D&D (2024) Experienced DMs, how useful is the 2024 DMG to you?

[billd91]

I have nitpicks. I think they botched how skills are presented. They ignored downtime in favor of bastions and made languages unnecessarily hard to get. There are areas of the DMG that feel like concepts rather than fleshed out examples (The creating traps rules are a major step down from Xanathar). But I feel any discussion where these things get brought up doesn't address things in a constructive manner, but with people saying "told you 6e was a Ha$bro cash grab".

How skills are presented? You mean SKILLS ARE PRESENTED?!? Because, from where I'm sitting, skills are barely presented at all.
I mostly joke, but...

I'm less concerned about anything being a step down from a resource like Xanathar's because I'm OK recognizing that the DMG represents the baseline for what they want to have in the hands of DMs starting from scratch with the 3 main books and there's always room for another future source - whatever ends up being the 5e24's successor to Xanathar's - to fill in the gaps again and push some designs forward.

 

[Imaro]

I just got my physical DMG & while I am still reading through it...I will say this... I don't envy the position the designers found themselves in with this book. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

They were lambasted for not making the 2014 DMG something that explained and presented the game for beginners. Something I personally didn't have an issue with since their primary market at the time were those who had already had familiarity with D&D.

Now with a massive influx of new players they rework the DMG into a beginner friendly book with more general advice, principles, etc. As opposed to optional rules, random tables, etc. and experienced DM's are lambasting it for not including these things... which I think if they were included would then be lambasted as a money grab with reprinted old material.

My thoughts are that the point of WotC stressing this isn't a new edition is that the 2 DMG's as well as previous supplements are all supposed to be used together by experienced DM's. I do think there will be some reprinted info once the 2014 sourcebooks have sold out but for now they are still readily available.

 

[Selas]

See, I look at something like that and think, "good." I never used those "stocking the dungeon" charts back in 1e and I certainly never used them in 5e either. Has anyone ACTUALLY used this? Good grief, even the most verbose dungeons that I've seen have never used those charts. To me, those charts were utterly useless and it makes perfect sense why they would get dropped. They got dropped because no one uses them. I'm assuming you mean the ten or so pages in Appendix A in the 2014 DMG. Until you mentioned it here, I had completely forgotten they existed.

Given that there are ten billion random generators out there that will do all of this faster, easier and probably better than what's in the DMG, it's not a surprise that this gets cut out.

I believe both Chris Perkins and James Wyatt mentioned that they dropped some things from 2014 going into the new books because they believe weren't necessary for new DMs or that hardly saw use. They didn't mention what those things were, but some of the tables that got removed are probably part of that

Edit: it was in one of the official video interviews, but I don't remember the specific one

 

[Selas]

And while Greyhawk as a campaign setting is presented in brief in the book (and I do like what I see - the country summaries are really helpful), it doesn't even attempt to go into what sort of elements you should look at or build up if you wanted to make your own - or even expand upon in the presented example. It's like a "show not tell" presentation in a book that is otherwise appears aimed at teaching one to be a DM.

I specifically remember Chris Perkins in one of WotC's videos say that very same expression: show not tell. He said the create campaign chapter provided guidelines, but rather than tell you how build one detail by detail, they would use the Greyhawk setting to show an example of what you need to build one

 

[Oofta]

Do we really need things like a random dungeon generator table when a quick Google takes me to the donjon website that does all the work for me with a click?

I get people wanting more stuff, but there's still limits on page count. They can't include everything we might want and this is more of a guidebook than a detailed instruction manual. There are detailed instructions a click away nowadays.

 

[Stormonu]

Do we really need things like a random dungeon generator table when a quick Google takes me to the donjon website that does all the work for me with a click?

I get people wanting more stuff, but there's still limits on page count. They can't include everything we might want and this is more of a guidebook than a detailed instruction manual. There are detailed instructions a click away nowadays.

Need? No, I can go back to my 1E DMG for that sort of thing if I really needed to. But it was an example of the new DMG providing less than the 2014 version in several areas (see also the disappearance of the monster creation rules), and not acknowledging or mentioning that those sort of tools are available to aid newbie DMs. The DMG shouldn't be dancing around the subject of making homebrew content, it should either be telling/assisting you with how to do it, or advising where you can go to get tools or more in-depth information that will help with that sort of thing.

The 2024 DMG just isn't doing more than a gloss-over of many areas that feel like could have been dealt with in more depth. It's become a primer, not a toolbox or helping hand.

 

[Oofta]

Need? No, I can go back to my 1E DMG for that sort of thing if I really needed to. But it was an example of the new DMG providing less than the 2014 version in several areas (see also the disappearance of the monster creation rules), and not acknowledging or mentioning that those sort of tools are available to aid newbie DMs. The DMG shouldn't be dancing around the subject of making homebrew content, it should either be telling/assisting you with how to do it, or advising where you can go to get tools or more in-depth information that will help with that sort of thing.

The 2024 DMG just isn't doing more than a gloss-over of many areas that feel like could have been dealt with in more depth. It's become a primer, not a toolbox or helping hand.

