D&D (2024) D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide (2024)

[Parmandur]

anything is in certain circles, nothing is universally true when it comes to TTRPG tastes

True, but some things can be generally true: I don't suspect that the online complaints about "lack of challenge" are as widely held as some think.

 

[TiQuinn]

eh, no ruleset is so all-encompassing and clear that there is nothing that needs a ruling, so the only question is where to draw the line.

I do not see 200 page rulesets as any better than 20 page rulesets, if anything they become too unwieldy fast, so some DM empowerment will always exist and I see no problem with that. If a specific DM abuses their position from your perspective then find another DM. If they keep running out of players then maybe they change their approach and if they do not run out then maybe the problem was you, or maybe the two of you just were not a good fit

Yeah, thinking that one perfect ruleset is going to do away with all of the problems of DMing is wishful thinking. I’d argue the problem with 5e in this area was much simpler: playtesting as the game reached higher tiers. The problem of keeping encounter challenging is less of an issue at tiers 1 and 2, but starts to become an issue at tier 3, and is definitely a problem at tier 4. Where do most published D&D campaigns/adventures end? Tier 2/Tier 3.

 

[mamba]

I generally prefer more rules to less personally. Better to have them and not need them.

there is such a thing as too many rules or too much detail for me, 5e sits pretty well in my comfortable spot, not as loose as DW and not as overkill as PF2

I mostly wanted the superheroics toned down. Something between Shadowdark and 5e, maybe sitting at 3/4 of the way towards 5e is probably what I would actually want. Curious what Goodman Games will do with their variant, they might be the ones getting the closest to that point, much too early to say however

 

[mamba]

True, but some things can be generally true: I don't suspect that the online complaints about "lack of challenge" are as widely held as some think.

criticism is generally ‘louder’ than praise, so yes, it might get overestimated.

On the other hand I believe that there are plenty of tables that do not really want a challenge, they just want to kill some stuff, find some loot and have a fun time with their friends, so the fact that plenty of people enjoy the game is not necessarily an indicator of it having the challenge level / balance figured out

 

[mamba]

I’d argue the problem with 5e in this area was much simpler: playtesting as the game reached higher tiers. The problem of keeping encounter challenging is less of an issue at tiers 1 and 2, but starts to become an issue at tier 3, and is definitely a problem at tier 4. Where do most published D&D campaigns/adventures end? Tier 2/Tier 3.

I’d argue D&D was never good at higher levels, I’d stop at level 12 or so and throw out the rest (yes, will never happen).

As to most published campaigns ending around 12 to 14, most groups never even make it there, if anything you need more 1-5 and 1-8 adventures

 

[TiQuinn]

I’d argue D&D was never good at higher levels, I’d stop at level 12 or so and throw out the rest (yes, will never happen).

As to most published campaigns ending around 12 to 14, most groups never even make it there, if anything you need more 1-5 and 1-8 adventures

I hate that I have to agree on this. Like, I have played high level D&D and to 5e’s credit, they were both 5e campaigns. And both times, they were fantastic thanks to a DM who worked hard to make them work well. Seriously, I feel bad for groups that never get to play that high a level. It’s truly sweet stuff.

But it’s difficult. The rules start fighting against you. You have to riff as a DM a LOT more. And from a sales perspective, I know Tier 4 adventures just don’t sell as well.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm not acting like this is an extreme situation, but people choose to play these games because they want to have fun, and fun is relative. It is entirely possible for two or more people at the same table to have differing ideas of what is fun for them, and when that happens a decision has to be made and that might leave one or more parties unhappy. It happens, and it is not bad faith.

Two people can have different ideas of what is fun without those different ideas being utterly incompatible. That's the point you keep skipping over, as if it is assumed that because two people find different things fun, they are automatically 100% incompatible and MUST absolutely HATE the things someone else loves.

