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

[Ruin Explorer]

But the whole point is that game theory doesn't help most people outside of general advice similar to what the DMG already offers. It makes sense to talk about things like the role of the dice, but getting into philosophy of the purpose of randomization is just going to make most people's eyes glaze over.

I don't think that's really true.

They don't have to write like me (or to be fair, most people on ENworld... including pretty much everyone in this thread).

Yeah, sure if you or I wrote such a thing, people's eyes would glaze over, but if someone like Robin D. Laws did? I don't think so.

Part of the big problem here is that basically no-one senior on 5E is good at writing text that doesn't make people's eyes glaze over. Crawford and Perkins are very good at writing their precise "natural language" powers and spells (where natural means about as "natural" as Mountain Dew (TM)), but can they write interesting, involving text outside of flavour text (which they do sadly little of)? I'd say that's a big no.

And I think this is another flaw 5E has that is totally solvable. I think there are plenty of writers out there who aren't meandering, circuitous buffoons like me, nor Text Robots like Crawford, writers who can boil stuff down to a sentence or three, and make it fun and interesting to read.

Earlier you were talking about player types, and how you felt that section in 4E wasn't hugely helpful. I don't entirely disagree. But I've read material that covered the same ground but was drastically more useful (the 4E one was honestly a bit weird). And this doesn't need to be take a lot of space. For example, sorry to go on about Robin D. Laws, but he wrote probably the most succinct and helpful DMing book out there:

Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering

Is it perfect? No but it's a damn sight better than anything WotC or for that matter, White Wolf or Paizo have ever published regarding game mastering. And look - it's only 32 pages! You could easily contain all of that within the DMG. And I know some people love to say "prescriptive", which, frankly is being used as a meaningless buzzword, and quite politically rather than helpfully, but by no means is his book "prescriptive" (unless the 5E DMG is drastically more "prescriptive"). It's just a great example of what an actually-good book on DMing can look like, and how extremely small it can be!

EDIT - Note I'm meaning prescriptive re: DMGs here, not 4E. 4E was, like 3E and 5E, pretty prescriptive. I don't buy that it was meaningfully more prescriptive than 3.XE, just prescriptive about different things, but 5E is certainly somewhat less so, albeit still drastically more prescriptive RAW/RAI than most modern RPGs. So I'm not critiquing your usage re: 4E.

I'm not advocating for shrinking the DMG, note, I'm just saying, containing everything you need to get a good start on DMing can probably be done by a skilled writer on the subject in 32 pages. And given it's from 2003, I'm sure it could be improved upon.

For contrast we might look at Gary Gygax's 1987 "Role-playing Mastery", which is 176 pages of absolutely "prescriptive" (in the literal sense) text on basically, how to be a "jerk DM" that nobody would ever enjoy playing with. Credit where credit's due, Gygax later basically disavowed this book, saying he's never actually run the game like that, and indeed, people who played with him backed that up, but it's still a travesty. Still what that points to is you can spend 176 pages and offer nothing useful, or 32 and offer a ton. It is important to hire the right people.

 

[Oofta]

I don't think that's really true.

They don't have to write like me (or to be fair, most people on ENworld... including pretty much everyone in this thread).

Yeah, sure if you or I wrote such a thing, people's eyes would glaze over, but if someone like Robin D. Laws did? I don't think so.

Part of the big problem here is that basically no-one senior on 5E is good at writing text that doesn't make people's eyes glaze over. Crawford and Perkins are very good at writing their precise "natural language" powers and spells (where natural means about as "natural" as Mountain Dew (TM)), but can they write interesting, involving text outside of flavour text (which they do sadly little of)? I'd say that's a big no.

And I think this is another flaw 5E has that is totally solvable. I think there are plenty of writers out there who aren't meandering, circuitous buffoons like me, nor Text Robots like Crawford, writers who can boil stuff down to a sentence or three, and make it fun and interesting to read.

