D&D General Have You Actually Read the DM's Guide?
Sword of Spirit
Legend
A DMG isn't primarily a guide for DMs, regardless of it's name. It is this:
1) The second part of the game rules for the edition. It typically contains magic items, poisons, diseases, rules for environmental conditions, traps, encounters and advancement, and various other things you literally need to play the game anything like it was intended, even when there is a highly flexible intent.
2) A world-building and running guide. It typically contains information about different types of political entities, settlements, geographical features and regions, natural and unnatural disasters, groups, planes, deities, NPCs and more. It describes how to create such worlds, how they might function, and how players might interact with them. This information is extremely useful for DMs whether creating their own worlds or using existing settings. You can usually get by with a this part of a DMG from a different edition than the one you are running, but you almost certainly will have better results if you at least reference the one from your current edition. If you don't make use of this type of content at all you are severely hamstringing yourself and just making it harder.
3) Advice for how to run the out of character aspects of the game. This can include how to manage player interactions, how to evoke certain genre conventions, how to support different playstyles, and how to resolve issues with the rules. It also includes general advice on how to handle a variety of situations in game, and how to make use of house rules and rulings. This part is often highly influenced by the particular edition's assumptions, although it relies less on the actual rules of the edition than any other category. It is the least necessary part of the DMG, and you can usually replace it with guidance from a completely different game, or years of experience. That said, it is quite useful to know in order to better understand designer intent behind the way the rules were designed to be used.
4) Optional/variant rules. A combination of hard mechanical options for the game, and mechanical guidance for developing your own house rules and additional content. This, like the first category, is fundamentally connected to the edition you are playing. If you have no interest in departing from official default rules selections or creating your own content, this section is not particularly useful for you. If you do intend to do either of those, its usefulness ranges from crucial to well-advised. It either gives you what you need without any work on your part, or it takes you step by step through the process, or it at a minimum shows you the way additional and variant options are designed to work. If you create such material without referencing this first, you are shooting yourself in the foot for little reason.
I think some people are thinking a DMG is supposed to be #3, which is actually the least important (and least page count) part of what a Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide is.
1) The second part of the game rules for the edition. It typically contains magic items, poisons, diseases, rules for environmental conditions, traps, encounters and advancement, and various other things you literally need to play the game anything like it was intended, even when there is a highly flexible intent.
2) A world-building and running guide. It typically contains information about different types of political entities, settlements, geographical features and regions, natural and unnatural disasters, groups, planes, deities, NPCs and more. It describes how to create such worlds, how they might function, and how players might interact with them. This information is extremely useful for DMs whether creating their own worlds or using existing settings. You can usually get by with a this part of a DMG from a different edition than the one you are running, but you almost certainly will have better results if you at least reference the one from your current edition. If you don't make use of this type of content at all you are severely hamstringing yourself and just making it harder.
3) Advice for how to run the out of character aspects of the game. This can include how to manage player interactions, how to evoke certain genre conventions, how to support different playstyles, and how to resolve issues with the rules. It also includes general advice on how to handle a variety of situations in game, and how to make use of house rules and rulings. This part is often highly influenced by the particular edition's assumptions, although it relies less on the actual rules of the edition than any other category. It is the least necessary part of the DMG, and you can usually replace it with guidance from a completely different game, or years of experience. That said, it is quite useful to know in order to better understand designer intent behind the way the rules were designed to be used.
4) Optional/variant rules. A combination of hard mechanical options for the game, and mechanical guidance for developing your own house rules and additional content. This, like the first category, is fundamentally connected to the edition you are playing. If you have no interest in departing from official default rules selections or creating your own content, this section is not particularly useful for you. If you do intend to do either of those, its usefulness ranges from crucial to well-advised. It either gives you what you need without any work on your part, or it takes you step by step through the process, or it at a minimum shows you the way additional and variant options are designed to work. If you create such material without referencing this first, you are shooting yourself in the foot for little reason.
I think some people are thinking a DMG is supposed to be #3, which is actually the least important (and least page count) part of what a Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide is.
Asisreo
Patron Badass
This is a fair criticism. Putting your best foot forward in a book is one of the better ways to start off a book.It leading off with the “Master of Worlds” section was a turn off. The amount I read is directly proportional to how far into the book I got.
Also the pages weren’t cut through properly in the first section, which I’m not complaining about
Even textbooks have the pattern of simplest to complex.
The pattern for the DMG sorta makes sense, but its easy to see it as a drag when you've already ticked off every box you'd ever want your homebrew setting to have.
