the design.

The two being interviewed here also hint towards what can be found in the upcoming D&D 2024 Monster Manual (coming February 2025, actually). For artwork, there will be a few cute pieces, but also plenty of body horror. 

The 2024 Dungeon Master's Screen launches November 12, right alongside the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide.