Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Has Arrived — I Have Thoughts

Welcome to the table,

A fairly monumental event has occurred this week. As of the time of my putting fingers to the keys, the newest Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook, known by most as the D&D 2024 Players Handbook — or PHB — is releasing to the general public in the next few hours. This is going to be the new standard rule set for the world’s greatest role-playing game for at least the next few years if not the next decade or more.

I’ve had these updated rules for the last month or so, and have been really impressed by much of what I’ve seen in this offering. As is normal when there is a release of this magnitude, there is going to be no end of social commentary that will both champion and condemn this book, the people who play it, and the people who worked on it.

There is also no end to digital marketing strategies to capture your attention while you doom scroll or to get interactions so because of that you are going to see a ton of really intense emotions and really big sweeping takes. I, myself, am going to be pretty passionate about this all because I love this hobby and it makes up a large portion of my life and has for decades now.

The biggest takeaway I would like you to have before we get any deeper: Dungeons & Dragons is a hobby about having fun with your friends. It can be a lot of things to a lot of people; an excuse to be social, a test of your math vs your friend’s math, a big old game of chance, an excuse to do silly voices, a chance to build your world, or just a means to escape.

If you are having fun and not hurting anyone, then all of those things are okay and I welcome you to enjoy the aspects of this hobby that fill your cup and make you feel good. I also ask that you do the same for others. What we don’t need is the outdated concepts of condemnation and gatekeeping that made it hard for people like myself to try and enjoy this hobby when we were younger. If typing that sounds like it could be a veiled attack on some portion of the player base, let me speak more plainly…

Everyone should be welcomed at the table, provided they are not causing harm or being problematic to the rest of the table. If you like tacos conjured by a Hero’s Feast spell, then by all means, conjure your taco night before the next big battle. If you want to smooch all your friends and they are all consenting, then roll for smooches. If you and your buddy Bob want to make your pal Cullen’s hair fall out by dropping over 400 points of damage in a single combat round between a house-cat wizard and a fancy lad dragon man, then friends, let those fires ball out of control.

This is a game for everyone, this is a hobby for everyone. The erosion of the hobby by trying to get a “dunk” in or some clickbait hot takes only chips away at the foundation of us all. Criticism and level commentary is always welcome if it is not inflammatory with the intent of being performative. If you don’t like the game, it’s totally okay for you to play something else.

What is really cool about that is we will play with you when we have time. If you love the game, please don’t be afraid to admit that. We are here for you and will sit at the table with you and celebrate your crits and misses with big goofy smiles on our faces. Every organization, every hobby, heck every sewing circle has its problems and pain points. Some are too much for certain individuals to navigate and if they choose to leave to go somewhere else, we must wish them well on their journey.

There are going to be a bunch of questions and a bunch of things to cover about this book as the fandom gets a hold of it, plays it, finds all the holes and min-max combos, and various things that will inevitably happen. Creators are fallible and every edition has those things. I have questions, and I have read the thing multiple times. My biggest question being… is the below image actually Mordenkainen or is Kas the Betrayer still out here being sneaky in the best way possible?

I have seen a few things as this book comes out first hand. I want to talk about them a little bit and hopefully share some first-hand perspective of what this new era of the hobby looks like the people behind it, and the future of the players and storytellers who will carry it’s legacy another 50 years or more.

In the last six months, I have seen a table come together of people between 25 and 65 years of age who, as a “let’s do things this year we have never done before” decided to “try D&D.”

This table is, for the most part, people who openly have said “I will never play D&D.” Now they are buying dice, picking up the 2024 players handbook, plotting out themed snacks for the monthly D&D game, and building miniatures for their characters from LEGO. One of these players, my wife, has for our entire relationship never wanted to play D&D, which is my favorite pastime. We have always been totally cool with that.

Now she is totally into the game and looks forward to our sessions. I think part of the enjoyment is because I give good story. I think part of it is also because the current generation is so accessible to new players and does such a focused and intentional job of welcoming everyone to the table that it’s hard not to find something to enjoy in the hobby.