Still, the advice in there range from decent for beginners to simply sublime as adding Guilds with Perk Points and so on has given my players a new way to interact with the world and invest in it. I've used guilds or guild-like organizations in every game I've made since I discovered it and every time my players loved it.
Sword of Spirit
Legend
I'll attempt to rate the 5e DMG based on the categories I laid out above. I'll be rating it compared to 5 other books: Rules Cyclopedia, 1e DMG, 2e DMG, 3.x DMG (similar enough to just count once), and 4e DMG. I haven't fully read either the 1e DMG or the 4e DMG (because I haven't run either edition), but I have read parts of both, and believe I have enough information to rank the 5e DMG in comparison to them, which should be all that is needed since I am not attempting to rank any other DMGs. With 6 different books involved, I will use a scale of 1-6, with 6 being the best and 1 the worst.
5E DMG
1) Rules = 3
This is both the most indispensable part of the book, and the worst performance for the 5e DMG. The section on magic items is actually excellent. They are flavorful, quirky, and feel like something special rather than just expensive gear. Epic boons are also inspired; and the Resolving (Social) Interaction rule is IMO the best ever seen in D&D. Regarding the rest of this category, the primary issues here are that some of the rules just don't work very well, are unclear in how they work, are contradictory to other rules, or are incomplete/missing. This is true even in the magic items section. Now, that isn't unique to 5e, but the flaws per rule density (outside of the magic items) seems higher here than in any other DMG. If the magic item section wasn't so good, the 5e DMG would have gotten the 1 spot. These are rules you have to have (and some are quite delightful!), but you'll be tempted to adjust some of them once you have them.
2) World-Building and Running = 6
This is the greatest strength of the book. I'm sure some will find this rating absurd based on the much greater amount of (often good quality) content in this category in some previous DMGs. The reason I give the 5e DMG the win on this is a combination of quality and conciseness. Generally I don't care much for conciseness in an RPG. I like huge tomes with small print and vast quantities of information of which I will actually only use a fraction, the rest waiting dutifully for its name to be called. But the 5e DMG manages to put information of equal or higher quality in a fraction of the words. I've never before read such a satisfying and brief set of steps for drawing a map of a continent, and that typifies the presentation of material in this category. Open this book up, go through the sections on building a multiverse and building a world and it will work. If I end up running a previous edition again, I'll probably still refer back to this guide for world-building. The adventure and NPC design sections are excellent; I used them along with the random dungeon generator appendix to create the starting dungeon in my campaign, and it still holds up as an interesting setting appropriate dungeon. Minor weaknesses include at least one case of contradictory information (spacing of settlements on a map), and if you count random encounter tables in this category rather than the first (it could go either way), there is a lack of comprehensive tables (Xanathar's Guide to Everything includes them, but they aren't as good as some previous editions) and the urban encounters table was botched because it is weighted towards the middle (d12+d8) but the entries are in alphabetical order rather than placed based on frequency.
3) Advice for Game Management = 5*
This is a small part of the book, but it's a larger proportion than most. It's updated with decades of experience; and stays true to the original 5e design goals of being play-style inclusive rather than limiting. It's not comprehensive, and if someone really wants an in-depth guide of this sort, they might want to consult an additional resource or two (not necessarily 5e or even D&D).
*This one is second best behind whichever other edition (if any) prescribes the playstyle you prefer.
4) Optional/Variant Rules = 4
This section does more than any other DMG did to try to support multiple playstyles with rules options and variants. Unfortunately, many (maybe even most) of those variants just aren't very good. I could write an extensive review on that, but I have better things to do with my time. Suffice it to say that you definitely will want to be thoroughly familiar with this content, and there is much of it you will likely use straight out of the book (I do), but there are other parts where the method they offer to meet the goal you have just isn't going to be satisfying and you'll have to DIY anyway.
For overall ranking amongst the 6 DMGs you have to consider some more variables. There is an assessment of how much weight should be given to each category in general. (I'd say that category 1 is the most important, followed by 2, 4, and then 3.) There is also a judgment of how important each of those categories is to 5e. (For instance, I'd say #1 is less important than in most editions, and #3 is probably more important given the number of newer players coming in.) There is also an assessment of how impactful the really good material is on your game, versus how detrimental the flawed material is to it. Then there is a pure gut feeling of "Which DMG do I like the best?"
