From the very first pages of the new D&D Player’s Handbook, you’re greeted with images of shady deals with witches, a fight to the death with wyverns, and the fickle nature of a d20. (You roll a 1? Oops, then you land right in the spike pit.) That’s enough to make the previous version seem dull by comparison, and the book is much livelier as a result. You can thank the game’s recent success and (far) bigger budget for that, but that’s not the only reason. According to Josh Herman, the art director of Dungeons & Dragons, it’s also because this was an opportunity to start over.
“If you had to show an image to someone who’s never played D&D… what would it be? We tried that in almost every case,” Herman explains when we meet at Gen Con 2024. “What should a Player’s Handbook show? What should a Dungeon Master’s Guide show? What should a Monster Manual show? For the Player’s Handbook cover, we look at parties. We knew we wanted to show a party, a collection of people. We wanted to show them with a dragon. That’s where (things) started. What are they doing? What situation might they be in? And so we looked at a lot of sketches on the Player’s Example cover to figure out what that moment was.”
The result feels like typical Dungeons & Dragons, but without the limitations. After spending a few days with the revised Player’s Handbook, I can confidently say that this is D&D at its best.
Supporting act
With this 2024 update, the Player’s Handbook is finally as elaborate as you’d expect from one of the best tabletop RPGs. In the old version, too much was left to the imagination. Class pages, some of the most commonly used in the game, were often limited to one or two illustrations and decorative elements apiece, while the spell section was a relentless wall of text. But with this update, things are getting a premium treatment that deserves that reputation.
In addition to a much grander piece of hero art for each class (this time proudly taking up a full page), each subclass also gets an evocative illustration, giving readers a taste of what they could be. Whether it’s a fantasy rock star from the Bard’s College of Glamour or the Paladin’s colorful Oath of Ancients build, it’s hard not to be inspired by the wildly different interpretations on offer. Likewise, on every page or two, you get an image showing how a spell works—and it’s actually quite convincing, showing how magic works, where before you had to guess what something like “Chromatic Orb” looked like.
Rather than being limiting, these illustrations inspire your creativity. For example, each background has its own painting of a landscape or scene that prompts you to imagine your character there, and I found myself cobbling together a story based on these images without even realizing it. Does the charlatan run that dodgy stall at the fair? Does the underground hideout full of robbery plans and weapons belong to the criminal or his gang? And why are the mugshots of ne’er-do-wells crossed out in red on the wall? Backstories start to form themselves with minimal effort, and that alone makes the 2024 Player’s Handbook more compelling than its 2014 counterpart. I can imagine this section being a hit, especially with newcomers.
That’s because the art isn’t just there to look pretty—part of the appeal is that everything tells a story. As Herman notes, the art in D&D books is about “supporting the text, whether it’s a monster or a location, a villain or a character class. Because, essentially, D&D Is the text – the rules of the game. And the art is really there to support that and show as much as possible what’s on the page. Because the text is incredibly exciting and full of really interesting things, isn’t it? And there are lots of ways to pick that up.”
For this reason, the new illustrations often take place before or after dramatic events — for example, when goblins prepare an ambush or a horse-drawn carriage speeds away from a threatening castle. Herman says this allows readers to fill in the gaps. Otherwise, “you’re robbing the player of the opportunity” to create their own story, unconsciously or otherwise.
Easier to read
“One criticism of the 2014 Player’s Handbook, particularly of the larger classes, is that there just aren’t as many (illustrations),” says Herman, who explains that the team wanted to add more personality to D&D’s classes and characters. “You know, there are a handful of choices. You get a couple of illustrations of, say, a dwarf, so you just don’t get as many views of what that character might look like. And I think that creates a relatively limited view of what players think they can do. So we wanted to add a lot more stuff, a lot more flavor.”
However, given the sheer volume of images and content that fill this 384-page tome, there was a real risk of overwhelming readers. So that was a big concern for Herman and co., and the attention grabber is clearly noticeable. The book is much easier to skim through than before, and your eye is immediately drawn to important information by boxes, tables, and icons to represent classes or statistics. Yes, there’s still a lot of text to get through, but in direct contrast to previous editions, where sections ran into each other and were therefore difficult to find quickly during one sitting, this time it’s a more logical read.
“How can we better support the text from a UX player experience perspective?” Herman asks. “It’s been 10 years since the last (core rulebook). So there are evolutions in the way people read and look at things, and people are much more visual. I think a good example would be the class divisions. We intentionally designed them all from the beginning to be different from the 2014 (rulebook). Every time you come to a class, there’s an iconic image of what that class looks like. And then the subclasses are all vertical half-classes that run down the sides. And what that does is… it’s kind of a subconscious thing. Every time (readers) come to a class, they know that when they get to (image on) the left hand side, that’s the start of a new section.”
In short, the new Player’s Handbook attempts to set up D&D for the next few years, with a focus on being more accessible than ever while adding new perspectives designed to revitalize existing players. As Herman concludes, it’s meant to be “nostalgic, but exciting and fresh.” And from what I’ve seen so far—who am I to argue with the “try it if you think you’re tough enough” party on the cover?—it achieves that goal with flying colors.
For recommendations on what to play next while you wait for the new D&D Player’s Handbook, see the best board games or our guide to best card games.
