The unacknowledged secret of D&D is this: The rules don’t really matter.
Yes, obviously, you need an agreed-upon framework to hold everything together; games would otherwise spiral into the fruitless disagreements that characterized (and concluded) childhood games of pretend.
“Pew pew—you’re dead.”
“Nuh-uh—I have a force field.”
“That’s not fair. I’m telling mom.”
“You don’t have a mom. I blew up your planet.”
“Mom!!!!! Johnny’s being genocidal again.”
But after you’ve run D&D long enough, you realize you can do so without consulting anything other than yourself. This is at odds with a nerd’s inborn desire to purchase new things for the hobby, so we pretend not to know what we already know: We don’t need new books and probably won’t use them. They look great on the shelf though.
The real utility of rules in tabletop roleplaying games is they tell players how to interact with the game and the kinds of things their characters can do. They’re something tangible in a game that's entirely make-believe. The rules are what make it a game, and not improv theater with a proliferation of questionable Scottish brogues.
That's why the rules are in the Player’s Handbook. There's an accompanying companion for the person running the game—the Dungeon Master’s Guide—but its contents are more art than science. How to build a world. How to run an adventure. How to keep a straight face when your players are about to do something really dumb, which is at least 50% of the experience.
You can do whatever you want behind the DM’s screen, and as long as it’s not egregious or blatantly against the rules, your players won’t notice or care. All that matters is telling a good story, and doing that adheres to different rules, ones you ironically don’t need a rulebook for: characters, setting, plot, conflict.
I’m not advocating ignoring the rules. I follow them myself, most of the time. But I’ve also made-up stats and abilities for enemies without consulting the monster manual. I’ve hand-waved things I deemed not to matter—spell components, character diet, inventory, payment for incidentals, and, of course, encumbrance—in favor of forward momentum. I’ve adjusted the layout of dungeons on the fly, adding rooms or removing them, based on the players’ progress or lack thereof. I’ve placed treasure and traps where the adventure had none. None of this is “by the book,” but I’d argue my games have been better of it.
When it comes to D&D, only one rule matters: Is everyone having fun?
Changes Big and Small
Thus, I was on the fence about buying the 2024 Player's Handbook, which refreshes the 5th edition ruleset introduced in 2014. 5th edition is easily the most popular edition of the game, and though publisher Wizards of the Coast doesn't share revenue details, it's also widely considered the best-selling edition. Many fans have taken to calling the new rules 5.5, though the publisher differentiates solely by the year the books were published—2014 and 2024. That reluctance to move away from 5th edition, even if only in name, makes sense from a business standpoint. It also reflects the changes themselves.
My prevailing thought while reading through the 2024 Player's Handbook is that it feels exactly like the 5th edition rules we've had for the last 10 years, with just enough minor changes to make me question what I think I know. For instance: Surprise no longer grants an entire round of unimpeded action. Instead, the surprised combatants have disadvantage on their initiative roll. Is that better or worse? I'm of two minds about it. The only thing I can say for certain is it's different.
Such rules tinkering is few and far between. I can only assume one of the design philosophies was, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." If you buy these books strictly for new noodly bits, or if you hated 5th edition and were hoping for something drastically different, you'll be disappointed. For the rest of us, the 2024 refresh is the ultimate distillation of the 5th edition experience.
Where the 2024 Player's Handbook shines brightest is in its advocacy for player choice. There are more subclasses, more spells, more abilities. Characters gain abilities faster, and on the whole feel about 10% more powerful. But the most exciting development is the one that ruffled some feathers in the community because it broke with 50 years of tradition.
Dungeons & Dragons characters are primarily a combination of two choices the player makes at the time of creation—the character's race and class. A human wizard. An elf barbarian. A dwarf cleric. The class stipulates what abilities the character has. Prior to 2024, race granted statistical advantages. All dwarves were cut from the same cloth—short, stocky, ruggedly robust—and mechanically enjoyed a bonus to their constitution score, among other things.
Depending on your familiarity with D&D and fantasy literature at large, the previous sentence will either have you nodding in agreement or thinking, "all dwarves— really?" But given the traits I listed are generally considered positive, most people give it a pass. The problem is more easily seen in the game's handling of Half-Orcs. Previous editions bestowed a -2 penalty to intelligence because they were considered savages. The 2014 edition did away with the penalty but retained much of the nomenclature.
Some consider "genetic determinism" to be a gamified form of the racism that has plagued the fantasy genre for years. I'm honestly not so sure. These are make-believe races and peoples, after all. Must we always project our own crap into everything? But by the same token, is it even possible to create something from whole cloth without bringing your own experiences and biases to the table? Even subconsciously?
The debate predictably raged across social media until it became yet another front in the culture war leeching into every part of modern life. As someone who's played D&D since the 80s, my knee-jerk reaction was this all felt a little silly and needlessly dramatic. But I also strive not to be a racist asshole, even on accident. Changing rules to be more inclusive harms nobody. And ultimately all the rhetoric and fist-shaking about undermining 50 years of convention conveniently overlooks something all players know: You can play D&D however you want, which includes ignoring the rules you don't like.
