D&D General A DMG for all of us

[Micah Sweet]

Aside from how you'd get folks arguing over what is, and is not, truly "Gygaxian", you mean?

I am not interested in books that, in effect, are positioned to define the orthdoxy of various styles.

A series of articles discussing the broad strokes of some styles, would be fine.

A series of articles discussing the implications and/or what changes to play experience you can support or produce with certain mechanical changes, worldbuilding techniques, adventure designs, GM procedures, or levels of sharing narrative control? Totally on board.

Me too. Wish someone would do that. Probably something collaborative would be best, to minimize bias.

 

[Umbran]

Me too. Wish someone would do that. Probably something collaborative would be best, to minimize bias.

On the contrary - we want bias.

If someone is writing an instructional piece about a style of play, to allow others to pick it up, that piece ought to be written by a knowledgeable fan of the style. They should, in fact, be enthusiastic about the thing in question, not artificially neutral.

If I were editor of such a series, I'd probably insist on style guidelines to the effect of not tearing down another style to make the one you are boosting look good, but that's a writing thing, not a bias thing.

 

[gorice]

I reckon a play style could probably be summed up on an A4 page if needed. Probably two sides of the page at most. Most of such a DMG would be duplicated. As mentioned in another thread there is far more that unites play styles than divides them.

One page to set down an approach to 5.5e. Most of it would be setting expectations.

This is going to sound cynical, but: writing summaries like this (or like Umbran suggests above) requires understanding of, and honesty about, how different playstyles work, plus a willingness to support them.

For example: 2024 is really doubling down on pre-written story arcs and railroading, but also on illusionism -- telling DMs it's OK to fudge dice so long as nobody finds out, and telling everyone that they can follow a pre-plotted story while also being spontaneous. WotC isn't just instructing people in one style of play, it's giving a fundamentally dishonest account of how it works. Why would they do that?

I don't know, but if I were WotC, I would notice three important things about my business: (1) I sell pre-plotted adventures; (2) streaming does a lot of free advertising for my products, so I want to appear to deliver a similar experience to most streamers; and (3), that many (most?) of my players already play in this style, and giving an honest account of what railroading entails will only alienate people for little gain.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is going to sound cynical, but: writing summaries like this (or like Umbran suggests above) requires understanding of, and honesty about, how different playstyles work, plus a willingness to support them.

For example: 2024 is really doubling down on pre-written story arcs and railroading, but also on illusionism -- telling DMs it's OK to fudge dice so long as nobody finds out, and telling everyone that they can follow a pre-plotted story while also being spontaneous. WotC isn't just instructing people in one style of play, it's giving a fundamentally dishonest account of how it works. Why would they do that?

I don't know, but if I were WotC, I would notice three important things about my business: (1) I sell pre-plotted adventures; (2) streaming does a lot of free advertising for my products, so I want to appear to deliver a similar experience to most streamers; and (3), that many (most?) of my players already play in this style, and giving an honest account of what railroading entails will only alienate people for little gain.

The only price you pay is truth in advertising, right?

 

[Remathilis]

This is going to sound cynical, but: writing summaries like this (or like Umbran suggests above) requires understanding of, and honesty about, how different playstyles work, plus a willingness to support them.

To be honest, it's why I think different playstyles should be supported by different games entirely. For example, the Gygaxian model of [-]gambling[/-] rolling for power (where more powerful options are gated behind good dice rolls) isn't compatible with classes built to be balanced and chosen from freely. It's hard to have a paladin that is both locked behind strict restrictions on scores and behavior and have it be only as powerful as the fighter class with no such limits. That's not the kind of thing you can adjust on an A4 sheet.

 

[Clint_L]

I teach IB Language and Literature. To succeed on their final exams, students have to be able to write two essays, in 135 minutes, analyzing two separate non-literary texts that they have just seen (for IB exam purposes, a non-literary text is basically a print text that is not a poem, story, or play - typically students might get a something like a review and an advertisement). Point is, they don't have a ton of time to analyze before they have to get writing, so we teach them the following acronym to get started: PAIRING.

