There's a new Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Dungeon Master's Screen. The theme is Unity. The art is by Joy Ang. It's got a whimsical illustrative style, populated by characters posed like they're in Darkest Dungeon combat if they'd been invited to The Last Supper by a red dragon. Everyone comes together around a golden 20-sided die. 

I haven't seen them all. But I've never been blown away by any one Dungeon Master's screen. The team putting this new one together had to look at the usefulness of the information placed on the screen, its legibility, and even making sure that DMs using laptops weren't "clam shelling" their laptops in order to see the most useful info on the screen.

That is a wild consideration.

From left to right, the four panels of quick-reference information on the screen are:

• Far left panel:
  • Conditions: Blinded, Frightened, Paralyzed, etc., which happened to be scattered alphabetically in the new Player's Handbook Rules Glossary.
• Left Panel:
  • Improvising Damage: 1d10 damage when Burned by Coals, or 24d10 when Crushed by the Jaws of a Moon-Sized Creature.
  • Damage Severity and Level: 2d10 damage can be deadly to character levels 1 - 4, but 10d10 damage is only a nuisance to character levels 17 - 20.
  • Actions: Attack, Dash, and Disengage are familiar, but some like the Magic action or Utilize action are newly introduced in D&D 2024.
  • Long Jump: Can you remember what this is?
  • High Jump: Me neither. 
  • Concentration: by the way, if you die, that breaks your concentration.
• Right panel:
  • Skills: listed in alphabetical order like in 2014 character sheets, rather than broken out by the Ability they fall under like in 2024 character sheets.
  • Death Saving Throws: Hopefully something not referenced terribly often, since this is largely hidden by those laptop-using Dungeon Masters.
  • Object Armor Class: Adamantine is stronger than Mithral? The Tolkien Estate is reporting, "Shots fired."
  • Object Hit Points: A fragile, tiny bottle has about 2 Hit Points. Which is good since I allow my players to Health Grenade those bad boys like in Baldur's Gate 3.
  • Food, Drink, and Lodging Costs: It's got bread and cheese on there (that'll get you through 75% of fantasy-fiction novels, for sure), and their are six tiers of room and board.
  • Typical Difficulty Classes: From a Very Easy 5 to a Nearly Impossible 30—this hasn't changed in D&D 2024.
  • Light Sources: Mostly only relevant to the dragonborn, halflings, and humans in the party since they're the only ones without Darkvision.
  • Obscured Areas: Which goes hand in hand with Light Sources.
• Far right panel (to be honest, this was the stuff that could've been hidden behind the laptop screen. Except Cover):
  • Travel Pace: Broken down in easy-to-divide-by-6-mile-hexagon distances.
  • Travel Terrain: To include maximum pace, encounter distance, and Difficulty Checks for foraging, navigation, and searching.
  • Cover: Great if you can get it.
  • Audible Distance: I don't know about these two...
  • Visibility Outdoors: ...Because I'm basically doing to arrange everyone on the battle map the way I want to.
  • Weather: I love talking about the weather in game. I'm not even kidding.

These DM's Screens are not an afterthought. There's a lot of blood, sweat, and tears going into their design, too. I'm not that into the cartoon illustration style of this one, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate the Unity concept. And the DM's side looks completely useful and entirely legible—their two biggest concerns going into the design.

The two being interviewed here also hint towards what can be found in the upcoming D&D 2024 Monster Manual (coming February 2025, actually). For artwork, there will be a few cute pieces, but also plenty of body horror. 

The 2024 Dungeon Master's Screen launches November 12, right alongside the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide.

EVERYONE IS HERE! In Vampire Survivors that is as the newest DLC pack has been announced and will bring characters from the Castlevania series into the game with the "Ode to Castlevania" DLC pack. 

This DLC pack will include a brand new map which also is the largest map introduced in the game yet, 40+ new weapons and 20+ new characters. Probably the most exciting thing coming in this DLC is the music because the Castlevania soundtracks have been on loop in my head for decades. 

Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania will cost $3.99 and will be available on all systems October 31st. 

The two PC ports of Sony's Spider-Man games have been really, really good and when Marvel's Spider-Man 2 was released last October, I was hoping it wouldn't be too long before it hit the PC scene. Yesterday, the news was made official.

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 will be coming to PC on January 30, 2025 so a very nice treat a few weeks after the New Year. The port will once again be handled by Nixxes Software, the people that did the other two as well. They've done a great job at putting in some PC specific features such as NVIDIA DLSS3 support, ultrawide display support, and unlocked frame rates to name a few.

