Anyone else disappointed at the lack of DM support in the playtest?
Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of the mechanical changes they are looking into, but given how much of the DMG is severely inadequate or outdated it's a bit frustrating that we are getting things more species options instead of things that would actually help the game run.
Major issues with the game that need improvement, like encounter balance, overland travel, crafting, foraging, tool/vehicle/instrument/game proficiencies, appropriate magic item rewards for level of play, T
hese kinds of things would add a lot more to the game than another animal themed race no one asked for.
I agree. DMing is becoming an increasingly hard job, and it would be beneficial for everyone involved with the game if more DM support was made for us. In particular, with the power increase in player characters introduced by the 5e expansions (and, apparently, One D&D), I think a new CR system and some tougher, more dynamic monsters would make sense to add. It seems like the current policy is to make monsters suck and PCs be ridiculously powerful, so some new balance is needed.
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Panda-wat (I hate my username) is somehow convinced that he is objectively right about everything D&D related even though he obviously is not. Considering that, he'd probably make a great D&D youtuber.
"If I die, I can live with that." ~Luke Hart, the DM lair
Considering the playtests aren't over, no, I'm not disappointed. Not yet.
I would like to imagine that after the classes get set in Jell-O, there might be some attention paid to the items that you mention. There are already some minor changes to some of the action verbiage and conditions, if given enough time, the topics that you want addressed might make it to the table. At the intro to each of the playtests, thus far, is a disclaimer regarding items put forward to the field not being finalized. Best that we can do, is try the material, as presented, as best we can, and provide our honest feedback. Maybe the design team will listen to the feedback that they are asking for.
We won't know, until the final release. I'm not going to pass final judgement until then. A lot can change.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Considering the playtests aren't over, no, I'm not disappointed. Not yet.
I would like to imagine that after the classes get set in Jell-O, there might be some attention paid to the items that you mention. There are already some minor changes to some of the action verbiage and conditions, if given enough time, the topics that you want addressed might make it to the table. At the intro to each of the playtests, thus far, is a disclaimer regarding items put forward to the field not being finalized. Best that we can do, is try the material, as presented, as best we can, and provide our honest feedback. Maybe the design team will listen to the feedback that they are asking for.
We won't know, until the final release. I'm not going to pass final judgement until then. A lot can change.
I get that its not over, but that doesn't mean you cant be disappointed that they haven't addressed thing from a DM perspective at all yet.
I think one thing that people who don't DM might not understand is how much of the DMG is totally unusable, or is so loosely covered that you are better off either avoiding those areas all together, or making up your own rules.
IDk, there is some chance that this is just my frustration with the DMG in general. The fact that we have 1 entire chapter in a 9 the chapter dmg dedicated to creating a multiverse, when there aren't useable rules for creating an encounter still boggles my mind.
I get that its not over, but that doesn't mean you cant be disappointed that they haven't addressed thing from a DM perspective at all yet.
I think one thing that people who don't DM might not understand is how much of the DMG is totally unusable, or is so loosely covered that you are better off either avoiding those areas all together, or making up your own rules.
IDk, there is some chance that this is just my frustration with the DMG in general. The fact that we have 1 entire chapter in a 9 the chapter dmg dedicated to creating a multiverse, when there aren't useable rules for creating an encounter still boggles my mind.
While you have your perspective and opinions on what is and isn't useful in the DMG, there are others out in the world that find a majority of its content useful. One of its largest guidelines is to encourage you to change the rules, and make up your own. I can see how you might not be all that pleased with the DMG in current form, and that you don't enjoy following the guidelines as presented for encounter building.
I get that might be some impatience for the next new thing, or the big fix to all that was wrong and brokey. To some extent, the fixes to all of the rules, not just the DMG, are being attempted. It might be easier to write the Administrator's Instruction Manual (DMG) after having worked out the Users' Instruction Manual (PHB), and then add on the pertinent bits to run, build and administrate the game world that encompasses all of the rules. The only mention of timeline that I've noticed are that the PHB is supposed to be released sometime in '24, and playtesting is expected to continue through at least the end of '23. We're looking at an entire year projected to be dedicated to untying and retying knots and performing game design-esque cable management.
Your mentioning of having a chapter set to building a multiverse, seems to resonate with a passing mention, that I can't seem to be able to source (or maybe made up in a fever-dream) about One D&D not being centered around the FR. That might be a hint at more campaign settings and guides, like VRGtR, MOoT, GGtR, or Spelljammer. It could indicate that there will be more robust guidelines and instructions for building a world of your own in the new DMG.
All I'm really getting to here is, we haven't been told to expect to see a new DMG in the immediate future. It took the team at WotC five years to produce 5e. And that was in an attempt to get away from "The Edition That Shall Not Be Named". Not seeing anything that pertains strictly to DMG stuff isn't all that disappointing from the viewpoint that we haven't been told to expect to see one.... Yet. I'm more expectant of the results of the PHB rework, as most, at least half, of the encounter balance spectrum comes from PCs and their abilities. This may provide some relief to the oft touted "unusable encounter building and garbage CR system" in D&D. Then again, could break it entirely and send it hurtling through Wild Space into the depths of the Far Realm.
