I think the "Oh no, WotC is adding more ways to make a house party fun and you guys are saying they're doing a bad job because they don't provide anything to make the party fun for the host!" argument is missing a point. It's not that players getting more options is a bad thing. It's not even that DMs' fun is antithetical to player fun. But D&D is a very traditional game in terms of the way authority is shared between the players and the GM. That also means that the GM has a lot more work to do to keep the game going. They design the structure of the story (either as a railroad with set story beats and exciting setpieces or as a sandbox full of interesting hooks that the player can craft their narrative out of), they run all the NPCs, they balance the encounters, they keep the rules consistent and fun for the group... And so far, WotC seems to be offering very little support in that regard. The 2024 DMG is supposed to be the book where they finally give DMs these necessary supports, but it seems that a non-negligible portion of the page count is instead used for player-facing rules where the DM explicitly does not have authority to do some things. I mean, consider all the important stuff previous editions had:
- 3.5 DMG had a very strong simulationist basis, telling you to dress up a settlement, know what level of NPCs of which classes were there, how much money that settlement could take in at once, and so on. Most DM advice from WotC in terms of making places believable post-Tasha's has been "I dunno, make stuff up".
- Compare the 2E Spelljammer sourcebook that had incredibly detailed procedures on how to generate solar systems, planets and so on, and compare that to the 5E spelljammer sourcebook that had no such rules, and just threw up its hands in the air and said "Make some fun solar system! You've got it!"
- Most importantly, the current edition seems to be in dire need to clean procedures (as the Effin' GM put it), and we don't seem to be getting any of them. I had this epiphany ever since I started running OSE more frequently: Old School D&D (and by extension, OSE and Dolmenwood) have such clear procedures on how to run all of the game: Exploration has a clearly outlined procedure with Dungeon Turns, visibility, wandering monsters, how to adjudicate things like searching for traps... In the 2024 PHB, the exploration rules go into specifics like hiding, hazards and travel pace from page 19 onwards but give you no procedures on how to run things properly. Older DMs have an intuitive sense of these procedures, and newer DMs tend to learn them by osmosis, but... Why does it have to be this way? Why can't WotC outline the game's procedures (regardless of whether they're the same compared to older editions or not)? Why do the GMs have to run to forums and YouTube videos and blog posts to learn this stuff?
In all these ways, I feel like WotC has stopped expecting to teach DMs anything, and just expects them to be a player who sees behind the screen without teaching them the pattern behind things. The players keep getting newer and cooler abilities, but there is no guidance on WotC's end on how to make these abilities mesh in a coherent game table. There is no passing down of GMing's own joys and virtues (the ability to weave an interactive story with your players, building an interesting world, making players feel challenged while cheerleading them the whole time), just the expectation that the novice GM will somehow pick those skills up.
And sure, the 2024 DMG might actually teach these things, and if that's the case I'd be delighted. But given how most of the page space is given to magic items and bastions (aka goodies for players) and not to guiding GMs, I am very, very cynical.
