The Ruins of Castle Greyhawk comes to D&D Beyond in November 2026: four adventures for levels 5 to 10 from Baldman Games, built on the 2024 rules, "featuring the iconic three towers and the dungeons beneath them" [1]. It is the fifth published go at a dungeon Gary Gygax started under his own house rules in 1972, and the owlbear's…
Two kittens in the picture above. The ginger one is mid-leap, claws out. The tabby has its head on the floor. It looks like a fight. It isn't. In ten seconds the tabby leaps and the ginger one rolls over. Every D&D table plays at fighting. Characters argue, steal from each other, insult the paladin's god. Most of it is…
Nearly two thousand years ago, a British queen rode a chariot along the front of her army with her two daughters in front of her. The Roman historian Tacitus records what Boudica told them. It was usual, she said, for Britons to fight under the leadership of women. Then she named the cause: "my scourged body, the outraged chastity of…
The 2014 rules called them races. The 2024 rules call them species, and the change is more than the name. A 2014 dwarf got +2 Constitution and walked at 25 feet. A 2024 dwarf gets no ability score increase at all, walks at 30 feet, and sees twice as far in the dark. The free System Reference Document 5.2.1 [1]…
The Magus class for D&D 2024 (5.5e) lands on D&D Beyond on 29 September 2026. It is a sword-and-spell class from Sterling Vermin: 22 pages, one class, six subclasses and 31 spells, already sold as a $15 PDF on the publisher's own store. On D&D Beyond it is partnered content, so it plugs straight into the character builder. Rohan read…
In the 2014 rules a greatsword and a maul were the same weapon with different paint: 2d6 damage, Heavy, Two-Handed. In the 2024 rules they play differently. The greatsword Grazes: it hurts even when it misses. The maul Topples: it knocks the target flat. That difference is weapon mastery, the biggest change the 2024 Player's Handbook made to martial characters,…
A green dragon bursts out of the waterfall with its mouth open. Nobody at the table needs the stat block read out. You know what it is, you know what it wants, and you know how you feel about it. That is the gift of dragons: they are obvious. The game is named for them. They are the one monster…
A coin has two sides and one job: be fair. It is not quite fair. A person flipping a coin by thumb lands it on the side it started on about 51% of the time [1][2]. That one percent is where this post lives. Chance is the maths of what the dice do. Luck is the story we tell about…
A friend who has never played asked whether a D&D turn is like blackjack: learnable rules, so you never freeze when the table looks at you. It is. Both games compress to one law each. Blackjack: "the dealer has no choices, so play off what their up-card threatens." D&D: "actions are the currency, so spend yours to take away theirs."…
What Makes a Shape Worth Trusting. Five shapes are perfect. Rather more than five are fair. The difference is the whole story. What Makes a Die Fair The obvious answer is symmetry, and the obvious answer is very nearly right. It matters which symmetry, and the usual assumption asks for far more of it than a die needs. A die…
