Creating an entirely new edition of Dungeons and Dragons would have been easier than creating the updated 2024 rules for 5e, says D&D designer Jeremy Crawford. Speaking to Wargamer at MCM London in October, Crawford says “the further we got, the more we realized it would have been easier to start from scratch”.
Honestly, we can believe that statement. Rather than sweeping changes to mechanics, the new core rules are filled with hundreds of tiny tweaks. For our 2024 Player’s Handbook review, we kept a change log of every difference we spotted – and it wound up being over 10,000 words long. The core identity of most DnD classes and DnD races remains the same, but in play, everything feels as if it’s been moved one step to the left.
Crawford tells Wargamer that Wizards of the Coast has never had the chance to “iterate” on existing editions in quite this way before. “It was more work to do that than to create an entirely new edition”, he explains. However, this is not a complaint on Crawford’s part – he remains immensely pleased with the results.
“I’m proud we pulled it off”, he says. “I’m proud of the fact that the Player’s Handbook really delivers on our vision of the last 10 years”. As Crawford sees it, these new core rules are “better” than the fifth edition they released back in 2014.
We’re still waiting for the 2024 Monster Manual to complete the trilogy of new DnD books, but that won’t release until February 2025. Before then, be sure to check out our 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide review to get a feel for the rest of the already-released rules.
Source: Wargamer
