On Settlements

It's been on my to-do list for some time to develop some method for fleshing out settlements in my D&D games:

I had become aware at this point that my settlements need some work. They are usually something of an afterthought for me - a place for the party to sleep, gather rumors, recruit NPCs, shop, acquire services, and the like. Aside from the local ruler and nearby quest hooks, they don't have much character. I've decided to try to devote more time to fleshing them out with more details. 

I don't particularly care what the local inns are called or what the blacksmith's name is, but it would be nice to know a factoid or two about local history, landmarks, important NPCs, and potential quests to be had in the settlement itself. I'm not entirely sure how I intend to flesh all that out and make it gameable (how many adventure sights should be in a village? a town? a city?), but it's something I'm definitely thinking about.

I don't know that I'm necessarily any closer to figuring it out definitively, but I figured I'd just start writing about it and see where the blogging process takes me.

It's worth nothing that there is a fantastic post on urban gameplay over at A Knight at the Opera which not only has an excellent and comprehensive bibliography but also a summary of the prevailing attitudes and approaches towards urban gameplay in the hobby. Dwiz's thoughts about urban gameplay, why it's daunting to prepare for and run, why it's important to include in a fantasy roleplaying game, and critiques of common approaches are similar to my opinions on the subject. 

I will try to make this post unique and complimentary, rather than regurgitating the very good and thorough work Dwiz has already done.

The Purpose of the Settlement

What is the gameplay purpose of a settlement in D&D? The above quote from one of my previous play report addresses how I was thinking about the settlement at the time: a place for the party to recover and resupply (by resting and regaining hit points, but also purchasing equipment or recruiting NPC hirelings and henchmen), obtain services (like getting an NPC to cast identify on the magic item they found, or having their recently-acquired ankheg shells made into armor), and gather rumors (which provide gameable information about the region and broader setting, particularly calls to adventure).

That's a good amount of things, but the settlement serves so many other purposes. The most obvious purposes are tied directly to adventuring, which is the core element of the game - obtaining and completing quests (the former is often a result of gathering rumors, but can also result from being proactively recruited by NPCs, in which case a return to the settlement may be needed to cash in on the reward, if any) and offloading acquired loot. 

And the settlement not only points the players towards adventure elsewhere, but can itself be an adventure location. That adventure might involve ridding an abandoned house in the village of a restless spirit, dealing with doppelgängers who have replaced the town's most esteemed family, bumbling through a secret door in an alley and into a lich's tomb, or confronting the cabal of vampires which pulls the city-state's strings of power.

Settlements are also a place where players can engage in a different timescale of play - downtime activities. They might spend weeks carousing and gambling, gathering information about their next adventure at the local archives, devising new spells and magic items, brewing potions, planning heists, and bribing or romancing NPCs. 

Xanathar's Guide to Everything has rules for downtime in 5e which are more robust than those initially presented in the DMG, offering a range of complications that might occur for each activity the players pursue. These in turn can spur further adventures involving new allies and adversaries. (Unfortunately, because of the speed of natural healing in 5e - i.e., instant - player characters rarely if ever need to spend extended periods of time in a settlement between adventures, instead doing so only if the downtime activity itself is some sort of means to an end.)

As the players make contacts of the settlement's NPCs and become entangled in its politics and schemes, they may eventually want to plant roots there themselves. They may want to build their own estates, gambling dens, libraries, alchemical labs, temples, guildhalls, taverns, inns, and whatnot. The settlement has always been intended to be the first* "home base" for player characters - filled with recurring NPCs, intrigue, and property and businesses for them to own. 

(*In OD&D, the intention was for player characters to eventually establish a more permanent home base by claiming unsettled wilderness and building their strongholds, temples, and the like there, but I don't see much reason why they couldn't do the same in a settlement - albeit with more hoops to jump through.)

If the settlement is only a place to recover and resupply between adventures, it makes plenty of sense to spend very little time thinking about it or playing in it. But, as I've hopefully demonstrated, the settlement can and probably should be a lot more - which means a lot more time and consideration needs to be put into it.

Where are the Settlements?

The first problem I'm confronted with when preparing settlements for a D&D game is where exactly to put them. 

I almost exclusively run my campaigns as sandboxes in a large region represented by a hex map. It's not a "hexcrawl" per se, because I present the players with a map of the region with known locations included - the lay of the land is known from the outset, as are the locations of adventure sites, and I'm transparent with the players about the fastest way to travel from A to B. Wilderness exploration is not focused on gradually uncovering the "fog of war" so to speak, but on traveling from one known location to another, with the occasional unexpected encounter or discovery along the way. The characters are assumed to be somewhat familiar with the area, because at least one of them is usually from there, which means they should know approximately where the population centers are.

I start my campaign prep by using a modified version of Welsh Piper's Hex-Based Campaign Design to create a map of the region. I like to be surprised by what the area of play looks like, so this randomized method works for me. I try to use common sense to keep it from looking too bizarre. Once I have the map, I have to decide how to place the settlements (among other things).

I could just place the settlements where it makes sense for them to be - cities are mostly on the coast and adjacent to rivers, with some being inland to serve as trade nexuses or capitals for other forms of industry. They're surrounded by a ring of villages and towns which support the city. The towns are in turn surrounded by villages which support them, and the villages are surrounded by hamlets and thorps which support them. There's plenty of information online about why cities are where they are. I've played a lot of Civilization - I've got a pretty good idea as to where is the best hex to plant a city.

But something about that is just kind of...boring to me. I'll never end up with a city like Tenochtitlan, built on a marshy island in the middle of Lake Texcoco, with great causeways connecting the sprawling city center to the lake shores. Tenochtitlan wasn't there because it was an good place to build a city, but quite the opposite - the Mexica were more or less exiled there for being bad neighbors who angered the local powers. Tenochtitlan only developed into the urban center that it was as the Mexica rose to power in the region by conquering the surrounding people, who had much better land.

Likewise, if I simply place settlements where it makes sense for them to be, I'll never end up with a city in the middle of an arcane wasteland, its hinterland sucked of all vegetal life by the hubris of its sorcerous rulers and their defiling magic. I'll never end up with the seat of a lizardfolk empire in a vast and intractable swamp. I could decide to deliberately include those things, but if there's one thing I hate doing when preparing a campaign setting, it's deciding things.

As a DM, I'm deciding things all the time. I got back into running D&D around 2018. I've been deciding things continuously for like six years. It's exhausting.

The opposite of deciding things is rolling dice and letting them decide for me (or at least letting them do their damnedest to convince me).

One method of letting the dice decide is presented in the AD&D DMG, where the DM rolls on each hex to determine inhabitation (including castles and ruins). This allows for an 11% chance of a settlement being present in each hex, with a 1% chance for a city to be present. That doesn't sound like a lot, but my regional maps are usually 37x37, which is 1,369 hexes, meaning approximately 150 settlements and 13 cities. That is far more than I care to detail, especially considering that I'm trying to give these locations their due.

Instead, I again prefer a modified version of Welsh Piper's Hex-Based Campaign Design. Part 2 of the process details placing major and minor locations on the map generated in Part 1. There can only be one major location in each "atlas hex" (a 5x5 hex superimposed on top of the smaller hexes), whether there is major location at all is determined by dicing against the hex's terrain, and the location has only a 1-in-6 chance of being a settlement.

This method usually leaves me with around two cities and one city-state/metropolis per area of play, which is a very manageable number while still allowing for some variety of places to explore and engage in urban adventure.

The random placement of settlements doesn't necessarily make sense, but that's a feature, not a bug. D&D is a fantastic game - settlements might exist in odd places because of the magical nature of the world and its inhabitants. Dwarves, elves, halflings, goblinoids, kobolds, orcs, and the like live in different places than humans. Cities can sustain themselves in unusual places thanks to magic, and they might be built in those places because their location allows the inhabitants to take advantage of some magical resource, like ancient technology or ley lines.

