[3.5E] In the Works - Changes to the DMG's structure

[MerricB]

G'day, people!

The latest In the Works has been posted on the Wizards website.

Of particular note:
* Changes to the structure of the DMG
* The stats for the 3.5E Titan (Discussion)
* A few D&D miniatures shown in relative scale (Discussion)

This thread is about the first of those three significant notes.

To summarise from the article - the new DMG has the following chapters:
Chapter 1: Running the Game.
Chapter 2: Using the Rules
Chapter 3: Adventures
Chapter 4: Nonplayer Characters.
Chapter 5: Campaigns.
Chapter 6: Characters.
Chapter 7: Magic Items
Glossary
Visual Aids
Index

What do you think?

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

Making a little more order out of Mat Smith's ramblings...

Chapter 1: Running the Game.
- Shows you the ropes of how a game typically flows and feels

Chapter 2: Using the Rules
- like movement, bonus types, combat, skill and ability checks, saving throws, magic, etc.

Chapter 3: Adventures
- motivation
- encounters
- treasure
- adventure types
- dungeon terrain
- dungeon ecology
- traps
- wilderness adventures
- urban adventures

Chapter 4: Nonplayer Characters.

Chapter 5: Campaigns.
- establishing and maintaining a campaign
- how the characters and the world around them interact
- various events (such as war) and other calamities
- world-building
- interplanar adventuring
- creating your own cosmology

Chapter 6: Characters.
- ability scores
- races
- subraces
- modifying and creating character classes
- 16 Prestige Classes
- how PCs improve
- cohorts
- familiars
- mounts
- animal companions
- epic characters

Chapter 7: Magic Items
- "72 pages of things that glow when you cast detect magic" (I like that quote. )

Glossary
- filled with expansive definitions
- descriptions of various conditions (like "energy drained" and "nauseated")
- a section on the various effects and damage caused by The Environment; such as immersion in acid, exposure to extreme cold, catching on fire, standing in lava.

Visual Aids
- three pages of spell effect templates (so you know what squares are affected by your 15-, 30-, 60-, or 120-foot cones, or those 5-, 10-, 20-, 40-, or 80-foot radius effects).
- three pages that illustrate the space occupied by different-sized creatures and their reach (including the threatened space when they're armed with a reach weapon)
- six pages of various and sundry things you can use as terrain and dungeon dressing when setting up your battlemat
* dungeon flooring and walls
* stairs (wooden, stone, and spiral)
* bridges (wooden and stone)
* piles of treasure
* wooden chests
* wooden chairs
* wooden doors
* iron doors
* double doors
* doorways blocked by stones
* Stalactites
* difficult terrain
* pits
* floors inscribed with magic circles
* columns
* pedestals
* statues.
* coffins
* an assortment of dead bodies,
* sleeping figures

Index
- gives you the quick, alphabetized way to look up subjects like "altitude sickness", "falling into water", and "quicksand."
- also includes a listing of all the tables and an extremely handy list of sidebars, so it's even easier to find the variant rule for using Power Components when spellcasting, or to look up the One Hundred Adventure Ideas.

Cheers!

 

[kuroshidaku]

12 pages of "visual aids" seems a tad much. It would have been better to use these as a web enhancement so you could print them off. Screams waste of space to me.

 

[MerricB]

It seems a bit much to me as well - oh well. I guess they had to pad the book out to 320 pages with something.

OTOH, the addition of sections dealing with wilderness and urban adventures is something I really wanted to see - I hope they do them justice.

Cheers!

 

[johnsemlak]

Thanks a lot for that Merric! You'll find the full text of that on the news site in just a minute.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Nice summary, Merric.

Looks like a lot of interesting & useful changes!

 

[Nine Hands]

12 pages of "visual aids" seems a tad much. It would have been better to use these as a web enhancement so you could print them off. Screams waste of space to me.

Are these pages made of thick paper? If so, then that's worth it for me, but I could see some people not wanting to rip them out of the book.

 

[MerricB]

Are these pages made of thick paper? If so, then that's worth it for me, but I could see some people not wanting to rip them out of the book.

It's quite obvious that Wizards believe we all have access to colour photocopiers.

It's unlikely in the extreme that they'll be of thick paper - not given where they're placed in the book (between the glossary and the index). Photocopying is far more likely what they intend us to do with them.

Or buy three copies of the DMG each. Either will work.

Cheers!

 

[Tom Cashel]

The remaining six pages are various and sundry things you can use as terrain and dungeon dressing when setting up your battlemat. You've got dungeon flooring and walls. There are stairs (wooden, stone, and spiral), bridges (wooden and stone), piles of treasure, wooden chests, wooden chairs, wooden doors, iron doors, double doors, doorways blocked by stones. Stalactites, difficult terrain, pits, floors inscribed with magic circles, columns, pedestals, and statues. There are coffins, an assortment of dead bodies, and (my favorite) sleeping figures -- a must for those encounters that take place during "second watch" and other inopportune moments.

This is a very silly thing to include in a hardcover book.

Maybe a web enhancement...or something to include with the Playskool miniatures...

 

[Chibbell]

12 pages of "visual aids" seems a tad much. It would have been better to use these as a web enhancement so you could print them off. Screams waste of space to me.

Amen. Nice too see where all those new pages went. I suppose it was a bit silly of me to think that those 30 new pages of material they were talking about would actually be useful.

I mean, yeah, ok, this could be helpful. But it is NOT what I was led to believe would be in the book. Give me a whole page of guiding a player through creating a magic weapon. Give me a couple of pages on making people show up on time for the game. Give me a page on what types of snackfoods that are tasty, yet less likely to leave stains in handbooks. That would be useful. Not some doctorred texture off the web slopped together to look kinda like a wall that I have to scan in and print out to be able to use it.

Like so many have said already. This is prime web enhancement material.

So whats next? 6 pages of pop-up monsters to REALLY scare the players.