D&D (2024) What do you want in the revised DMG?

I like the 5e books a lot. I particularly like the bolded word or phrase with a period to start a description of an ability or feature, and I love the art getting away from dungeonpunk.

I do get confused when subheadings are underlined, and I do wish the page numbers were darker.
 

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dave2008

Legend
Thank you!
Yes, I mean the 5e books have an outdated graphic design. I understand they were trying to create the feel of a classic D&D book, but from the game point of view, there are a lot of visual tricks that can make the book better. It doesn't have to be visually modern, but it does need to be functional. Some examples:

Put different colours on the borders to help us to find chapters quickly (example).
Pathfinder 2E uses blue for titles and red for subtitles. Simple and elegant. Another thing is to highlight tiers. For instance, in the PHB, in the classes, the level of each trait needs to be highlighted. Sometimes it can be more difficult to figure out which trait is 3rd level and which is 11th level.
Bullet points can be coloured to separate them from the text.
Sometimes you need to read a long paragraph to figure out what a spell or magic item does. These books are mostly used when you are playing or want to consult something. It's important to organize it better. The easy way to do this is to put important information in bold. Spells must have an "Effect" paraphyly tath stands out from the rest (as is already done with the artefacts). It doesn't have to be video gaming like 4e, but 4e was definitely more organized them 5e, IMO.
For a game, D&D lacks visual ways to explain the rules, such as flowcharts and less "boring" tables (another example). Different thickness in the lines, different shades in the colours, different colours, inverted colours (white text on dark background) in the head... all these can help to find information faster in a table.

Good references:
Grim Hollow - Players Guide
Symbaroum (all books)
The World of the Witcher

PS: I apologize in advance for my English. :)
Thank you for the detailed reply. I don't disagree with your comments, but I also don't think it is that big of a deal. Like I said I preferred the 4e graphic design (and I didn't think it was video-gamey, but I don't play video games, so...) which had a lot of what you discuss - but it didn't sell.

I will say I quickly looked at your Grim World and Witcher links you provided they look remarkably similar to 5e graphic design to my eye (again on a quick pass). Maybe I would need to have physical copies to really appreciate the difference.

EDIT: I looked at the 3rd link now and I am not really seeing the improvement over WotC 5e products. On a very cursory review I like the WotC 5e graphic design as much or more the examples you provided. But l reserve the right to change that opinion if I get a chance to look at physical copies of the books.

PS - I had no idea your were a non-native English speaker, It was all good IMO.
 
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I think the new DMG should point players to use dndcombat.com to test their battles, and WOTC should pay to have to it finished :)

Because no CR system is useful when you can create a party of optimized bladesingers and warlock hexblades that can fight double what your default random party can fight.
I just tried using dndcombat and the party wizard kept fireballing the party lmao.
 

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