There could be some version of this procedure where, after making the regional map, I stock it with "resources" like food, livestock, stone, and luxury and trade goods, then place the cities in resource-rich locations a la Civilization, but I don't think it's worth it to do all that work when I could just roll on a table to determine if a settlement is known for its thoroughbred horses, its marble quarries, or its gold mines (even that much, I think, is pretty much unnecessary for gameplay purposes).

Types of Settlements

Another benefit of Welsh Piper's method is that it breaks settlements down into three types: towns, cities, and city-states - I add villages (or more accurately, probably, small towns) to the list so that I have four "tiers" of settlements corresponding to 5e's tiers of play (my modified method treats a "major" settlement as being a city or city-state, and a "minor" settlement as being a village or town). I think this is a lot neater than Gygax's nitty-gritty distinction between single dwellings, thorps, hamlets, and villages. I also like having the distinction between small cities and sprawling, anachronistic, fantastical cosmopolitan metropolises.

Using a combination of the 1e DMG and the 5e DMG, I have the following table for a settlement's population:

Village: 2d3+4 x 100 (600 to 1,000)

Town: 2d3 x 1000 (2,000 to 6,000)

City: 6d4+1 x 1000 (7,000 to 25,000)

City-State: 1d4+2 x 10,000 (30,000 to 60,000)

These numbers are simply to find some sort of sweet spot between what Gygax originally wrote in the AD&D DMG and how the designers of modern D&D see the game today. I have no idea (or care to determine) whether the numbers are "realistic" or "make sense". 

One could certainly build their setting using historical medieval demographics, but this seems like a tedious slog to me, involving calculating hectares of arable land and dividing numbers and squaring them and whatnot. Besides, D&D is not medieval and never was. I'm just trying to play a fun fantasy game, not recreate the idea of France but with goblins. Just as dungeons are the mythic underworld and the wilderness is the mythic wilderness, cities should be mythic too.

Anyway, now I know a settlement's approximate population. What is the point of determining that? 

Fantastic Demographics

My general rule is this: 1-in-100 people have class levels. Of that 1-in-100, 65% are Tier 1 (levels 1-4), 20% are Tier 2 (levels 5-10), 10% are Tier 3 (levels 11-16), and 5% are Tier 4 (level 17+). This works for 5e, where tiers of play are made explicit, but I use a different breakdown when playing something like AD&D.

This ensures that not only are player characters "special", but also that they aren't the most special. It's not just dressing for the setting, or an attempt at simulation - it has gameplay implications. This number of leveled NPCs in the setting allows for there to be replacement player characters, allied and rival adventuring parties, knowledgeable wizards to serve as mentors, devout clerics to raise the party's dead before they have ready access to such magic, immortal archdruids and their weirdly specific hierarchies and ranked battles for advancement, and master thieves sending the party's rogue out on heists.

Using this rule, villages will on average have 7 NPCs with class levels, with at least one of Tier 2 and a chance of one or two of Tier 3 or 4 in rare and very rare cases. The average town will have 26 such NPCs, with at least one of Tier 4. The average city will have 160 leveled NPCs with at least 8 of Tier 4. The average city-state will have 450 leveled NPCs with a whopping 22 to 23 or so of Tier 4.

Okay...so what use is any of that? I could exhaustively detail all of these NPCs, but it should be apparent that at the city, city-state, and even town levels this is not really practical. Instead, I tend to focus on the exceptional leveled NPCs in each settlement. 

Villages are assumed to have a handful of Tier 1 NPCs, so I only detail those of higher level than that (on average, 2 NPCs). Towns are assumed to have Tier 1 and 2 NPCs, so I only detail those or Tier 3 and 4 (on average, 4 NPCs), and so on. I wouldn't detail all 8 to 23 Tier 4 NPCs in a city or city-state, but assuming an even distribution of those NPCs from levels 17 to 20, I know that there are 2 to 6 NPCs of level 20 in such a settlement. Those might be leaders of regional factions, and similar NPCs found in the smaller settlements in the region might then be their agents, lieutenants, and the like.

The exceptional NPCs in each settlement might be the rulers of the place (because D&D implied setting is a levelocracy), or else provide local color. A village which is home to a Tier 2 fighter, wizard, cleric, or rogue would probably feature a prominent stronghold, mage's tower, temple, or criminal operation which is either a landmark that stands out to the player characters upon their arrival there, or otherwise influences events and drives adventure in the settlement.

By comparison, a city-state might have whole neighborhoods dedicated to the needs of its powerful NPCs. There could be a district which houses the wizarding academy, with streets lined by spell component shops, crowded with familiars, constructs, and summoned extraplanar creatures who do their masters' bidding, all in the shadow of soaring wizards' towers. Another district might house the many temples run by powerful clerics. Another might be a seedy slum run by local thieves' guild bosses who are eternally at war. An entertainment district might house the bard college, amphitheaters, and coliseum. A lush garden might be the "stronghold" of the urban arch-druid. I find it far more gameable to flavor the settlement this way than to determine a handful of mundane industries like masonry or textiles, which the players rarely ever do anything with.

This information also suggests what sorts of problems the locals are able to deal with on their own, as well as when they would need outside help. The village might have problems with the minor fey of the fields and woods, or with griffons stalking their horses, or skeletons stirring in the barrow-mound over the hill, but there are leveled NPCs in the village who can deal with that. That's not to say that the villagers won't turn to the player characters for help, but that the player characters might then be able to encounter allies or rival adventurers while dealing with those problems.

The 10th-level wizard might be able to handle the pig-stealing kobolds with a flick of the wrist, but that wizard is preoccupied with larger concerns, like the young dragon that's started nesting in the nearby swamp. The wizard can't handle that issue on their own, so they would need to send for help from a nearby town or city.

Similarly, while individuals within a city-state might still be preyed upon by puddings from the sewers, they don't pose any threat of overrunning the place. A portal to Orcus's realm in the Abyss, spewing undead demons into the undercity, is another matter entirely.

Magical Goods and Services

The type of settlement and its NPCs also tell me what sorts of services are available in the settlement: 1st- and 2nd-level spells in a village, 3rd-, 4th-, and 5th-level spells in a town, 6th-, 7th-, and 8th-level spells in a city, and 9th-level spells in a city-state. The occasional exceptional NPC in a settlement can provide additional services, which is why it's important to determine who exactly those NPCs are (a Tier 2 fighter in the village provides different services than a Tier 2 wizard, cleric, or rogue) - and what the players might have to do to befriend them.

This approach is somewhat validated by the 2024 PHB, which lists what spellcasting services are available in which type of settlement:

Spellcasting Services
Spell Level Availability
Cantrip         Village, town, or city
1                 Village, town, or city
2                 Village, town, or city
3                 Town or city only
4–5                 Town or city only
6–8                 City only
9                 City only

This aligns eerily closely with my own system, aside from the fact that I distinguish between cities and city-states.

I extrapolate this further with regards to the buying and selling of magic items (which I allow not because it's my preference, but because my players feel very strongly about being able to do it). Since 5e again helpfully breaks magic items down into "tiers" based on rarity, I allow common magic items to be bought and sold in villages, uncommon items in towns, rare items in cities, and very rare items in city-states. Legendary items and artifacts are of course the things that adventures are made of.

Exceptional NPCs might have additional magic items to sell, but these will probably be limited to the extent that the player characters will have to befriend that specific NPC, and by the fact that the NPC will likely only sell items which they cannot use themselves or which they can reproduce (potions, scrolls, etc.).

The types of items the player characters can buy in the settlement (and the type of settlement) also determine some of the settlement's locations and NPCs. In a village, potions might be sold by an otherwise mundane herbalist or disgraced alchemist. Scrolls might be sold by a hedge wizard. A village might have a blacksmith, but the player characters will need to travel to town to find the blacksmith who forges +1 swords or whatever, whereas a city-state might have an entire district where master smiths churn out such weapons every week.

Lodging

According to this post on Red Ragged Fiend (which also has an interesting and insightful series on worldbuilding which could potentially compete with the Welsh Piper method in terms of stocking a sandbox, but which I personally don't prefer due to how involved it is), "historical data" suggests that "there’s an average of one inn in a settlement for every 2,000 residents." I can't speak to the veracity of that assertion, but it sounds good enough, so let's roll with it.