In the last few days, I have been sent messages from the editor of this piece telling me how stoked his kid is getting the new 2024 Players Handbook. That’s a powerful thing to think about. This kid is young, almost as young as I was when I started my adventure in tabletop role-playing. He has parents who foster his love for the game, providing him with tools to enjoy the game to the fullest.

This is our future. This is the future of the hobby. It’s rad to think if I’m alive in 50 years, I will see the 100th anniversary of D&D, but it’s even more rad to think this kid is going to grow up and hopefully not have to live in a world where they burn our D&D books and condemn us for our love of the game. I don’t think living through those bad-old-days is some kind of mark of honor needed to enjoy the game. I want nothing but warm, welcoming, and safe tables for this new crop of gamers so they never have to experience the stuff we survived.

In the last few weeks, I have engaged with a live streamer on TikTok whose video was completely focused on attacking Hasbro and talking about how horrible the 2024 Players Handbook was. It’s easy on that platform to fight with people, but that will not solve anything or bring anyone together.

Rather than swiping away, I asked questions via the chat, found out what she was irritated about, most of it was misinformation, that she had not looked through the whole book, and that she formed opinions based on hot-takes and clickbait. By the end of her live she was stoked to play a monk using the new 2024 players handbook.

This is possible not because I am some kind of D&D guru. There is no superpower or deep lore knowledge needed to do this kind of thing. The entire turnaround was because I just wanted to be a good steward of the hobby.

This new edition, at times, gets referred to as 5.5. On some level, I can totally understand why some people are painting it this way when they speak about it. I was playing when 3.0 shifted to 3.5 and the rules got a little more crunchy, some loose ends got cleaned up, and we got some Monster Manuals I am still having trouble tracking down to this day.

The rules in 2024 are compatible with the rules from the 5th edition books from everything I have seen so far. There may be some things that get murky, but from what I can tell they have done a great job keeping it close enough that people who have been playing since 2014 can transition to the new book with little barrier of entry.

Where 2024 really makes leaps and strides to open the table is the way it is laid out. It teaches you from page one what you need, how to use the book, and how to play the game before it even jumps into character creation and equipment.

Jeremy Crawford, Christopher Perkins, Ben Petrisor, F. Wesley Schneider, Ray Winninger, James Wyatt, and Makenzie De Armas, along with Emi Tanji and Josh Herman, the illustrators, editors, and everyone else on the team put a ton of heart into it. They put in an extreme amount of care, and it feels like it opens the table in a way that welcomes everyone regardless of their familiarity with D&D to the table.

Regardless of what you may find in some corners of the internet, I can say with almost absolute certainty that the Dungeons & Dragons team is not trying to put out some cloak-and-dagger money-grab product as part of a weird secret plot to wreck the pastime and steal the moon or some such nonsense. Even though this is a rulebook for a game of make-believe and probability, this is very much the real world and not some anime where a kid with an ancient spirit in his oversized chain fights some dragon-slinging bazillionaire on a trippy battle island.

I have met a decent number of the D&D team. I’ve looked them in their eyes. I’ve been lucky enough to roll dice with one of them. I’ve spoken with them about the hobby and their love for it. I’ve listened to them talk about the pastime in a way that is so honest and full of excitement at seeing players new and old come to the table together. This is an excitement that does not seem to diminish regardless of the hit after hit from various voices near and far. These champions of the past time just keep pushing forward to bring us something beautiful and well-thought-out.

The people behind Dungeons & Dragons 2024, from the artists to the designers to the marketing reps, all want this game to be successful. They worked their very best on something they thought would be a rad and enjoyable game for players and storytellers to experience with their friends and families.

This team loves this game as much as we do, dear reader. They are here for those long-time fans, full of nostalgia and love of their old adventures and the friends they made along the way, as much as they are here for those new to the table and full of excitement at what possibilities are yet to come. The team behind this book has made this for you, for me, and for all of us to have those amazing experiences because they also love this game.

Until next time, this is the table, and we are all welcome at it.