D&D 2024: A Review

We have (eventually) over a 1,000 rules of text and infinite electrons to burn. Let's do this.

D&D 2024 Review

A new edition of D&D is always big news in the TTRPG world, but here in 2024 a new edition of D&D faces a much different hobby and market than ever before.

D&D editions fall into two rough camps. Some editions – 1e, 3e, 5e – spark a surge in the game’s fortunes. 1e saw the game shift from a hobbyist creation to a full-fledged business. 3e sparked the game after years of business turmoil that led to the collapse of TSR and the game’s descent into torpor. 5e clawed back market leadership from Pathfinder, then rode a surge of popularity that lifted the entire TTRPG hobby from a near death experience.

In contrast, 2e and 4e both attempted to build on past successes with diametrically opposed strategies. 2e tried to maintain backward compatibility, but ultimately failed to spark a healthy, ongoing business. 4e decided to scrap the 3e rules in favor of a hard push to digital-assisted play. Where 2e led to a steady decline, 4e sparked a dramatic collapse of the business.

Here in 2024, D&D finds itself attempting a mix of the 2e and 4e strategies. As with 4e, Hasbro seeks to jumpstart profit margins with a push into a direct to consumer, digital business. At the same time, that digital business likely needs the ongoing revenue of a deep backlist to earn back its investment as quickly as possible. Thus, as with 2e, the 2024 revision seeks to maintain backward compatibility and the high margin, easy revenue that comes with selling a deep backlist.

Will this Frankenstein’s monster of a business plan work? Does the TTRPG business want to move to digital platforms? Will we finally get usable rules for encounter building, exploration, and interaction? Let’s dig in.

Part 1: The Core Rules

A full review of the 2024 products and rules requires multiple entries over the next few weeks. This entry focuses on the core rules, as summarized in chapter 1 of the new PHB and the Rules Glossary found in appendix C.

Before we can dive into the text of chapter 1, I have to do the nerd thing and complain about a potential canon issue in the art. The full-page piece that opens chapter 1 shows a post-test of High Sorcery Raistlin adventuring with Kitiara. As far as I know he and Caramon did not have contact with her between his test and the start of the War of the Lance. By that point, Kitiara would have the armor of a Blue Dragon Highlord and Caramon would have his iconic winged helm, neither of which are in the art. Please correct me in the comments if I am wrong.

In any case, allow me to push my glasses back up my nose and begin.

Rules Overview

The first few pages of the chapter summarize the core concepts of the game. Most notably, saving throws, attacks, and checks are now grouped under the super category called tests. That’s a nice change, as it means we can use one word to label all types of d20 rolls.

Otherwise, this section does a solid job of laying the game’s mechanical groundwork. If you’ve watched a game online or played in a session (or 10) before buying this book, this section brings you up to speed on the core concepts you need to know.

If you’re starting with zero knowledge of D&D, it’s likely a daunting wall of text, but these days the staggering majority of people learn games online. I can’t imagine the zero info use case is a relevant chunk of the audience.

With the core rules explained, the text then segues to D&D’s three pillars of social interaction, exploration, and combat.

Social Interaction

Once we get to the three pillars, the text augments the traditional rulebook presentation to a series of well-executed examples of play.

Building on the mechanics of 5e, the 2024 revision layers in some useful guidelines. The mechanics of social interaction focus on influencing NPCs. An NPC is either friendly, indifferent, or hostile. You have advantage on checks to influence friendly NPCs, and disadvantage on checks against hostile ones.

The rules really shine when you get to the influence action. The DM judges the NPC’s response to the request. A willing NPC goes along with your request, while an unwilling one ignores it. If the NPC is hesitant, the DM calls for a check. It’s a simple procedure that nicely melds the mechanics and narrative at the table. It nails exactly what anyone would want from a rules update, in that this procedure easily replaces what came before without undermining what’s already in stat blocks and on character sheets.

The example of play does a dynamite job of showing how the rules translate into play. In several spots, the example’s dialog has call outs that refer to rules summaries and tips nested alongside the example. That text, along with the overview of the rules provided before it, does an excellent job of pointing to the relevant sections of the rules glossary while bringing the rules to life.

I think this section sets an exciting path for teaching TTRPGs. I hope other products follow its lead.

Exploration

While the social interaction rules provide a great framework for play, the exploration rules highlight the disjointed nature of the exploration pillars. Since 2e, the game has struggled to create a framework for exploration that can cover any situation.

The section starts with an overview of the rules for exploration, then shifts to another example of play. Let’s cover those in reverse order.

Like the example from the social interaction section, the exploration narrative is well-written, easy to follow, and highlights how DMs and players should approach play. Once more, handy call outs explain the mechanics and provide details on how the game works. A+ work once again.

Things become quite a bit trickier when we switch back to the rules text. Where the interaction section laid out how to engage in that mode, the exploration rules instead delve into the minutia of a variety of rules topics.

