Some already have the 2024 Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook in hand, and the other two core books will trickle out in the next few months, but I worry the releases that follow won’t address what the game truly needs. If the 2024 revision follows the model of its 2014 predecessor, fans will see core books and starter sets for brand-new tabletop RPG hobbyists, and then a series of books that alternate between pre-made adventures, campaign-setting books, and rule expansions. The game, instead, needs elaborately explained adventures that clearly illustrate campaign styles, from political intrigue to hex crawls.

The 2024 DnD Dungeon Master’s Guide launches soon, and this prompted me to revisit the 2014 DMG. Like many DMs, I read the book in its entirety shortly after the release of 5e DnD. In the years since, I’ve only opened it to peruse the magic item list or to consult a specific optional rule when it arises in my campaign, like the madness system or the statistics for firearms. I that when I originally read the 2014 DMG I was largely satisfied with it. It gave me everything I felt I needed to run a 5e-appropriate campaign.

5e's DMG Focused Too Much On World Building

Starting DMs Need To Focus On How To Run A Campaign, Not Creating New Worlds

The masterwork video game Disco Elysium started from DnD homebrew, but my homebrew world was certainly less impressive. Still, the DMG gave me the tools to homebrew a world that fit the mechanics and vibe of 5e. It gave me the rules and suggestions I needed to run a campaign with a mix of all pillars of play, namely combat, exploration, and social interaction. Except, it didn’t. I realized upon my recent re-read that the 5e DMG didn’t really instruct me on much outside of how to create a campaign world. The rest came from my experiences with older DnD editions.

A well-explained adventure can show how the story's stakes create a "failure state" if the party does not proceed at a pace that encourages risk and challenge by attrition.

The ambiguously named game 2024 DnD is launching with a DnD Player’s Handbook that starts fresh, much closer to an entirely new edition than a simple revision of the 5e system. Veteran fans know what to expect from a Player’s Handbook or a Monster Manual, but the third core book of DnD has always had a more ambiguous role. Some editions buried core mechanics in a book that players were never meant to see. Its role as a repository for magic item stats has been consistent. Less consistent is how genuinely useful it is for starting Dungeon Masters.

Often, there are tips for new DnD Dungeon Masters, with broad-stroke advice to “run intrigue” or “run a sandbox adventure,” but little in the way of practical examples of running any of these styles. When I saw the recommended number of combat encounters per adventuring day, I immediately made the logical leap that I could ensure those with a story that has consistent time-bound narrative stakes. The DMG did not tell me that; past DnD DMing experience told me that. There was no guidance on organically incentivizing players to press on instead of taking a long rest after every combat.

Starter D&D Adventures Need Explanatory Sidebars

For New DMs, Adventures Need To Thoroughly Explain, Now Simply Show, The Format

When DMs use a DnD adventure aimed at starting DMs, it usually only teaches them how to run that specific adventure. They might infer certain things based on how that adventure is structured that they might use when creating their own custom adventures and campaigns. There has been remarkably little transparency in the playtests prior to 2024 DnD. Playtesters were shown a piece of Unearthed Arcana playtest material and asked to provide their thoughts on it. The design goals of the creators remained opaque. A starter adventure can feel the same way, without sidebars from the writers explaining its structure.

While compressing decades of DMing experience into a single book might seem quixotic, it could be possible. Imagine an adventure with multiple “modes” of play, one focused on each pillar. The social pillar-focused rendition explains how DMs can incorporate combat into a Byzantine web of alliances and deceit. A crumbling kingdom with various factions vying for power, surrounded by ruins containing powerful relics, could fit the bill. The intrigue-focused approach can detail each faction and its leaders, and the various schemes of blackmail and assassination they have planned. The book can show DMs how adventurers enmeshed in political struggles work.

Inexperienced DMs may think an intrigue-focused game lacks combat. While the social pillar is paramount, intrigue-based campaigns are as bloody and brutal as any dungeon crawl.

This could illustrate how DnD parties split and then reform, as a Rogue might shadow an agent of another faction while the Fighter goes undercover with corrupt constables. Once the party has information on an assassination attempt that threatens their faction, they gather together to stop the assassins and engage in combat. An actual practical example can illustrate how intrigue can work with DnD while still ensuring time-based stakes that encourage multiple daily combat encounters. The same adventure could illuminate the more irksome “sandbox game,” and even the classic hex crawl model, and how to make it functional with DnD.

Every D&D Style Requires Stakes And Urgency

The DM's Story Must Always Involve Time-Bound Failure Conditions

If the players are not cast as deeply involved of a faction, they might simply be bog-standard adventurers who accept a contract to acquire the relics for one of the factions. Where the intrigue-focused game might have the players battling information couriers to learn when a rival faction’s hired mercenaries is delivering a relic, then moving to intercept them, the sandbox-style heroes are going into the wilds to search for dungeons and ruins. Time-sensitive stakes still apply, as the client can convey rival faction agents are pursuing the same goals. This gives a hex crawl urgency.

The biggest flaw of sandbox-style hex crawls is the plodding pacing and lack of focus. Time-bound stakes mean overly frequent long rests cause the mission to fail.

The hex crawl is a format as dated as DnD’s Tomb of Horrors, which relies on the overland travel rules some DMs avoid. A map of the region is divided into hexes, each representing a number of miles. Some hexes might have dungeons to explore, while others have unrelated combat encounters, clues, or treasure. A “motivated hex crawl” changes things. If the party takes a long rest after one battle, a spell of Sending from their patron could inform them one of the relics has been claimed by a rival faction. This reinforces time-sensitive stakes for the story.

A third example that focuses on the combat pillar might hand wave away the complexity of the social pillar or the decision-making of the exploration pillar and cast adventurers as hired muscle, essentially. The story remains the same, but now the heroes are escorted by a faction’s scouts to the entrances of each dungeon in sequence, and the players just focus on battling its guardians and claiming the loot. The same story is unfolding across all three formats, but they vary in how involved the player characters are in their complexities. All three reinforce multiple daily combat encounters as well.

D&D Adventures Should Explain Their Structure

Starter Adventures Can Clearly Spell Out The Logic Of Their Design For New DMs

An anthology like DnD’s Quests From The Infinite Staircase showcases several styles, but a more useful format for starting DMs would explain why story structure is important to ensure there are always time-bound stakes that are relevant to the players. They might have personal convictions for their faction, or they simply don’t want relics to fall into an evil faction’s clutches.

Even profit-motivated adventurers don’t want to miss out on claiming treasure when others are also seeking it. Dungeons & Dragons’ campaign styles need examples and explanations within an adventure, not one paragraph per pillar in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.

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