D&D (2024) What can WotC do in OneD&D to make the DM's Guide worth buying?

[UngainlyTitan]

Here's what I'd like.

• Move magic items to the PHB. I consider that player-facing anyway (especially when their characters have the ability to craft magic items.)

Agreed

• Drop the high-minded "how to be a DM" advice. There are better examples of actual plays and DM advice online.

Quibble, here something along the scripted example of play from the Old D&D Basic Red Box would be good but I think that should be a free online document, referenced in the DMG and the SRD. That should discuss, player agendas, and different campaign styles and how one may implement them and resources on that topic.

• List many examples of traps (including complex ones) and environmental hazards
• Have a completely overhauled "player rewards" section. How to award XP, treasure, etc.

OK.

• Downtime rules

Absolutely

• Encounter design

OK, I would add they should be fairly explicit on their encounter assumption and what to do it you find it too easy for your party. Upping the CR vs more lower level monsters.

• Travel vignettes, skill challenges

This should be a big section because there are a number of incompatible popular approaches to the topic of travel and exploration.
I think a detailed review of the old D&D resource management hex crawl is in order and then go on to more relaxed version where the encounter pattern is followed but without the resource management and how it breaks down around levels 7 to 10, due to assumed magic (items) and how things might be adjusted.
Then discuss the journey and skill challenge approaches to wilderness exploration.

But basically, I think we keep getting DMs Guides because of tradition. I don't think it's a necessary book. I'd like to see a two-core book model.
Treasure, crafting, downtime rules in the PHB.
Traps, encounter design, hazards, skill challenges, etc., in the MM (adversary guide?)
Have the DM's advice stuff on D&D Beyond columns and in-print in the various "beginner DM" adventures.

An Extended discussion of different world building assumptions, gritty and/or low magic, level caps below level 20 and so forth.

 

[overgeeked]

Return to having actual advice on gamemastering skills in the book.

1st edition was a big mess 43 years ago, but at least it tried. Star Wars Roleplaying Game had a great Gamemaster Handbook back in the 90s that didn't need any additional game mechanics or tables to fill out its page count.

Make the book an actual guide, not just a collection of mechanics that didn't fit in the PHB.

Yeah, that. There’s a lot of wonderful advice in the 4E DMGs that’s still relevant. Restating the GM advice from Star Wars is a good idea. Taking up DCC’s notion of “quest for it” would be great.

Maybe hire a few famous DMs and DM-advice people to write the thing. Matt Mercer, Matt Colville, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Mike Shea, Professor DM, Ben Milton, WebDM, etc.

 

[darjr]

There was some great stuff in Dragon and on line in their various efforts too. Like some of the stuff in Iomadra.

 

[Shiroiken]

The big issue is the divide is styles of DMing. Every edition prior had a built in default game style, which the DMG was written to support, but 5E is intentionally style agnostic. The issue is that they simply ignored the problem, rather than addressing it, leaving it rather... underwhelming. Instead, they should have the first chapter addressing the most popular styles, providing the advantages and disadvantages of each, allowing the DM to decide for themselves how they want to run the game.

Wow, snarky comment. That was useful. Let's assume that I wouldn't have made this thread if I had not.I still have my AD&D DM's Guide, for that matter. It was also the least useful book in that edition.

I got no idea what you're talking about. The 1E DMG is amazing, and even if you didn't think so, the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide would like a word about who's "useful." The 2E DMG wasn't great IMO, but there's a lot of garbage in 2E that wasn't useful at all.

I would move magic items to the PHB. I think they are currently only in the DM's Guide because that's where Gygax originally put them, probably to give people a reason to actually purchase the book.

Magic items are DM facing, because they're the ones who make them available. The DM can decide that certain items don't fit their game, and simply don't issue them (for example, I'll never give out a +x shield). Additionally, cursed items would be awful, since players would just know what they do and how to avoid them. Finally, you'd be pushing a large page count into a book that's already quite full.

 

[tetrasodium]

Additionally, cursed items would be awful, since players would just know what they do and how to avoid them. Finally, you'd be pushing a large page count into a book that's already quite full.

Not if example & custom curses are secondary things that the GM can attach to any item

 

[Clint_L]

My perspective is that the PHB is primarily for player-facing options. Magic items are used by players, but the player can't generally choose between them in the way they can choose between races, classes/subclasses, backgrounds or spells. Instead, they have access to the specific items they come across in the course of gameplay. This is primarily a matter of worldbuilding/adventure building, so I think the DMG is the best place for magic items.

