D&D 5E We are betting a LOT on the DMG.... will it deliver?

The way I see it the DMG will have the normal DMG stuff (I.e. Magic items, DM advise, building adventures and counters, etc) and many optional rules (I.e. Healing and wounds, alternate skill systems, firearms, etc.). Will it have everything everyone wants? Nope.


My biggest question for the DMG is if the tactical combat stuff will be sufficient enough to scratch the same itch that 4e does. 5e already replaces pre-4e D&D for me so we will see. However, the DMG won't be a failure if it doesn't have enough tactical stuff for me. It just means that 4e will still be a regular in my line-up.

Sailor Moon said:

I believe the DMG will fall short of my expectations. I also believe the DMG will try and cram as much as possible and end up with the information feeling short and rushed, not to mention still having to leave things out.

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Aren't you the person who started threads about both the Player's Handbook and Monster Manual, saying in both cases that you felt the book was poorly done/nonfunctional and that you wanted to return it for a refund?

I think anything that WotC thinks doesn't belong in the game (Magic Item Creation, World Building, Strongholds) will not be well made.

There are a lot of little things I'm hoping will be in the book, but what I'm really hoping for is options. I want this DMG, in addition to giving us rules that we need to run the game, to be the answer to the question of "Where is 5e's modularity?" When they first started designing this thing, the big draw for me was the idea that this would be a modular game, with a simple base of rules that could be easily expanded. While I don't expect this to be an Unearthed Arcana, I hope that it does give us more optional and variant rules than past editions of the DMG, with an eye toward customizing your game to suite your table's preferences, particularly with regard to tactical combat options, experience and leveling, skirmishes and mass combat, and supporting playstyles of earlier editions.

I see the Basic rules as the foundation and as a beginner's edition, the PHB as a resource for player but with few variant or optional rules, the MM as a catalogue, and I'm hoping the DMG will bring the modularity. It needs to do other things that earlier DMG's did too though, so I suspect it will feature less modularity than I'd prefer, just because of space issues.

As has been already said, for some:

It will be awesome. Everything thing wanted and more.
It will be adequate and provide a positive experience for their game but may not be used fully.
It will be inadequate but still useful
It will show that WotC hates D&D or is woefully incompetent in regards to game design.

That's pretty much been the trend since D&D3e, so I don't expect to it change.

RPGs are a mixed bag for me. They almost never are perfect for what I want, so I hunt for better for my game > worse for my game and run from there. So, for me, I think it'll be the second one. There will be parts I won't bother using even though they'll perform just fine and other parts I'll adopt as soon as I get a D&D5e game going.

Gargoyle said:

There are a lot of little things I'm hoping will be in the book, but what I'm really hoping for is options. I want this DMG, in addition to giving us rules that we need to run the game, to be the answer to the question of "Where is 5e's modularity?". . . the DMG will bring the modularity. It needs to do other things that earlier DMG's did too though, so I suspect it will feature less modularity than I'd prefer, just because of space issues.

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Thank you. 5e is about "modularity," which means that the DMG should provide some different ways to play the game, and importantly, fall short in several areas.

This will leave a gap for more books to fill.

Kind of looking forward to the new DMG but as I look at my shelf with 1E, 2E, 3E, and 3.5 (I skipped 4E) DMG's stacked up, I wonder, do I really need another DMG? 5E is just a watered down version of 3.x so I can easily scale items in the DMG up or down as I see fit. And to be honest I really dont need a DMG to tell me how to run campaigns, gots plenty of that from past editions. Maybe WotC should come out with a DMG for dummies and noobs and use the space in the core DMG for more crunchy bits.


Scott

Henchmen

Do you think we'll see rules on henchmen (I believe they were called cohorts in D&D3.x)?

It's going to be adequate. I pre-ordered it already, they've got my money. I'm satisfied with the PHB and MM so far, I don't expect the DMG to deviate significantly in quality.

The books are gorgeous. Barring a handful of exceptionally crappy artwork, I think the books are total eyecandy. The writing style and content is top-notch for the most part as well.

My biggest gripe honestly is layout and accessibility. I remember how much I loathed looking for specific bits of information in the 3.5 DMG. For example, I couldn't for the life of me find Wealth By Level for characters starting above level 1 on my own, I had to google search for that info to find the random page they stuck it on. I had to do A LOT of google searchng for where stuff in the DMG was. That just shouldn't happen. I should have a good idea of where to look from the Table of Contents and Index.

5e's PHB I had similar problems finding things. I know I'm not alone in this because we've had an enormous thread on that topic.

5e's MM I have no idea why they couldn't devote 1-2 pages ordering monsters by CR and instead give it to us as an online supplement. It's especially baffling because this feature is standard in previous MM editions. Also, why can't they sort creatures by their native regions?

So I expect the DMG to be this: a beautiful book with solid writing, overall high quality artwork and writing, talks about most (but not all) the things I wanted to read, but craptastic content accessibility scattered all over the book that will piss me off and require many bookmarks and online note taking on my part.

On a side note: for the love of god sell me some PDFs or I'll have to find them a different way. If I can't easily navigate your books, let me have an online version so I can CTRL+F to find the exact thing that I'm looking for.

Delandel said:

... If I can't easily navigate your books, let me have an online version so I can CTRL+F to find the exact thing that I'm looking for.

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+1 for Ctrl+F