Dungeon Master's Guide 3?

[Erdrick Dragin]

I'm curious. Is there going to be a Dungeon Master's Guide 3? And why don't I see Player's Handbook 4, Monster Manual 4, or DMG 4 listed for 2011?

Is WotC failing on, yet, another promise again?

 

[FireLance]

I think a DMG3 will be published when WotC has developed enough material for it. Similarly, PH4, MM4 and DMG4. Assuming, of course, it decides to maintain the same naming convention.

And if we define "failing to deliver on a promise" as "failing to follow a trend", then the answer to your last question is, "Yes".

 

[Destil]

I'm pretty sure the D&D marketing people decided this was a no-go, as the names just don't work for new players looking to pick things up.

Very likely to see the same sorts of books with different names, though.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I think we will get an announcement from WOTC about 2011 in early January.

At least I hope so.

 

[ourchair]

I don't think WotC ever made a promise of sticking to sequential numbering, nor was it ever one of the core goals of 4th Edition, so they haven't 'failed' on that in the way they have for the other things that they could reasonably accused of failing at.

That said, new DMGs aren't really necessary. Campaign supplements suffice and DDI helps provide the advice material that DMG2 covered. The original plan was for DMG3 to focus on the epic tier, but the audience for epic tier publications isn't really a proven market.

 

[Aegeri]

I think a DMG3 will be published when WotC has developed enough material for it.

From the epic games I've played already I could write pages and pages on it (in fact, I already have wrote about such experiences). Personally there is a lot to cover in a book dedicated to epic tier, a lot of DMs struggle with it in their first dig at running a game between 21 to 30 - including myself it should be noted!

Quite frankly, I am amazed at the remarkable drop in the amount of epic support. Monster Vault shows an immensely worrying sign with an insignificant 13 or so epic monsters, the highest being level 27 (Balor). Like their previous mistakes, most of those epic monsters are elites and solos. Not to mention wizards lacks the complete new monster design rules, guidelines and advice anywhere currently (Monster Vault/DM's kit missed a huge trick here). Making an effective monster now has very different concepts to 2008. There is more you can get away with and variation is heavily encouraged (especially in how monsters resist conditions).

I mean if Wizards can't get enough material out of those two things alone I would simply be flabbergasted. They published the DMs kit book and that is the worst book in all of 4E by a mile. The first two DMGs far outclass it in quality, advice and new mechanics presented. Anyone would be better buying the two original DMGs over the DMs kit any day - unless you REALLY want the adventure and tokens. Incidentally, I did actually want both the adventure and tokens - but the book is still horrible (so bad I am considering not even taking it with me when I move country. That's how little I will miss it).

A DMG3 should be a logical and easy to put together book.

 

[JoeGKushner]

From what I've heard before, there isn't enough game play at epic levels to warrant a book for it.

In addition, WoTC quickly learned that books with numbers at the end of them tend to not necessarily do as well as the previous books ala the sequel effect. They were able to do great in the 3rd ed days with the PHB2 and DMG2 because it was not an immediate launch, and in 4e at least, the PHB2 contained what many considered 'core' elements.

It is very much a chicken and egg thing. Without the proper amount of support, epic play will languish. Without more people playing at epic levels, there will be no demand preceived.

This is another reason why I was disappointed when it became apparent that WoTC was dropping the adventure path sequencing in Dungeon. At least then you knew there wouuld be a few high level adventurers out. Now?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I suspect it sort of goes like this: DMG1 (or PHB1 etc) sells well, everyone needs it. If 75% of those people buy DMG2 it still sells fairly well, but by the time you get down to DMG3 with 75% of the people that bought DMG2 picking it up the book just isn't a money maker. Beyond that people coming into the game see all these books and they are confused. Either they wonder if they need ALL of them to play, or they wonder if DMG3 replaced DMG1 and DMG2. Either way they're a bit confused.

Isn't there still a book in the "sometime next year" category that has been discussed that is supposed to have character options and additional rules for this and that (crafting and whatever)? That seems like it is sort of partly "DMG3" kind of material. More like providing stuff that was in the 1e DMG, rather than the epic focused DMG3 that was originally proposed.

Honestly as far as PHB4 goes I think they just plain ran out of enough material that was generally interesting to a large enough base of players to fill such a book. What races would be in it? I mean PHB3 was already down to Shardminds and plant men. Yes, I'm sure people can list all sorts of things THEY would like to see in races, but the problem is no one set of them is interesting to enough players to sell the book. Likewise with classes, the iconic stuff is done.

Seems to me the current strategy makes perfectly good sense, switch to smaller cheaper softcovers that each concentrate on one narrow thing, like Heroes of Shadow. The book is cheap enough to produce and has a low enough price that it can make money even at modest sales, and at $15 even people that are only marginally interested are likely to still pick it up.

They can always do a 'savage species' type book for all the oddball races, a 'book of ritual magic' for those of us that like rituals, etc. The sequential core books just ran their course. I mean I general like to have every rule book, but when even I stop buying them, yeah, it's pretty much time to call it quits.

 

[Nikosandros]

Isn't there still a book in the "sometime next year" category that has been discussed that is supposed to have character options and additional rules for this and that (crafting and whatever)?

Player's Option: Champions of the Heroic Tier. It has recently disappeared from Amazon. I don't know if it's just a glitch or if it has been postponed or canceled.

 

[Dungeoneer]

I'm curious. Is there going to be a Dungeon Master's Guide 3? And why don't I see Player's Handbook 4, Monster Manual 4, or DMG 4 listed for 2011?

Is WotC failing on, yet, another promise again?

I'm pretty sure that WotC never promised to deliver annual sequels to the core books ad infinitum.

Their initial business plan involved doing this, sure, but with the release of the Essentials line it's obvious that they're trying some different strategies. It's their business plan and their prerogative. Whatever they decide to do, I'd be very surprised if we saw any more Player's Handbook X books.

The bad news about this is that there's a lot of us who would dearly love to see a DMG3. The good news is that we probably won't get a Martial Power 3.