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

[Yaarel]

In my veiw:

The Players Handbook includes ALL of the rules for playing D&D. It especially needs to include skill info, like Social Reactions to Charisma and assessment of Athletic jumps and such! It should be possible to play a (humano-centric) game of D&D with nothing but the Players Handbook.

The DMs Guide should be for all of the "modular" options and variants. The catch is, these modular rules must be well balanced and EASY to implement if the DM wants too. The modular rules should coordinate with Players Handbook rules in away that minimizes conflicts and confusion.

The "modules" include more info for grid style, adding other abilities beyond the six, varying rest to alter the tone of the setting, and so on.

Meanwhile, the DMs Guide also handles all worldbuilding, including for settings that are local, regional, global, and planar. The Players Handbook should avoid discussions about the planes if any. Even races beyond Human work better as part of the Setting.

Unless the DM is using an official Setting Guide, such as for Forgotten Realms or Ravnica, the DM will rely heavily on the DMs Guide to create the world in which the adventures are happening.

 

[Shiroiken]

At risk of crossing the streams, I do like how PF2e just has a single core rulebook covering players and the GM. A seperate book exists for those wanting to lift their game (so to speak).

Downside: it’s a hefty book. Upside from the downside: the glossary serves as an index and is really useful.

A lesson for WoTC?

BECMI has the Rules Compendium that does exactly this, and it's an excellent book. There's advantages and disadvantages to putting everything together, but likely the 3 book model is particularly profitable for WotC.

 

[delericho]

It was important in 1e and 2e as it had actual rules in those editions, including how to run combats.

Nitpick: it was important in 1st Ed.

By 2nd Ed the rules for combat had moved to the PHB, and so the DMG for that edition was needed only for the magic items and treasure tables. They then padded out the rest of the book with some truly terrible advice for the aspiring DM.

3e started the DMG as primarily advice + magic items and traps.

That's not really fair. The 3e DMG also had many, many pages of descriptions of doors, walls, and floors.

 

[delericho]

As I said on one of the other threads, I'd suggest that DMG should be aimed at intermediate DMs - beginners are better off being guided to the Starter Set and/or the how-to videos that WotC have made available. Advanced DMs, meanwhile, may benefit from some of the tools made available, but will largely ignore any advice given anyway.

(That said, I should note that I'm not absolutely opposed to including a short "how to DM" chapter at the start of the book. I don't think that's the best use of very limited page count, but if it absolutely has to be there, it's not a deal-breaker.)

So, what should be in the book?

I'd suggest that it should contain how-to guides for that intermediate DM that will allow them to reliably build interesting and fun encounters, to build interesting and fun adventures of various types (the classic dungeon crawl, the mystery, the prison break...), campaigns of various types, and so on.

The idea being that our intermediate DM should be able to pick up the book, follow the step-by-step guide and get an output that is worth running and worth playing. (And, obviously, the book needs to make it clear that this is one way to create such things, not the way!)

The book should also include lengthy sections giving examples of a wide range of Exploration and Interaction challenges (complete with mechanics), a large section giving examples of traps and other hazards, and the appendix of magic items.

The book would also probably benefit from having fewer, but better fleshed out, optional systems.

One other thing: in addition to being fairly badly written and organized, the method presented for creating monsters doesn't match up at all with the actual monsters in the MM (probably because it was written before the playtest locked down the 'correct' numbers). This should be fixed - the output of that system really should be comparable to the MM. Since that mostly seems to be a matter of fixing the numbers in a key table, hopefully that can be done.

And a really good index is a must!

 

[Yaarel]

I feel "traps and hazards" should be a section in the Monster Manual.

 

[aco175]

I feel "traps and hazards" should be a section in the Monster Manual.

I can see this as most traps add to the CR of the encounter. It would also be handy to see and maybe be used more.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Maybe I'm one of the few people who DON'T want the DMG to have this whole big section on "How To DM". Because quite frankly... learning how to DM and what to focus on while DMing is such a personal and personal preference kind of thing that I in no way wish to see a single way proscribed as "here's the way to do it."

I've read how a lot of you people run your games here on EN World and know for a fact I would NEVER want to play in a lot of your games, LOL! If the DMG was then giving us instructions on how to DM in the styles that some of you DM? That would be horrible for someone like me! The last thing I want is for more people to think that your ways of DMing are the "proper" ways to do so, heh heh! We've already got worshippers at the altars of The Alexandrian and the Angry DM... to have any one of their styles of DMing possibly become the "instructions" of how to do it in the DMG? No thank you!

And by the same token... if the DMG was to be all about MY methods (and folks like Matt Mercer, Matt Colville and the like) of narrative and story and throwing out the "board game rules" of D&D combat and mechanics even more than it does already (with the 'Rulings, Not Rules' mantra)... I think a whole crap-ton of you folks would absolutely FREAK. You wouldn't want new players to learn to treat the game in my way either, because that would basically stomp out your preferred ways of playing the game over time too, players thinking your ways are "wrong" because those aren't what the DMG has taught them.

Learning to DM well is a personal thing that you only get better at and figure out your particular preferences as you do it. Thus I am wholeheartedly in favor of what we have... which is the Starter Set (of whatever type it is) showing players the very generic and baseline instruction of what the DM needs to do to run the game... but any additional instruction on "how to do it" should be left to the DM's own devices, or websites, or YouTube videos, or whatever. Let the DM who wants more info go out searching for it on their own... rather than proscribe a single way to do it in the Dungeon Master's Guide.

 

[delericho]

I feel "traps and hazards" should be a section in the Monster Manual.

My only issue with that is that the MM is already the biggest of the core rulebooks, and it really should get the various monster tables that shouldn't be in the DMG. So unless there's a significant increase in page count or reduction in artwork (and I'd expect the opposite, on both counts), adding traps/hazards would come at the cost of dropping a significant number of monsters.

I suppose they could drop upper-level support from the core 3 to make room, but I'd rather they didn't do that either - if it's not in the core 3 then it's probably gone for good.

 

[Bill Zebub]

If they took magic items out of DMG completely and sold a fourth Book of Treasure...with lots more magic items, tables for generating unique magic items, expanded Artifact and Sentient Weapon information, rules or at least guidelines for crafting magic items (and harvesting components from dead monsters?), etc...who would buy it?

I would.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

I'd like all the default assumptions of the game design and expected game play to be explicitly outlined. And then get to the optional rules.

Don't just have an optional 1 week long rest rule. Lay out the assumptions of 6-8 combats a day as a balancing factor of the short rest mechanic as the context for a longer long rest. Talk about different types of games and the potential implications of this assumption.

13th age had these great designer commentary boxes that got behind the thinking of design choices and how to change them up if you wanted to.

I think this kind of designers talking directly to the audience would have a lot of appeal to DMs as both an interesting read and a toolkit.