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

[Lanefan]

Yeah, the content is solid, but the organization is bonkers.

So, nothing has changed since 1e then. Got it.

 

[Minigiant]

Put the magic items in the monster book and then there's no need for the DMG.

Put magic items, special materials, expanded weapon lists, expanded armor lists, alternate item names, firearms, explosives, ray guns and siege engines, in it's own book.

I've been in support of a 5 book system

Player's Handbook
Monster Manual
Dungeon Master's Guide
Equipment Catalog
Spell Tome

 

[Mordhau]

Put magic items, special materials, expanded weapon lists, expanded armor lists, alternate item names, firearms, explosives, ray guns and siege engines, in it's own book.

I've been in support of a 5 book system

Player's Handbook
Monster Manual
Dungeon Master's Guide
Equipment Catalog
Spell Tome

That's fine. But my feeling has long been that most of the stuff in the Dungeon Masters Guides doesn't really need to be in a core book you supposedly need to run the game.

DM advice and optional rules is well and good, but it's not essential, whereas having monsters and magic items is.

 

[Lanefan]

Put magic items, special materials, expanded weapon lists, expanded armor lists, alternate item names, firearms, explosives, ray guns and siege engines, in it's own book.

I've been in support of a 5 book system

Player's Handbook
Monster Manual
Dungeon Master's Guide
Equipment Catalog
Spell Tome

Yeah, I could see a 5-book system but some would be different from your list:

Player-side:
Player's Handbook. I think we all agree on this one.
Spells and Equipment Guide. No magic items here, but all the spells and an expanded catalogue of non-magical adventuring equipment. Player-side downtime material e.g. stronghold-building guidelines could go here as well.

DM-side:
Dungeon Master's Guide. Magic items, running the game, optional rules and dials, downtime ideas, etc.
Monster Manual. Another universally-agreed-on book.
Worldbuilding, Cosmology, and Magic Book. Adventure design and example adventure goes here, as does setting design and physics, cosmology and pantheon ideas, and campaign/world building material.

The idea would be that before actual play begins - i.e. during char-gen and campaign prep - the players mostly refer to the PH while the DM mostly refers to the WCMB. Then once play begins the players mostly use the SEG while the DM mostly uses the DMG. The MM gets used during both phases.

 

[Minigiant]

That's fine. But my feeling has long been that most of the stuff in the Dungeon Masters Guides doesn't really need to be in a core book you supposedly need to run the game.

DM advice and optional rules is well and good, but it's not essential, whereas having monsters and magic items is.

I agree but I think magic items and the associated charts and rules take up too much page space.

If you take magic items and the implied setting out of the DMG, you free up 100-150 pages.

I'd be okay with a 6th book for planes and advanced wandering monster charts

• Astral Planes
• Ethereal Planes
• Feywilds
• Shadowfells
• War Worlds
• Spirit Realms
• Inner Planes
• Outer Planes
• Outlands
• Demiplanes

 

[Rogerd1]

Worldbuilding, Cosmology, and Magic Book. Adventure design and example adventure goes here, as does setting design and physics, cosmology and pantheon ideas, and campaign/world building material.

I liked the M&M version with magical planes, such that the gods could also exist there. But in a science fiction setting have no attachment whatsoever. Then have a Metaphysical plane where the souls whether aliens, animals, all species even gods when they die.

Or have each setting have their own particular afterlife, and then allow for cosmic beings and such to feature in this like in M&M.

 

[Raduin711]

I can't agree with splitting the books up any farther. As it is, each of these books runs $50 each, but they have everything you need to play. And the way modern commerce works, if you split 3 books into more, they are still going to cost $50 each.

Remember many new players don't know what they need, and not every bookseller knows either. Nobody wants to sit down and play only to discover that D&D no longer keeps equipment in the player's handbook, or that magic items are in a different book from that, and what's a "Plane of Fire?" It's not in the DMG...

 

[Minigiant]

Yeah, I could see a 5-book system but some would be different from your list:

Player-side:
Player's Handbook. I think we all agree on this one.
Spells and Equipment Guide. No magic items here, but all the spells and an expanded catalogue of non-magical adventuring equipment. Player-side downtime material e.g. stronghold-building guidelines could go here as well.

DM-side:
Dungeon Master's Guide. Magic items, running the game, optional rules and dials, downtime ideas, etc.
Monster Manual. Another universally-agreed-on book.
Worldbuilding, Cosmology, and Magic Book. Adventure design and example adventure goes here, as does setting design and physics, cosmology and pantheon ideas, and campaign/world building material.

The idea would be that before actual play begins - i.e. during char-gen and campaign prep - the players mostly refer to the PH while the DM mostly refers to the WCMB. Then once play begins the players mostly use the SEG while the DM mostly uses the DMG. The MM gets used during both phases.

That's was my original design for a 5 boon system.

I just think magic items, like spells, take up too much pages and hurt PC creation and DM guidance by forcing cuts.

My preference for perfect is 6 books but I think it just would be too prohibitive in cost for kids.

So either magic items or worldbuilding needs to leave the DMG. The DMG can't fit both.

Spells (outside of the basics) definitely need to leave the PHB.

 

[Minigiant]

I can't agree with splitting the books up any farther. As it is, each of these books runs $50 each, but they have everything you need to play. And the way modern commerce works, if you split 3 books into more, they are still going to cost $50 each.

Remember many new players don't know what they need, and not every bookseller knows either. Nobody wants to sit down and play only to discover that D&D no longer keeps equipment in the player's handbook, or that magic items are in a different book from that, and what's a "Plane of Fire?" It's not in the DMG...

Cost is a problem.

However I think the flaws of the last 3 editions could have been greatly lessened if there more pages factored in the initial design and development. D&D is too old and has too many varying perspectives and preferences to meet it's needs if you don't add.

If you don't add 2 more books in 6e, you need to add 100 more pages to each book.

 

[John R Davis]

Yeah I remember reading 5e a lot of times and thinking "just tell us what you intend here"*. A lot of forum arguments about stealth might have been avoided if they'd just had a 13th Age style sidebar which told us something like "this is how we intend to use stealth, or perhaps more importantly, this is how difficult we intend it to be to get Sneak Attack, so in the case of the Rogue and hiding err on the side of being permissive".

To me that doesn't read as clear AND is also a terrible idea to make a classes " one unique thing" difficult to do!