Earlier you were talking about player types, and how you felt that section in 4E wasn't hugely helpful. I don't entirely disagree. But I've read material that covered the same ground but was drastically more useful (the 4E one was honestly a bit weird). And this doesn't need to be take a lot of space. For example, sorry to go on about Robin D. Laws, but he wrote probably the most succinct and helpful DMing book out there:

Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering

Is it perfect? No but it's a damn sight better than anything WotC or for that matter, White Wolf or Paizo have ever published regarding game mastering. And look - it's only 32 pages! You could easily contain all of that within the DMG. And I know some people love to say "prescriptive", which, frankly is being used as a meaningless buzzword, and quite politically rather than helpfully, but by no means is his book "prescriptive" (unless the 5E DMG is drastically more "prescriptive"). It's just a great example of what an actually-good book on DMing can look like, and how extremely small it can be!

EDIT - Note I'm meaning prescriptive re: DMGs here, not 4E. 4E was, like 3E and 5E, pretty prescriptive. I don't buy that it was meaningfully more prescriptive than 3.XE, just prescriptive about different things, but 5E is certainly somewhat less so, albeit still drastically more prescriptive RAW/RAI than most modern RPGs. So I'm not critiquing your usage re: 4E.

I'm not advocating for shrinking the DMG, note, I'm just saying, containing everything you need to get a good start on DMing can probably be done by a skilled writer on the subject in 32 pages. And given it's from 2003, I'm sure it could be improved upon.

For contrast we might look at Gary Gygax's 1987 "Role-playing Mastery", which is 176 pages of absolutely "prescriptive" (in the literal sense) text on basically, how to be a "jerk DM" that nobody would ever enjoy playing with. Credit where credit's due, Gygax later basically disavowed this book, saying he's never actually run the game like that, and indeed, people who played with him backed that up, but it's still a travesty. Still what that points to is you can spend 176 pages and offer nothing useful, or 32 and offer a ton. It is important to hire the right people.

I can't count how many times in my software development career I've met theorists who will swear up and down by some book or that some technique is far more efficient. Then when I developed tests for the technique in question and it was less efficient they would neither admit that perhaps they were wrong nor prove to me how my test was not correct. I would have been perfectly fine with the latter but all they could do is point to someone else's blog. Not a perfect analogy, but my point is that theory and reading what others have said only takes you so far. Most people have to learn by doing.

I also think that calling the authors of the most popular TTRPG ever written crap writers is pretty ludicrous. I have no problem with the vast majority of the text, people I actually game with in real life don't either.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Earlier you were talking about player types, and how you felt that section in 4E wasn't hugely helpful. I don't entirely disagree. But I've read material that covered the same ground but was drastically more useful (the 4E one was honestly a bit weird). And this doesn't need to be take a lot of space. For example, sorry to go on about Robin D. Laws, but he wrote probably the most succinct and helpful DMing book out there:

Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering
Is it perfect? No but it's a damn sight better than anything WotC or for that matter, White Wolf or Paizo have ever published regarding game mastering. And look - it's only 32 pages! You could easily contain all of that within the DMG. And I know some people love to say "prescriptive", which, frankly is being used as a meaningless buzzword, and quite politically rather than helpfully, but by no means is his book "prescriptive" (unless the 5E DMG is drastically more "prescriptive"). It's just a great example of what an actually-good book on DMing can look like, and how extremely small it can be!

That's a great example. I think this is something that should be achievable by the team at WotC.

And here's the thing.... they still do the "types of players" thing in the 5e DMG. A lot of these things are already in there, they're just included in a half-baked way. If they're going to bother identifying player types at the start of the book, I'd hope for that to be mentioned again later on. It may be, but not that I can readily recall, and not overtly and with intent the way I think would be helpful.

 

[gorice]

I can't count how many times in my software development career I've met theorists who will swear up and down by some book or that some technique is far more efficient. Then when I developed tests for the technique in question and it was less efficient they would neither admit that perhaps they were wrong nor prove to me how my test was not correct. I would have been perfectly fine with the latter but all they could do is point to someone else's blog. Not a perfect analogy, but my point is that theory and reading what others have said only takes you so far. Most people have to learn by doing.

I'd put it more like theorise -> practice-> analyse -> repeat, at least for me. You can't analyse your success (or failure) without articulating your aims.

