A Book That Actually Guides People? 2024 Dungeon Master's Review (D&D5e)
It’s not really ridiculous to say that there are probably a fair bit of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) Dungeon Masters (DMs) that have never opened a Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG). If you are the type of DM who always runs pre-written adventures, whether from Wizards of the Coast or other third parties, then usually everything you need to know is in those adventures. At the very least, you’ll need the Monster Manual to maybe look up some stats. Personally, I think I’ve maybe opened my original copy like 3 times: once when I did my initial read-through of the book, then another two times when I needed to look up something specific. One of those times was actually recently when I needed to check something in my Planescape review.
I remember when the original DMG came out I saw a twitter rant about how unusable the book was and how unorganized it was. I mentioned in the Player’s Handbook review that during this period I was new to reviewing RPGs but also, I was still pretty green in running RPGs as a DM. I had only just finished running my first long campaign* as a DM and had maybe DM’d some one shots about a handful of times. Weird how much you can change in a decade.
*Note: if you’ve ever heard us talk about “Dr. Anus” aka how bad I am at naming things, this was the campaign this took place in
Copy, Paste….Err Refine!
Apparently I wasn’t the only one who got better after a decade, as we now have the new 5.5e/2024 DMG and it definitely follows in the pattern of the PHB. After I read through the book, which I thought was very organized and well written, I had a long list of notes. Then, I pulled out my original DMG and looked to see, and it turns out a few of those notes were in the first version of the book too - just in all sorts of weird locations. As I was flipping through the 2014 DMG, I noticed several paragraphs that were straight up copied into the 2024 version.
This isn’t to say that the new version is a sham, taking the old version and moving stuff around and slapping a new cover on it. No, reading through the book, I can tell that a lot of effort was put into the book (unlike some other books) to provide useful resources to DMs. For example, there are a lot of “worksheets” in this version of the book. These worksheets are sample pages that the DM can copy to help map out various aspects to their adventures. This includes planners for any travel scenes that the party will have, and journal pages to write down how the adventures actually went. (I also appreciate that they included a separate section in the Contents for finding all of these pages quickly).
One of these sheets is a “DM Character Tracker” that is basically the DM’s version of a player’s character sheet, that they can have to have all their various background and personality quirks on it. Having one of these for every character in your party during a “Session 0” and having the players fill it out and bring it to you for the first “actual” session would be great homework to get players invested in their characters. Plus, having important background notes on every character will help DMs include those stories into the overall adventure, making the storylines richer in the end.
Not really reusing, more like repurposing
While yes, some of the artwork is reused in this DMG, especially in the items section, there are a couple of items that have gotten new art pieces done. The “Book of Vile Darkness” is an example of this. The original artwork was nothing that really called out to me, but this new version really makes me want to include this book in a future game. The artwork really gets those creative parts of my brain firing. And that’s not the only time I was seriously impressed by the artwork in this book. There were many pictures that I saw and said to myself “I kinda want that as an artwork to hang up in a gaming room”. Most of these images you can see in this blog post because I really wanted to show them off. Even the covers are so cool - it was hard choosing the normal or alternate cover to keep for myself because they both look so good!
One of the things many people said from the beginning when these new 2024 books were announced was “do we really need this?” - I know I was one of those people. While this book and the PHB have shown that the original 5e books left much to be desired, there’s another benefit to these books. With over 10 years worth of adventures and supplements, this new DMG takes advantage of this fact in its descriptions. In several places, references to these older books will pop up when referring to something relevant. Want to use the Infinite Staircase to travel the various planes? We’ve got a book for that. Interested in “Wildspace” and astral travel? Yep, there’s one for that too. While I’m not saying everyone should wait 10 years to create a book just so you can do that, it is a nice inclusion for those not aware of all the D&D books that have been published over the years.
A Good Add-venture
Everyone knows that there are a myriad of options available to DMs when planning out custom adventures. However, sometimes people can get overwhelmed by said options and decide to stick to what they already know how to run. It’s all well and good to create a very vivid background and history for a new setting, but if a potential DM has no inspiration on what kind of adventure to run in said setting, then it’s likely to never get used.
One of the things that stuck out to me in this DMG is that it really focuses on examples and pieces of inspiration for DMs. In one section of the book, they have basic frameworks of adventures that DMs can expand upon to create their own unique stories. It isn’t doing all the work for the DM, just giving people a place to start and getting their creativity going. Instead of just describing all the different planes of existence in D&D, this DMG adds in examples of the types of adventures that a party might have if they were to travel to the Abyss, or the Nine Hells, or the Beastlands.
Actually, speaking of the Cosmology chapter, this was probably my favorite chapter of the whole book. When you hear about “Inner Planes”, “Outer Planes”, and then areas like the Feywild, Shadowfell, etc, it can be kind of confusing about how these all relate to each other. Especially when you throw in other universes, wildspace, etc. The new Cosmology section describes all of these in a way that was much easier to follow than it was originally. Again, some sections of text are the same, but the way they are organized and illustrated makes it easier to imagine. This is especially surprising since Wizards just put out the Planescape books not too long ago featuring some of this same information.
Bringing it back to the beginning
One of the things that I’ve said about D&D5e is that it leans a bit too much into nostalgia. Taking places and characters from its vast history and reintroducing them to people instead of creating new legacies. The new DMG does as well, but in a way that actually makes much more sense. Long-time players of D&D will talk about how awesome Greyhawk, the original setting for adventures, was. I’ve heard many people lament about how 5e loves the Forgotten Realms and tries to take aspects of Greyhawk and force them into the Realms. Well, the new DMG course corrects this a bit by having a whole section devoted to the world of Greyhawk*. At first glance, it might seem like a nostalgia piece designed to harken back to old players, I think there’s a secondary benefit of including this. That is, showing newer DMs additional examples of how to flush out a setting that those DMs wouldn’t have been exposed to in just D&D5e books.
*Note: As someone who started playing in D&D3.5, I myself didn’t know that much about Greyhawk. So it was nice to read a paired down version of the history/geography/etc as opposed to getting lost in an entire sourcebook devoted to it.
Overall, this book is just good. It does exactly what it says on the cover - it “guides” DMs. As I mentioned before, the old book just had tidbits of good info here and there. Info that once you read it, you didn’t need to re-consult it and so the book just sat on the shelf forever. Over and over again, this Dungeon Master’s Guide takes those bits of info and flushes them out, giving examples and more ways of using those tidbits in your games. In such a way that you probably will pick up this book again and again for nothing else but some random item or location to spark your next grand adventure.
Conclusion
The original DMG felt like it was saying “You’re in control here, so here’s some basics and have at it. This new one seems as if its saying “Hey, if you took the time to open this, you probably need some guidance, so let’s look at some examples…”
Even for experienced DMs, there are still a few good tips in here, like speeding up combat by having players roll to hit and damage at the same time, even if they end up failing the attack.
Did I know about the planes in between the elemental planes? Like the plane of ooze/magma/ash/ice? I don’t remember seeing that in the original DMG.
Notes/Disclaimers: I generally assume I know nothing. So if I've missed something, let me know in the comments. Or let me know on Facebook. If you like these types of posts, consider subscribing to our patreon. Lastly, thanks to Wizards of the Coast for providing a review copy of this box.