3 out of 5 rating for D&D 5th Edition Dungeon Master's Guide
I'll start by saying I was pretty anxious to pick up the 5th Edition DMG. I already have the PHB and the MM, so this was the third book I needed for the "core set." While there are a lot of great things inside the Dungeon Master's Guide, I somehow came away feeling less enthusiastic than other reviewers appear to feel. It could certainly be possible that my expectations were too high; though, I also believe part of my feeling was some Deja Vu from how my experience with early 4th Edition went. I'll touch upon that further down in the review.
The first impression of the 5th Edition DMG is that the book looks fantastic. The artwork (as with most of 5E) is great. Likewise, the text and tables are clearly featured and easy to read. The only visual anomaly I found upon a quick browse was on page 15; there were some oddities concerning the words on the page having bled into the paper on the left side. It's nothing major; it could very well be unique to my copy. I only noticed because I once worked in a print shop, so I tend to notice such things.I felt that the discussions about playstyles and various other things at the beginning of the book were good, but a little shallow. The information presented was great, it it's a nice primer to get someone started on thinking about such things when putting together a campaign, but I feel like there could have been a little more. That being said, I understand there are only so many pages in a book. I somewhat expect later products to expand upon the "Flavors of Fantasy" section; I imagine that some of the setting books will delve further into the flavors they tend to embody (Ravenloft for Dark Fantasy -as an example.)
Discussion of the planes was interesting. I somewhat like the 5E approach of using a version of the Great Wheel which also keeps the Feywild and the Shadowfell. I also like that the DMG gives a few options and inspiration for running a game which is more in tune with other editions or just other cosmological assumptions in general. In the section on planes, but, then a few times later in the books as well, I noticed that the DMG sidebars and examples serve as a way to sneak a little more of 4th Edition back into the game. In a way, I like that approach. I like it because -attempting to put myself in the shoes of the designers- it seems like the best way they could have gone about including those options without getting backlash from parts of the customer base who might be opposed to them. If you don't yet have the book, an example of what I mean is the inclusion of 4E-style Eladrin via the example given later in the book of how to design new races for your campaign.
Between the tables, discussions of playstyle, and various other things in the DMG, there is a lot of good information. What I don't really gather from the DMG is a good idea about how the game actually works in play. It's difficult for me to explain what I mean by that, but the basic feeling I have is that there's a lot of great information and tools given to me, but I still don't quite know what 5th Edition's identity is. However, in spite of that, there are times when I come away feeling more shallow than I'd like. That's where I start getting the Deja Vu feeling because I was extremely happy with the first three 4E books when I first picked them up, but then the game moved forward in a direction that I didn't care for; there are a few times during my reading of the DMG that I started to feel a worry that a similar thing may happen again with 5E. Since this is a review, I wish I had something more substantial to point to and explain that feeling, but I honestly (at this point in time) don't.
The main negative I can point to as I come away from the DMG is that I still don't know what identity 5th Edition has as a game, and -more importantly- as a roleplaying game; what identity will it have a year from now? One area where this question is most prevalent for me is in encounter design. Somehow, despite the fact that I have both a Monster Manual and a DMG with tons of tables and charts, I still do not really know what I am doing when it comes to designing encounters for 5th Edition. I can look at and understand the numbers being shown, but I still do not have a good feel for how to produce the results I want in actual play. I feel as though that's part of what a DMG is supposed to do; so, since I have the DMG and still do not feel confident when it comes to the aspect of running a game, I cannot help but to see that as a negative. Though, to be fair, that may be due to the edition being so early in its life cycle; perhaps future books which are produced after the game is tested more will answer some of my questions.
By no means would I dare say the DMG is a bad book. It isn't. However, at the time of me writing this, I look at the 90-something percent rating given to it and am somewhat baffled by that. There are many things about the book I really like. However, it somehow feels shallow. That is odd to say because there's a lot of information given in the DMG; it just somehow doesn't really give me what I thought the DMG would give me. That is more of an idea about what kind of game 5th Edition is. I almost come away feeling as though the DMG could have been a collection of Dungeon articles. To be fair, the price of the book would be consistent with the Dungeon (and Dragon) compilations that were released in the past. So, from that standpoint, I do not regret my purchase. There's plenty of information here which is good; I'm just not so sure it's not information that I couldn't find in pretty much any other book about running a game, and I could very likely get more in depth treatment of the topics I want from those other sources. The one thing I wanted from the DMG was more of an idea about what 5th Edition's identity is, and I don't think I got that. A contrasting idea would be to say that the options presented allow me to make the identity of the game whatever I want, but the material -while very thorough- somehow feels shallow enough that I'm not so sure that is true; I won't know whether it's true or not until I see future products.