D&D 5E (2014) In Search Of: The 5e Dungeon Master's Guide

[el-remmen]

All you need to be a good DM is a model to work from, the opportunity to run a bunch, and the space to F- it up.

 

[pointofyou]

All you need to be a good DM is a model to work from, the opportunity to run a bunch, and the space to F- it up.

I don't see a conflict between "experience helps" and "the manual should be better at teaching new DMs." At least give the new folks enough information that they make their own mistakes instead of repeating ours out of ignorance.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

At least give the new folks enough information that they make their own mistakes instead of repeating ours out of ignorance.

Exactly. This is why some advice on DMing was really good when I was younger. Anything Robin D. Laws wrote tended to be extremely helpful, for example, and Mike Pondsmith had some surprisingly salient stuff in Listen Up... (despite it also being a hilarious insight into a man running his own game VERY different from how you'd expect, let's just say Streets of Fire seemed to be more of a model for Mike's own game than Neuromancer, Hardwired, Bladerunner, or the like). You can genuinely help new DMs by giving them good advice on how to avoid mistakes and so on.

Prescriptive DMing advice is rarely useful - that's why things like Gary Gygax's Role-playing Mastery (feat. almost zero advice related to roleplaying, and a ton related to literally bullying your players) and most of the early White Wolf Storyteller Guides were pretty worthless (oh the sheer amount of "If you don't play [WoD game in question] like [insert hyper-specific and extremely narrow gaming style] you're doing it wrong and should be ashamed!!!").

 

[el-remmen]

Oh I don't disagree that a good DMG will have useful info for a new DM. I am, however, skeptical, of how much it can actually "teach."

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Oh I don't disagree that a good DMG will have useful info for a new DM. I am, however, skeptical, of how much it can actually "teach."

What does that even mean though?

If people actually read it, a book can give them some really great resources on how to DM.

Part of the problem is that the DM's Guide for D&D serves about 14 different masters. You could give people the information they need to have a good basis to be a good DM in like, 16 pages or 32 maybe, and it's largely system-independent stuff. But the way WotC organise things, that'll likely be either split among a dozen different chapters, or put 3/4s of the way through the DMG, when it should be absolutely the first stuff you read as a DM.

EDIT - to add to this, there are really only three sources I learned from positively when DMing in my first few years.

1) The older cousin who ran AD&D for us and left an adventure for us to look at how she wrote it. She also gave me some basic advice which was way ahead of its time, frankly.

2) RPG books on DMing.

3) The early internet.

I don't think the "folk tradition" thing is super-helpful because so many DMs are so bad. If I'd learned from the first DM I played D&D with after my cousin, who was almost the first DM I played with (only the summer holidays prevented that being the case), I could have ended up as a totally awful DM because he was absolutely terrible and tyrannical and eventually got deposed by the players. One of those real GMPC-loving, player deprotagonizing scoundrels.

It's true that now you can see DMs running stuff in Critical Role and the like so that makes the "local weirdo" factor less bad, but a lot of the popular DMs to watch are so far beyond anything a new DM is likely to be able to do skill-wise that it's kind of nuts.

I mean, maybe the best argument for "not a book" is that "kids today" often prefer to learn from videos than books or written information (apparently they're worse at Googling than us Millennials too), but that just means WotC should think about making a video series to accompany the DMG.

 

[Maxperson]

Olaf the Somewhat Stout.

 

[Maxperson]

And that text shouldn't be split across two pages and confusedly sitting next to the "madness" tables!

I would have used appropriately myself.

 

[Maxperson]

The OP throws a bunch of things from the DMG at the wall with presumption people don't know those things are in the DMG because people don't read the DMG. How can a book that people don't read be useful? Why don't people read it?

Most of those I see saying that they don't read it are long time DMs who recognize that the vast majority of the book is advice that they don't need, but which would be useful to new players who might not have considered all of the options.

I would bet that most new DMs read most of or all of it.

 

[pointofyou]

Most of those I see saying that they don't read it are long time DMs who recognize that the vast majority of the book is advice that they don't need, but which would be useful to new players who might not have considered all of the options.

I would bet that most new DMs read most of or all of it.

How would one know the book is mostly "advice that they don't need" without reading it?

Before I ever ran 5e I read the DMG primarily because I was expecting it to be helpful. I was of course gravely disappointed.

 

[Maxperson]

This is spot-on. The amount you have to dig to find stuff - even rules you know exist - is staggering. The DMG is a masterpiece of confounding and vexing arrangement. The PHB is not at all like that.

I think that's because it's the PHB that has the rules to play the game, not the DMG. The DMG is almost entirely advice on world building with sides of magic items, XP charts and optional rules.