D&D (2024) The New DM Tools In The New Dungeon Master's Guide

The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide contains a 'toolbox'. The DM's Toolbox is the third chapter in the book, presented as an alphabetical miscellany of varied things to help you prep or run a game.

Each entry is 1-2 pages long and includes things like creating monsters, fear and mental stress, chases, firearms and explosives, and traps. For example, it goes in depth into chases, with details about wilderness or urban chases.

Much of the topics were already in the 2014 DMG--albeit organized differently. Some new topics include character death, and more detailed look at alignment--and how actions determine alignment and not vice versa.

Also included is a big table of 'dungeon quirks'--why, then, and by whom was it built? Examples include made by giants (with everything being larger scale), built on top of a cloud, and so on.

There's plenty more stuff--environments, a settlement tracker (Chris Perkins and James Wyatt roll up a random settlement in the video), hazards, mob rules, marks of prestige (rewards like deeds, medals, or titles).

 

[Distracted DM]

Alright.

I can admit when I'm wrong, at least, presuming these previews are in fact genuinely representative and the quality is a (major) step up from 5.0.

This sounds like exactly the kind of improvement the 5.0 DMG needed. I'm still going to reserve judgment about quality for now. But in terms of concept, this is moving in the right direction for a DMG: actually USEFUL TOOLS for DMs to be using, at the table, on the regular, to make it as easy as possible for DMs to do their basic DMing tasks.

Because that's how you empower DMs. You empower them to explore new ideas, because they aren't spending (IMNSHO, wasting) tons of time hemming and hawing over stuff, they're just using the effective tools given and moving on. You empower them to solve commonly-faced problems, so that common issues faced by DMs of yesteryear are genuinely not an issue 99.9% of the time. You empower them to show discernment and care, by giving them genuinely productive advice and guiding them toward tested, successful patterns of thinking and responding.

If they have written this stuff well--and that's an "if" written in sixteen-foot strobing neon letters--then I will happily eat crow on this one.

I'm curious about what'll end up in the revised DMG, but if you haven't checked out Kobold Press' Game Masters Guide I'd recommend it. It's pretty great and obviously 5e (ToV).

 

[Azzy]

I agree. Whenever people talk (joke?) about how "no one reads the DMG", I'm always the one who says, "I have!"

Same here. I read it front to back when I first got it. I do agree with others who say it is poorly organized and sometimes a slog, but it is well worth reading.

I'm actually jazzed about getting the new DMG—between being better organized (allegedly, I can't say until I have it in hand), Greyhawk being used as an example, the Greyhawk maps, hopefully better chase rules, etc.

 

[Emerikol]

Though I have so many Greyhawk maps, a new one tempts me greatly to pickup the DMG despite my feelings about WOTC.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I hope the next preview is the worlds & cosmology chapter.

Also the Planar Energies thing leaking over into like the Material Plane (possibly others like Shadowfell and Feywild), it begs the question of if it could lead to say a Planar Incarnate popping up on the Prime Material Plane, like say Gehenna Incarnate Fiend.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

Ginny in particular has been very open about the fact that she's still a relatively new player and has had takes that she's since changed her mind on.

It's a good thing when people's views are allowed to evolve. If we yell at them for changing their minds to a point of view we agree with, we're just encouraging everyone to double down on even stupid stances. And we just have to look at the newspaper to see where that leads.

I agree with your point about newer players and evolving views, but there is a very large amount of content creators that players and viewers take as the final word on the subject, to the point that their insight on DPR and theorycrafting your character is considered the be-all end-all.

To hear that the man behind Dungeon Craft has said he hasn't read the 5e DM Guide is pretty insulting when you look back at his videos attacking WotC etc. He literally says, in ten years, he's never read the 5e DMG. And yet, 136,000 subscribers and who knows how many random viewers have listened to his views on the way to run D&D and taken it as valuable.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

Though I have so many Greyhawk maps, a new one tempts me greatly to pickup the DMG despite my feelings about WOTC.

Greyhawk maps will always be my favorite. I think it's nostalgia, which to quote Judge John Hodgman, is our most toxic impulse.

 

[Nefermandias]

In the last month both Ginny Di and Dungeon Craft have released videos stating as much. It's weird to me that you'd be a referee for a game and not actually read the DMG. Much less be a D&D YouTuber who's a referee and never read the DMG. It's weird.

Not just weird, I would say it's downright arrogant on their part to think they could create "content" for a game they haven't even read all of the basic rulebooks.

 

[Oofta]

Greyhawk maps will always be my favorite. I think it's nostalgia, which to quote Judge John Hodgman, is our most toxic impulse.

I like Greyhawk simply because it's not so completely overstuffed like FR.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Not just weird, I would say it's downright arrogant on their part to think they could create "content" for a game they haven't even read all of the basic rulebooks.

Yeah, but what's worse... them creating the content or all the thousands of people who follow them and take their opinions and views to heart?

 

[Li Shenron]

This seems like it was developed with the new player/DM in mind.

It's definitely WotC's strategy, they've mentioned recently that beginners/newcomers are considered to be a much larger share of their customer base than long-timers.

In fact personally, I don't think I'll ever need another DMG, and I didn't really need the 2014 DMG either if it wasn't for the magic items. While it certainly doesn't hurt to refresh your mind by reading another DMG every now and then (and not just for D&D), I think most of us would buy it only for fear of missing out, as in "it's a new edition/revision, I have to buy at least the core books".

It looks like they have done a great job in re-arranging the DMG, making things easier to find and use as well as putting a lot of cool stuff in one place and some that wasn't in the 2014 DMG.

I didn't like the order of the 2014 DMG, it gives too much of a top-down image of what DMing is about, because it starts with worldbuilding, then adventure design, and then running the game.

It shouldn't be difficult to realize that ALL DMs need to learn to run the game, but only SOME DMs also want to design adventures and settings. Going bottom-up could make it easier both for beginners and gamers coming from another edition, to immediately jump into the game, just try out a sample adventure to learn how the new ruleset work. Heck, I'd even put a sidebar at the end of the first chapter saying "close the DMG and run your first game, before reading the rest!".

I think there's a difference in the fact a lot of these creators have made videos, and profits, saying 'WotC failed to address this, and so here's what I eventually had to do' to then, some years later, say 'Wow, it was there the entire time'

Video creators only really create entertainment, and ranting or raving are the two most effective techniques for that, they rarely create usefulness.

Something I appreciated about the 3.5e DMG was all the "behind the curtain" sidebars - where the designers talked about things like the possible implications of implementing rules variants and such. I wish there was more transparency like that in the 5e books.

I loved those sidebars! The 3.0 DMG was my first DMG, and it taught me enough to start as a DM rather than as a player with the 3e edition (even though I had played already BECMI before, so I wasn't completely clueless of D&D). The 'behind the curtains' sidebars made that book really feel like it wanted the reader to be part of the game design process itself.

Yes, downtime is a substantial portion of our game - pretty much anything that isn't an adventure. We can easily spend a whole session or more on "downtime"

There's a difference though, between "incorporating downtime" and "incorporating downtime rules" in a game.

Lot's of gaming elements exist, that for different groups can be important, unimportant or even detrimental. Being important though doesn't imply hardcoded rules are used. For instance, exploration is my favourite pillar of the game, but exploration rules often get in the way for me.

WotC's problem is which elements to feature within the DMG, and for which of them to provide hardcoded rules vs sensible guidelines only. I guess they have some statistics to rely on, because personally I can't figure out what usefulness is there for me from stronghold building rules and siege engines for example... Downtime is something we dedicate a significant attention to, but hardly use any rule for it.