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Today was release day for the 2024 edition of Dungeons and Dragons 5e. Some good, some bad.

Honestly, I haven't read through the 500 monsters yet but I look at the book in the context of the entire game. For instance, the Player's Handbook made PCs tougher. How do monsters compare? Well, it seems they're tougher too. That's a good thing.

500 monsters is another good thing. There's lots and lots a baddy's to throw at PCs.

The stat block seems clearer and more organized but more important, the creature description is built out better. Habitat and treasure is clearly identified. They also provide some help for DMs on how to use them with random tables of lair findings or variations on the monsters. That may not be clear. OK, an example:
This is an example. Other monsters have tables for what their deity looks like, traditions they follow, what they may be composed of, etc. This is good stuff.

But what's not so good?
Orcs. There are no orcs. Similarly there are no drow or duergar. I won't get into politics but this smells very ...
Instead of that, your typical orc is a "tough". Consider that to be like a class You might make a drow a knight or mage, etc. That brings up another point. 45 of the "monsters" are humanoid classes? like pirate or cultist. First, that's 1/10 of all monsters and since traits of various races combined with these classes does offer some flexibility. But I want to know what the species (racial) traits might be. Do orcs have darkvision? Do duergar have a natural ability to turn invisible? Do drow levitate? One saving graces is that there's a conversion chart from 2014 to 2024. Orc translates into Tough. Drow into Priest Acolyte. Duergar into Spy. Go figure.

There are 3 wizard types. Mage apprentice, Mage and Archmage.
Let's just look at the apprentice. The apprentice has 49 (9d8+9) HP and has what translates into 3 cantrips and 4 first level spells. That roughly translates into a 2nd level PC. But a 2nd level PC will have 10-14 HP. The conclusion is that there's no logical correlation between a PC and the monster equivalent. And instead of 20 levels of Wizard that can be foes, you've got this impossible situation where DMs who want more flexibility need to create custom NPCs. Obviously this was done for ease.

That's it for me so far. It's fair to say that since I'm running a game here and a FTF game which have a long time to finish, I may never get to run a 2024 game. I may just need to skip to the 2035 version Honestly, because of how support for 2014 might wane quickly, DMs like me will find themselves moving to 2024 out of necessity.

Neptune,

I have to check... but aren't Orcs, Drow, and Duergar already covered in the Player's Handbook?

They are covered as PCs but not as monsters.

That's the point. None of those were PC races (species) before. At best, they were supplemental PC races but not core. Now they are core and no longer monsters.

So now, when you build an orc monster what you need to do is take the "Tough" monster and apply the "Orc" species traits to it. Yeah, it makes it more flexible but will there be base "orc toughs" as monsters to use on DnDBeyond or do we need to make custom monsters?

As a retired programmer, I can see the elegance of what they did. As a user of the game, I think it's making so that you need to be a technical guru just to DM the game. It won't impact me as an experienced DM but I shudder to explain to a new DM how to set up an encounter in a VTT.

Interesting. What's the artwork like?

The artwork is exceptional. Funny, but that's the last thing I look at since I purchased the digital version which I have as part of my subscription. I've decided, for the first time in 50 years, to not buy the hardcover.

But a neat thing is that under each picture of a monster is a button to display it in the VTT for a game. Kinda cool. I tried it just now and it works if a VTT session is open. There may have been hooks I placed into my browser to get it to work so it may be more than plug-and-play, but it worked for me.

I don't know if this link (directly to DnDBeyond) will work for everyone but it's a Red Dragon:

Very nice! Yes, full width artwork, pretty lush.

There's a similar graphic for every monster, I think.