I'm a huge fan of the new racial rules. Which frankly surprised me, given the years-long investment I have in this game.
Each race—since rebranded to species—still bestows abilities unique to their physiology. Dragonborn deal breath-based damage. Dwarves know their way around stonework. Orcs are particularly hard to kill. (Yes, Orcs; the 2024 update does away with the half races—Half-Elf, Half-Orc—which always suggested a world in which interspecies sexual assault was commonplace.) The statistical benefits previously granted by races have been moved to the character's background. Backgrounds have been a part of D&D since 2014, but take on increased importance in the 2024 update.
It seems like a relatively minor change, but the result is a sense of limitless possibilities. You're no longer constrained by the rules but instead by your imagination. There was nothing stopping you trying to play against type previously, but the game fought you all the way. The new rules remove all superficial guardrails.
This change is the biggest, but it is thematically in-step with every other addition. The rules serve the player and cater to their choices. The overall sense is of having more options and greater freedom. It's damned exciting.
The 2024 Player's Handbook also sports much improved organization, which isn't the sexiest perk but its value can't be overstated. Incorporating spell lists alongside each class is a move of such genius, you have to wonder how we got along for 50 years without it.
The Last of His Name
There's a very real possibility that this will be the last D&D book of its kind.
Hasbro, which owns D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast along with much of my childhood, has made it no secret that it's their desire to ruin D&D through the pervasive and liberal use of AI.
Speaking at a Goldman Sachs conference—which I imagine is like Mordor with three-piece suits—Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks made the following statements related to D&D and AI (comments mine in italics):
- "Inside of development, we've already been using AI." The patient is already infected, so it's really a question of how long until Hasbro kills D&D completely.
- "We will deploy it significantly and liberally internally as both a knowledge worker aid and as a development aid." It's the latter part that's particularly troubling.
- "There's not a single person who doesn't use AI somehow for either campaign development or character development or story ideas. That's a clear signal that we need to be embracing it." Umm, I beg to differ, bro.
- "The themes around using AI to enable user-generated content, using AI to streamline new player introduction, using AI for emergent storytelling—I think you're going to see that not just our hardcore brands like D&D but also multiple of our brands." How is it that the least creative people end up running companies founded on creativity?
Cocks—I'm sorry, and it's juvenile, but I'm just going say it: the dude's name is apropos—also said he plays D&D with "30 or 40 people regularly," which is the CEO version of "how do you do, fellow kids." I'm not saying he's lying, just that in my 30+ years of experience, nobody plays D&D with "30 or 40 people regularly." Maybe he's confusing D&D with a different kind of roleplaying.
While he undercut his nerd credibility with that throwaway boast, Cocks has been consistent in his slavish praise of AI's ability to resell us stuff we already own.
"But when you talk about the richness of the lore and the depth of the brands–D&D has 50 years of content that we can mine. Literally thousands of adventures that we’ve created, probably tens of millions of words we own and can leverage." ~ Cocks, Hasbro CEO
The company was already caught with its hand in the cookie jar for using generative AI art. Not only is the call coming from inside the house, the killer's eating all the Oreos too.
All of this is but preamble to Hasbro's goal to lock us all into a subscription model populated with their AI-mined creations.
Project Sigil is a 3D sandbox that brings your favorite franchises to life in a fast, fun, and immersive way. Play, create, and share imaginative adventures with friends across platforms from PC, console, and mobile.
On the surface, Project Sigil is a feature-rich, 3D version of virtual tabletops like Roll20. But given Hasbro's public decrees of love for what AI can do for their bottomline, it doesn't take a spell of scrying or a crystal ball to determine their end game.
The new Player's Handbook and the rest of the 2024 refresh are more likely a vestige of the old ways than a promise D&D will continue as it has been. Like it or not—I definitely do not—the future of D&D will be written by AI fed on D&D's past.
If this is to be the final physical D&D rulebook, it's going out like Aragorn and King Théoden at Helm's Deep—riding out into the faceless horde to make one glorious final stand.
You Should Buy This Book
I initially felt a very conflicted about buying the 2024 rules update.
It felt like a very optional purchase. Especially compared to the move from the tactics-heavy approach of 4th edition, or from the Feat bloat of 3rd edition. And though buying the book was a foregone conclusion—I've purchased every new rulebook since 2nd edition, which I saved my allowance to buy back in 1993—it wasn't something I was enthusiastic about. Did I really need to drop $50 on an updated version of the rules I already own? In this economy? Especially since I can make D&D whatever I want it to be?
But after reading through the book, I have no regrets. In fact, I’ll go one better: I’m giddy with excitement about the 2024 update. I'm anxiously awaiting the updated Dungeon Master's Guide, due out next month. And the 2024 Monster Manual releasing in 2025. I'm all about the 2024 update. I've taken to stalking the Wizards of the Coast YouTube channel to gorge myself on their marketing materials.
You probably don't need the updated Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook. I recommend buying it anyway. It may very well end up being the final Player's Handbook. But if so, what a way to go out.