5e DMG Overall = 6
It's not perfect, and I'm still unhappy about certain rules that were supposed to be in it but vanished before publication (monsters as characters and gestalt character classes in particular), but overall I find that, as a fan of DMGs, I just like this one a little better than the rest.
5E DMG
1) Rules = 3
This is both the most indispensable part of the book, and the worst performance for the 5e DMG. The section on magic items is actually excellent. They are flavorful, quirky, and feel like something special rather than just expensive gear. Epic boons are also inspired; and the Resolving (Social) Interaction rule is IMO the best ever seen in D&D. Regarding the rest of this category, the primary issues here are that some of the rules just don't work very well, are unclear in how they work, are contradictory to other rules, or are incomplete/missing. This is true even in the magic items section. Now, that isn't unique to 5e, but the flaws per rule density (outside of the magic items) seems higher here than in any other DMG. If the magic item section wasn't so good, the 5e DMG would have gotten the 1 spot. These are rules you have to have (and some are quite delightful!), but you'll be tempted to adjust some of them once you have them.
2) World-Building and Running = 6
This is the greatest strength of the book. I'm sure some will find this rating absurd based on the much greater amount of (often good quality) content in this category in some previous DMGs. The reason I give the 5e DMG the win on this is a combination of quality and conciseness. Generally I don't care much for conciseness in an RPG. I like huge tomes with small print and vast quantities of information of which I will actually only use a fraction, the rest waiting dutifully for its name to be called. But the 5e DMG manages to put information of equal or higher quality in a fraction of the words. I've never before read such a satisfying and brief set of steps for drawing a map of a continent, and that typifies the presentation of material in this category. Open this book up, go through the sections on building a multiverse and building a world and it will work. If I end up running a previous edition again, I'll probably still refer back to this guide for world-building. The adventure and NPC design sections are excellent; I used them along with the random dungeon generator appendix to create the starting dungeon in my campaign, and it still holds up as an interesting setting appropriate dungeon. Minor weaknesses include at least one case of contradictory information (spacing of settlements on a map), and if you count random encounter tables in this category rather than the first (it could go either way), there is a lack of comprehensive tables (Xanathar's Guide to Everything includes them, but they aren't as good as some previous editions) and the urban encounters table was botched because it is weighted towards the middle (d12+d8) but the entries are in alphabetical order rather than placed based on frequency.
3) Advice for Game Management = 5*
This is a small part of the book, but it's a larger proportion than most. It's updated with decades of experience; and stays true to the original 5e design goals of being play-style inclusive rather than limiting. It's not comprehensive, and if someone really wants an in-depth guide of this sort, they might want to consult an additional resource or two (not necessarily 5e or even D&D).
*This one is second best behind whichever other edition (if any) prescribes the playstyle you prefer.
4) Optional/Variant Rules = 4
This section does more than any other DMG did to try to support multiple playstyles with rules options and variants. Unfortunately, many (maybe even most) of those variants just aren't very good. I could write an extensive review on that, but I have better things to do with my time. Suffice it to say that you definitely will want to be thoroughly familiar with this content, and there is much of it you will likely use straight out of the book (I do), but there are other parts where the method they offer to meet the goal you have just isn't going to be satisfying and you'll have to DIY anyway.
For overall ranking amongst the 6 DMGs you have to consider some more variables. There is an assessment of how much weight should be given to each category in general. (I'd say that category 1 is the most important, followed by 2, 4, and then 3.) There is also a judgment of how important each of those categories is to 5e. (For instance, I'd say #1 is less important than in most editions, and #3 is probably more important given the number of newer players coming in.) There is also an assessment of how impactful the really good material is on your game, versus how detrimental the flawed material is to it. Then there is a pure gut feeling of "Which DMG do I like the best?"
5e DMG Overall = 6
It's not perfect, and I'm still unhappy about certain rules that were supposed to be in it but vanished before publication (monsters as characters and gestalt character classes in particular), but overall I find that, as a fan of DMGs, I just like this one a little better than the rest.
David Howery
Hero
read the 1E and 2E ones thoroughly from cover to cover, since I was an active DM back then. Read bits and pieces of the 3E one, and the 5E one most of the way...
Musing Mage
Pondering D&D stuff
Add my voice to the 'almost always DM' pile, as opposed to 'sometimes.'
I have read the 1st ed, 2nd ed and 5th ed DMG's from cover to cover, but I only generally review the 1st ed DMG with regularity.
I have read the 1st ed, 2nd ed and 5th ed DMG's from cover to cover, but I only generally review the 1st ed DMG with regularity.
