Dungeon Master's Guide Previews Start October 1st

Previews of the Dungeon Master's Guide start on October 1st. Today, Wizards of the Coast announced that they would kick off the marketing cycle for the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide next week with two videos. The first will be a general overview of the Dungeon Master's Guide, while the second will focus on the new Bastion system found in the book. The overview video will run on October 1st, while the Bastion video will run on October 3rd.

The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide was completely overhauled from the 2014 edition and will feature new adventures, a Greyhawk campaign setting guide (and accompanying maps) and reworked magic items. The Bastion system will also appear in the new DMG and will allow players to create custom strongholds that provide mechanic effects during downtime.

The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide will be released on November 12th, although the early access window starts on October 29th.

 

[tetrasodium]

Have you used the Bastion system? It works quite well, so unusable is just not right.

And of course there is a seperate video for the biggest new rules addition to the DMG.

Let's be honest, the biggest reason they are adding a base building system is because they saw Strongholds & Followers do the numbers.

A subsystems largely focused on delivering permanent and consumable magic items to PCs in an edition designed with the expectation of no feats no magic items and somehow zero CharOp is very out of place and that is before getting into the obvious loopholes in draft we saw. When we saw it the videos from wotc were very explicit in talking about making players feel like a dm and having a little thing in the game that they they could dm.

 

[Sulicius]

A subsystems largely focused on delivering permanent and consumable magic items to PCs in an edition designed with the expectation of no feats no magic items and somehow zero CharOp is very out of place and that is before getting into the obvious loopholes in draft we saw. When we saw it the videos from wotc were very explicit in talking about making players feel like a dm and having a little thing in the game that they they could dm.

What's the issue with making players do a little NPC creation?

 

[tetrasodium]

What's the issue with making players do a little NPC creation?

I was explicit about my "issues" with the bastion system and don't feel like giving any of it a pass just to talk about that part should tell you something wen wotc's past framing of it's goal is so indefensible that you need to select one isolated part of what they discussed and make some assumptions about it being the part getting highlighted rather than all of the other related and interlinked elements they were discussing along side it in the bastion videos.

 

[Sulicius]

I was explicit about my "issues" with the bastion system and don't feel like giving any of it a pass just to talk about that part should tell you something wen wotc's past framing of it's goal is so indefensible that you need to select one isolated part of what they discussed and make some assumptions about it being the part getting highlighted rather than all of the other related and interlinked elements they were discussing along side it in the bastion videos.

I'm not nitpicking, I am just curious about your views.

Like I said already, the system works well for me, I am just interested in what you have to say.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm not nitpicking, I am just curious about your views.

If you wanted to know my issues with bastions previewed on a mechanical level I believe that the spoiler in my sig includes a link to a post I did on them when we saw the preview

Like I said already, the system works well for me, I am just interested in what you have to say.

"Works well"? Were the attribute arrays reworked to make room for those consumable and permanent magic items? No it was not. Since the math behind phb monsters are near identical to existing monsters, as there been any indication that the monster manual is going to have new monster math that does so? Once again no there has not.

Because of those reasons, what you are describing as the bastions "work[ing] well" says nothing about bastions and everything about the gm compensating for them. Yesterday I covered why wotc needs to do much better than that for the dmg here before this forked off. When their past coverage of bastions is one of the many shovels wotc used to did the hole with it makes for an unlikely candidate for showcasing them for the dmg is going to be properly targeted as a tool built for the gm with the GM's needs of primary concern while doing so.

 

[Sulicius]

If you wanted to know my issues with bastions previewed on a mechanical level I believe that the spoiler in my sig includes a link to a post I did on them when we saw the preview

"Works well"? Were the attribute arrays reworked to make room for those consumable and permanent magic items? No it was not. Since the math behind phb monsters are near identical to existing monsters, as there been any indication that the monster manual is going to have new monster math that does so? Once again no there has not.