In keeping with our established population guidelines for each type of settlement, that means that villages never have an inn, the average town has one, the average city has 8, and the average city-state has 22.

The PHB outlines seven types of lifestyle: wretched, squalid, poor, modest, comfortable, wealthy, and aristocratic. The wretched lifestyle costs nothing and suggests that the player character isn't receiving any hospitality at all - they're basically living on the street, which leaves six types of lodging (examples from the PHB text):

• Squalid: A vermin-infested boarding house in the worst part of town
• Poor: A room in a flophouse or in the common room above a tavern
• Modest: A room in a boarding house, inn, or temple in an older part of town
• Comfortable: A private room at a fine inn
• Wealthy: A comfortable suite at a fine inn
• Aristocratic: Rooms in the finest inn

This in turn suggests the following types of inn:

• Vermin-infested boarding houses
• Flophouses and taverns
• Boarding houses, inns, and temples
• Fine inns
• The FINEST inns

Since the average town has one inn, and modest is right in the middle of the seven types of lifestyles, I assume the one inn in the average town is a boarding house or inn (whether or not there's a temple would be determined by whether the town has leveled clerics or maybe paladins among its population).

A city with 8 inns would probably have a relatively even spread of the five types (perhaps one of each plus an additional one of each of the three middle types), and the same could be said of a city-state with 22 inns (roughly four of each type plus two more). This suggests areas of the city segregated by class - the slums or lower city, the middle ward, and the upper city.

Staying in the poorer inns should come with drawbacks, while the richer inns come with benefits. Characters who stay at the poorer inns are susceptible to crime and disease, while those who stay at the richer inns have access to the middle and upper classes - merchants, artisans, nobility, politicians, and high priests. On the other hand, perhaps a character can keep a low profile in a poorer inn, while a character in a richer inn is vulnerable to political machinations and enemies looking to use them for their wealth.

This has implications for the carousing downtime activity. Xanathar's Guide to Everything says that characters can carouse with the upper class only if they have the noble background, have made sufficient contacts, or disguise themselves and use the Deception skill to pass themselves off as foreign nobles. I would say that the character's lifestyle puts a hard limit on who will associate with them, which is a decent way to incentivize players to spend that 10 gp per night on accommodations at the FINEST inns.

The carousing downtime activity also implies the existence of additional locations in the settlement, which is where the carousing actually occurs. It might be in the common rooms of the FINEST inns, but it could just as well occur at a noble's manor (every D&D game needs an Eyes Wide Shut party), a guildhall, or the like.

I wouldn't detail every inn in every settlement in advance, but I would consider where the player characters might find lodging in a village, or detail the one inn in town, or an inn of each type in a city or city-state. I could come up with those details on the fly, but if I always improvise, I'll probably never come up with anything like the Yawning Portal, the Elfsong Tavern, the Overlook Hotel, or any truly fantastic inns - which is what a good D&D game deserves.

Other Downtime Activities

Carousing is not the only downtime activity which implies the existence of a location in the settlement. 

If player characters can buy magic items, then there must be a place to do so - an auction house, a magical Walmart, or specialty shops whose artisans imbue their wares with magical power. 

Crafting mundane and magical items requires access to facilities with equipment - alchemical laboratories, tanneries, forges, and such. 

The crime downtime activity allows the player to target a struggling merchant, a prosperous merchant, a noble, or "one of the richest figures in town", all of whom would presumably have shops, warehouses, homes, vaults, and the like.

Gambling can be done in taverns, but it also implies the existence of dens, gaming halls, and maybe even magi-tech casinos.

Pit fighting might be fighting farm boys in the village, back alley brawling, basement fight clubs, or a Roman coliseum with thousands of spectators.

Relaxation requires only modest living expenses and could be done at a boarding house, inn, or temple, or at a specialty spa, sauna, or bathhouse.

Religious service is done at a religious building dedicated to a deity "whose beliefs and ethos align with the character's", although I don't see why a character can't perform religious services disingenuously in order to ingratiate themselves to the clergy, provided the character has the requisite skills. In a smaller settlement without much choice of such places, this may be the only option.

Research is done at libraries or with the help of a sage. This could be an exiled scholar or hedge wizard in a village or a full-blown university or national college in a city.

Training might take place at a guildhall, with a tutor, or with an appropriately leveled NPC.

Finally, work can occur in many places, depending on the character's skills - whether backbreaking labor in, at, or on the fields, lumber mills, mines, docks, plantations, quarries, or fishing boats, an apprenticeship at a guild or artisan's workshop, or a musician's residency at a tavern or music hall.

It's way too much work to detail all these locations, especially for multiple settlements. It's appropriate to simply keep in mind that these places exist (although probably not everywhere), and determine the specifics once the player characters express an interest in engaging with them.

Player Character Backgrounds

There are a number of player backgrounds that also imply the existence of certain locations and NPCs in a settlement.

Acolytes can receive free healing and lodging at religious sites of the character's deity, as well as support from people of the same faith.

Criminals have access to criminal contacts, including messengers, corrupt officials, and "seedy sailors".

Entertainers can receive free food and lodging in exchange for performing at an inn, tavern, circus, theater, or noble's court, and people in town tend to recognize them. Gladiators gain access to arenas and secret fight clubs.

Folk heroes can receive shelter from commoners.

Guild artisans are members of a guild, with access to a guildhall, which in turn provides access to patrons, allies, hirelings, and politicians, and protection from the law.

Nobles are welcomed by figures in high society. 

Sages have access to libraries and information.

Urchins know hidden ways through the city, allowing them to traverse it twice as fast (suggesting that time should be a factor when traveling from one place to another in such environments).

As with downtime activities, not every settlement needs all of these things. There won't always be a temple or local worshipers of the character's deity, and smaller settlements won't always have spies from the criminal's network, or a guildhall, and they will be too small to necessitate the use of the urchin's City Secrets feature. Still, all are worth considering, especially when preparing larger settlements.

Adventure Sites

As I mentioned earlier, a settlement can point the players towards adventure or be the site of adventure itself - and in this case, I'm not talking about carousing, or committing crimes, pit fighting, or any of those things. I'm talking about the rat-infested cellars, the ruins at the bottom of the town's lake, the estate of the richest merchant in the city who is a rakshasa in disguise, and the lair of the Great Old One cult infiltrating the city-state's halls of power.

I know how to stock a dungeon with monsters, traps, tricks, and treasure. I know how to stock a wilderness with strongholds, ruins, and monster lairs. How do I "stock" a settlement - not just with powerful NPCs, inns, libraries, guildhalls, shops, and the like, but with dungeons, and monsters? Places to explore and threats to overcome? I truly don't know of any methods for doing so.

And these aren't things I can make up on the fly. I can't just decide one week that the city-state that the players have been cruising around for several months is suddenly ruled by a vampire lord that needs to be taken down - that needs to be apparent if the player characters spend any significant time in the place at all (and maybe even evident upon their initial arrival). The same goes for a hag disguising itself as the village herbalist, wererats crawling out of the ruins beneath town at night, or a silver dragon leading a crusade against the city's criminal element.

A lot of settlement generators will have a table to roll on to determine "what's going on" or what "the current problem" is, which is a place to start, but I find it unsatisfying that there should only be one big thing happening in a sprawling metropolis. I like the idea of there being one adventure site in any given village - a haunted house or abandoned mill or infested barn, for example - but what about in town or city?

Maybe there's an adventure site per every 1,000 residents (rounded up). That's one in the average village and three in the average town, but 16 in the average city and 45 in the average city-state. That seems like way too much, considering that I'd want these elements to actually impact life in the settlement and so would have to have some idea as to what each entailed.

Maybe there's one adventure site in a village, two in a town, three in a city, and four in a city-state. But that feels too small.

Maybe I should treat adventure sites similarly to powerful NPCs - there might be hundreds of them in a sprawling metropolis, but I only need to detail the exceptional ones - but then that eliminates the possibility of low-level adventures in a big city, because I'm only detailing those of Tier 4 or so. 