Voadam
Legend
I read Moldvay Basic when I got it as a kid. It was a great intro to D&D and DMing. It is short, has good explanations, and good flow for learning the game.
I bopped around the 1e DMG a lot and probably went through the whole thing early on when I was playing and DMing 1e. I reread it straight through a couple years ago as a cover to cover read and not for purposes of playing 1e. Lots of interesting arcane stuff.
I copied the xp and expanded demihuman level limit charts out of a friend's 2e DMG and used my 1e DMG for magic items. That served me well during the years (more than a decade) I was DMing 2e. I did not own a copy until I got the rules CD which has the DMG text on html and then more recently the PDF.
In late 2e times I started consciously reading some D&D books straight through as some of my recreational downtime reading.
3e I was working off a PH and the SRD for a long while, supplemented with lots of 3rd party OGL stuff and some non core 3e stuff. I read the DMing sections of the SRD, and probably read those files comprehensively, but did not even get the DMG until years in and I have rarely cracked it open. With 3.5 I worked off the SRD as well. I read the 3.0 PH cover to cover shortly after it came out though.
Similarly I worked off the Pathfinder SRD for most of the time I was playing Pathfinder and I did not read the SRD comprehensively, though I did read a lot of it (there are probably individual monsters, magic items, and spells I did not get to). I used the hard copy book a bunch in games at the table, but nowhere near reading it cover to cover and mostly for things like combat rules, and player specific mechanics, not for most anything in the DM section besides specific magic items.
I read the 4e DMG cover to cover during the period I was playing 4e, which was pretty late into the 4e cycle. I read all three 4e core books cover to cover after having started with the free online intro rules packet in H1 Keep on the Shadowfell that eventually came out. The rules packet was great. I would have been tempted to try 4e a lot earlier if they had released that earlier.
I read the 5e DMG cover to cover along with the PH and MM and the first basic set. The basic set is fantastic, particularly having an easy to look up conditions page at the end. I used that at the table in face to face games. I am currently making my way through Xanathar's.
I bopped around the 1e DMG a lot and probably went through the whole thing early on when I was playing and DMing 1e. I reread it straight through a couple years ago as a cover to cover read and not for purposes of playing 1e. Lots of interesting arcane stuff.
I copied the xp and expanded demihuman level limit charts out of a friend's 2e DMG and used my 1e DMG for magic items. That served me well during the years (more than a decade) I was DMing 2e. I did not own a copy until I got the rules CD which has the DMG text on html and then more recently the PDF.
In late 2e times I started consciously reading some D&D books straight through as some of my recreational downtime reading.
3e I was working off a PH and the SRD for a long while, supplemented with lots of 3rd party OGL stuff and some non core 3e stuff. I read the DMing sections of the SRD, and probably read those files comprehensively, but did not even get the DMG until years in and I have rarely cracked it open. With 3.5 I worked off the SRD as well. I read the 3.0 PH cover to cover shortly after it came out though.
Similarly I worked off the Pathfinder SRD for most of the time I was playing Pathfinder and I did not read the SRD comprehensively, though I did read a lot of it (there are probably individual monsters, magic items, and spells I did not get to). I used the hard copy book a bunch in games at the table, but nowhere near reading it cover to cover and mostly for things like combat rules, and player specific mechanics, not for most anything in the DM section besides specific magic items.
I read the 4e DMG cover to cover during the period I was playing 4e, which was pretty late into the 4e cycle. I read all three 4e core books cover to cover after having started with the free online intro rules packet in H1 Keep on the Shadowfell that eventually came out. The rules packet was great. I would have been tempted to try 4e a lot earlier if they had released that earlier.
I read the 5e DMG cover to cover along with the PH and MM and the first basic set. The basic set is fantastic, particularly having an easy to look up conditions page at the end. I used that at the table in face to face games. I am currently making my way through Xanathar's.
Helldritch
Hero
Are you a clone of myself?
I did everything you did. It took me a while to get into 2nd edition as it was not different enough but I too, took the demi-humans level limitations and apply them to my 1st edition games. We fully migrated to 2ed in 1994 (around)... We tried PF but it was too close to 3ed for us to play it fully. It had the same number bloating problems as 3.xed. 4ed brought a nice change and had great ideas but some of these were poorly presented and combat in high levels were taking forever. And yes, Keep on the Shadowfell came a bit late in the editon's life. It might have helped a lot (or not...).
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