We get two paragraphs explaining how equipment like ladders and candles can help you explore, though none of that comes up in the example of play. Vision and light are cluttered with two levels of obscurement and three levels of lighting. Looking back at the clean, intuitive, and useful interaction rules, I wish the same streamlining had hit this section.

Things take a further turn into the trivial with the rules for interacting with objects. With headers like “What Is an Object?” and “Time-Limited Object Interactions” we are quite deep into the land of fiddly rules and designer anxiety. I have no idea what strange rules questions prompted this section’s existential crisis, and I’m glad of my ignorance.

The rules also mention hiding, and here we see the tension between the rules glossary, which provides definitions of specific terms, and the running text. Some entries in the glossary, like the influence action, provide a clear, concise procedure. Meanwhile, the rules for hiding are scattered across multiple entries in the glossary and directly contradict the running text on page 19. There, the text tells us that the DM decides when circumstances are appropriate for hiding, yet the definition of hide in the glossary gives specific conditions and a DC.

On top of that, there’s no mention of passive Perception in the overall rules for exploration and any of the glossary entries that comprise the spiderweb of rules for hiding. Yet, passive Perception is defined within the glossary. Does the running text or glossary take precedence? Is any portion of the running text actual rules, or is just set dressing to point the reader to the glossary in a digestible, orderly sequence? I honestly don’t know, and I’m not looking forward to arguing with randos at conventions on how exactly this all works.

(Protip: Having a key role in designing a new edition of D&D helps keep the arguments at a minimum, even as you commit felony-level assault on the rules. If possible, convince Hasbro to publish your edition of D&D before running games at conventions. It goes a long way.)

Where the interaction rules were a nice, clear upgrade over what came before, I suspect most groups will use a hodgepodge of rules for hiding and exploration. That’s irritating, and the exact opposite of what I want from a rules update.

Weirdly, the inferred rules used to guide the example of play look easy to use, simple, and intuitive. In that narrative, the DM asks everyone what they want to do. They then ask the players for more details or resolve events in whatever order makes the most sense. The players are expected to detail their actions in roughly one-minute intervals. Between the example of play and the general rules that lead off this section, a new player should have a good grasp on exploration without needing to ask big, philosophical questions about what exactly an object is or the details of space, time, and object interactions.

Combat

If the rules for exploration are a dud and the rules for interactions dynamite, the combat rules are a nice encapsulation of how 5e handles fights. The only significant change I noted was a revision to how moving through another creature’s space works, and the new rules are sensible and easy enough.

The tension between the glossary and the rules text comes into play again, as the combat rules struggle to mark a line between rules necessary for play and rules that could safely be consigned to the glossary. The rules spend time explaining resistance, temporary hit points, mounted combat, and other esoterica. As with exploration, the example of play is concise and shows D&D when it is firing on all cylinders. Using that action as a template – just give me the rules needed to run THIS version of the game – would’ve been enough.

Worse still, the tension between this section and the glossary rears its head once more. The rules for temporary hit points in the glossary bounce you back to chapter 1 for the full details. Once more, I’m stuck trying to figure out exactly what’s a load-bearing element in the game and what’s explanatory text. Mounts and mounted combat don’t even get an entry in the glossary. I need to go to chapter 1 for them.

That’s a pity, because as we close this section the glossary was shaping up to be another big win for the revision. Yes, I complained about the stealth rules, but the glossary at least made it easy to run down all the components. With combat, I’m stuck in a weird, shadowy world where some topics are in the glossary and others are explained in the text. Temporary hit points and resistances are exactly the kind of fiddly, weird rules that the glossary could bring to heel.

As with exploration, I think there was a lost opportunity to streamline the game. If you had told me that the 2024 rules killed temporary hit points entirely, I would have danced a little jig. I appreciate that they are more clearly and concisely explained, but I don’t look forward to pawing through the rulebook, undoubtedly after remembering once more that the glossary punts us to chapter 1 for a rules definition.

Thus Ends Part 1

Chapter 1 puts to bed any worries about compatibility between these rules and the rules that came before. The interaction rules are nicely done, and the new approach to blending examples of play with rule commentary should become a standard for TTRPGs. I’m disappointed that the fiddlier bits of combat aren’t covered in the glossary, and exploration remains defiantly undefined, even if the example of play provides a great model.

The stealth rules are straight up galling. Stealth has been wonky in 5e since the beginning, and now it’s even more confusing. I absolutely pity Adventurers League DMs, or anyone else running the game with strangers, who runs into arguments about stealth. In my opinion, the rules offer fodder for plenty of arguments and little resolution.

I really wish that the same design sensibilities that shaped the interaction section had carried over to the rest of the core rules. Anyone looking for guidance on exploration should just read the example of play and be done with it. It’s a great model that I wish was supported with explicit rules procedures.

So far, I’m a little frustrated with the book. There’s a great concept for TTRPG layout and rules organization here, but the execution is quite shaky in places. Let’s see how it holds up as we go deeper into the book.