What’s New in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide?

Tags author-mike-bernier Dungeon Master's Guide

The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide is your toolkit for infinite fun with your adventuring party! Packed with 384 pages of new and redesigned content, this book offers everything a Dungeon Master needs to excite their imagination. You'll find everything from tips on running your game to the new rules for Bastions and over 400 magical treasures for your players to discover.

This essential resource walks you through every step of running a campaign and provides real-world advice for your D&D sessions. Perfect for beginners looking to dive in and experienced DMs ready to take their games to the next level!

The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide is Now Available

Prep your adventures with invaluable tools and expert advice in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide! Encompassing 400+ magic items, new rules for Bastions, a Greyhawk campaign setting, and more, this trove of tools will help you weave epic tales for your table and save you time on your prep.

If you want all three core rulebooks, you can save $60, get exclusive digital bonuses, and immediately access the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide and 2024 Player's Handbook when you pre-order the Digital & Physical Core Rulebook Bundle.

New Advice for Dungeon Masters of All Levels

Artist: Katerina LadonA party of adventurers sit in a wagon on a dirt road discussing their plans.

The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide is packed full of essential advice for DMs of all experience levels, whether you're just beginning or a seasoned veteran. It now kicks off with an overview of the basics, making it perfect for those who are curious about stepping into the role of a Dungeon Master. This introduction is complete with sample gameplay scenarios to demonstrate how different elements can come together in an actual session, like how exploration can transition to combat.

The book then leads into a detailed chapter on running the game, which will be helpful for newcomers and old hands looking to refresh their skills. It overviews important parts of gameplay, like social interaction and exploration, while also providing real-world advice to DMs, like what to do if some players can't make your session.

As much as the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide contains tutorials on how D&D is actually played, it also contains tons of ways to add to your game, like the DM's Toolbox chapter. This section covers the building blocks for your game. You can now easily find information about anything from alignment to traps, reorganized into alphabetical order to make them easy to look up. Need to create a background, creature, magic item, or spell to fit your story? This chapter walks you through the process. Just TPK'd your party? You'll find advice on how to handle the situation here.

Players Can Build Bases With New Rules for Bastions

Artist: Noor RahmanA Rogue's Bastion, which appears as a Thieves' Guild in a dark alley

Another major addition is the rules for Bastions, a reimagining of the classic concept of strongholds from earlier editions. With these new rules, players can build their own bases, furnish them with special facilities, and weave narratives with their NPC hirelings. 

Bastions are a fantastic way to show off who your players' characters are and realize long-term plans to build the base of their dreams. Will the Druid set up shop in an abandoned greenhouse or build a cozy grass-roof cottage in the woods? Does the Wizard prefer a tall tower protected by wards or an underground maze so their experiments don't get loose? The possibilities are only limited by your players' imagination!

The Bastion system operates parallel to your players' adventuring career, so while they're off saving the multiverse, their Bastion is running in the background, managed by hirelings and triggering events. As they level up, their Bastion will follow suit, allowing them to build special facilities that provide mechanical benefits.

Managing a Bastion is a perfect out-of-session activity that can engage players even when they aren't actively rolling dice. Players can work on drawing and designing their Bastion, think about what orders they want to provide their hirelings, and browse the upgrades that will be available as they level up.

Over 400 New and Improved Magical Items and Rules for Crafting

Artist: Olga DrebasA wizard sits at his desk, attempting to make a new magic potion.

The biggest chapter in the book is devoted to magic items of all kinds. Among these pages, you'll find new magic items spanning rarities, including nostalgic items, such as the Energy Bow, wielded by the Ranger Hank from the 1980s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. You'll also find more Common magic items, which are fun trinkets to award players that can stoke their creativity!

With this chapter at your disposal, your players will never be more excited to hear, "Roll for loot!" 

Rules for crafting magic items are also presented in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide, which means your Wizard who likes to tinker away in their free time will have something to devote their energy (and gold) towards!

Adventures, Handouts, and Ready-to-Play Maps

Artist: Luca BanconeA table surrounded by bookshelves. The table has a miniature city and castle on it.

The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide provides a trove of tangible content that you can pluck straight from the pages to use in your games, including ready-to-play adventures, maps of adventuring environments, and handouts to help track your game.

These pieces of content serve two purposes: First, they are perfect for DMs who need to quickly slot something into their game. Second, they give DMs a framework for preparing these types of content for use in their games.

For example, the five short adventures included at the end of chapter 4 show Dungeon Masters how to break their adventures into an actionable outline that gives them what they need to run their sessions. Similarly, the handouts sprinkled throughout the book provide a template for creating NPCs and building settlements.

Greyhawk as a Customizable Campaign Setting

Artist: Bruce BrenneiseAn imposing castle is lit by torches in the dark.

The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide contains a full campaign setting guide for one of D&D's more legendary realms, Greyhawk. It includes a double-sided poster map showing the City of Greyhawk and its surrounding wilderness on top of a variety of content that details important campaign information. You'll learn about what kind of Oerthian conflicts are suitable for different party levels, how to start your campaign in the Free City of Greyhawk, and how to continue your adventures in the various locations spread throughout the vast region of Eastern Oerik.

Much like the adventures in the previous chapter, this gives Dungeon Masters a pre-made campaign to run if they wish or provides them with a template for creating their own campaign world.

Explore the Legends of D&D in the Lore Glossary

Artist: Kent DavisA Brass Dragon soaring over a desert landscape

For DMs who love the swathes of lore established in D&D's 50 years, there's an entire chapter dedicated to a lore glossary. This chapter acts as a quick reference guide to the most famous characters, magical items, and key concepts that define the world of Dungeons & Dragons.

There is also a whole chapter devoted to cosmology in D&D, making it easier than ever to reference and incorporate the multiverse into your campaigns.

Throughout the book, pieces of artwork have been added to give players and Dungeon Masters more context on the location or entity they're reading about. Alongside the chapter about D&D's cosmology, you'll find artwork for prominent planes in the D&D multiverse. Similarly, the chapter on magic items is full of illustrations for specific magic items.

These stunning artworks bring concepts to life and fuel creativity. Being able to see what their Staff of Frost looks like can help players complete the mental (or physical) picture of their character. Likewise, DMs who see the jagged spires of stone that jut from Avernus's landscape will be able to craft adventures that incorporate these aspects into their games.

Order the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide

A decade's worth of feedback has gone into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide to make it the ultimate resource for new and experienced DMs. This redesigned book has been crafted to promote accessibility and presents the information in a way that suits Dungeon Masters. With the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide, the infinite creativity of D&D is at your fingertips. You'll have everything you need to lead your players on adventures in Greyhawk, through the D&D multiverse, or in a realm of your own creation.

Order your copy today, and you'll be ready to embark on adventure with more tools, inspiration, and confidence than ever before!

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Mike Bernier (@arcane_eye) is the founder of Arcane Eye, a site focused on providing useful tips and tricks to all those involved in the world of D&D. Outside of writing for Arcane Eye, Mike spends most of his time playing games, hiking with his partner, and tending the veritable jungle of houseplants that have invaded his house.

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