There will be two versions and all the DLCs will be included in both with the deluxe edition offering 10 exclusive suits between Peter and Miles along with early unlocks for other suits as well.

Eric really loved the second game and Insomniac's done a tremendous job with the series. I can't wait to play it for the first time on the PC.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 – Standard Edition

• The complete game
• All the latest updates since Marvel Spider-Man 2’s PS5 launch, including:
• 14 new suits
• New Game+
• Ultimate Levels
• New Symbiote Suit Styles
• Time of Day options
• Post-Game Achievements
• Action Figure Mode in Photo Mode
• Screen Reader and Audio Descriptions

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 – Digital Deluxe Edition

• The complete game with updates listed above
• 5 exclusive suits for Peter Parker
• 5 exclusive suits for Miles Morales
• Early unlock for the Arachknight Suit (Peter)
• Early unlock for the Shadow-Spider Suit (Miles)
• Early unlock for the Web Grabber gadget
• +5 skill points
• Additional Photo Mode items

The Greyhawk campaign setting is packed into the Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide. A campaign setting has never been in a DM's Guide before. Its inclusion honors the 50th anniversary of D&D because Greyhawk was the first published D&D campaign setting ever, back in 1980.

Greyhawk was conceived by Gary Gygax, one of the cofounders of D&D. It was a thin folder that held a 32-page guidebook to the World of Greyhawk, plus some foldout maps. This makes it conceivable to fit it into the new 384-page DM's Guide.

Designer Chris Perkins, who first fell in love with Greyhawk when he was a boy of 11 or 12, recognizes "How unburdened it was by detail. It deliberately left a lot for the Dungeon Master to make their own." He loved the leanness of it all. 

Gary Gygax first built the Greyhawk setting (for his friends, in the '70s) by thinking small. He started with the dungeons below Castle Greyhawk. 

The 2024 DM's Guide likewise starts small: with the city of Greyhawk. There are a few key locations highlighted on a foldout map that comes with the book. One side of the map is the city, on the other side are the surrounding nations. And as points of interest spiral further away from the city of Greyhawk, the descriptions become intentionally more vague. The designers want to give a Dungeon Master just enough to pick up and run with. They want you to make your mark on the map.

Character backgrounds can connect a player to different points of interest in the city. If you've got a character with the Soldier background, for instance, and you're using Greyhawk as your starting location, it's easy to imagine that former Soldier getting their start within the City Guard. The DM can then bake that into their campaign—giving a player deeper ties to the setting. 

Things in the Greyhawk section to keep you reading:

• Big Bads (e.g. the faceless Elemental Evil, or Iuz the evil cambion demigod)
• Gods of Greyhawk
• Living History sidebars that are ways to explore Greyhawk's depths
• Location descriptions
• Made-up days of the week
• More than one moon
• Neighborhood descriptions
• Political organizations
• Supernatural adventure hooks in the city
• Wargaming adventure hooks in the surrounding nations
• Seafaring adventure hooks in the massive bodies of water
• Three major conflicts iconic to D&D and/or Greyhawk:
  • secret nihilistic cults of Elemental Evil unleashing things meant to stay locked away
  • big bad Iuz planted on the map and ready to conquer everyone else
  • evil dragons—specifically drawn up for a game called "Dungeons & Dragons"
• Deep cuts into lore
  • Such as, why the name "Unearthed Arcana" is used by Wizards of the Coast to this day

What makes Greyhawk iconic? Greyhawk is not defined by tropes, but there are things that you can find in Greyhawk that you would expect to find in any fantasy setting. It's very "straight down the fairway" D&D. All the monsters in the Monster Manual and all the magic items in the DM's Guide have a home in Greyhawk. 

On the map, longtime Greyhawk fans—even if it's through more recent adventures found in Tales From the Yawning Portal, Ghosts of Saltmarsh, and Quests From the Infinite Staircase—will find marked locations for the Tomb of Horrors, White Plume Mountain, Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, the Tower of Inverness. This is even the home of powerful nonplayer characters that've made their way onto the covers of 5th Edition D&D books, like Tasha, Mordenkainen, and Bigby.

As a DM of the Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen adventure, I sometimes feel handcuffed by the number of Dragonlance novels I've read from Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman. It feels like I'm tiptoeing through a minefield of potential "errors" I could make in the setting's lore. But Greyhawk doesn't come with that weight. There's a ton of lore in that anything and everything D&D feels cozy there, without being so steeped in its own lore that it paralyzes you from making your own fun.

