D&D and keepsake games are set to collide in 2024, and I’m here for it

Currently in my home there are six copies of the Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition Player’s Handbook — one for me, one for my 13-year-old daughter, and four for the other kids that we play with from time to time. But there’s only one copy of the Dungeon Master’s Guide. The book is rarely used by the Hall family after its first readthrough. That’s likely to change in 2024, because the DMG The face of the is receiving a major makeover.

D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast has been talking about revised versions of its three core rulebooks for a long time now. Its ambitious schedule of playtests, which has already garnered over 500,000 written comments, is partly responsible for the length of this promotional period. Good feedback is hard to find, and when you’re getting it in volume it’s hard to make use of. Wizards bungled its initial announcement, and they spent much of 2023 trying to explain it. But the D&D publisher appears genuinely motivated to make the books better — easier for players to find what they’re looking for, with richer guidance for every skill level. It’s the Dungeon Master’s Guide that is in the greatest need of improvement. DMGA private media event held in Seattle, earlier this year, made it clear that.

Wizards of the Coast

“I don’t know if you recall,” said rules architect Chris Perkins at the time, “but chapter one of that book is on building a campaign, and one of the first things you’re told is the difference between a meritocracy and a plutocracy. It’s like, OK. I’m a new DM. This is it? Is that the most important information I need about my Campaign? No. […] Chapter two is all about the D&D cosmology. Outer Planes, and Inner Planes. And it’s like, Does this mean I have to start here to be a DM?”

That’s basically the response that my 13-year-old had the week before Gen Con. “I want to be a DM,” she said, and my heart sorta skipped a beat. She took the book from me. DMG. A few hours later, I discovered her eating it. So when I bumped into game design architect Jeremy Crawford at this year’s Gen Con, I wanted to know: How’s that DMG going? That’s when things turned a little philosophical.

“Why do people DM?” posited Crawford. “What causes them to stick around as DMs? What could cause burnout in DMs? What would excite them to be DMs longer?” These are the most important questions to answer, he said, and those answers should be what fills the new DMG.

You can open the new version by clicking on the link below. Dungeon Master’s GuideCrawford stated that you should expect to see it much more organized. You’ll learn how to roll dice, for instance, in chapter one, not chapter eight as it sits now. It will be slightly longer as well. Also, you will need to complete some of this space.

“Worksheets [are a]There is a brand new book in our collection. Dungeon Master’s Guides haven’t had,” Crawford said. “We know that for many DMs, the creation of a world, the creation of adventures, the creation of NPCs and magic items and backstories — it is a solo game, and we want to make sure that this Dungeon Master’s GuideThis is why it has worksheets. Which is why it has worksheets.”

Those worksheets, Crawford said, will be made available to download so that players don’t have to write inside their books if they don’t want to. It’s not that I don’t think many people would want to.

It’s a habit of mine to write in my RPG books. When I played 4th Edition, I painstakingly updated the core books manually based on errata. The practice continued into 5th Edition, where my books have become a jumble of highlighted passages, annotated notes, and marginalia. It makes me more efficient to have it all in one place — not on a tablet or my phone, and not scattered between a bunch of different books. I mostly just carry my customized PHB The following are some examples of how to get started: Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything for the latest Artificer rules, and I’m good to go.

What if I was to get a new phone? DMG. If it’s full of worksheets, well, then I’m going to fill those worksheets up right there on the page. And when I’m done filling in those worksheets, and dragging my new campaign around to weekly games with my group, I’m going to need another fresh DMG You can always start again.

“I don’t have to buy a new book,” I told Crawford. “But I can.” He laughed.

“I had actually not thought of a person sort of writing directly in the book,” he admitted. “But it’s a fun idea.”

I think it’s a lot more than a fun idea: I think it’s an opportunity for other creators in the space to make something amazing.

Photo: Nicole Carpenter/Polygon

Imagine if instead of filling in the blanks, creatives created something that was fun and exciting. DMG into something different — something like a keepsake game. Keepsake gaming is a niche market in role-playing games. The experience can vary from solo journals to role-playing exercises with groups that become tangible works of art. Designers like Jeeyon Shing Khor, Tim Hutchings and Shing Yin have explored this space for years with keepake-games. Field Guide to Memory, Has I been Good?Then, The Thousand-Year Old Vampire. Wouldn’t it be great if people with such skills were teamed up with Avery Alder? He is the creator of Quiet Year? Would it be possible to invite Gabe Hicks or Elise Rezendes the creators behind soon-to-be released Session Zero SystemTo help us build our party heroes? Would they team up with the talented craftspeople from Heart of the Deernicorn? City of Winter? What if all of these keepsake game devotees showed up on Beadle & Grimm’s doorstep with the intention of making the most over-the-top, inspirational Dungeon Master’s GuideAll time best? Would it be system-agnostic too? Wouldn’t it be great if you could use the worlds that you create to fuel other TTRPGs in the future? Or for fanfiction? For the sake of creating something unique and new?

From what I’ve seen of the care and commitment from the team at Wizards of the Coast, the next version of the Dungeon Master’s GuideThe new version should last longer. This could be just as important as Player’s HandbookIt is now. This could represent a shift in paradigm for the industry. These books that we all carry around with us are quickly being replaced by digital versions, and that’s fine. What if these books were to become artifacts that represented the imaginary worlds in which we all play? Imagine that after many years of making jokes with your friends around the dinner table you have something tangible to remember your fun times together. Perhaps, just possibly, we could create something worth leaving behind for generations of tabletop enthusiasts to come.

“This was my dad’s favorite D&D campaign,” my daughter might say one day. “It’s a whole world that we made together. Let’s take it down off the shelf. Let’s explore it. Let’s play it. Together. Again.”