Charlie Hall is Polygon’s tabletop editor. In 10-plus years as a journalist & photographer, he has covered simulation, strategy, and spacefaring games, as well as public policy.
Dungeons & Dragons has gone mainstream. Nearly 50 years after its invention, more people than ever before are rolling dice with their friends. Meanwhile, major media crossovers like Stranger Things and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves are making sure that even the long-held stigmas attached to the game are falling by the wayside. But, in many ways, the game’s development team at Wizards of the Coast has fallen a bit behind, and now it’s time for a revision. A new set of core rulebooks is on the way. just be careful not to call it 6th edition.
Following the launch of the game’s 5th edition in 2014, Wizards spent the better part of a decade tinkering with and iterating on its winning formula. That process culminated in early 2022 with the Rules Expansion Gift Set: three volumes titled Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, and Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse. Now, developers say, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and formally integrate what worked in those three new books into a full-fledged update of 5th edition D&D. That means new versions of the original three core rulebooks, a triad known to fans as the Player’s Handbook (PHB), the Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG), and the Monster Manual (MM). Along the way, Wizards said it will also endeavor to make those books richer and more usable than ever before — all while retaining continuity and compatibility with every 5th edition product that has come before.
“For so many people, those books are their introductory experience to the game,” said game design architect Chris Perkins in a group interview with press earlier this month. “Those books are denser than some of our later books, the monsters aren’t as easy or as fun to play as some of our more recent books, and finding things is not as easy. [. ] So making sure that our gateway to the game is as strong, as beautiful, [and] as accessible as possible I think is very important for the longevity of the game — and just for people’s enjoyment.”
Here’s what you should expect inside the updated 2024 editions of Dungeons & Dragons’ core rulebooks.
Player’s Handbook (2024) will have a lot more pages in it than the original, which is among D&D’s largest books, clocking in at a hefty 320 pages. But the updated version likely won’t have as many words.
The new PHB designers said they are working hard to streamline its language throughout and to provide more art to players than ever before. There will be new images for each of the book’s 12 core classes — barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, fighter, monk, paladin, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, warlock, and wizard — as well as for each of the 48 sub-classes included inside (four total for each core class). Most importantly, that art will highlight the full spectrum of real-world human diversity.
While it’s important that potential players be able to see themselves on the pages of the Player’s Handbook (2024), it’s likewise important that newcomers have the best on-ramp possible to actually learn to play the game. For that reason, character creation is being moved back behind the game’s most fundamental rules. This new expression of the 5th edition PHB will actually teach you how to play the game before it invites you to roll up your first character.
And, when you do decide to make that first character, you’ll have more choices than ever before, thanks to more than 144 options for your character’s background. Whether they started life as a soldier or a scholar will also be more important than it was in 2014. That’s because the new Player’s Handbook (2024) will offload important features like ability score improvements, first-level feats, and more from your character’s biological roots to their cultural and socioeconomic roots — similar to what was proposed as a new, optional rule in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything.
“The ‘character origins’ chapter will also include guidance on alignment [and] languages,” said game design architect Jeremy Crawford. “But the focus is on species [formerly called race] and backgrounds. How we are framing it — and this is really building on work we did in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything — is taking those two components of the character [and] combining them to create a glimpse of who their character was before they became an adventurer.”
Player’s Handbook (2024) will also include rules for creating backgrounds of your own. “We’re basically giving people more tools than they’ve ever had,” Crawford said.
Ability scores like strength, dexterity, and wisdom will also be locked in much later in the character creation process. Players will of course be able to use existing methods to generate those scores, like the “standard array” and the “point-buy system” of old. But going forward, the classes themselves will recommend what ability scores to take. These, and other changes in the PHB, are all designed to get people playing faster.
“Let’s get to the play,” Crawford said, “while still giving people the customization options that they’re used to. Now you decide, as a player or a DM: Am I gonna take the time to build this myself? Or am I going to use one of these get-going-quick options that the book now provides?”