Maybe I only detail those which the players are likely to engage with - i.e., start with the small-time stuff, then build up as the campaign goes on - but if I don't know what the settlement's most dangerous adversaries are until the players are ready to engage with them, then I can't reason out ahead of time how those more powerful creatures influence the settlement and the larger world.

Districts

This is probably the time to mention that Brave (Dwiz's Knave hack) has a pretty neat system for building settlements. According to that procedure, each settlement has a certain number of districts, industries, defenses, languages, and temples. Then, each district has its own shops, landmarks, factions, NPCs, and taverns. 

Detailing each district according to this system ends up being a little much for my purposes. A city has 5 to 6 districts, each with 2 to 3 factions, for 10 to 18 factions in a single city on average. Remember, I'm building about 3 cities for a single campaign, and not really trying to determine ahead of time what or who every shop, tavern, and NPC is. 

While Brave's system is more in-depth than I need, I do really like the idea of breaking the city down into districts. A village is basically a single district. A town will have 2 or 3 districts on average. An average city will have 5 or 6 districts. There's nothing equivalent to my city-states in the Brave settlement rules (Dwiz is clear in his post on urban gameplay that he prefers much smaller, more historically accurate medieval settlements in his games), so I had to extrapolate to determine how many districts there should be. I landed on 3d6+1, which is an average of 10 or 11. 

Instead of rolling up a list of factions, landmarks, and NPCs in each district, I use districts to break a settlement down into tightly-themed chunks: the port, the slums, the rich people neighborhood, the market, the temple district, the place where all the wizards live, etc. 

With themed districts, it's easy to determine where the characters need to go for whatever activity they'd like to do. If they want to talk to the mayor, they have to go to his manor on the hill in the town's center. If they want to shop, they need to go to the market district. If they need to raise an ally from the dead, they need to go to where the temples are. Once I know what a district's theme is, I can figure out who the important factions and NPCs are based on that.

If there are more than three districts, I'll make a hex map with each district represented by a hex to see how they connect (if there are three or fewer districts, I assume they're all connected to each other, so there's no need to map it out). That way, I know what districts the characters need to move through as they run their errands.

Moving through a district is a turn. Doing anything within a district is also a turn. I don't really care how long a turn is or where each building or landmark is in the district relative to the others. If it's important to track exactly how long the party spends in the settlement, I might call a turn 10 minutes. D&D characters are weirdos who do everything together apparently, so I imagine most parties will stick together when running their errands, though it may behoove them to split up if they have a lot to do and are crunched for time somehow.

I'm aspiring to have a random encounter table for each district, which I would roll on every turn, but maybe the AD&D 1e city encounters table is just fine. Creating urban encounter tables is a conversation for another day.

To circle back to my point about adventure sites, I can also give each district a unique problem related to its theme. That problem might then suggest one or more adventure sites in that district. There might be a necromancer raising zombies in the cemeteries of the temple district, giant crocodiles in the sewers beneath the slums, and a colony of mind flayers infiltrating the upper city. Just as the district's theme informs what services, factions, and NPCs are there, it also informs what problems the district experiences, which in turn inform its adventure sites.

A City in Hell

I've been running a 5e game for the past few months. I was originally a player in the game and occasionally ran a short adventure, but when the primary DM ran their last adventure, which ended with the remaining party members being trapped on the wrong side of a portal to Hell, I couldn't resist picking up the reins.

The party is now on their way to visit the region's metropolis, which I decided was once a mortal city that was sold to Hell by its rulers - Descent Into Avernus-type thing, but better because I'm doing it instead of Wizards of the Coast.

I've been using my methods to flesh it out. It has a population of 39,000 mortals, which means about 4 or 5 20th-level NPCs. There are 15 districts and 19 inns of varying quality. Each district has its own theme and a single problem of varying severity. I arranged them all on a hex map so I can see how they all connect. I don't have every single little detail figured out, but I know where the players can find goods and services, high-level NPCs, lodging, and locations related to their backgrounds or to downtime activities. I know where the districts that contain those things are in relation to the rest of the city and how the character need to navigate the city to get to those places.

It's still a work in progress. I'm trying to figure out how many NPCs need to be fleshed out, whether every problem needs a "monster" (whether it be a literal monster or an NPC) at its root, and why the party might travel to each district aside from just passing through. I really want to make an encounter table for each district, but on top of everything else I need to get together, that seems like a tall order.

I can easily see how someone can get totally bogged down when detailing a city, and how a sprawling, anachronistic metropolis could be the setting for an entire campaign.

Conclusion

After all that, I don't know that I'm that much closer to having a foolproof method for generating settlements, but I at least have a pretty good idea of what they're for, and what they need to have in order to serve their multifaceted purposes. I have a method of placing settlements and determining their populations, what powerful NPCs reside in them, what services they can provide, how many neighborhoods they have, and what problems those neighborhoods are facing.

A lot of this is purely dependent on the players and their characters. Their chosen races, backgrounds, and classes will all determine what elements of a settlement need to be fleshed out, as will their in-game desires. Like most prep in a D&D game (especially a sandbox), I don't want to have to figure out every little detail ahead of time - I just need to try to stay one, two, or three steps ahead of the players, and have some idea of what exists in the world on the margins of the game in case the players decide to ask about it or go looking for something.

This is certainly nothing like a definitive guide to settlements in D&D. I'm yet to find anything that is, but I'm always fascinated to read others' opinions on the topic, and I always come away with something new to think about for my own games. Hopefully this post has given someone something new to think about or a new way to approach this kind of gameplay.

The 2024 DMG cares even less about dungeons

After hearing gossip about it for weeks, I finally got a chance to look at the 2024 version of the D&D 5e DMG. Reception to the book has been positive. There is a lot of advice for navigating the game's many notorious social pitfalls. There's a section that says that players aren't supposed to exploit the game's rules! ...People needed that to come down from the mountain for some reason.

As more information came out, I noticed small details mentioned in passing that threw up red flags for me. It seemed like no one else was talking about it. Was it true that the new DMG wouldn't include rules for creating monsters? Was it true that the Dungeon Master's Guide reduced rules for making dungeons?

Kinda. The rules for "creating a creature" are abysmal, and are better described as "modifying an existing creature", because that's all the guidance the book gives - the authors recommend changing a creature's size, type, ability scores (so long as they don't affect its attack bonus, damage, AC, hit points, or spellcasting ability), languages, proficiencies, senses, spells (so long as the spells don't do damage), the flavor and name of its attacks, and its resistances and immunities. They also recommend adding traits, and give a handful of examples.

I never loved the 2014 DMG's monster creation rules. But at least the authors provided the information to extrapolate a custom monster's CR from its statistics, and vice versa. It was an involved process, but the guidelines were there. The new DMG just tells the DM how to reskin skeletons into ice skeletons.

Maybe the upcoming Monster Manual has more detailed guidelines. But, I doubt it.

As for dungeons, there's still something there, but it's different, and I'm not sure it's in a good way. 

For comparison, let's review what the 2014 DMG presented. The information is in two places - Chapter 5 and Appendix A.

The former has tables for determining a dungeon's location, its creator, its purpose, and historical events, usually related to its ruin. I've always found these tables useful. For fun, I tried rolling up a dungeon just now and got the following results:

• Location: Underwater
• Creator: Dwarves
• Purpose: Lair
• History: Dwarves still in control

Underwater + Dwarves immediately throws me for a loop, and in a lot of cases I might reroll, but I think, "Okay, this is a dwarf stronghold or mine that flooded and is now submerged. That's cool." I get Lair as the purpose, which is fine - an underground dwarf colony that struck an aquifer and flooded makes sense.

Then I roll "Original creator still in control." I could reroll this too, but instead, I'm now thinking that this is a sea dwarf homestead. Are they water-breathing dwarves, or do they have a Gungan set up with means of keeping the water out, with submersible vessels to travel to and from the surface? What deep-sea mining are they doing down there? Or were they regular dwarves, but they turned into fish people and flooded their home on purpose? Or did they all die in the flood and reanimate as aquatic undead?

