D&D 5E In Search Of: The 5e Dungeon Master's Guide

[FrogReaver]

Still seems more like platitudes than anything else to me.

So obviously you don't accept the answer. Perhaps you can give an example of what you mean by 'types of games' or 'play at a table'. Those are some fairly nebulous, platitude sounding phrases to me. It makes it hard to answer when I don't know what you are looking for.

How would a DM know where in this particular range they wanted to be?

They would read the pros and cons and decide for themselves.

How constrained do we mean "anything is possible" to be? How constrained are the players' decisions?

Not sure what you are trying to ask here.

 

[pointofyou]

So obviously you don't accept the answer. Perhaps you can give an example of what you mean by 'types of games' or 'play at a table'. Those are some fairly nebulous, platitude sounding phrases to me. It makes it hard to answer when I don't know what you are looking for.


They would read the pros and cons and decide for themselves.


Not sure what you are trying to ask here.

There aren't enough pros and cons. There is one pro and one con and they're practically meaningless. There is no help here for someone new to the game trying to figure things out.

Are we playing a dungeoncrawl? What approaches to handling dice work best for that? What about a hexcrawl? What about something more explicitly story-oriented? How do the players in those types of games react to a DM who calls for dice rolls for everything? How do the players in those types of games react to a DM who rarely calls for dice rolls?

I want some specific commentary on why a DM would run one way as opposed to another. This doesn't need to be judgmental but rather than just telling the new DM they can run in these ways it seems useful to explain at least some of why people run those ways. More than a sentence or three about the why seems like a reasonable ask.

 

[Azzy]

Okay.
1a) What additional advice do think new DM’s need that the DMG should provide?

More on dungeon, wilderness, urban, and social adventure design, for one. More examples. Best practices. Defining different styles of play and help choosing which is right for the DM and their group (and tools to help facilitate these play-styles). Touching on the whys and wherefores of the game.

1b) Why specifically should it be the DMG providing this?

Because the DMG is a DM's guide and should give guidance to DMs (especially new ones). Unlike AD&D, 5e doesn't have the equivalent of basic D&D to on-ramp new DMs and the 5e starter sets aren't adequate for anything past running the accompanying adventure.

2) Do you think that such advice can be presented in a playstyle neutral way?

Sure, why not? The DMG should discuss different play-styles.

 

[Voadam]

For that reason, it has nine chapters divided into three parts; playing on the "Master" in DMG, it divides the chapters into "Master of Worlds" (explaining how to create settings, with rules about maps, towns, campaigns, tiers, and different planes in the multiverse), "Master of Adventures" (explaining how to create and run adventures and NPCs, the different types of adventuring environments, treasure, and what happens between adventures), and "Master of Rules," (which has the ideas and rules for running the game, along with specialized rules, optional rules, and how rules can be modified).

Organizationally I think up front should be either the most important things, or the things DMs should read first sequentially. I would not put how to create settings there.

The Master of Worlds material should mostly not be the lead off section. Explaining tiers is probably the best of that section's list here for starting off material to give some context for the different tiers of play.

Building adventures and ideas and rules for running the game would probably be great stuff to start with. How the DM handles dice rolling in 5e is a good section, it should be up front, not over 200 pages in. Specifics on trap examples and variant rules and such can wait for a later chapter, but the stuff on actually running the game I think would benefit a reader from being in the front.

 

[FrogReaver]

There aren't enough pros and cons. There is one pro and one con and they're practically meaningless. There is no help here for someone new to the game trying to figure things out.

'Snip to Below'

I want some specific commentary on why a DM would run one way as opposed to another. This doesn't need to be judgmental but rather than just telling the new DM they can run in these ways it seems useful to explain at least some of why people run those ways. More than a sentence or three about the why seems like a reasonable ask.

Okay. I don't believe much more can be said about rolling the dice as much possible vs rolling them as little as possible than the DMG currently says. Is there some glaring pro or con on this that you believe was missed?

Are we playing a dungeoncrawl? What approaches to handling dice work best for that?

IMO, the problem here is that the group of players/DMs that likes dungeoncrawls isn't going to agree on which approach to handling dice works best with that style.

 

[FrogReaver]

More on dungeon, wilderness, urban, and social adventure design, for one. More examples. Best practices. Defining different styles of play and help choosing which is right for the DM and their group (and tools to help facilitate these play-styles). Touching on the whys and wherefores of the game.

In Chapter 5, there are about 6 pages devoted to Dungeons. There are about 14 pages on Wilderness right after. There is nothing specifically on urban. Not sure what you mean by social adventure design. There is a decent sized section on creating NPC's. There's multiple pages devoted to talking through social interaction.

There's a page on playstyle (and I agree that while it's a good writeup it's lacking quite a bit of things I would have thought would be mentioned - as an example it doesn't even mention sandbox vs 'linear' adventure). 4 pages on various genres.

We can debate some about the specifics of the content that is there but for the most part the things that keep getting brought up are covered. They may not be covered to someones particular liking, but they are covered.