This is also kind of how game design generally works, interestingly enough.

I also think that calling the authors of the most popular TTRPG ever written crap writers is pretty ludicrous. I have no problem with the vast majority of the text, people I actually game with in real life don't either.

I think 5e's popularity hinging on the quality of its prose is something that needs to be established, not assumed.

FWIW, writing and editing is my day job, and I think that the 5e books are generally competently written qua prose, but badly structured and generally illogical.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Here’s the rub. The argument seems to be that the defaults that are already in the DMG aren’t prescriptive, but any new information added must be prescriptive.

So, for instance, 20 pages in a 300 page book describing the default D&D cosmology (including a full half-page illustration of the cosmology) isn’t prescriptive, because some alternatives get a one paragraph write-up.

On the other hand, language like:
“Some people prefer a more OSR-style game. If you want to try this, here are some rule variants that taken together restrict healing (and can increase the lethality of the campaign), and put a greater emphasis on exploration (including removing certain spells)” is considered prescriptive, because whatever is indicated will become the new standard.

At the end of the day, it is “appeal ad conservatum”. Change is viewed with suspicion, because it’s change.

I sincerely doubt the 6e DMG will make mention of any other RPGs, even in a general sense (OSR).

 

[MGibster]

Or, perhaps, some of us say that it might be cool if people who were going to start playing D&D were provided a low-cost alternative to the core three books. Maybe WoTC could put some material together, perhaps in a box, and make it easy for new groups to learn the game? They could even have it available at mass market retailers?

It's a crazy idea ... some kind of .... Starting Kit ... or Beginners' Set .... maybe they will be smart enough to try it?

I'll be honest here, as a veteran player (old school nerd), I have trouble evaluating the value of starter sets. For most games, the starter sets I've purchased have been rather disappointing. The ones I've found value in, like the Alien starter set from Free League, game with peripherals or an adventure that made the game well worth the cost to me. But for some others, and I'm drawing a blank now, I feel like it was a waste of my money. But as a veteran player (old school nerd), I have to consider that a starter set might be of greater value to a newer player.

Folks, do you all find the various D&D starter sets to be a good deal?

 

[MGibster]

It's been a long time since I've run OD&D, but there was absolutely instructions in the older versions of the game to make the game your own. Have you actually read any of the books that Gygax wrote? You couldn't follow the rules exactly because there were contradictions all over the place.

I've certainly had my characters die horrible deaths beacuse of his #%#%#^# Gygaxian dungeons!

I think 5e's popularity hinging on the quality of its prose is something that needs to be established, not assumed.

Like the success D&D had in the 70s and early 80s, I'm not sure anyone can really say why D&D is so popular today.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'll be honest here, as a veteran player (old school nerd), I have trouble evaluating the value of starter sets. For most games, the starter sets I've purchased have been rather disappointing. The ones I've found value in, like the Alien starter set from Free League, game with peripherals or an adventure that made the game well worth the cost to me. But for some others, and I'm drawing a blank now, I feel like it was a waste of my money. But as a veteran player (old school nerd), I have to consider that a starter set might be of greater value to a newer player.

Folks, do you all find the various D&D starter sets to be a good deal?

I liked the first 5e one with Phandelver. The subsequent ones hold no value for me.

 

[Oofta]

I'd put it more like theorise -> practice-> analyse -> repeat, at least for me. You can't analyse your success (or failure) without articulating your aims.

This is also kind of how game design generally works, interestingly enough.


I think 5e's popularity hinging on the quality of its prose is something that needs to be established, not assumed.

FWIW, writing and editing is my day job, and I think that the 5e books are generally competently written qua prose, but badly structured and generally illogical.

I never said the writing was the best ever but it's also not complete crap. It's as good or better than previous editions.

 

[FrozenNorth]

This is somewhat comical. If the 4e and 5e DMGs are not different I'm not sure why those that enjoy the 4e DMG within this thread have such an issue with the 5e DMG. Perhaps you care to explain?

Your claim was that they had different purposes. That’s what I am taking issue with.