Assessing the Revised DMG for D&D 5E

Revising the Dungeon Master’s Guide was an obvious choice for the Wizards team. The 2014 DMG was criticized as a book DMs did not consult often, or even need to read. Does the revised 2024 DMG solve these problems and become the DM’s indispensable tome? What should the role of a DM’s Guide be for an RPG?

The Style and Role of a DMG

DMGs have changed in both style and the role they play (as we discussed in our 2014 DMG review DMG on the Mastering Dungeons podcast – episodes 136 to 158). Historian Jon Peterson has helped us see how the AD&D DMG was created in part as an answer to D&D’s biggest fans wanting lots of rules covering all kinds of play. It provided dense pages full of inspiration and random tables. In addition to wild ideas a 1980s DM had probably never considered, it also contained the rules required to play, including attack bonuses for PCs. AD&D could not be run without its DMG.

As editions progressed, rules of the game moved to the Player’s Handbook. 4E even had magic items in the PH! 4E also changed its style away from inspiration and random tables, instead favoring prescriptive approaches and tools. 4E’s DMGs were full of useful systems and drop-in elements such as traps, monster powers, monster templates, ships, terrain, and more. 4E, however, was not very inspirational.

2014’s DMG returned to the inspirational approach, which makes sense given the desire to try a non-4E approach. But this left the 5E DMG with very little value. Optional subsystems and topics such as describing the planes in detail were great… if the reader had an uncommonly high attention span. As much sense as focusing on inspiration seemed great, it didn’t work.

Where 2024 Improves

2024 shifts its style. It sharpens its guidance to be closer to an approach. Its advice is often actionable. It dials down inspiration, while still retaining some, and tries to group subjects together so they feel like tools. Does it go far enough?

In many ways, yes. 2024 has a far superior organization, especially for a new DM. Chapters 1 and 2 (The Basics, Running the Game) are very strong, an asset to a new DM (and new DMs are vital to our hobby). Throughout, the book provides a series of tracking sheets, and it pulls together disparate and common rules (poisons, traps, curses, NPCs, etc.) into a DM’s Toolbox chapter. Chapters 4 and 5 are all about creating adventures and campaigns, including the three pillars of play. Chapters on Cosmology and Treasure are followed by a new chapter for Bastions, and then the appendices.

Many of the rules have been revised. Traps are described more succinctly, with better example traps. In addition to revised encounter math (which in some ways is great but in others seems to be a change just for the sake of change), we get example adventures meant to feel like what we might sketch out at the table. And the campaign guidance does a better job of painting a picture of what it is like to create a campaign.

But Not Far Enough

2024’s DMG doesn’t go as far as many DMs would like. Compare 2024’s guidance to 4E or the Sly Flourish Lazy DM and the latter two are more likely to offer a set of clear steps and reproducible approaches. 2024’s example adventures are a great idea, but they don’t quite feel like a real DM’s outline or something a new DM can easily reproduce. It’s not a huge shortcoming, but it fails to offer the easier to use approach and toolset of the 4E DMGs.

Bastions and Greyhawk

I’ve covered Bastions in detail, both the positive aspects and where they fall short. It’s a system designed to offer something exciting and new, validating buying the new version. But it changed only in a minor way from the original playtest version. It is a system you can’t use with the vast majority of 5E’s official adventures, and it cuts off player inspiration (are you under 15^th level and want to run a tavern… sorry). It pulls story away from PCs, so that Bastion events happen when PCs are away instead of empowering DMs to tell stories more easily and make their home relevant.

It is fun to see Greyhawk again highlighted in core books, and it is a reasonable showcase of a campaign setting, but it could have been far better at showcasing how to make the most of a setting and how to expand play over time. It’s arguable that 4E’s DMG did a better job with Nentir Vale and Fallcrest, especially once the related Keep on the Shadowfell adventure provided an excellent showcase of these topics.

Insufficient Space and Innovation

Perhaps because so much space was spent on Greyhawk and Bastions, the team seemed to backtrack on their goals to incorporate the best of Tasha’s and Xanathar’s, as they had promised at the D&D Summit. Take a look at 2024’s traps. The simple traps are improved… but no complex traps at all. And all of the new traps and guidance found in Xanathar’s is gone. It’s an actual step back from what a DM had to work with. The same can be said if we compare 2024’s guidance on Curses to the same topic in Van Richten’s. Insufficient space plagues many of the otherwise great topics in this DMG.

We can see this in the various topics 2024 promises to teach, such as how to create Backgrounds, Monsters, Magic Items, and Spells. Too little detail and utility is provided, and the approach falls short of what would create great stories at the table rather than simply act as “reward candy” for PC who may not need a power-up.

Crafting has changed, simplified but less interesting and it seems player-driven instead of DM-driven. This makes it simple, but it removes the places where the DM can create story and interest, as well as maintain control. It is arguably a step back from 2014. Don’t get me started on Downtime, the excellent 2014 system revised in Xanathar’s and then dropped unceremoniously in 2024 from both the PH and DMG. Crafting greatly misses the complications, rivals, and storytelling potential Downtime used to provide.

Exploration is presented, with generally good approaches. It is a small section but reasonable. I rate it higher than most reviewers, though I do think that it could have done a better job of weaving in story and the various techniques we see in use by DMs today.

And though the team talked about finally having the time to make a great DMG, the result manages to still feel rushed. Bastions feels like the timeline simply didn’t allow for better revisions. Or perhaps the team simply couldn’t agree on a better approach. It feels like compromise and cutting room floor, rather than an evolution.

Looking to the Future

I don’t want to be overly negative. Overall, this is an improvement. It simply doesn’t reach the heights that were within reach. And that’s the point of this blog post. I hope the next DMG will see what could have been.

In addition to the improvements I ask for above, what should a hypothetical 6E DMG provide? A possible approach is to look to the many requests DMs made as they first saw the 2024 Player’s Handbook. DMs would see rules in that book for stealth, Exhaustion, Weapon Masteries, and much more and say, “surely, the 2024 DMG will provide us guidance on how to adjudicate that.” And no, it did not.

What if the DMG was a parallel to the PH? It could follow some of the PH topics and provide answers to common problems (how do I weigh the magic items a player wants against too much power, how do I compensate if Weapon Masteries are too strong, how do I adjudicate stealth if a player is abusing it, how do I use exhaustion in play to create a proper challenge?) while providing a stronger 4E-style and Sly Flourish-style set of approaches and tools.

Similarly, it could go back to the PH and let the players know what to expect. It could say, “Weapon Masteries,” (or item crafting, or powerful magic items, or any number of other topics) “are exciting and fun, but they work best when you as a player are aware of their effects on play and check in with the DM. Your DM has tools they can use to keep play fun, which may change the exact way Weapon Masteries play at the table.”