Those four simple rolls provide a lot of fuel for the dungeon conceptualization fire. Once I have the big idea, it's easy to imagine what the place looks like, and what monsters, traps, tricks, and treasures are there.

The chapter goes on to describe dungeon factions and ecology, and to recommend varying encounter difficulty. There's guidance about mapping a dungeon, and descriptions of dungeon features like walls, doors, light, air, and sound, and dungeon hazards.

Appendix A looks like Appendix A of the AD&D 1e DMG, which I'm sure is an intentional throwback, considering the nostalgia-oriented design of 5e. I don't care for this random style of dungeon design, with impractical fractal corridors and bizarre geometry, but I found it helpful when I started mapping dungeons and had no idea what I was doing. It's helpful to have random tables of rooms sizes, corridor lengths, and door types. It prevents every room from being 30 feet by 30 feet or every door from being stuck or locked.

The later section, "Stocking a Dungeon", is far more useful. It starts with tables which list what rooms can be found in each type of dungeon (going back to the "Dungeon Purpose" table in Chapter 5). I'm not going to create a random dungeon layout where the treasure vault or fire giant king's bedroom is the first room in the dungeon and the audience chamber ends up in the middle for some reason, but it is helpful to have a big list of rooms that can be found in a given type of dungeon. 

It is helpful to know that a "death trap" usually has an antechamber, a guardroom, a puzzle room, a trapped room, a scrying chamber, and a vault hidden behind a secret door and protected by traps. I don't have to include all those rooms, and I can include others, but if I don't know what a room should be, I can refer to this list and use it like a dungeon checklist.

The "Stocking a Dungeon" section continues with a "Current Chamber State" table, which is fine, but following that is "Chamber Contents", which includes a more traditional dungeon stocking table, which the DM can roll on to determine what the "main thing" in the room is: is it empty, or does it contain a monster, trick, trap, or treasure?

Unfortunately, I don't like this table. 50% of the results are monsters, and only 20% of the rooms are empty. The remaining balance is 8% dungeon hazards, 5% obstacles, 13% traps, and 4% tricks. Compare that to AD&D's distribution:

That's 60% empty rooms, 25% monsters, and 5% each special, trick/trap, and treasure. The problem with 5e's stocking table is that it has twice the frequency of monsters, and 80% of rooms contain bad things that will happen to the characters. No wonder 5e players think dungeons are un-fun slogs! 

I use my own version of the AD&D table to stock my 5e dungeons, or I use Delta's rule. But although I dislike the way the 2014 DMG presents dungeon stocking, I still appreciate that they demonstrate it as something the DM can do.

The rest of Appendix A has a lot of tables. There's a "Monster Motivation" table, which is like a reaction roll, and decent. There's a limited "Dungeon Hazards" table. There are obstacles, traps, tricks, and tons of dungeon dressing tables. I don't use this stuff now, but when I got back into D&D, these were useful as idea generators.

The most useful resources for dungeon building in the 2014 DMG are the tables for determining the dungeon's location, creator, purpose, and history, plus the list of rooms found in each type of dungeon. The dungeon stocking table is lackluster, but is serviceable for a DM who wants to lean into 5e's tactical combat action-centric design. It suggests that one can use a dungeon stocking table, and a DM can modify the exact distribution of room types to taste. These elements combined are a great introduction to conceptualizing dungeons as well filling those dungeons with interesting things.

Now, let's look at what's been included in the 2024 DMG - and what hasn't.

The 2024 DMG has been entirely reorganized. I'm going to refer to "Chapter 3: DM's Toolbox", which has a section on dungeons. The dungeon-oriented Appendix A of 2014 has been eliminated. 

The dungeon location, creator, purpose, and history tables have been collapsed into one "Dungeon Quirks" table. The book recommends using a single quirk or combining as many quirks as the DM likes. As a demonstration, let's see what we get.

First, I roll "Abandoned because the site was cursed by a god or other powerful entity", which is dungeon history. It doesn't tell me anything about where the site is, who built it, what it is, or, by extension, what god or powerful entity it's related to. So, I roll again to add another element to it. 

Next, I roll "Amazingly well preserved ancient city inside a dome encased in volcanic ash, submerged underwater, or entombed in desert sands." Specific, but okay. I now know where and what the dungeon is, and why it was abandoned. I don't know who built it, so I roll again.

I roll "Built in a volcano." The city was already potentially buried in volcanic ash, so...sure. We're just getting more specific about the location.

I roll again. "Transformed by multiple events or disasters over the course of centuries." Sure. That can describe many dungeons, and hasn't added much to this particular dungeon.

I roll again. Finally, I get "Made by a powerful spellcaster (perhaps a lich) as a site for magical research and experimentation." I feel like I have a sufficient overview of the dungeon. It took five rolls to get there, and two of those rolls only added redundant details.

I tried again, and it took six rolls to get those same four pieces of information (location, creator, purpose, and history), with three redundant rolls.

Some extra rolling isn't a big deal, but there are other consequences. Collapsing four tables into one results in entries being cut. One can no longer generate a dungeon made by elves, hobgoblins, mind flayers, or yuan-ti (all of which were included in 2014's "Dungeon Creator" table).

That's not to say a DM can't include those dungeons in their game using the 2024 rules, but it was helpful for the 2014 DMG to say, "These are the four things a DM needs to know about their dungeon." The table entries are not super important, but by rolling all four elements into one table and not calling them out explicitly, the four elements are hidden from the new DM. 

The rest of the section on dungeons is similar to parts of the 2014 DMG. A dungeon is chambers and passages and a DM usually maps it on graph paper. Use asymmetry and three dimensions and branching paths and wear and tear and natural features and secrets. Got it.

Then, there's a list of rooms that can be found in dungeons and a brief blurb about each: crypts, guard posts, living quarters, subterranean areas, shrines, vaults, and work areas. That's all.

Of course the book is not suggesting those are all the rooms in a dungeon, or in every dungeon, but it's still a step back from what came before. It was helpful for the 2014 DMG to say, "Now that you know your dungeon was once a lair, here is a list of rooms often found in a lair." The 2024 DMG says instead, "Now that you know your dungeon is a lich's laboratory, here is a list of rooms often found in dungeons in general."

What about stocking suggestions? I acknowledged that the table in the 2014 DMG was not great, but appreciated that it at least suggested an intended distribution of room types, and that this might then lead to DMs customizing the stocking table to fit their tastes. Is there anything like this in the 2024 DMG?

No. The book says to vary encounters by including a mix of combat, exploration, and roleplaying, as well as easy, medium, and hard encounters, but I can't find any suggestions about the number of encounters to include, or traps, or tricks, or treasure, or how much of a dungeon should be empty. There are suggestions about building tension and managing the pace of the game, including when to let the characters rest, but nothing else. The authors eliminated the useful and unfairly maligned "adventuring day", so the DM can't design a dungeon around that structure, either.

The new DMG says that dungeons can be a variety of locations and sizes and that I should map them. I know that they have rooms and monsters and traps and treasure, but I have no idea how many or what kind and in what proportion. The 2024 DMG doesn't tell me. It tells me to figure it out myself. It's not unlike the 2014 DMG in that way, but it is a step further in that direction.

If the AD&D 1e DMG is D&D's encyclopedia, then the 2024 DMG is D&D's self-help book. It's very encouraging, and nice. It might get a DM motivated to start a new game, but it's not a reference document. It doesn't help the DM run the game. The DM is going to have to help themselves.

It's not bad, or useless, but it's worse, and less useful than the 2014 DMG (which is saying something), whereas I thought the 2024 rules were supposed to be more useful. I thought they were supposed to be better for new DMs and players. I thought that was the whole point...aside from doing the bare minimum to remarket and resell 5e all over again, that is.

...On the plus side, reaction rolls are back! In true 5e fashion, the rules are worse than previous iterations of the same concept from an entire 50 years ago, but maybe that's a topic for another time.