The D&D 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide launches November 12. The 2024 Player's Handbook launched in September—we reviewed it here.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 has released details on its upcoming multiplayer modes. The game is set to release with 16 launch maps pitting the Rogue Black Ops and Crimson One Factions with the various Operators, or characters, that can be selected. Contests will take place across 6v6 modes of Team Deathmatch, Domination, Search and Destroy, Kill Confirmed, Hardpoint, Headquarters, Kill Order, and Control. There's also the 8 player Free for All where it's every man for themselves and the 2v2 Gunfight mode that eliminates respawns. In addition to the standard modes we also have alternate "Face Off" 6v6 modes for Domination, Team Deathmatch, Kill Order, and Kill Confirmed. Then there is the "Hardcore mode" that enables a limited HUD, friendly fire, and significantly lowered health. 

In addition to the actual game modes, Black Ops 6 provides new and returning players with a Training Course and Firing Range to hone your skills, get accustomed to the new "Omnimovement" innovations, and test out the various gun types. Show off your highlights in Theater Mode, swapping perspectives on replays and capturing your clutch kills, but only in next-gen consoles like PS5 and Xbox One.  

For more multiplayer details, including the maps and operators themselves, check out the official blog. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launches More news is expected to drop later this week with details on the Zombies mode, weapons, gear, and level progression. Black Ops 6 releases October 25th for PS5/PS4, Xbox One/Series X|S, and PC.

Mecha BREAK is not out yet, but the team at Amazing Seasun Games are already working on new features that will be added to the game at launch and beyond. The multiplayer mech shooter sees squads of three or six players compete in battle royale-style combat, either on the ground or in the air. You’ll be able to fully customize your pilot and mech, from cosmetics to weapon loadouts, with several classes of mech including assault, melee, sniper, recon, and support.

Some of the new features revealed today include additional customization options for both pilots and mechs, explorable space stations with a hangar to view your mech, a tactical command center, private living quarters for your pilot, a bar, a gym, and a shooting range to hone your pilot’s aim outside of the mech. Yes, that apparently means that the studio is working on a game mode (or modes) where the pilot can exit the mech suit, which is dope, and since we don’t have a new Titanfall, maybe Mecha BREAK can fill that void for us.

Mecha Break is scheduled to launch in 2025 for PC and consoles.

One of the year’s best games, Astro Bot, is not quite done yet, with developer Team Asobi announcing today plans to bring five speedrun levels to the game over the coming weeks. The first level, called Building Speed, will be released on October 17^th, with a new level releasing each subsequent week. Each of the five speedrun levels will also add two new special bots for you to rescue, including the Helldivers and Eve from Stellar Blade.

The speedrun challenges were a big hit in 2020’s Astros Playroom, so it’s nice to see them bringing them back. Of course, the best part is that these will be free content updates for Astro Bot. Here is the weekly release schedule, with each drop happening at 9:00AM Eastern Time:

• Oct 17: Building Speed  
• Oct 24: Let it Slide 
• Oct 31: Spring-loaded Run 
• Nov 7: Helium Heights 
• Nov 14: Rising Heat

In the land of PS5 pros, and video cards being released like candy, The Arcade Crew still believes in old school graphics, and old school gaming. No big dragons, or realistic playing fields. You don't have to have the best TV in the world. They're just good at taking a classic feel, or ideal, and making it into a game. Their latest seems like their imagination and Windows 95 had a PC baby. And it's called MainFrames.

Your character's name is Floppy, and you're trying to make it in the digital world. In order to do that, you must traverse through this side scrolling adventure through, you guessed it, other windows. Daemons (no spell check, Eric) are trying to keep you from doing that, putting obstacles in your path. Go meet some other friends, and find your purpose, all while going through another platforming clinic. 

I say that, because the demo starts you off pretty light. You can jump, spin and wall bounce, as platformers go. The game then tells you that you can click on windows and move them to where you need them to be. Later, you can click on windows, to make them change from floors to walls, and even ceilings. Or, nothing at all, so you can navigate through. The platforming is a little easy. Figuring out which window does what is the tricky part, for your clicks also reveal jump boosters, and sometimes crimson colored stage hazards. 

All this is wrapped around the narrators of the game, who are going back and forth on how to present this game to you. They've removed all the talking, and context, because they just want you to play it. When the demo ends, and your brain is mush, then they tell you that that was the demo, goodbye. Your save file goes away, and you get to wishlist it. I had a whole bunch of computer puns for this article, but the game toward the end warped my fragile little hard drive. If you don't want to spoil it for yourself, then don't watch the video below, as I went through the entire thing. You can watch as I short circuit toward the end, if you're a masochist. Otherwise, go grab it now, and boot it up. (There it is.)

