The Fifth Edition DMG

I actually finished reading this some time ago, but somehow managed to forget to post about it. Oops.

The 5e DMG is the best 'main' DMG of any edition of D&D to date. And, since that's damning with faint praise, I'll also say: this is an extremely good DMG.

(The previous best DMG was the 1st Ed version, which still has some value. But the extremely idiosyncratic language used comes at the cost of obfuscating the meaning and impeding comprehension. High Gygaxian may make for an interesting read, but it's lousy for a manual intended for use. Conversely, the 2nd Ed DMG was almost totally devoid of useful content, and is worthwhile only for the magic item descriptions. Indeed, some of the DM advice provided by that book is not just unhelpful but is actively bad. The 3e version is okay, but did we really need quite so many pages about doors and walls? And then the 3.5e version took that same material, reorganised it badly, and added the broken Epic rules. Finally, the 4e version was long on triviality and then painfully short where detail was needed. All in all, then, the DMGs have been an unimpressive bunch.)

The 5e DMG has 9 chapters and 4 appendices. It opens with two chapters on being Master of Worlds: A World of Your Own and Creating a Multiverse. These reminded me, more than anything, of the 2nd Ed "Campaign Supplement and Catacomb Guide" - an extremely impressive book that in many ways is the missing half of the 2nd Ed DMG. Excellent stuff, and a good start.

Part Two is five chapters on being Master of Adventures. Unfortunately, this was where I hit my few caveats about the book. In both the discussion of Mystery adventures and also in creating NPCs, I found the book very good at stating the bleeding obvious, but painfully lacking on specifics. Which, sadly, was reminiscent of the 4e version. There are some hard-won lessons that veteran DMs pick up along the way, and that are ideal fodder for a DMG (allowing a new DM to skip the pain of learning them the hard way). For example, it reminds the DM to include lots of clues for a mystery (good), but could profitably have talked about the Three Clue Rule. (The TCR isn't holy writ, of course, but it's an extremely good rule of thumb... and exactly the sort of starting place a new DM would benefit from.)

My second caveat mostly concerns the placement of the magic items in the book - the items presented are pretty good, and there's a good range, but they'd have been much better placed at the back of the book, in a second appendix. This would allow a time-pressed DM to find them much more easily for later reference. A nitpick, perhaps, but something that bugged me.

Part Three is two chapters about being Master of Rules, and consists of two chapters. The first of these is additional applications and expansions of the existing rules, while the second is a grab-bag of optional rules and systems. The final chapter also guides the DM in developing new monsters, backgrounds, magic items, classes, and so forth. Really good stuff.

Finally, the Appendices detail Random Dungeons, give useful lists of monsters sorted in various ways (good, but should have been in the MM), a handful of maps, and a recommended reading list just for DMs. All good stuff, though sadly not matching the 1st Ed DMG appendices, which were far and away the highlights of that book.

One last caveat: the binding on my copy is already cracking, after just a read-through and no use in-game at all. A shame.

All in all, though, this is an excellent book, and highly recommended.

Some Final Thoughts on the 5e Core Rulebooks: All in all, I'm very impressed. 5e remains, probably, my second-favourite version of the game, but also the one I'm most likely to run going forward (since 3.5e is just so much work). Of the three books, the MM is my favourite, and yet it is only in the DMG that 5e has the best book out of the editions - an oddity largely caused by the 2nd Ed Monstrous Manual being so damn good.

The big thing that disappoints me about 5e is that it isn't getting the same wealth of supplements as the last three editions. I understand the business logic behind this, and indeed appreciate not feeling the need to pick up endless supplements. And yet, I would really like to see a second MM of the same quality as this one, and would very much like to see a full Eberron campaign guide (there's an article that converts some key elements for the new edition, but this is both incomplete and, IMO, a poor conversion).

Mostly, though, I'm very pleased with this new edition, and looking forward to running some games using it. With the caveat that I'm a little burned out on vanilla D&D at this stage, and may well enjoy Firefly more for the next little while. We'll see - I'm hoping to start up a new campaign in September, and that could obviously go either way...