D&D 5E We are betting a LOT on the DMG.... will it deliver?

[Nebulous]

One thing i REALLY REALLY hope they pull back on is the excessive artwork. Yes, it's great and gorgeous, but for a book chock full of crunchy rules, i would rather have an extra page or 10 of rules instead of a full page spread of art.

 

[Teflon Billy]

One thing i REALLY REALLY hope they pull back on is the excessive artwork. Yes, it's great and gorgeous, but for a book chock full of crunchy rules, i would rather have an extra page or 10 of rules instead of a full page spread of art.

Not me. Every edition has people asking for some version of what you are asking for here "Do it softcover, on newsprint, with no art...just give me rules and get the price down". Honestly, I love hardcover, art-heavy books. Since way back in the 80's I've been inspired by a lot of the art in virtually every edition of D&D (lots of it was total too mind you)

But seriously a bunch of "books of crunchy rules" is nothing people buy en masse (provably!), producing it would limit the game's appeal and diminish returns for the publisher. Lose-lose.

 

[Uchawi]

If you like the game in general, and only have a couple minor problems with it, the DMG may help or be neutral at best. But if you want significant changes, then it will fail to deliver in my opinion. Especially if your misgivings are based on current class assumptions and/or design.

 

[JesterOC]

I know it will meet MY expectations because every other book did. But there is no way it can meet everyone's expectations, because one person's essential information is another's waste of space.

 

[Jester David]

I am a little worried.

5e is pretty solid so far but there's a LOT that needs to go into the DMG, and it seems like WotC's philosophy of late when facing the limited page counts of the PHB and the MM is "we'll put that in the DMG". So much is being slipped into the book and there's no shortage of expected content.
Aside from all the must-have stuff that needs to go into a DMG (advice on running the game, rules for treasure, rules for building encounters, etc) there's all the promised content they've been teasing for years such as the modularity that the whole edition is built upon.
It's going to be hard fitting everything people are expecting into 320-pages, not without sacrificing a lot of content like magic items or rules modules.

Really, I doubt WotC is certain of everything that will be in the DMG. They're still working on the book. And they were hard at work on it during GenCon. So they've been working on the DMG for well over five weeks straight, and had to delay it to continue working on it. They saved it for the very end after burning themselves out on the PHB and MM.

I'm pretty confident the D&D team will make a solid book. But so much is resting on the DMG, so many people are being told "wait for the DMG", and so much missing content is explained as "wait for the DMG" that it's inevitable that the book will disappoint.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I am a little worried.

5e is pretty solid so far but there's a LOT that needs to go into the DMG, and it seems like WotC's philosophy of late when facing the limited page counts of the PHB and the MM is "we'll put that in the DMG". So much is being slipped into the book and there's no shortage of expected content.
Aside from all the must-have stuff that needs to go into a DMG (advice on running the game, rules for treasure, rules for building encounters, etc) there's all the promised content they've been teasing for years such as the modularity that the whole edition is built upon.
It's going to be hard fitting everything people are expecting into 320-pages, not without sacrificing a lot of content like magic items or rules modules.

Really, I doubt WotC is certain of everything that will be in the DMG. They're still working on the book. And they were hard at work on it during GenCon. So they've been working on the DMG for well over five weeks straight, and had to delay it to continue working on it. They saved it for the very end after burning themselves out on the PHB and MM.

I'm pretty confident the D&D team will make a solid book. But so much is resting on the DMG, so many people are being told "wait for the DMG", and so much missing content is explained as "wait for the DMG" that it's inevitable that the book will disappoint.

One thing that gives me is hope is when Mike Mearls said something to the effect that he thinks people will be surprised by just how much stuff is in the DMG.

Of course, you are right. Regardless of how good it is, some people will be completely dissatisfied. I'm generally optimistic, but I'm preparing myself in advance to expect that the DMG probably won't have some of the specifics that I want, so that I'm more likely to be positively surprised than negatively surprised by the final product.

 

[DaveMage]

Do you expect it to be a book?

Thaumaturge?

OK, you got me on that one.

But APART from being a book, I have no expectations....

OK, APART from being a book, having text (in English) and artwork, being 320 pages, and being about D&D, I have no expectations.

 

[Nebulous]

i have this secret hope that the DMG will have the nostalgic value of the original 1e DMG mixed with the 3e kitchen sink approach of Unearthed Arcana. I'm not worried about it, i think it will be a good book.

 

[aramis erak]

My expectations aren't really that high...

And I think it's going to meet them. So far, my expectations have been exceeded consistently.

 

[Thaumaturge]

OK, you got me on that one.

But APART from being a book, I have no expectations....

OK, APART from being a book, having text (in English) and artwork, being 320 pages, and being about D&D, I have no expectations.

Ah, OK then.



Thaumaturge.