After being teased for the past few weeks, 2K has announced that they have released a version of WWE 2K24, titled the Bray Wyatt Edition. This comes with the new version of "The Fiend", Bray Wyatt's final vision of the character before he passed away. This pack also sold separately, includes Bo Dallas as Uncle Howdy, an updated version of the already in game superstar. In addition, you get the Fiend championship belt, the Firefly Funhouse manager card, and 15,000 VC.

Here's the breakdown of pricing.

If you don't already own the game, you can get the Bray Wyatt pack, all the DLC superstars, with their my faction cards, the 40 years of Wrestlemania version, the fast track unlock from the showcase of the immortals, the Nightmare Family pack, and 67,000 VC, it's going to run you $140. This is not bad considering all the stuff from the deluxe edition, including the season pass, and the VC.

Option 2 for if you don't already own the game, you can get it, and the Bray Wyatt pack with 32,000 VC, and nothing else, for $80. So base game, and this package. That's it. 

If you have the game, and just want to add the Bray Wyatt pack regardless of what edition you purchased, that comes with 15000 VC, and it's $10, which is fantastic in my opinion. 

My Faction also gets an update, which includes persona cards of CM Punk, including him in a mask, and his Straight Edge Society variant. King Booker is also available, and if you use locker code SINGLTSTYL2K24, you'll get a deluxe pack from the Singlet Supreme collection. 

"This may surprise you, but in 50 years of D&D, we've created a lot of lore." Lead Dungeons & Dragons designer Chris Perkins isn't kidding. Keeping it all straight is the Lore Glossary in the upcoming D&D 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide. Some of the iconic characters and locations that are covered:

• Acererak: appearing on the cover of the old 2014 DM's Guide
• Adamantine
• Alustriel Silverhand: with a pronunciation guide saying it's uh-loose-tree-uhl
• Ashardalon: a D&D 3e threat that eats pre-incarnate souls and has a Baylor for a heart
• Baba Yaga: the mother of witches, synonymous with the boogeyman
• Bahamut/Paladine/Fizban: father of metallic (good) dragons
• The Companions in the Hall
• Demogorgon
• Elder Evils: a catch-all term for "weird, ancient, horrible, evil things"
• The Great Modron March: Every 17 x 17 years, modrons sweep through the multiverse ("no one" knows why, and Chris Perkins isn't talking)
• Heroes of the Realm: the 1980s D&D cartoon characters
• Lloth: appearing on the alternate cover of the new 2024 DM's Guide
• Mithral: Not "mithril" lest ye be sued by the Tolkien Estate
• Niko the Cleric: one of the '80s Heroes of the Realm but only recently introduced in 5e
• Prince of Frost: a D&D 4e spoiled rich kid Son of the Summer Queen
• The Raven Queen: D&D 4e God of Death, who has lived on where much of 4e is forgotten
• Tasha: of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything fame
• Tiamat/Takhisis: mother of chromatic (evil) dragons
• Vlaakith: Githyanki lich queen made better known through the Baldur's Gate 3 video game

Many of these people, places, and things have appeared in D&D sourcebooks and adventures with little or no context. Publisher Wizards of the Coast expected knowledge of these things to exist in players' and DMs' shared knowledge—or that the Internet would fill in those gaps. Thankfully, they now see fit to collect this knowledge into one place. This is so the DM's Guide will no longer be that one book nobody reads.

For instance, Adamantine appears in the 2014 Player's Handbook, but you're never told what Adamantine is. Now it appears in the Lore Glossary, which also points you to Adamantine armor and weapons in chapter 7.

Hopefully Alustriel Silverhand is cross referenced with several other people in the Lore Glossary. Chris Perkins rattles off the top of his head that Alustriel is one of the Seven Sisters who counts Drizzt Do'Urden and Elminster among her friends. These are folks appearing in lots of new D&D 2024 Player's Handbook art, so this Lore Glossary is where you'd go to find out who they are. 

This section is a robust collection of D&D's 50-year history. But there's still an element of the unknowable to many of them, especially the gods or Elder Evils. That's part of the fun: leaving room for interpretation, or keeping details completely obscure. This gives a Dungeon Master—for whom this sourcebook is written—to come up with their own versions and interpretations. 

Chris Perkins goes on to say that the Lore Glossary makes apparent how "wacky" and "elastic" D&D is. This is a showcase of D&D's flexibility, variety, and identity, without ever making it feel generic. 

The D&D 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide releases November 12, 2024.