The 2024 Player's Handbook Wants the Player to Know All the DCs For Some Reason

I had a chance to look over the new PHB and wanted to record some of my thoughts about what I found there. This isn't meant to be an exhaustive changelog with minor revisions to individual classes, subclasses, races, feats, spells, and the like - others have already done that. It also isn't a "review", per se - others have done that, too. Rather, I wanted to call attention to a few topics in particular that I thought were noteworthy changes - some good, some bad, some...interesting - that I haven't seen reported on elsewhere.

It's worth noting that some of these items might be elaborated on further in the DMG. These are just my impressions based on what's available so far.

I'm going through these items in order as they appear in the book, so there's no real rhyme or reason as to how this post is organized.

I love this piece by Noor Rahman in the rules glossary. Click to embiggen.

Skills

I want to call attention to the fact that skill proficiencies are still, by default, tied to ability scores. That is, the player makes a Charisma (Performance) check. I mention this because this little blurb is still included on page 14:

Skills with Different Abilities

Each skill proficiency is associated with an ability check. For example, the Intimidation skill is associated with Charisma. In some situations, the DM might allow you to apply your skill proficiency to a different ability check. For example, if a character tries to intimidate someone through a show of physical strength, the DM might ask for a Strength (Intimidation) check rather than a Charisma (Intimidation) check. That character would make a Strength check and add their Proficiency Bonus if they have Intimidation proficiency.

I understand why skills are tied to ability scores by default - players and DMs can both benefit from having some idea of what normally goes with what - but I personally really wish they had done away with the default pairings entirely. 

It is enough to know that a character is proficient in Intimidation - the DM gets to decide if a situation calls for a character's proficiency to be added to a Strength check, a Charisma check, or some other ability check entirely, and leaving it open might entice players to come up with creative ways to advocate for the use of their skills in unusual situations. Maybe that is just too "advanced" for the PHB, and I certainly wouldn't want players arguing that they can use Strength to make a Perception check, because that doesn't make any sense (not that that's stopping the 2024 barbarian).

The "Skills with Different Abilities" rule is one of my favorites in 5e, and I wish it was used more, but players see "Persuasion (Charisma)" on their character sheet and assume that NPCs can be persuaded only by the character's innate ability to influence (Charisma), and not with logical or intuitive arguments (Intelligence and Wisdom, respectively).

Social Interaction

This is one of my favorite topics to discuss. The social interaction "pillar" is often criticized for being too threadbare. Does the 2024 PHB improve it?

The 2014 PHB took a rules-light approach to social interaction, explaining that players could use a "descriptive" or "active" approach - i.e., describing what their character does or says while interacting with an NPC versus speaking in-character and saying exactly what the character says. The DM then uses their knowledge of the NPC's personality to adjudicate the results, sometimes calling for an ability check. The DMG, in turn, has information on NPC's attitudes (friendly, indifferent, or hostile), associated social interaction DCs, and how to actually adjudicate the interaction.

The 2024 PHB now provides an example of social interaction, including examples of both descriptive and active roleplaying. The friendly, indifferent, and hostile attitudes return, and are now included in the PHB's rules glossary. Player characters have advantage on ability checks to influence friendly creatures and disadvantage on ability checks to influence hostile creatures. The DM can now call on player characters to take the Influence action to urge an NPC to do something.

I like that the PHB explicitly states "The DM will typically ask you to take the Influence action", which will hopefully avoid players simply yelling "I take the Influence action!" instead of actually roleplaying the interaction. Hopefully. 

The rules for the Influence action also state that requests that align with the NPC's desires automatically succeed, and those which don't automatically fail. An ability check is only needed if the NPC is "hesitant". Here's the kicker, though:

The GM chooses the check, which has a default DC equal to 15 or the monster's Intelligence score, whichever is higher. On a successful check, the monster does as urged. On a failed check, you must wait 24 hours (or a duration set by the DM) before urging it in the same way again.

First, I can see why the DM chooses which ability check the player makes, but I also think it should be framed more as a discussion. The player should be able to say "I say 'blah blah blah'." If the DM then says "Okay, make a Persuasion check", the player should be able to say "Wait, no. I was trying to threaten them" (or whatever). It also, again, might preclude the player from trying to convince an NPC using a logical or intuitive argument (if the DM habitually falls back on the default Charisma check). Like with any other part of the gameplay loop, the player and DM need to be on the same page about what the player is trying to do and how they're trying to do it. 

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but the codifying of social interaction in this way feels so rigid. It doesn't seem like it's teaching new players how to navigate these situations in a way which ensures that the DM is hearing them and adjudicating their actions appropriately.

Second, what is with those DCs? 15 or the NPC's Intelligence score - no matter the NPC, no matter their personality, no matter the player's approach? The friendly and hostile attitudes already provide advantage or disadvantage on ability checks, so the DCs don't necessarily need to be modified by attitude as they were in 2014, but I'm otherwise a bit baffled by this. 

Less intelligent NPCs are universally easier to Influence, regardless of whether or not the attempt to Influence them has anything to do with how smart they are, and intelligent NPCs are universally harder to Influence, even if a well-reasoned argument might reasonably appeal more to a more intelligent NPC. A more intelligent NPC might be able to see through lies more easily, but if they are in a situation where they are in danger of being harmed or killed, shouldn't an intelligent NPC be able to recognize that, and perhaps be more susceptible to Intimidation?

Shouldn't some NPCs be more susceptible to one approach versus another? A cowardly politician who goes to the theater and regularly engages in intellectual discourse in the king's court would be difficult to deceive, persuade, or impress with a slam poetry performance, but would be easier to intimidate. A king who values emotion over facts and logic would be more susceptible to an impassioned plea than a cold accounting of the facts at hand. Shouldn't player attempts at Deception be opposed by the NPC's Insight? Shouldn't player attempts to Intimidate the NPC be opposed by the NPC's morale?

Admittedly, I'm realizing that my own social interaction procedures use flat DCs based on the NPC's disposition, which don't account for different approaches when attempting to interact with them, but this is as simple as noting the NPC's personality traits, ideals, bonds, flaws, and goals, and modifying the DCs up and down accordingly if necessary. 

The fact that the 2024 PHB's rules don't even allude to these differences between NPCs is what's driving me nuts. It suggests to players that the most optimal form of social interaction is to only ever use whichever skill they have the highest bonus in. That might be the approach most players take anyway, but if players know that different approaches work better or worse with different NPCs, they'll more likely make some attempt to understand what resonates with an NPC before deciding who in the party should speak to them and how. 

As printed in the 2024 PHB, the game is telling the players that all approaches work equally well with a given NPC, so they should just use whichever skill is best for them. It does offer this tidbit:

When interacting with an NPC, pay attention to the DM's portrayal of the NPC's personality. You might be able to learn an NPC's goals and then use that information to influence the NPC.

But this only really applies if the players are able to identify the NPC's goals such that their attempts to Influence the NPC are automatically successful - if they have to roll, it doesn't make any difference.

There's also something to be said about the limitation that a character can only urge an NPC in a given way once per 24 hours. Does that mean a character can only attempt to Influence the NPC with Persuasion once during that time, or will different approaches to persuading the NPC be treated as different urgings? It doesn't read that way. At least the rules are explicit here that the DM can choose a different duration, although I don't know how much good it does.

Hiding

After plenty of complaints of ambiguity about how hiding worked in the 2014 version of the rules, the 2024 PHB offers some clarity and...simplification. From page 368:

With the Hide action, you try to conceal yourself. To do so, you must succeed on a DC 15 Dexterity (Stealth) check while you're Heavily Obscured or behind Three-Quarters Cover or Total Cover, and you must be out of any enemy's line of sight; if you can see a creature, you can discern whether it can see you.

On a successful check, you have the Invisible condition. Make note of your check's total, which is the DC for a creature to find you with a Wisdom (Perception) check.\

The condition ends on you immediately after any of the following occurs: you make a sound louder than a whisper, an enemy finds you, you make an attack roll, or you cast a spell with a Verbal component.

