One D&D: 2024 D&D Core Rulebooks

Here follow my notes and thoughts about the 2024 Core Rulebooks video that Wizards of the Coast released in early June 2023.

For more context and my Standard Disclaimer, check out the introduction to this series.

The new books are a “continuation” of the 2014 books. The goal is to “prepare the game for its next decade”. They want to include all the best parts of the 2014 books, new material, and old material that has been refined based on what is resonating with the community. Things that aren’t resonating won’t be carried forward. The UA process so far has been a way to gauge the community’s interest for change and to see what gets people excited. Things got tested even knowing that they might not be work out. Upcoming UAs will feature a return to more familiar things with some new material incorporated.

Gaining subclasses at 3rd level is testing well, but having the subclass progressions in sync has not been testing badly, but isn’t causing “delight”. “If the response to something is ‘meh’, we’re leaving it behind.” In the next UA — Experts and Priests — the old subclass progressions will be back, but without subclasses in levels 1 and 2.

Monk is still “coming soon”.

”Backward compatibility” is much more explicitly defined now — the goal is for the adventures to be compatible with the new books. Curse of Strahd, Princes of the Apocalypse, etc.

Why maintain this adventure compatibility instead of doing a new edition? Fifth edition continues to grow (and sell well) — no reason to stop it. They aim to fix “squeaky wheels”, set up new design spaces to explore, and make the core books the best they can be for the next ten years. The new books will tell you how they work with existing adventures.

What’s with all the “2014” vs. ”2024” in recent discussions? They’ve been using calver internally for three years! They’ve found that it helps them be clear about which versions of the core books they’re discussing.

Changes in capitalization? Started off with many more things capitalized in the early UAs; it’s been dialed back but we should expect the 2024 release to have many more terms capitalized than in the 2014 version. Proper nouns help to distinguish when something is an important game terms instead of just plain English; the text signals whether something can be looked up versus just interpreted by a reader.

My Thoughts

This is a shorter video, restating the approach to and goals of the play test process. It feels a bit repetitive to me, but then again there’s that saying about people having to hear something seven times before it really sinks in.

Personally, I’m glad to see subclass acquisition standardized at level 3, but I’m skeptical about whether a return to 2014 subclass progressions is a good idea. Folks on Reddit are calling this “the worst of both worlds”, but I’ll wait to see how the next UA shapes up before rushing to judgment. I did light into them in the most recent survey about reverting to the 2014 exhaustion rules, which I found really disappointing.

I’m curious about the hold up with the Monk. I wonder if they’re struggling with the process of trying to disconnect it from kung fu stereotypes and related terminology.

I appreciated the acknowledgment that sales of 5E books play a part in refining 5E vs. making a clean break to a new edition. It felt like a bit of genuine honesty — why would they break adventure compatibility if people are still buying Curse of Strahd? That’d be foolish.

My jaw hit the ground when Crawford said they’d been using calver internally for years. I’ve been banging that drum for a while now, and it felt pretty great to have that validated. I expect to see some kind of “2024” label on the new books, and hopefully we can put an end to all the arguments about whether it’s “5.5E” or “6E” or “5.1E” or whatever else people want to argue about to get their flavor of social media points. Folks on Reddit seem to think this means there won’t be new cover art, but the video doesn’t mention that one way or the other, so don’t fall for any nonsense there.

And as for making game rule terms into Proper Nouns with Noticeable Capitalization? I twigged to this early on, and I welcome it wholeheartedly.

I look forward to the next UA revisions with cautious optimism, an open mind, and an eagerness to provide survey feedback.