Joshua Rivera (he/him) is an entertainment and culture journalist specializing in film, TV, and video game criticism, the latest stop in a decade-plus career as a critic.
I have, on occasion, been known to read role-playing game sourcebooks for fun. I don’t need to play every game published to get something out of it — in fact, no one has the time to join me in every game I find interesting, least of all me — but a good one usually gives me the sense of what it’s like to play, or tell a story in its world. That’s not always been the case with Dungeons & Dragons. While plenty of older D&D tomes are fascinating to page through, the most useful ones — the core rulebooks, including the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual — usually leave me with a mild headache. I’m far from alone in this.
Wizards of the Coast, the Hasbro-owned shop responsible for all things D&D, is using the famed role-playing game’s 50th anniversary to address this. After years of playtesting, plans, and changed plans, the general public will get its first taste of the 2024 Player’s Handbook at this weekend’s Gen Con. Polygon has had a look at it courtesy of Wizards, and, well — they may have pulled off exactly what they set out to do. The Player’s Handbook (2024) is a shockingly accessible refresh of D&D’s fifth edition, a modern and clean reworking of the first book every D&D player reads — and one they likely hold onto for generations.
A point of order: I’ve only had the new handbook for a couple of days, and have not had the chance to run a game with it yet. Any interesting or unfortunate wrinkles in how the updated game plays will continue to emerge in the weeks and months that follow as the book breaks containment, proliferating through the role-playing masses. I cannot, then, tell you how this new version of D&D plays. I can tell you how this book feels to simply read, though: It feels great.
Wizards has not been shy about communicating that making the rulebook more readable was its goal with this edition. The designers have acknowledged that their previous design philosophy was, in not so many words, backwards as hell. Looking at my original 5e handbook from 2014, it’s clearly built with the assumption that the reader arrives with some level of buy-in or, preferably, someone to guide them. It expects you to do work, and that work is cumbersome; there’s a lot of flipping back and forth between sections devoted to minute aspects of rolling a character and playing the game. It’s a textbook, burdened with the weight of institutions and history, and the assumptions baked into them.
The Player’s Handbook (2024) is a beach read in comparison. As suggested by the reveal event, the book feels well-planned in a way previous books haven’t, offering an organic path through the game’s concepts and ideas. Rules are explained when necessary, and thornier questions are relegated to a glossary in the appendices. Character creation and development is thoughtfully laid out, noting every decision’s narrative and mechanical expressions — making it clear how any given D&D game can emphasize either, or both.
The end result, in my mind, is a book that presents a less stodgy version of D&D, one that’s better suited to how the game is played in 2024. With just the simple decision to present vital information first and tuck away weightier rules elsewhere, the new book more openly encourages players to take what they need and ditch the rest — yet another way the designer’s intent is embracing how the game is and has been played for decades. It’s just that, this time, that fact is emphatically underlined by the book’s instruction. The cleaner, reworked presentation of the 12 character classes (and their four subclasses each) makes it easy to immediately imagine what each of them play like, and the shape my future adventures might take.
Again: With fifty years of history, and a player base that is as varied as it is opinionated, there is no telling how popular this rework will be. For its part, Wizards has started the conversation early, with a long series of videos breaking out changes large and small in detail — like, for example, the completely reworked Ranger class (one of the more radical changes for the 2024 Handbook). But no matter how thorough the rationale, it’s a pretty huge change, and a number of promises — like the assertion that the new core books will be backwards compatible with all previous 5e products — may turn out differently in practice.
As the biggest name in tabletop role-playing, D&D is still, for good or ill, many players’ first stop in the hobby. While great strides made by other games in the space have begun chipping away at the idea of D&D as synonymous with TTRPGs as a whole, it remains a crucial juncture for the role-playing-curious — it can be the start of a wonderful new hobby or an unfortunate turn-off.
As the purveyor of countless D&D products with lucrative licensing deals to strike, it behooves Wizards to read the tea leaves and meet players where they are, to provide as smooth an onramp to its sprawling ecosystem as possible. The new Player’s Handbook (2024) does this. More than ever before, it helps D&D make sense for anyone who wants to know, and gives the reader the itch to see what all these ideas look like in practice. It does this by using the oldest trick in the storytelling biz: showing, not telling.
However, it arguably also leaves new players better equipped to venture forth into the wider world of RPGs. To understand that no matter what’s printed, there are things that serve the collaborative story being told and things that do not, and as long as everyone is on board, a role-playing session can take limitless shapes. It helps the reader see how a game that previously seemed so rigid can be molded into the kind of freeform experience they see in their favorite actual play series, or give them a sense for what parts of the hobby appeal to them and what parts do not. Turns out that the best Dungeons & Dragons book might be one that best prepares players to start playing other games.
Player’s Handbook (2024) was previewed with a pre-release copy of the book provided by Wizards of the Coast. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
