The new D&D Player’s Handbook makes the old one feel like a dictionary

polygon.com:

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 olderD&Dtomes 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&Dplayer 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