Purpose: what is the text designed to accomplish?
Audience: who is it targeting?
Institution: who made it?
Representation: who is or is not represented in the text, and how are they represented?
Ideology: what is the explicit or implicit ideological bias?
Narrative: what story is it telling?
Genre: what genre features are employed or subverted?

We remind them to always start with the purpose - that's the one crucial element - and then focus on just a few of the other aspects, the ones that seem most obviously important.

So, the new DMG.

Purpose: The underlying purpose is...well, it's to sell books. But more specifically, it's to teach D&D players how to better run games. It's kind of right there in the title: it's designed as a "guide." So it's to sell books to D&D players who need a guide in how to be a DM.

Audience: I think this is the obviously important element of the DMG that spawns a lot of disagreement. A lot of it is geared towards inexperienced DMs. However, it includes other features (magic items, bastions) that muddy the waters a bit. I don't think you can realistically have "a DMG for all of us," but OP's suggestion that WotC publish different versions for different audiences is interesting. I think it would cannibalize their own base so I can't see them doing it, and in his case, I'm not sure why the 1e DMG doesn't suffice.

Institution: Wizards of the Coast made it, and they are a subsidiary of Hasbro. This has a lot of implications, because this is not some indie publisher releasing a kickstarter. This is a tentpole publication for a major corporation.

Representation: This could be a thread in itself, but suffice to say that WotC has made a pretty obvious effort to expand representation, especially through how it represents players in the text (e.g. non-gendered pronouns, using female players as examples as frequently as male) and visually (e.g. showing much more diversity in how characters are depicted).

Ideology: The new DMG is aggressively pitched towards a younger audience (new players) and is (arguably) framed towards younger ideological biases (c.f. representation).

Narrative: Most of the DMG is written from the perspective of a new player. This makes sense: I don't normally need a "guide" if I already know the paths.

Genre: There have been enough DMGs that it is arguably a genre unto itself, and we have certain expectations. The OP mentions Gygaxian prose. I think one of the reasons magic items are in the 2024 DMG is because they have always been in the DMG, even though to me they make a lot more sense with equipment in the PHB, or perhaps as treasure in the MM if you want to make Quixotic case that they should be kept out of the hands of players to preserve the mystery. In any case, I think many objections to the new DMG come from ways it subverts genre expectations (i.e. by reframing Rule 0 to be more about group consensus than DM control, though this is also ideological).

 

[TiQuinn]

For example: 2024 is really doubling down on pre-written story arcs and railroading, but also on illusionism -- telling DMs it's OK to fudge dice so long as nobody finds out, and telling everyone that they can follow a pre-plotted story while also being spontaneous.

Um, cite?

 

[gorice]

To be honest, it's why I think different playstyles should be supported by different games entirely.

It's a fair call. Personally, I don't care whether D&D caters to my preferences. I don't like the kind of influence stuff like the (frankly, toxic) advice in the new DMG will have on RPG culture in general, though. It's also sad to see people who keep going back to WotC even though D&D clearly doesn't give them what they want.

Um, cite?

Here.

Hidden Die Rolls. Hiding your die rolls keeps them mysterious and allows you to alter results if you want to. For example, you could ignore a Critical Hit to save a character’s life. Don’t alter die rolls too often, though, and never let the players know when you fudge a die roll.

Honestly, I advise anyone who is interested in this stuff to read those free DMG rules.

 

[Umbran]

Still, it would be nice if we could get articles that feel closer to old Dragon Mag articles rather than Dragon+ fluff to discuss these kinds of things.

Umbran looks around at 3rd party publishers, and shrugs.

 

[TiQuinn]

It's a fair call. Personally, I don't care whether D&D caters to my preferences. I don't like the kind of influence stuff like the (frankly, toxic) advice in the new DMG will have on RPG culture in general, though. It's also sad to see people who keep going back to WotC even though D&D clearly doesn't give them what they want.


Here.

Honestly, I advise anyone who is interested in this stuff to read those free DMG rules.