First, this clarifies when a character can hide. The 2014 PHB, by comparison, says only "The DM decides when circumstances are appropriate for hiding." This is probably helpful to some people, although as a DM, I've never had a problem making a common-sense ruling as to when a creature can hide. I have heard that there are some DMs who are super stingy about when they allow characters to attempt to hide, so making the conditions player-facing is probably meant to alleviate that particular pain point.

It is weird that successfully hiding gives the creature the Invisible condition, which is not to be confused with being actually invisible in the reality of the fictional world. The capital I Invisible condition doesn't make the creature lower case i invisible, yet in this case, a creature that uses the Search action has to make a Perception check which beats the total of the other creature's Hide action in order to find them. The searcher does not see the hider just by looking at them, even if they are standing out in the open, so...they are invisible, kind of? 

Does Truesight, which allows a creature to see objects and creatures with the Invisible condition, then negate hiding? It shouldn't, because in the fiction, Truesight is the ability to see through illusions, shapechanging, and into the Ethereal Plane - being hidden by non-magical means is none of those things. It's literally giving me a headache to write this out.

Aside from that, the biggest problem I see with this is similar to the main gripe I had with the Influence action. What is with that flat DC? It used to be that Stealth checks were opposed by the monster or NPC's Passive Perception, which made plenty of sense - it represented the creature's ability to passively notice another creature attempting to hide without actively looking for it. Now, so long as the other conditions for hiding are met (and I'm accounting for special senses like Blindsight and Tremorsense here), a creature has the same chance of successfully hiding regardless of the situation or what/who it's hiding from.

A 1st-level rogue, assuming a starting Dexterity of 16 (+3) and expertise (+4) in Stealth (total of +7), has a 65% chance of hiding from anyone and everything. At 7th-level, once the rogue gets Reliable Talent, which gives them a minimum of 10 on the die when they roll any skill check with proficiency, that same rogue can successfully hide 100% of the time.

That's fantastic for the class fantasy of the rogue, and monster and NPC Passive Perception scores in the 2014 rules were such that this was often the case anyway, but it's also extremely simplistic and limiting. Again, aside from monsters and NPCs with the aforementioned special senses, all monsters and NPCs are equally easy to Hide from if the conditions are met.

It should be easier to Hide from a drunken guard than from a paranoid beholder with eyes more or less literally in the back of its head. The beholder can more easily find a hidden creature, I suppose, but it should also be harder to Hide from it in the first place.

Stabilized Player Characters Versus Unconscious Creatures

I'm not going to go off on this one, but I found it weird. In both the 2014 and 2024 rules, when a player character drops to 0 hit points but isn't killed and is then stabilized, they regain 1 hit point and become conscious after 1d4 hours.

In both the 2014 and 2024 rules, a player could choose, when reducing a creature to 0 hit points with a melee attack, to knock the creature out instead of killing it. Presumably, in the 2014 rules, unconscious monsters and NPCs worked the same as unconscious player characters, regaining 1 hit point after 1d4 hours.

In the 2024 rules, an unconscious monster or NPC is instead reduced to 1 hit point (because at 0 hit points they are dead, unless the DM makes an exception). The monster or NPC then starts a short rest, meaning they always regain consciousness after 1 hour, they get to roll all of their hit dice and heal for that amount, and they get back any abilities that recharge on a short rest.

It has more or less always been true that player characters and monsters and NPCs follow different rules, but in a few instances it really bothers me, and this is another such instance. Not a huge deal, but a weird quirk of the rules I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere.

Languages

I've written about languages before. One of my complaints was that it felt too easy to learn exotic languages, and that they weren't sufficiently differentiated from standard languages. The 2024 rules change languages just a bit. It's weird.

First, in desperation to remove any connection between a character's race/species and their culture, player characters no longer gain languages based on their race. Instead, all characters speak Common and two other standard languages.

The funny thing is, it's not clear how a character learns a rare language (exotic languages are now rare languages). The PHB says: "Some features let a character learn a rare language." For example, druids learn Druidic, rogues learn Thieves' Cant, and rangers learn two languages from their Deft Explorer feature. I don't know that there's any other way to learn these languages.

So, according to the rules, an aasimar can't know Celestial, an elf can't know Sylvan, a drow can't know Undercommon, and a tiefling can't know Abyssal or Infernal. A reasonable DM can obviously make an exception, but I do find it funny.

A piece by Chris Seaman shows how adventurers' equipment evolves with the tiers of play.

Starting Equipment at Higher Levels

Finally, a change I kind of sort of like. The 2024 PHB gives some recommendations for what kind of starting equipment newly made higher-level characters should have - some extra gold and magic items.

If I have a concern about this, it's that if a character with a bunch of magic items and treasure dies, the rest of the party can take their stuff, then a new character enters the game with more magic items and treasure. The more characters die, the more magic items and treasure are added to the party. It doesn't make sense to me that if a character with 20,000 gold and 10 magic items dies, the party salvages their stuff, and then another character with 20,000 gold and 10 magic items joins the party. The party as a whole is now 20,000 gold and 10 magic items richer because they messed up and someone died. 

The way I've handled this in my games is to treat magic items and treasure as belonging to the player, not the character. If a character dies with a bunch of magic items and treasure, that player's new character enters the game with equivalent magic items and treasure. If, however, the other characters loot the dead character and either use or sell their stuff, that stuff no longer belongs to the player whose character died, and their new character enters with fewer items and treasure.

It's a bit meta and not entirely fair to the player with the dead character, but they should have thought about that before they died. And they should convince the other players to give them some of their stuff back so that their new character isn't underpowered (making sure the new character isn't underpowered is in the other players' best interest as well).

Backgrounds

As far as I can tell, the 2024 PHB no longer even suggests that backgrounds are customizable, aside from this:

Each background includes a brief narrative of what your character's past might have been like. Alter the details of this narrative however you like.

The 2014 PHB referred to its backgrounds as "sample backgrounds", and went into detail as to how to customize them or work with the DM to create an entirely new one:

You might want to tweak some of the features of a background so it better fits your character or the campaign setting. To customize a background, you can replace one feature with any other one, choose any two skills, and choose a total of two tool proficiencies or languages from the sample backgrounds. You can either use the equipment package from your background or spend coin on gear as described in chapter 5. (If you spend coin, you can't also take the equipment package suggested for your class.) Finally, choose two personality traits, one ideal, one bond, and one flaw.

If you can't find a feature that matches your desired background, work with your DM to create one.

In my experience, most players do not even try to customize their background, but it happened occasionally when we were playing 5e, and I personally tried to do it with all of my characters. Players new to D&D who start with the 2024 PHB might not even think to ask their DM about the possibility, which is a real shame.

Ability score increases are now tied to backgrounds, which is fine. I personally like my dwarves sturdy and taciturn and my elves lithe and frail, but I get why the culture has moved away from that. 

What's funny is that, beginning a few years ago, Wizards of the Coast did away with specified ability score increases entirely in favor of letting players build the exact characters they wanted, then tied the ability score increases to backgrounds in the 2024 playtest materials, and now...made them specific again? For example, a player who chooses the acolyte background can now only increase some combination of Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma (+2 to one and +1 to another, or +1 to all three).

In the 2014 rules, a player might choose to be a dwarf fighter because that race and class synergize well, then have their pick of interesting backgrounds with which to differentiate that character. Now, a player might choose to be a soldier fighter for the same reason, and it is instead the species which differentiates the character.

It's not necessarily better or worse, it's just...different. The race/species and background have just changed places. (Considering the fantasy bioessentialism of it all, maybe it is slightly better now. I just never particularly cared about that but I understand why some people do.)

Perhaps worst of all is that the 2024 PHB does away with traits, bonds, ideals, flaws, and background features (the latter are more or less replaced by origin feats, which are more mechanically useful but less interesting to me). 

I personally loved the TBIFs and used those suggested by each background to create my own for each character. Instead, the character creation chapter suggests one-word descriptors based on the character's ability scores and alignment, which is...fine. It's just kind of a little bit...boring? Uninspiring?