Because of those reasons, what you are describing as the bastions "work[ing] well" says nothing about bastions and everything about the gm compensating for them. Yesterday I covered why wotc needs to do much better than that for the dmg here before this forked off. When their past coverage of bastions is one of the many shovels wotc used to did the hole with it makes for an unlikely candidate for showcasing them for the dmg is going to be properly targeted as a tool built for the gm with the GM's needs of primary concern while doing so.

Alright, I found your original takes on the bastion system, but I still don't get your issue with letting the PC's design an NPC. Maybe it's because we're both not using our first language here, as I have trouble understanding what you mean in many posts.

First off: Magic items being available through the bastion system
I totally agree that WotC has done a terrible job at balancing magic items within their rarity, and that encounter building is unusable from the books if you want to challenge a kitted out party. The bastion system, however, actually takes too long to get anything out of it. In my current campaign I had to cram in additional weeks of downtime and I just halved the needed cost, just to make spending bastion points relevant. I am not worried that my players can now "pick" two uncommon items. I trust my players and they trust me not to try to break the game.

What do you mean with attribute arrays reworked? Are you talking about ability scores?

I really want to understand you better, but I can't get what you are trying to say with that last run-on sentence. Or maybe I do, but I don't want to get the wrong idea.

 

[tetrasodium]

Alright, I found your original takes on the bastion system, but I still don't get your issue with letting the PC's design an NPC. Maybe it's because we're both not using our first language here, as I have trouble understanding what you mean in many posts.

On that specifically there is a couple wider problems. Firstly is the whole base building to create a convoluted xcom base defense style weirdness that players will only care about with reverse proportionality to how much benefit they are gaining and expect to continue gaining... Of course those benefits immediately exceed the mathematical allotment baked into rules for encounters dcs monsters and so on.

The second problem is that wotc spent the last decade telling players you do you and tell your story for a collaborative cooperative game where the group plays out and discovers the party's story... While the new phb does better at being clear about the working with collaborative side of things ∆. So far wotc has avoided touching those kind of changes in the phb even with a ten foot... As the "Jason" example clearly shows it's a problem that wotc needs to loudly and clearly address their reasoning for that intentional shift after a decade of feeding the monster.

First off: Magic items being available through the bastion system
I totally agree that WotC has done a terrible job at balancing magic items within their rarity, and that encounter building is unusable from the books if you want to challenge a kitted out party. The bastion system, however, actually takes too long to get anything out of it. In my current campaign I had to cram in additional weeks of downtime and I just halved the needed cost, just to make spending bastion points relevant. I am not worried that my players can now "pick" two uncommon items. I trust my players and they trust me not to try to break the game.

What do you mean with attribute arrays reworked? Are you talking about ability scores?

The default is an elite array of 15 14 13 12 10 8. Those attributes factor into almost anything a player might do using starting gear consumable or permanent magic items... The easiest way to carve out room for them to fit without overloading the math reworking monsters and reworking DCs to make room would be to provide lower arrays and less generous point buy options like the 3.5 dmg did and to be explicitly clear about that being the purpose. Without that explicit clarity simply using them comes off as the gm nerfing their players and leads to adversary feelings from players who feel unjustly nerfed below what wotc intended them to have..


∆see the player facing session zero sidebar guidance in the new phb chargen section for one of the more obvious example of a thing previously ignored by the text in favor of telling players to do whatever they want without considering anyone else at the table during that process

 

[Sulicius]

I still have a lot of trouble parsing your posts.

All I can say is: that’s not really an issue at my table.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I can't say that it gives me warm fuzzies to learn that wotc decided the most important thing in the Dungeon Master Guide to highlight with a video of its own was a previously near unusable subsystem originally described by wotc as a thing to help players be their own little dungeon master on the side within the actual Dungeon Master's campaign. That does not telegraph strong indications of this dmg being written for the needs of the person taking on the role in the book's title.

Yeah. I strongly recommend Level Up's stronghold system as an alternative.

 

[MarkB]

Any word yet on if/when we're going to see content from Youtubers who have early access to the DMG?