Every experienced Dungeons & Dragons player ultimately ends up having some gripes about the game, but it only stands to reason that everyone has their own preferences when it comes to design choices. If anyone might be consistently happy with the approach, however, it should be the designers behind the decisions. Still, hindsight is everything, and even D&D Creative Director Chris Perkins can end up bemoaning an annoyance for a decade.

Taken on their own, D&D's core rulebooks are critical texts for playing the game, but they also feed into everything else that D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast releases. Campaign books are defined by what the rulebooks include and exclude, and if something foundational to the average adventure didn't make it into a core rulebook, every adventure is doomed to explain it once again. One mundane concept that the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide left out was the workings of doors, and the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide finally fixes this lingering issue.

Doors In D&D Have Been A Persistent Annoyance

Chris Perkins Has His Complaints

Chris Perkins explained his frustration with doors in an interview with Screen Rant, which ultimately comes down to the fact that every D&D 5e adventure has been forced to offer some advice on how to handle doors. Cropping up repeatedly both in dungeons and outside of them, doors are a constant target of the average party's interactions. While things are simple enough if the key for a locked door is readily at hand, the frequent use of a door as an obstacle means that the party is often using much less conventional methods.

How The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Addresses Doors

One Page Can Do A Lot Of Work

To settle the issue, the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide dedicates a full page to doors, and not in the same way as the 2014 book's appendix of random tables. This time, stats and rules are provided to help DMs adjudicate the party's success in opening them. Armor class, health, and DC thresholds for dice rolls determine the odds of brute force succeeding, while a couple more tables and a paragraph-long explanation serve a similar role for locks. Appropriately for surprise-filled dungeons, secret doors are also covered, as are portcullises.

It's not the most thrilling material of all time, but it's undeniably practical, and having the information on hand in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide could be a godsend for new DMs. To Perkins's concerns, the consolidated resource could save on wasted space in future campaign books, which also has the benefit of making the reference more convenient for DMs running homebrew adventures.

The section on doors is a part of the DM's Toolbox, a new chapter that consolidates a lot of useful materials into the span of roughly 50 pages. The approach falls in line with a greater emphasis on organized reference sections in the new rulebooks, most notably showcased by Rules Glossary in the 2024 Player's Handbook and the Lore Glossary in the Dungeon Master's Guide. Major new features like Bastions might be more thrilling for DMs, but for Chris Perkins, the biggest relief in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide might very well be the page on doors.