Such things are quite rare, and 99.9999999% of the time, two people can enjoy different things and still enjoy spending time together doing the same things because they recognize the value of give and take. "You can have your fun now, and I'll have my fun later," or "we'll do what I want this time, and we'll do what you want next time." I, personally, don't like steak. My dad loved steak. I would cook steaks for him, not because I like them, but because I know he does. And then he'd cook something I like, even if it's not really his cup of tea. Or vice versa.

That's one form compromise can take--one person accepting delayed gratification, so long as the delay is reasonable, and preferably both/all sides wait their turn at different times. Another is mixing things together: in a TTRPG context, having fights that have persuade-able enemies, so it is possible for both the butt-kicker and the diplomancer to have fun in the same combat, but in different ways. A third form is diversification of labor: have the PCs doing different things in different places, but which all contribute to the same over-arching goal. A fourth is making use of the fact that we don't have to run a purely linear timeline, we can jump around, having flashbacks or (more rarely) flashforwards, where folks can contribute differentially without needing to wait.

Your thesis rests on the idea that two people genuinely cannot, even in principle, find a way for both of them to get what they want. In a TTRPG context, that is essentially always not true--and if it IS true, then it is essentially always the case that at least one person is not participating in good faith. Either they want to always be the person who gets gratification, and the other person always gets delays with no gratification (bad faith by "heads I win, tails you lose"), or they want the other person to always be stuck only doing what's right in front of them, rather than contributing via flashback or side story or separate participation (bad faith by spotlight-hogging), or some other similar thing.

The vast, vast, vast, VAST majority of difficulties like this can, in fact, be resolved if all participants genuinely desire a fun time to be had by all. The moment someone doesn't actually want everyone to have fun, they are participating in bad faith. Period.

 

[Micah Sweet]

there is such a thing as too many rules or too much detail for me, 5e sits pretty well in my comfortable spot, not as loose as DW and not as overkill as PF2

I mostly wanted the superheroics toned down. Something between Shadowdark and 5e, maybe sitting at 3/4 of the way towards 5e is probably what I would actually want. Curious what Goodman Games will do with their variant, they might be the ones getting the closest to that point, much too early to say however

I agree partially. I definitely want the superheroics dialed down (not likely from the official game, and I've accepted that and now play other games), but my threshold for rules is somewhat higher than 5.0 or 5.5 have offered. Quite a bit higher personally, though I dial it back for my players.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Two people can have different ideas of what is fun without those different ideas being utterly incompatible. That's the point you keep skipping over, as if it is assumed that because two people find different things fun, they are automatically 100% incompatible and MUST absolutely HATE the things someone else loves.

Such things are quite rare, and 99.9999999% of the time, two people can enjoy different things and still enjoy spending time together doing the same things because they recognize the value of give and take. "You can have your fun now, and I'll have my fun later," or "we'll do what I want this time, and we'll do what you want next time." I, personally, don't like steak. My dad loved steak. I would cook steaks for him, not because I like them, but because I know he does. And then he'd cook something I like, even if it's not really his cup of tea. Or vice versa.

That's one form compromise can take--one person accepting delayed gratification, so long as the delay is reasonable, and preferably both/all sides wait their turn at different times. Another is mixing things together: in a TTRPG context, having fights that have persuade-able enemies, so it is possible for both the butt-kicker and the diplomancer to have fun in the same combat, but in different ways. A third form is diversification of labor: have the PCs doing different things in different places, but which all contribute to the same over-arching goal. A fourth is making use of the fact that we don't have to run a purely linear timeline, we can jump around, having flashbacks or (more rarely) flashforwards, where folks can contribute differentially without needing to wait.

Your thesis rests on the idea that two people genuinely cannot, even in principle, find a way for both of them to get what they want. In a TTRPG context, that is essentially always not true--and if it IS true, then it is essentially always the case that at least one person is not participating in good faith. Either they want to always be the person who gets gratification, and the other person always gets delays with no gratification (bad faith by "heads I win, tails you lose"), or they want the other person to always be stuck only doing what's right in front of them, rather than contributing via flashback or side story or separate participation (bad faith by spotlight-hogging), or some other similar thing.