Because the DMG is a DM's guide and should give guidance to DMs (especially new ones). Unlike AD&D, 5e doesn't have the equivalent of basic D&D to on-ramp new DMs and the 5e starter sets aren't adequate for anything past running the accompanying adventure.

Assuming you are right on the starter sets. I've never delved into those. But it seems to me that if the starter set teaches you how to run that adventure, then the DMG provides you the tools to build your own adventures that you then can run. That's it's primary purpose and I think it does a solid job there (nothing is perfect).

Sure, why not? The DMG should discuss different play-styles.

I think in practice you'll find it difficult to say much about those playstyles without prescribing particulars to them that don't really fit for all players of that style. IMO, the best they can do without prescription is end up with more things some describe as meaningless platitudes.

 

[Alby87]

I think that the heart of the debate is that the Starter Set and Essentials Kit are like a demo of D&D, and not a standalone version of it. In all the three products (Both Starter Sets and the Essentials Kit) there is an adventure with some "advice" to the DM, but not a guide on how to be one. For me, the right division of kits should be:
1) For new players and new DMs: Tutorial style game play, maybe even a choose your path like the Red Box from BECMI or Essentials: premade characters, and a very module with a lot of reminders on how to do something and guide new DMs, railroady but with reminders that more advanced game can go on different directions. This should be the starting guide for new players and DMs

2) A little more advanced players: Essentials Kit: now the game is a bit more advanced: players know enough of basic gameplay to understand the choices to be made when creating a new character, and a DM can understand the game enough to be guided by a module like B1 or B2 to create new dungeons, using a small selection of monsters and some uncommon magic item. Giving a small rewritable map, dices, condition and initiative cards, and DM screen tells you the kit is helping you growing in the game.

Now with both boxes you have a sized down game, that you can combine to create small adventures, with a selection of classes and low levels.

3) What to up the game? Time for the core rules! Players will have a lot more choices, the complete rules, feats and spells. The DM will find in the guide a lot of advices and tables to continue building bigger dungeons (more traps examples), bigger settlements (up to cities), and adding subsystem like Wilderness, Domain management and so on!
Experienced players from previous edition can buy just the core and have everything, without not necessary tutorials. New players will be guided to how to start to play without having to pay upfront the core books or being not sure how to do after the end of the starting set.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I would disagree with this. Both the 4e DMG and the PF2 Gamemastery Guide did an excellent job at all 3. I’m sure other posters will pop in with their own examples from different games.

Firstly - I cannot speak to PF2, but if it is in any way like PF1 and 3.x then the font is small and allows for much more information to be delivered to its readers. WotC changed their style from 4e onwards.

Secondly - The 4e DMG had an excellent layout but the game was relatively focused in playstyle. 5e tried to unite the playerbase, it covers a variety of playstyles and options. Different.

Personally, unless WotC goes back to smaller font (and I doubt that) we are unlikely going to see a DMG that does teaching and advanced play both well, unless of course they take some of it online as I suggested upthread.

My opinion ofc.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I get the feeling that 4e and PF2 were both much more prescriptive in how their games should be played when compared to 5e. Do you think that's accurate?

I’m not sure I agree. There are a couple of posters here that are extremely vocal about the similarities between 4e and more “scene framing” games. Although I DMed 4e for several years, I have to admit I never saw it this way. That is 2 extremely different ways to play the game. Could you run 4e in an OSR fashion? I don’t know, I didn’t try. But of the top of my head, I don’t see why you couldn’t.

PF2 has a highly detailed ruleset. I don’t necessarily think that a highly detailed ruleset requires prescriptivity to how the game is played. As a matter of fact, while for the most part, I’ve jettisoned all the detailed rules, I’ve adapted several PF2 frameworks into my game.

Edit. And naturally, I suggested 4e and PF2 as two games that are similar to 5e in both theme and complexity that I know well. Others may have their own suggestions.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Firstly - I cannot speak to PF2, but if it is in any way like PF1 and 3.x then the font is small and allows for much more information to be delivered to its readers. WotC changed their style from 4e onwards.

PF2 (and PF1) are more complicated and detailed, I agree. It seems to me that since 5e is simpler, the same goal can be accomplished with fewer words.

Secondly - The 4e DMG had an excellent layout but the game was relatively focused in playstyle. 5e tried to unite the playerbase, it covers a variety of playstyles and options. Different.

Was it? I didn’t play 4e as a open sandbox, but off the top of my head, I can’t think of any reason you couldn’t. Certain players both play 4e more narratively and swear that the game was designed with that in mind. OSR grim and gritty would probably have been harder, but I don’t think it would have taken very many more pages to present the playstyle and the variant rules to implement it.

Actually, that might be the way to do it. Take the 4e layout. Immediately after the GM Toolbox section, include a new chapter: Playstyles. Devote 4-5 pages to each playstyle: why people play it, what rules variants can be used to run it.