Comparing the ToV Game Master’s Guide to the Dungeon Master’s Guide
By
Celeste Conowitch / November 12, 2024 /
Articles,
Reviews
As Wizards of the Coast continues to roll out the 2024 changes to D&D, the kobolds are keeping a curious eye on how D&D 2024 stacks up against the
Tales of the Valiant roleplaying game. Both are based on the 5th Edition SRD.
Here are our first impressions of the D&D 2024 DMG (and how it compares to the
Tales of the ValiantGame Master’s Guide).
Little for Experienced DMs
After reviewing the content, it’s clear that the 2024 DMG is meant to be a resource primarily to onboard new DMs. Which is great! But we were surprised how little there was for experienced GMs looking to elevate their game.
As a GM with two decades of experience under their belt, the D&D 2024 doesn’t offer us enough to justify the cost—or space in our GM-going-to-game backpack.
DIY? MIA.
For a while now, Wizards has had a reputation for discouraging homebrew. As a big business, they prefer for you buy their options. But it feels like they’ve gone to a new extreme in this release. All the included “how to create” guidance is jammed into a single section taking up a little less than two pages. Only a single section contains guidance for creating backgrounds, creatures, magic items, and spells.
Considering that we dedicated 14 pages alone to walking you through Creating a Monster Stat Block in the ToV GMG, two pages covering all those elements doesn’t seem like anywhere near enough.
We also were shocked that there was no attempt to include any kind of table, breakdown, or explanation of monsters by statistics. That feels like a pretty basic inclusion for a GM guide to have! Maybe that will be in the Monster Manual release next year?
While we wait to find out, the
Game Master’s Guide was written with the expectation that you will want to make up your own stuff: campaigns, monsters, character options, and more. It has tools for experienced game masters and stepping stones for beginning game masters to become experienced.
Fewer Plug & Play Options
GM guides are notorious for being heavy on fluff with few useable tools. Unfortunately, we feel that the D&D 2024 DMG has followed suit. Here are some examples:
- There are only 12 sample hazards included. The ToV GMG has 30 (not counting variants).
- There are only 8 sample traps included. The ToV GMG has 20 (not counting variants).
- There are 3 sample magical contagions—AKA diseases in 2014 5E. The ToV GMG has 11.
- There is one sample curse. The ToV GMG has 13.
Although the
Game Master’s Guide does have a lot of advice for taking the game apart and putting it back together the way you want, it also has a great deal of ready-to-go material that you can put in your game this week.
Maybe Not the Best Use of Space?
When you plan a book like this, you know you’ve only got so many pages. You want to make every one count. Yet, as we read through the 2024 DMG, several sections felt like . . . filler. We got the impression that choices were made to meet page count and get this onto store shelves as soon as possible.
As a prime example, the DMG dedicates eight full pages to “Tracker” sheets, form-fillable worksheets aimed to help track various game elements. That concept is nice! In theory. From experience with gamers of all stripes though, we know a lot of GMs simply won’t use these. This kind of game aid generally asks the GM to adapt to the sheet rather than being a tool that adapts to the GM.
The trackers might not work with a GM’s specific prep style or the cutesy art might be off-putting. And whether you particularly find them useful, Wizards spent eight hardcover pages on something they could have offered as a free (or low cost) PDF download. Those eight pages could have been something better suited for all GMs.
There is also a lot of space dedicated to describing the Greyhawk setting. Don’t get us wrong—Greyhawk is one of our favorite classic campaign settings. However, having over twenty pages dedicated to describing a single setting seems like a bad fit for a book that is supposed to help you run a game—especially when survey data routinely shows that most GMs play games in their own homebrew settings. This whole section belongs in a different release. Perhaps in an adventure book set in Greyhawk?
In comparison, Kobold Press has our own richly detailed fantasy setting of Midgard. If you want that (It’s good! We recommend it!), it’s it the
Midgard Worldbook. But we didn’t put it in the GMG.
The third big, dedicated section we felt weird about is the entire chapter dedicated to bastions. This might be good. We’ll reserve judgement until we get a chance to play more with the system. But this is a lot of space to dedicate to a micro-management system that only appeals to a subset of your customers. These mechanics feel like they would have shined in a different kind of release.
Other Impressions
More impressions will come out as we sit with this new release (join the conversation in the
Kobold Press official Discord server!),. For now, here’s a quick list of other details we found surprising about the 2024
Dungeon Master’s Guide:
- No random encounter tables. No quick encounters to throw in front of your players were included. Even the quick monsters-by-terrain tables were left out.
- Still no specific magic item prices!
- No variant rules. There is no dedicated section covering alternate rules. That means popular elements like variant initiative, flanking, and similar mechanics are entirely absent.
- No mention of theatre of the mind combat. Running combat without grids and minis (whether physical or digital) is more popular than ever. Too bad the DMG doesn’t even mention that possibility, let alone provide guidance on running it.
Closing Thoughts
Lots of smart people worked plenty hard on the
Dungeon Master’s Guide. We don’t know what goes on there. They made their calls with the information they had. And look, we wrote the book we thought was good. Of course we’re going to think ours is better.
However, the DMG appears to be aimed almost exclusively at brand-new GMs, and it appears designed to capture them into the WotC mindset. That’s an OK place to start. But if you want more than that, the
Tales of the Valiant Game Master’s Guide is built on the same SRD bones as D&D and gives you a lot more to grow on.
Until next time, happy rolling!
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