The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide packs a lot of advice and material for Dungeons & Dragons DMs into 384 pages, but there might be nothing in the book that's more condensed than the sample adventures. Five adventures appear in the course of four pages — three, really, if you discount an introduction to the concept and some splash art of a ballroom. Compared to the size of a modern DnD campaign, these materials are absolutely miniscule, but the bare bones aspect is a large part of the point.

I've had a digital copy of the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide for a while now, and over the past few weeks, those sample adventures have been calling my name. I'm never exactly at a loss for material, with years of experience writing homebrew DnD campaigns and plenty of books to turn to when I'm not. Truly bare-bones official adventures are an unusual offering, however, and I leaped at the opportunity to test one out when it came.

D&D’s 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide Adventures Are Very Basic

The Essentials & Very Little More

In an odd twist on the usual bane of DnD, it was actually an issue with scheduling that led me to run one of the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide sample adventures. The past month has been a nightmare to align with my usual group, and of the five players in the campaign, only two could commit to the usual time this week. Instead of calling it off, I put forth the proposition of running the level one adventure, The Fouled Stream, and both of them agreed to help determine its merits.

Although we could have spent a little time preparing things, I wanted to make this as much of a stress test as possible. While I would typically read through pre-written material ahead of time and think about how to best rework it to my needs, I intentionally hit the ground running without a warm-up. My players did the same, grabbing two of D&D Beyond's pre-made level one adventurers from the '80s DnD cartoon and jumping in. They went with Presto, the Wizard, and Diana, the Monk, although the latter was quickly abbreviated to Diane for the sake of a joke.

The level one adventure in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide takes up half a page, so the setup is simple. The village of High Ery, a Greyhawk location that receives a paragraph-long description elsewhere in the book, has a problem with a polluted river. I ran with the hook that sees the adventurers set out from the city of Greyhawk to investigate the problem, giving the characters the briefest of moments to get acquainted and letting them visit a classic starting tavern before starting their quest.

From there, Presto and Diane followed the pollution upstream, nabbing a restorative magic acorn from a helpful Treant along the way. Reaching a cave, they made short work of the Twig Blights outside and narrowly survived a battle with Bullywugs after entering. Presto downed the magic acorn and got back up to five health, so they journeyed on to the final encounter with a Psychic Gray Ooze and some Stirges.

Minor Hiccups Don’t Spoil The Dungeons & Dragons Fun

Sessions Don't Have To Be Perfect

My lack of prep did lead to a couple of brief pauses while running things in the cave, mostly in the interest of making sure I was following instructions. The book suggests using part of one map in the back for the cave, but I had a brief hang-up making sense of what it wanted from me (I'm still slightly unclear on it). The other tripping point was the fault of the Monster Manual putting the Psychic Gray Ooze information in a sidebar two pages before the Gray Ooze actually appears, which also took me a minute to figure out.

In the long run, the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide is intended to be used with the 2025 Monster Manual, which might make the Psychic Gray Ooze a bit easier to reference.

Otherwise, it all went well, and roughly halving each encounter to accommodate a level two party led to appropriately dangerous odds that Presto and Diane ultimately survived. Rather than destroying the brain-like fungus corrupting the water, Presto tossed it in his pack. Stopping once more by the tavern as the adventure drew to a close, Presto rolled a nat 20 to convince the bartender to use the problematic fungus in future brewing. When you unshackle typically high-minded players from their long-term characters, they're a lot more willing to cause problems for the sake of it.

Some prep or improv could definitely make more out of The Fouled Stream, and a couple additional unique NPCs, additional threats and discoveries in the forest, and an expanded cave with a bigger narrative pay-off would go a long way. Running it as it is, however, generally works just fine. Diane's player summed up the experience nicely after the session, deeming the adventure highly generic but acknowledging that it was more fun than he had expected.

The 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide Proves Its Point

Anyone Can Be A Dungeon Master

With that assessment in mind, I think the sample adventure serves its purpose reasonably well. DMs used to heavy improvisation can sometimes run fun sessions with no solid materials in hand, but I intentionally avoided spinning far off-script for this test, and it proves that extemporizing experience isn't necessary to work something out with a basic hook and a few encounters. Making DnD fun requires very little, and illustrating that principle is one of the best ways to convince people to try their hand at being dungeon masters.

There are plenty of resources out there to help experienced DMs continue to hone their game, and some material in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide could help with that. Its biggest advancement over the 2014 edition, however, is how much better it is at leading newcomers into the concept. I've been doing this for years, but watching my players purify the water supply to poison the alcohol in its stead convinced me that an aspiring DM wouldn't need anything more than the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide to run their first perfectly decent Dungeons & Dragons adventure.