D&D (2024) I have the DMG. AMA!

[DarkCrisis]

I do think these books go a long way if helping new people who want to learn it. Not sure we’ve had anything as a whole quite as good. I include the red box in that assessment. And the prior 5e starter box.

Gosh I can’t wait to see with they do with the new starter box.

Rules Cyclopedia. It's still the best one and done official D&D product to exist IMO

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I’d love a 500 page DMG!!!

Would you pay the extra price for 200 reprinted pages from the old one though?
Would you like to flip through such a big book?


Edit: I flipped through my digital copy now. And I find a lot of the old DMG rules and advice and optional rules in the book. Now at a place where it makes sense and better explained.

 

[Xenolith234]

Would you pay the extra price for 200 reprinted pages from the old one though?
Would you like to flip through such a big book?

I’ve purchased the hardcover of Ptolus, so yeah, if the tools were worth it, I would, and I expect the DMG to be a jumbo toolbox.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

We still have the older books. So it is not lost.

But they go out of print; new people will not know of the stuff in them.

So what would have been your solution?
Make the book 500 pages big?

So it appears DMG has lot of setting stuff, Greyhawk stuff in it. This is just my opinion, and I'm sure many disagree,but personally I could not care less about that, and even if I did care, I don't think its place is here. DMG should be about building settings, and customising and running the game; it should be the GM's toolkit. Setting books for official settings should be their own thing. By leaving the setting stuff out of the DMG there would have been much more room for other things.

 

[darjr]

Rules Cyclopedia. It's still the best one and done official D&D product to exist IMO

As an intro to the game? I’ll have to look again. It’s one of the books I have the least experience with.

 

[darjr]

But they go out of print; new people will not know of the stuff in them.

There are A LOT of 2014 books out there.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

We are usually on the same page, but I'm gonna have to disagree with this one.

I'm okay with that - and it's nice to hear the first bit.

System matters. The fiction and the ruleset should not be fighting each other.

Well, I agree with this part!

The tone shift that D&D have been experiencing with each iteration reflects on it's mechanics and vice versa.

Sure, but I guarantee you that I can still run my gritty weird western under the current rules. Probably better than before, in fact!

Again, I'm not arguing that more rules variants would not be nice to have. I'd love to have 'em. I'm with @dave2008 in really, badly, wanting a book full of variant rules, and I'm one of the many folks who still lament that 5e never managed to pull off their early "promise" of Modularity.

But I don't think that those variants need to be in the DMG, for the DMG to be an excellent book. This one is that. Excellent. I agree with everyone that it's a shame that there isn't a version (preferably an improved version) of the "Gritty Rest" mechanic, or something of the sort, but I can follow the rules that ARE presented and achieve much the same thing. Or if I like, just use the 2014 version. Or make up my own.

The way I do Initiative isn't in the books either, and you don't hear me complaining about it. That's all.

EDIT TO ADD: And I'm not saying that anyone is not allowed to complain! (See my earlier comment to Micah) It's just... pick your battles. We tend to get really worked up about what amounts to very small details.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

But they go out of print; new people will not know of the stuff in them.

That's a weak argument. Sorry, but if they need those rules, they will easily be able to get ahold of them. Heck, you don't need the books. They can be explained in a few sentences! But the books will be available. There are MILLIONS of them.

So it appears DMG has lot of setting stuff, Greyhawk stuff in it. This is just my opinion, and I'm sure many disagree,but personally I could not care less about that, and even if I did care, I don't think its place is here. DMG should be about building settings, and customising and running the game; it should be the GM's toolkit. Setting books for official settings should be their own thing. By leaving the setting stuff out of the DMG there would have been much more room for other things.

Greyhawk is used as an EXAMPLE of what you get when you set out to BUILD A SETTING. It's AFTER the chapter on how to make your own, as a "You might wind up with something that looks like this" kind of way. It's only 30ish pages, and it does the job it set out to do.

 

[mikeburke]

It's not really about what I want (not much anyway(. It's about providing options and different ways of doing things for the game that's so darn popular that many, many gamers are only going to be familiar with this version. I think it would be nice if said game encouraged the idea of making it your own mechanically as well as narratively, and supporting more than one way to play it in a fashion that makes use of the rules people are paying for.

I mean, there's a section in the new DMG specifically discussing House Rules and how to introduce them. It's short, but it's there. Also optional rules like Renown, firearms, and 'Death Lite' etc that support different narrative and play styles - essentially giving examples of house rules to consider.

I also think the different 5e settings (both WOTC published like Eberron, Strahd and DNDBeyond published like Grim Hollow) do a fine job at showcasing different flavors and takes on D&D (with additional rules to reinforce that setting, such as fear/stress in Van Richten's - also ported as optional rules into DMG 2024).

All this said, I don't recall earlier versions of the game giving DMs explicit permission to create house rules - it was an unwritten assumption - and people obviously did it anyway without permission - in droves. Gygax tried to put the hammer down by proclaiming if you're not playing by the AD&D rules you're not playing "Dungeons and Dragons".. cue thousands of people muttering "OK sure Gary" then writing up their own initiative rules because they couldn't make sense of the book anyway. I don't see anything in my own kids or anywhere else to suggest that newer gaming generations are any less creative, resourceful or free-spirited than earlier generations. I have faith that if they're not having enough fun, they'll find a solution.

There will always be people who look at WoTC 5e and are unhappy that it's not close enough to their preferred play style (old school exploration, ultra-crunchy combat, whatever), but that comes down to a matter of opinion. I would argue that any RPG (ok, maybe not GURPS) needs to be opinionated about the default narrative/setting it wants to support - and not everyone is going to share that opinion.

 

[TwoSix]

Again, I'm not arguing that more rules variants would not be nice to have. I'd love to have 'em. I'm with @dave2008 in really, badly, wanting a book full of variant rules, and I'm one of the many folks who still lament that 5e never managed to pull off their early "promise" of Modularity.

I would love to see a 5e version of the 3.5 "Unearthed Arcana" book.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist or anti-WotC guy, but I definitely think the reason we haven't seen such a product is a subtle corporate desire to harmonize play styles rather than create a hundred different styles.