The D&D Player’s Handbook 2024 finally makes reading the core rules a pleasure

I have occasionally read RPG sourcebooks for fun. I don’t need to play every game released to get something out of it – in fact, no one has the Time to participate in any game I find interesting, least of all me – but a good game usually gives me a sense of what it is like to play in its world or tell a story. That was not always the case with Dungeons & Dragons. While many older D&D It is fascinating to browse through these books, but the most useful ones – the core rulebooks, including the Player’s Guide, Dungeon Master GuideAnd Monster Manual — usually give me a mild headache. I’m far from alone in this.

Wizards of the Coast, the Hasbro-owned shop responsible for everything D&D, is using the 50th anniversary of the famous role-playing game to address this issue. After years of testing, planning and plan changes, the general public will get their first taste of the Player’s Guide at Gen Con this weekend. Polygon took a look at the game courtesy of Wizards and, well, they may have achieved exactly what they set out to do. The Player’s Guide (2024) is a surprisingly accessible reprint of the fifth edition of D&D, a modern and clean revision of the first book of every D&D Gamers read it – and it will likely stay with them for generations.

A point of order: I’ve only had the new manual for a few days and haven’t had a chance to play a game with it yet. Any interesting or unfortunate changes to the updated game’s gameplay will emerge in the weeks and months that follow as the book breaks free of its limitations and spreads among roleplayers. So I can’t tell you how this new version of D&D plays. I may However, I can’t tell you how reading this book feels: it’s great.

Image: Tyler Jacobson/Wizards of the Coast

Wizards has not shied away from communicating that the goal of this edition was to make the rulebook more readable. The designers have admitted that their previous design philosophy was, to put it bluntly, pretty damn backwards. When I look at my original 5e handbook from 2014, it is clearly built with the assumption that the reader comes with some level of commitment or, preferably, with someone to guide them. It expects you to workand the work is tedious, constantly flipping back and forth between sections that deal with the smallest aspects of playing a character and acting. It is a textbook, burdened with the weight of institutions and history and the assumptions embedded in them.

The Player’s Guide (2024) is beach reading by comparison. As the reveal event suggests, the book feels well-planned in a way that previous books have not, offering an organic path through the game’s concepts and ideas. Rules are explained when necessary, and thornier questions are relegated to a glossary in the appendix. Character creation and development is carefully laid out, with the narrative of each decision noted And mechanical expressions—which illustrates how any given D&D game can emphasize one or the other, or both.

The end result, in my opinion, is a book that presents a less cumbersome version of D&D that better suits the way the game is played in 2024. With the simple decision to present important information first and tuck weightier rules elsewhere, the new book more openly encourages players to take what they need and leave out the rest—another way in which the designer intends to take into account the way the game has been and will be played for decades. Only this time, that fact is strongly emphasized by the book’s instructions. The cleaner, revised presentation of the 12 character classes (and their four subclasses) every) makes it easy to immediately imagine how each of them plays out and what shape my future adventures might take.

Again, with fifty years of history and a player base as diverse as it is opinionated, there’s no telling how popular this revamp will be. For its part, Wizards got the discussion started early, with a long series of videos breaking down changes big and small in detail – such as the completely revamped Ranger class (one of the more radical changes for the 2024 Manual). But no matter how thorough the justification, it’s a pretty big change, and a number of promises – such as the claim that the new core books will be backwards compatible with all previous 5e products – may turn out differently in practice.

As the biggest name in tabletop roleplaying, D&D is still the first port of call for many players in the hobby. While other games have made great strides in this area, the idea of ​​D&D has begun to crumble. Synonymous with TTRPGs in general, it remains a crucial turning point for the roleplaying curious – it can be the start of a wonderful new hobby or an unfortunate turn-off.

As a supplier of countless D&D products with lucrative licensing agreements, it makes sense for Wizards to recognize the signs of the times and meet players where they are in order to give them the smoothest possible entry into the extensive ecosystem. The new Player’s Handbook (2024) does this. More than ever, it helps D&D make sense for anyone who wants to know, and makes the reader want to see what all these ideas look like in practice. This is done with the oldest trick in the storytelling business: show, don’t tell.

However, it’s also likely that new players will be better prepared to venture into the wide world of role-playing games. They need to understand that no matter what’s in print, there are things that serve the communal story and things that don’t, and that a role-playing session can take on unlimited forms as long as everyone pitches in. It helps the reader see how a game that previously seemed so rigid can be transformed into the kind of free-form experience they see in their favorite real-life gaming series, or gives them a sense of which parts of the hobby appeal to them and which don’t. It turns out that the best Dungeons & Dragons book might be one that best prepares players to play other games.

Player’s Guide (2024) was introduced with a pre-release copy of the book provided by Wizards of the Coast. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, but Vox Media may earn commissions on products purchased through affiliate links. You can find Further information on Polygon’s ethics policy can be found here.

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