The background features were never terribly exciting - they mostly amounted to some way for the character to obtain free room and board in a settlement - but I felt that they were interesting little roleplaying tidbits. They invited the player and DM to collaborate on something together - the acolyte's home temple or shrine, the criminal's black market contact, or the entertainer's preferred tavern to perform at. It felt good to be the street urchin who could show the rest of the party a faster way through a busy urban neighborhood, or to be the sage who knew how to use the fantasy Dewey Decimal System.

Tools and Adventuring Gear

Every tool and bit of adventuring gear now has a little description about what a character can use it for. Tools list what items a character can craft with them. A character can use perfume to get advantage on Persuasion checks to Influence Indifferent Humanoids. Cute! But also very specific for some reason.

A character can use alchemist's supplies to identify a substance! Cartographer's tools to make a map! Jeweler's tools to appraise a gem! 

What is with these DCs?!

DC 15 to identify any substance? DC 15 to make a map of any area? DC 15 to appraise any gem? It goes on and on like this! A DC 20 check with a gaming set to "win the game". What game? Who is the character playing against? DC 20 to win any game against anyone?

Admittedly, this isn't the first time these DCs have appeared in a book, at least not with regards to tools. DCs to do a variety of things with tools were first printed in Xanathar's Guide to Everything. But now, they've infected the entire equipment list: DC 10 to apply makeup with a disguise kit (what?), DC 13 to wrap a chain around any creature, DC 10 to tie a knot with a rope. It's enough to make me go completely mad.

Of course the DM is well within their rights to change any of this nonsense. Of course. But the DCs are in the PHB! Why? That's DM-facing information - players literally do not need to know this information, and that goes for social interaction, and hiding, and equipment, and everything else. The section on making ability checks should tell the player how to make an ability check, then say "The DM determines the DC." That's all the player needs to know. The book is actively undermining the DM's ability to adjudicate these situations by implying that there are set-in-stone DCs for any of these things.

All of the tools also have an associated ability score, which mostly seem arbitrary. Painter's supplies require Wisdom, as do all gaming sets (dragonchess doesn't use Intelligence, and playing cards don't use Charisma, so no bluffing). All musical instruments use Charisma (dexterous fingers have nothing to do with playing a string instrument - it's all about convincing people that the performance is good through force of personality).

I've seen a few people praise the new equipment section, so I was especially startled when I read and saw just how bad it actually is.

Spellcasting Services

This is nice - there are suggested prices for NPCs to cast spells for the party. Of course, I'm once again wondering why this is in the PHB, and if it must be in the PHB, why there isn't some disclaimer that the DM can change it or decide that certain services aren't available. Still, it's nice enough, and the prices seem reasonable.

I also find it interesting that the table aligns pretty closely with my own ideas about what services are available in which types of settlements. I've always run it so that Tier 1 NPCs can be found in villages, Tier 2 NPCs in towns, Tier 3 NPCs in cities, and Tier 4 NPCs in metropolises, which is exactly what the table suggests (minus the metropolises).

Where Are the Downtime Rules?

I don't know. They're not in the 2024 PHB (crafting is, but none of the other options). 

The new DMG includes rules for player character bastions, so maybe they're lumped together with downtime rules there. Or maybe they've gotten rid of downtime altogether. I wouldn't be surprised.

That's all I've got for now. I've spent a little bit of time looking at how they changed the classes and spells and whatnot but honestly my eyes just kind of glaze over whenever I try too hard to read that stuff.

I'll probably do another post like this when I can get a look at the DMG. Hopefully it will give me less of a headache and I'll have more positive things to say, but I've already heard some things that make me think I, uh...might not like it. Lol.

An Update on the Adventuring Day

Apparently, the 2024 edition of the 5e DMG will not include the concept of "the adventuring day".

by Matt Ray

This isn't really much of a surprise to me. As my previous post detailed, the adventuring day has always been a controversial (and misunderstood) concept in 5e. People got hung up on the "6 to 8 medium to hard encounters" of it all, and ended up missing the forest for the trees - that is, that the adventuring day concept was simply demonstrating that player characters are intended to face a certain degree of challenge (measured in XP) between long rests.

What made the adventuring day helpful is that it attempted to quantify the attrition that player characters are expected to experience between long rests, when all of their hit points and abilities reset. The important thing wasn't the exact number of encounters or their difficulty, but simply that player characters should have at least three encounters (allowing for a minimum of two short rests) between long rests, and that these encounters gradually wear down the characters' resources. Attrition is the primary means by which the characters are challenged - not so much each individual encounter.

This was especially important in 5e, because characters recover resources (and especially hit points) much faster than in previous editions, where attrition could be drawn out over a longer period of time.

I felt that the adventuring day concept was - at the very least - helpful for planning dungeons. If I wanted a short dungeon, I could plan for it to have an adventuring day's worth of encounters. If I wanted a three-level dungeon, each level could have an adventuring day's worth of encounters. And in a dungeon environment, it has always made sense for there to be that number of encounters. The adventuring day worked perfectly well for me in dungeon-crawling scenarios.

The problem, as I see it, is that inexperienced 5e DMs don't run dungeons - at least not the kind that the adventuring day seems to encourage. The 5e DMG barely teaches dungeon design, and when it does, the guidelines are not great. (For example, according to page 296, 50% of dungeon rooms contain monsters - why yes, that does sound like an un-fun slog! Compare that to AD&D, where only 25% of rooms contain monsters.) 

Instead of running dungeons, most 5e DMs seem to Google "D&D battle map" until they find one that's like, a shattered causeway being held up by a petrified giant's hand while a volcano is erupting or something (which is cool I guess - I've never understood how people use these hyper-specific battle maps unless they are designing the whole adventure around them, but more power to them), then plop down some tokens on the map and voila - find a way to get the player characters to the big damn fight, and that's the session. At most, they are running Five Room Dungeons (which I have my own problems with).

Anyway, I thought it was funny that I just wrote a post about how the adventuring day is an unfairly-maligned concept which is actually kind of useful, then find out that, like many such things throughout D&D's history of editions, it is getting dropped in the 2024 rulebooks. What are we getting instead?

According to Christian Hoffer:

The new 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide contains a streamlined guide to combat encounter planning, with a simplified set of instructions on how to build an appropriate encounter for any set of characters. The new rules are pretty basic - the DM determines an XP budget based on the difficulty level they're aiming for (with choices of low, moderate, or high, which is a change from the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide) and the level of the characters in a party. They then spend that budget on creatures to actually craft the encounter. 

But we already had that. XP budgets for encounters of different difficulty levels were already in the 2014 DMG, it just also told DMs how to string those encounters together in a combination that would challenge the player characters. Instead, the 2024 DMG includes advice about "encounter pace and how to balance player desire to take frequent Short Rests with ratcheting up tension within the adventure." 

Sure. I'm sure those guidelines will be very...thorough.

This certainly isn't the end of the world. After all, the adventuring day is a very new concept - it's not some sacred cow of original D&D. In fact, I'm sure most gorgnards and OSR people alike detest the very concept. 

But honestly, one of the things I really like about 5e is that the designers explicitly say "X characters of Y level can handle A monsters of B CR, and they can do that C number of times per day before they need to take a break." It's clinical and math-y, but I also find it very helpful in broadly gauging what my players' characters can handle. I miss it when I play AD&D because it takes a lot of the guesswork out of prep. 

Sure, it's only slightly more useful than "X characters of Y level can handle A monsters of B CR - you decide how many of those encounters you and your players want!" But, I don't see why as a game designer one would design an "improved" version of the game with...slightly less useful guidelines.

We'll have to wait until the new DMG is more widely available to see what these new guidelines actually look like. I am trying to reserve judgment, but I do find it funny how the "refined" rules for 5e, with 10 years of hindsight, seem to be eliminating rules and advice from the original rulebooks, replacing them instead with flat DCs for hiding and tying knots. I look forward to perusing the new DMG to see just how much they've gotten rid of. (For free, of course - there's no way I'm paying for these books.)