When Dungeons & Dragons decides to go for a new edition, we get fresh versions of the three core books. The Player’s Handbook is always first, as it details the core rules for the game. The next book is the Dungeon Master’s Guide, which tells the Dungeon Master how to actually run the game. It’s also the book with all the magic items in it. (The third book is the Monster Manual, which is really just more resources for DM. We’ll review that when it comes out in 2025.)
The Dungeon Master’s Guide 2024 is a 380+ page hard-backed book (available digitally) rammed with illustrations and guidance for novice and experienced Dungeon Masters, which is the fancy title we give to the person who actually runs the game. Players get to be one character, but the Dungeon Master (aka DM, Games Master, or Referee) gets to be everyone else and the world.
Previous iterations of D&D have taken different approaches to how to best guide a Dungeon Master. 2014’s Dungeon Master’s Guide had a much more rules-based approach, being more of a referee’s manual and technical guide on how to tinker with the rules than a tool for good storytelling. 2008’s Dungeon Master’s Guide had great guidance on improvisation, the use of props, and so on, but it sat on such a fundamentally flawed rules set that all the charisma in the world wouldn’t save you.
Luckily, the Dungeon Master’s Guide 2024 sits on solid rules set, namely its companion book, The Player’s Handbook, and it has about a decade’s worth of development. But it has a new challenge to deal with. During the last ten years, expectations of what it is to be a DM have changed. We’ve seen D&D become something that people pay money to see played in front of an audience, and the Dungeon Masters such as Brennan Lee Mulligan and Matt Mercer have become celebrities. So, no pressure then.
This new book finds the fine balance between referee and storyteller. It’s a solid manual on how to build worlds and how to work with players, and it also provides rules and guidance on how to make things fair. We get solid advice on different play styles and different sorts of groups. D&D is played by all sorts of people, and something that might seem obvious to you needs to be said to others.
The DM’s Toolbox chapter, for example, provides solid advice on not only how to invent a monster for the players to fight but also what to do when it all goes wrong and the entire party gets wiped out. (We’ve all been there.) The fact that it says “Death Must Be Fair” and then explains the steps to take when, say, your party decides to storm the gates of hell armed only with a wooden spoon and a grin pretty much sums up the gaming experience for Dungeon Masters.
The chapters on creating adventures and campaigns are also solid and break it down so you don’t miss anything for any of the players. Solid examples of how to plot and pace an adventure are provided, laid out in a clear and easy-to-replicate way.
The new Dungeon Master’s Guide also provides a basic setting, Greyhawk, which is a very ‘knights and wizards’ style fantasy setting. This was the very first world ever created for D&D, so it’s appropriate that it’s the example world. The book gives the basics and explores some of the more fun elements of creating your own setting. The physical book also has a map, we are led to believe.
We only had access to the digital copy of this book for review, so we can’t confirm the physical quality of the book or check out the map at the back. Wizards of the Coast does have an excellent track record in this regard, however. The version we saw appeared heavily illustrated, but we can’t confirm if those pictures help or hinder the print edition. Certainly, they look nice on the screen of a laptop.
Still, it’s nice to see Greyhawk become such an essential part of the game, especially as the Forgotten Realms are broadly seen as D&D’s default.
The final chapter of the book (before we get to the useful and expansive glossary) is about Bastions. This is a hold-over from D&D’s origins as both a table-top wargame and as a game folk would play via the postal service. The idea is that as your character progresses in the campaign, they build their own ‘home base’, which can be used as a starting point for adventures and the like.
Imagine if Bilbo Baggins, when coming back to Bag End, had decided to hire some stuff and add a trebuchet to his garden, that sort of thing. The rules presented are a perfectly cromulent example of a cooperative world-building exercise. Alas, we can’t see them used very often. Many DM’s prefer to handwave these sorts of resources instead, and if you wanted to do this properly, it’s the sort of thing you should devote an entire campaign to and build a spreadsheet for, and it really deserves its own book.
Overall, it was the best Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide we’ve ever seen.
