Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process.
1. Introduction- What Does "No One Reads the DMG" Actually Mean?
So my undying love of Leonard Nimoy, long-running jokes, and the many nifty and obscure things tucked away in the 5e DMG led me to write the following recent post-
Lost civilizations, extraterrestrials, myths and monsters, missing persons, magic and witchcraft, unexplained phenomena, and unread roleplaying game books. "In Search of..." forum posts are traveling the internet, seeking out these great mysteries. This thread was the result of the work of...
www.enworld.org
Alas, it appears that a few things may not have been readily apparent to everyone. The primary one is the refrain of, "No one reads the DMG." Now, there are many people that take that quite seriously.
If no one in the history of ever has read the DMG, then what use can it be?
As such, and with an exceedingly heavy heart, I must now report to you the truth- there are, in fact, people that have read the DMG. For example, the people who wrote it (the DMG was not, as I previously reported, written by the mad mage Abdul Alhazred ... my researchers will be flogged until performance improves) probably read what they were writing at some point. And I must state that I might have read it at some point as well, given that I was providing pinpoint citations to actual pages. It might also happen that people may have looked up things like ... oh, how magic items work, or the Oathbreaker class, or ... you know ... stuff. So why did I write that, and why do you keep seeing this refrain?
It's a joke.
It's been a joke for a long time. At this point, it's just a callback. It refers to the fact that people on enworld will refer to rules and "how to play" and debate it endlessly, without realizing that the issues that they are talking about are actually covered in the DMG.* Of course, this isn't just true with the DMG- I remember a post that was six years after the publication of the PHB telling us that there was an option for customized backgrounds, and people still can (and do) argue about the effects of spells or how to multiclass mostly because they haven't read the text of the PHB recently. That's ... that's just part of the D&D experience. As I wrote before, on this topic, the reason why this tends to happen even more with the DMG is the following:
1. Generally, the DMG of most editions tends to be under-read.
2. The genius of 5e is that it appears
similar to prior editions; the problem with 5e is that it isn't the
same as prior editions.
3. Most people assume that (other than things like magic items) everything they need is contained within the PHB.
4. A lot of people still learn to DM by playing; so when they first start to DM, it's not like they read the DMG cover-to-cover.
5. Since so much of the DMG is filled with tips and variant rules and ideas for building custom worlds and adventures, a lot of people assume that it is stuff that don't need or won't use and never bother really digging into it.
6. If you don't know what's in there, it can be hard to find (the 5e index issue).
*Much like the truism that anyone that complains about someone else's grammar usage will inevitably make a grammatical error in the complaint, so too is it true that anyone who attempts to list a lack of features in the DMG will inevitably and accidentally list something that is in the DMG. ...or so I hear.
@Voadam - does that seem right?
With that established, I will now make explicit what I thought was already clear in the prior post. Given that most people chose to discuss whether the DMG is (or is not) successful at onboarding brand-new players, I thought this second post would be helpful.
2. D&D is Not Like Other Games- How New Players Learn to Play D&D.
I will make this brief- there is no "wrong" way to learn to play D&D. But D&D, due to its uniquely dominant position in the market (especially if you add in "D&D variants" from prior editions to PF to OSR) is able to on-board new players in a way that is different that any other TTRPG.
Almost every other
new game that comes out has to use its rulebook to explain
how the game is played. If you purchase Snarf's new game,
Disco Party Athletes, you had better be able to understand how to play from the ruleset- because you're unlikely to find a game already happening, and I'm not making any youtube explainers. D&D is not in the that position; it has legions of players, a multitude of DMs, numerous websites and forums, a plethora of youtube channels and twitch streams and tiktoks, and another (synonym for lots and lots that I'm too lazy to think of right now) of online groups to play with, along with AL (if that's in your area). There are so many resources for new or beginning players that on-boarding new players into D&D has never been easier- hence, the stratospheric growth of D&D in the last eight years.
Moreover, D&D also sells starter sets (for the truly new players and DM), essentials, and has both the Basic Rules on-line for free, as well as instructional videos for learning how to play and how to DM. The core three books (PHB, DMG, MM) are not for "teaching you how to play D&D if you've never heard of D&D or RPGs before" but are, instead, best thought of as reference books. You refer to them as needed.
Looking at the core three books as teaching you D&D as a system, teaching a brand new person how to play the game- that's probably not the best use of those books. While they certainly can be improved to make them better organized and more intelligible for new players, given the ways in which players onboard now, it would be a waste of pages to "teach newbies how to play" using the books. IMO.
3. So What is the Purpose of the DMG?
Allow me to quote from the prior post-
While I assumed this was pretty explicit, I will now be 100% clear. You have to remember the timing of the release of 5e, and the issues with the D&D playerbase at the time. First, you had 2e, which emphasized a much more narrative style of play (building on the "Hickman Revolution" and away from "Gygaxian Skilled Play")- which was very popular for some, but not for other. Then you had 3e, which both revitalized D&D, but also caused many within the hobby to turn away at the increasing emphasis on RAW (3e was what led to OSR). Then there was 4e, which had a definite point of view that some people loved, and others were not as fond of.
5e's DMG can be seen as a reaction against prior editions in that way- it is quite specifically not going to tell DMs how to to run their games. If you like fudging, that's cool. If you don't, that's cool too! If you want to roll behind a screen, have at it! If you want to roll in the open, that's nifty! If you want to run traditional dungeon crawls, we're going to list dungeons as the first environment and put a random dungeon generator in the appendix. If you don't, we're not going to really privilege it over anything else. Maybe you're one of those old-school "Adventures make levels the old fashioned way ... THEY EARN THEM." Cool cool, the DMG will have rules for spending money and time on training to gain levels. Maybe you're one of those tables that likes to ensure that players get to have narrative control over scenes or complications? Cool cool cool. The DMG will have plot points.
Do you want extreme and gritty meatgrinders? The DMG has your back with slow natural healing, gritty realism, healer kit dependency, and lingering injuries.
Do you like heroes that champion over the odds? The DMG has you covered with Epic Heroism, Hero Points, and Healing Surges.
Do you run combats using ToTM? The DMG says that players "often rely on your descriptions to visualize where their characters are in relation to their surroundings and their enemies." It even provides handy tables for targets in area of effect.
Do you run combats using miniatures? The DMG has you covered there, too.
And so on. In the end, the primary purpose of the 5e DMG (other than, um, to sell books) was not to onboard brand-new DMGs by insisting that they play a certain way. It was to affirm. The way you are playing? Whatever that might be? That's right. You're doing it right.
This is what gets lost in some of the conversation about the DMG. The DMG (unlike videos, or starter sets, or any of a number of other resources) ... it's not supposed to onboard new DMs by telling them how to play. At the time, it was supposed to provide reassurance to everyone- that they were doing it right, and that they would be welcome in 5e. Which, while not 100% successful, has appeared to be overwhelmingly successful. While people complain about the DMG not serving a particular purpose as well as it should, it is a rare day that someone quotes the 5e DMG to another person to say that they are playing D&D wrong.
But maybe, just maybe, that's because no one reads the DMG.
ETA- some links I posted in the other thread if you are a new player/DM:
Basic D&D Rules | Dungeons & Dragons
Ready to begin playing Dungeons & Dragons? Let's get you started!
dnd.wizards.com
Ready to try your hand at becoming the Dungeon Master? Let's get you started!
dnd.wizards.com