The vast, vast, vast, VAST majority of difficulties like this can, in fact, be resolved if all participants genuinely desire a fun time to be had by all. The moment someone doesn't actually want everyone to have fun, they are participating in bad faith. Period.

I'm not the one saying always or never here, except in relation to your comments (and if I'm forgetting something, please feel free to call me out on it and I will happily apologize). Quite frankly, I think expecting every participant to be willing to compromise on any issue whenever it comes up as a disagreement or be labeled as a bad actor (how I read your claim of acting in bad faith) is simply an unrealistic demand. If this is what you need at all times from any group of players to feel comfortable playing with them, it might take some time to find a good fit.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

ok, let’s assume that for the sake of the argument, then why would the DM have to be the one giving in at all times, including the ones where the player is that jerk?

Given I never said that, have never said that, would never say that, I'm not sure what you're talking about. I can't respond to a request for clarification on a point I didn't make.

While this might be a significant number, I doubt D&D has had this massive explosion in popularity by being a horrible rule set.
It's extremely unlikely to grow if people struggle constantly.

This feels like a variant of the cliche "No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded."

Say what you like. I have seen the frustration with my own eyes (or, rather, heard it with my own ears). Every 5e DM I personally know has gotten frustrated--severly so--with the places where the rules simply fail them, and how often they have to pick up the pieces and brute force the rules into working.

You also seem to be discounting the network and bandwagon effects. Both of those are pretty damn important, especially in the TTRPG space, where the only game in town is almost always D&D. Even when Pathfinder challenged D&D...PF1e was D&D 3.5e, just with the serial numbers filed off and extra bonus content. That was literally the whole point, and also (explicitly, from Jason Bulmahn himself) the reason why they felt they needed to make PF2e.

I’d say the number of pages has a direct correlation to how many scenarios are covered in what detail and make rulings unnecessary, the fewer pages, the more decisions/ rulings that need to be made or the less universal the game.

Not at all! This is only true if you presume that every rule must be an individual, discrete, specific rule--one rule for every topic and one topic for every rule. It is entirely possible to construct rules that cover swathes. Skill Challenges are one example from D&D. Most DW move are written this way as well, e.g. the classic Defy Danger is the single most-used move because it's literally "when you try to avoid something bad happening," which covers an enormous design space. The player must declare what they're doing (subject to the restrictions of the fiction and reasonableness) to evade or forestall the Bad Thing, whatever it might be.

As soon as you allow rules to actually exploit abstraction for benefit--which is something absolutely every rule always has, every single rule is always, to at least some extent, abstracted from reality--you can actually cover a huge amount of space. 3e and its descendants are what happens when you try to have a rule for everything and everything having its rule--it will, guaranteed, fail. 5e said, "Okay. Then let's just not care about the rules." You can see how I feel about that.

DW lacks a ton of clear rules, for example take any of its monsters and compare them to their D&D counterparts.

The rules are extremely clear. They just do clarity in a different--and more narrative--way than D&D does. As an example, I am regularly told by the rules themselves what I must do, or what I am allowed to do, as GM. This isn't hiding behind anything. It's a straight-up, clear instruction. Such a thing is absolutely verboten in 5e, because its rules really don't actually matter. The DM does whatever the DM feels like, whenever the DM feels like it, for as long as they feel like it.

That leaves only the social contract for addressing any problems.

Leaving that aside, so the 5e’s rules are what then, do not matter? are not well tested?

That's literally what DM empowerment means, yes, according to the people who kept advocating for it for literal years. Remember how for the first like three years of 5e, every single thread that involved a rules question had one of the first five or so replies contain a disclaimer in the vein of: "Unless your DM says otherwise, because whatever they say goes." Which literally means, yes, the rules don't matter, because your DM can and will override them any time they like, for any reason or no reason at all. That's what this oh-so-wonderful DM Empowerment revolution was aiming for the entire time. "Rulings not rules" means "make up whatever you want, whenever you want." Always has. It is absolutely antagonistic to consistency and DM responsibility. That's why I hate it so much.