I totally get your point and I thought about that. I think you have a point about them not being a "player-facing" option to the same extent that non-magical items are. Although, this is a bit of an arbitrary line, since we do put non-magical power-ups in the PHB even when they aren't easily accessible to players, especially at low levels (classic example: full plate), and given that many settings have shops that sell magic items, especially the more common ones, the distinction between an expensive non-magical item and an equally expensive magic one is not clear, other than the word "magic." Like, why should a player be able to know that if they save enough gold they can up their power by getting a suit of full plate, but the existence of a +1 shield is somehow best left as a mystery?

I think when Gygax put them in the DM's Guide it was during an era when the DM/player division was more exaggerated, when the DM was expected to live behind their DM screen and deliver mysteries. Even then, that was sort of BS - I dunno about others, but back in the day all of us read all the source books and probably owned our own copies whether we were DMs or not, so we all knew exactly what a Vorpal Sword could do, etc. Similarly, every player today can have instant access to what magic items are out there, so all we do by splitting them into the DM's Guide is create a reason for people to have to buy the DM's Guide.

 

[phuong]

It's a serious question. The "Big Three" books of D&D have always been the Player's Handbook, the Monster Manual, and the Dungeon Master's Guide. The DM's Guide has always sounded like it is really important, but I don't think it has ever been an essential text in any version of D&D, aside from being where we hide the magic items (for some reason).

So what can actually make this book worth buying and reading, while remaining true to the basic 5e toolkit?

Its worth buying for the magic items. It used to be worth buying because they stuck required PHB content like combat specifics into the DMG.

I'm not sure that we need a DMG that is "required reading", such that you can't play the game without it.

I feel most people read one DMG, and that one reading of some edition was sufficient, such that future DMGs are just a reference lookup.

I don't think this is a bad thing, we want to streamline our experience, not make the requirements heftier.

But if you want to make the DMG more interesting to read, idk maybe you could put some beautiful examples of running a game with magnificent prose, real examples of how to handle common situations. Things like that for a novice DM. But old timers still don't need to read it.

 

[Clint_L]

I think they were just being silly, because of the running joke (but not really a joke) that "nobody has read the DMG".

Fair, but that's my point: for those saying to basically keep it as it is...why should anyone buy it? Why is it considered one of the three "core" books when, magic items aside, you can play the game fine without it?

I'm not saying my ideas are the best for how to improve it. But surely it can be made more essential. Or can it? Maybe the main problem with the DM's Guide and the reason it has never felt essential is that the PHB and MM are all the game has ever really needed.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I totally get your point and I thought about that. I think you have a point about them not being a "player-facing" option to the same extent that non-magical items are. Although, this is a bit of an arbitrary line, since we do put non-magical power-ups in the PHB even when they aren't easily accessible to players, especially at low levels (classic example: full plate), and given that many settings have shops that sell magic items, especially the more common ones, the distinction between an expensive non-magical item and an equally expensive magic one is not clear, other than the word "magic." Like, why should a player be able to know that if they save enough gold they can up their power by getting a suit of full plate, but the existence of a +1 shield is somehow best left as a mystery?

I think when Gygax put them in the DM's Guide it was during an era when the DM/player division was more exaggerated, when the DM was expected to live behind their DM screen and deliver mysteries. Even then, that was sort of BS - I dunno about others, but back in the day all of us read all the source books and probably owned our own copies whether we were DMs or not, so we all knew exactly what a Vorpal Sword could do, etc. Similarly, every player today can have instant access to what magic items are out there, so all we do by splitting them into the DM's Guide is create a reason for people to have to buy the DM's Guide.

It should be noted that 5e wanted to label magic items as optional, possibly as a reaction to their opposite status in 4e, and that's another reason to return them to the DMG. Also, putting them in the PH tells you that default D&D has magic shops. I don't know about you, but I don't want that to be the default.

 

[aco175]

A section on magic items. Add how to modify and craft them. Say you wanted a sword that shoots a lightning bolt, what does this do to rarity, cost, crafting? Maybe modify attunement, but not sure how.

A section on encounters. Add encounter charts based on locations and how to modify them. Examples of mixing monsters for varied challenge ratings. Maybe skip the wandering harlot table.

A section on style of play. What is a sandbox and how that differs from a linear campaign. Do you need to make encounters balanced or do you just make the world and the PCs react or die? What about a political game vs hack and slash.

Add a starter town like 4e did with Fallcrest. Show how you add secrets and hooks in with the NPCs.


A lot of all this can be found online and even here where we talk about it, but put it all in one place and people will buy it.