Less in some ways, but more in others. I need to make time to do a complete readthrough but it seems to be much better at handholding and introducing people to DMing. Which is it's real purpose after all.

It can only do so much. Well, unless you're Shimmer

 

[Selas]

Do we really need things like a random dungeon generator table when a quick Google takes me to the donjon website that does all the work for me with a click?

I get people wanting more stuff, but there's still limits on page count. They can't include everything we might want and this is more of a guidebook than a detailed instruction manual. There are detailed instructions a click away nowadays.

And the thing is, you can still use the cut content from 2014 if you really want to and should be compatible with some tweaks.

For example, I know people--specially experienced DMs--bemoan that the in-depth monster creation rules aren't in the new DMG, but a new DM will probably not go out of their way to create a brand new monster. Rather, new DMs would prefer to take one from the MM that fits the purpose and reflavor it, because it's easier for them to do so. Experienced DM can still use the DMG content from 2014 that they feel is more advanced. Personally, I think WotC will include the monster creation rules in the MM like in 3E.

Ultimately the new book will be useful for experienced DMs if they want it to be, but if they have preconceived notions about it, then chances are they won't find it useful even after reading it.

Need? No, I can go back to my 1E DMG for that sort of thing if I really needed to. But it was an example of the new DMG providing less than the 2014 version in several areas (see also the disappearance of the monster creation rules), and not acknowledging or mentioning that those sort of tools are available to aid newbie DMs. The DMG shouldn't be dancing around the subject of making homebrew content, it should either be telling/assisting you with how to do it, or advising where you can go to get tools or more in-depth information that will help with that sort of thing.

The 2024 DMG just isn't doing more than a gloss-over of many areas that feel like could have been dealt with in more depth. It's become a primer, not a toolbox or helping hand.

The new book is not a worldbuilding book, but a guide in how to be a DM and run the game; WotC has been very clear on that. Both Chris Perkins and James Wyatt were very clear the intent of the DMG was not to teach people how to build a campaign setting for publication, but how to run your home games.

 

[Elvish Lore]

Okay, bought it a week ago and have been reading it. This new DMG is of limited use to me. I'm an old hand at this... like many of us here. I'll use the magic item lists for sure... and probably the Bastion stuff - which is straightforward and uncomplicated compared to a lot of other subsystems I've seen for similar intent over the past few years. I couldn't care less about a lore glossary - I either know it already or it's of very limited to use to have it printed here in the DMG or reading about yet another generic fantasy setting like Greyhawk; I've got a shelf of mega-setting books. I really, really wanted a big chapter of optional rules to use in my game and there's really nothing there now! Ugh.

However... and this is huge however...

I can't tell you the level of joy my 10 year old is getting from this book.

She read the '14 DMG over the past couple years. It was an okay experience for her, she really liked the magic item descriptions, but I think she kind of bounced off the book. She's played D&D a few times and likes it a lot; she's finally trying to get her head around running the game too.

Thing is, this new DMG is doing a spectacular job at being a book of awesome for new/younger players. Greyhawk setting? This teaches my kid what a setting reduced down to a few pages looks like; she's been grappling with the Tal'Dorei Reborn book and my old copy of the Forgotten Realms setting guide for 3rd ed and while those are great, they're monster-sized tomes. DMG's Greyhawk setting is showing her a more macro view of setting design and it's excellent. The lore glossary? She loves it! The mystery of all these references she's read in the PHB are being revealed.

And nevermind all the solid but open-ended advice about adventure design and collection of DM tool-box ideas.

Me getting the Lloth cover version of the book is the cherry on this sundae and my kid is maybe getting slightly obsessed with D&D fantasy lately...

This thread was all about experienced DMs making use of the DMG so I get it. I just wanted to lend a perspective of someone who is going to fall into the hobby of tabletop rpgs because this new DMG is legit inspiring them.

But me? Yea... not so much.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Now with a massive influx of new players they rework the DMG into a beginner friendly book with more general advice, principles, etc. As opposed to optional rules, random tables, etc. and experienced DM's are lambasting it for not including these things... which I think if they were included would then be lambasted as a money grab with reprinted old material.

As an experienced DM, I think it would 100% be fair to lambast the 2024 DMG if it included the 2014 Optional Rules reprinted without alteration, because they were terrible (some even didn't do what they set out to do - they weren't just "OP" or whatever, they literally didn't work right!), and mostly an ill-considered and obviously un-playtested waste of space that were clearly down to the DMG being extremely rushed (as was the whole release of 5E, just like 4E). I actually applaud the 2024 DMG for not attempting to replicate that section, because really very little of value was lost.

I would like to see a "lessons learned" decade-later optional rules selection, which reflected more about what WotC had learned about what DMs and players wanted from the game, but I don't think that necessarily belongs in a DMG1, but rather would fit nicely into a DMG2 or Tasha's/Xanathar's-type book in a year or three.

Also new DMs don't really need a bunch of optional rules, unless the game is something unusual and broad which needs to be highly tailored, and D&D is absolutely the antithesis of that kind of game, despite attempts to run it as such. New DMs are much better off running it "as is" and seeing how that goes.

TLDR - I think ditching the Optional Rules was a solidly good thing.