Who's to say that all of the feedback that is being received is being done, using current bias towards the encounter building and CR system in 5e, and provide skewed playtest results that lean this iteration back towards "The Edition That Shall Not Be Named". Then, I'll be on the disappointed bus with you, I might even be driving it.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Given that they’ve put out only 3 play test documents, and all of them are specifically for the new PHB, I don’t see why there’s a problem. We have quite a while still before the 2024 books will come out; give ‘em a chance to do DM materials before you assume they won’t.
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Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
I too am disappointed. Everyone here is just saying to wait and see, but look when the DMG came out, and nothing else further was touched upon by WOTC. That besides the fact that DM/Player have a ratio I'd be willing to bet of something like 1 DM for every 50 players has me concerned that DMs are not in the agenda at the moment. I think people are far too forgiving of how WOTC handles DMs. The balancing issues in combat are a huge concern is a prime example of something that has been a problem for years and they never fixed.
Given that they’ve put out only 3 play test documents, and all of them are specifically for the new PHB, I don’t see why there’s a problem. We have quite a while still before the 2024 books will come out; give ‘em a chance to do DM materials before you assume they won’t.
I'm not assuming they wont
I'm saying that they haven't yet, and that is disappointing because this stuff is a way bigger issue for the game than stuff that is being addressed.
Monster CR doesn't work encounter building doesn't work Item rarity doesn't work There aren't useable guidelines for rewards/magic items Golds value, item costs and gold earned as rewards is way off Overland travel has little to no usable rules Item crafting which is part of the artificer class is poorly defined Overland travel, foraging, and tool proficiencies have rules so vague might as well not exists
My issue is that rather than fixing the parts that don't work at all, they seem to be focused on balancing parts of the game that are already more or less serviceable.
Knowing the DMG could "do more," especially for new DMs new to TTRPGs has been mentioned by D&D's present design team before. Will we see some sort of DM UA? I'd like to and I certainly can't declare One D&D a disappointment after three relatively scant playtest documents.
PHBs traditionally precede DMG, let's wait and see.
I too am disappointed. Everyone here is just saying to wait and see, but look when the DMG came out, and nothing else further was touched upon by WOTC. That besides the fact that DM/Player have a ratio I'd be willing to bet of something like 1 DM for every 50 players has me concerned that DMs are not in the agenda at the moment. I think people are far too forgiving of how WOTC handles DMs. The balancing issues in combat are a huge concern is a prime example of something that has been a problem for years and they never fixed.
The DMG is not in the agenda at the moment, it's no secret. The PHB is set to release at the end of '23. That's the apparent priority... for right now. I'm blissfully unaware of how poorly WotC "handles DMs", as I've not been treated poorly by anyone from that company, and can't think of anyone I know or game with that has. Your assumption about the ratio of DMs to Players points more towards the popular misconception that being a DM is hard, and a lot of work. And now we're being handled poorly by our corporate overlords? Who would want to take on the role of DM if it were so miserable? The balancing issues in combat are far deeper than "the designers need to fix this". Many of those balancing inadequacies stem from the popular misconception that you can do the same amount of work with one encounter that is supposed to be spread out over many.
You feel that you are being forgotten about, because you don't see any attention being paid to your current role in the game. I get it, and that's your perspective. You're welcome to your opinion, I just don't agree that being impatient is the best course of action right now.
I'm saying that they haven't yet, and that is disappointing because this stuff is a way bigger issue for the game than stuff that is being addressed.
Monster CR doesn't work encounter building doesn't work Item rarity doesn't work There aren't useable guidelines for rewards/magic items Golds value, item costs and gold earned as rewards is way off Overland travel has little to no usable rules Item crafting which is part of the artificer class is poorly defined Overland travel, foraging, and tool proficiencies have rules so vague might as well not exists
My issue is that rather than fixing the parts that don't work at all, they seem to be focused on balancing parts of the game that are already more or less serviceable.
Part of fixing the bits that don't work is to certify those things that appear to be working, as working *as intended*. This prevents "fixing" something that produces a wildly unexpected result. Is that what's happening in this case, I don't know. Fact is, you don't know that this isn't what is happening either. (Unless you do, and then... details...)
Every one of your items on your list are not codified requirements or rules. They are guidelines, suggestions on how to implement this into your game. Expecting that there is some defined mathematical equation that will provide a definitive outcome to combat, or travel, or anything is moot. We use dice. The best we can hope for is a probability or generally expected outcome. Setting a requirement that each PC *has to have* X/uncommon, X/rare, and x/very rare by Y/level, might suit your style of game, but strains every other game simply by forcing a DM to work their game the way you do. This is the blessing of vague, and often merely suggested, guidelines about how to run a game, and what to include in it. Same thing with amount of Gold, or how much xp, or when to level....all of it. You have the flexibility to set this at your table, without screwing up mine. More importantly, if I decide to use overland travel rules at my table, no one is requiring you to use them at your table at all, let alone making you use my ruleset.
If we gander back at previous editions, the source book release trend is PHB, DMG a few months later, and the MM and few months later. 5e is different in that the MM was released prior to the DMG. Regardless, the PHB generally proceeds the DMG. The most productive tool we have at our disposal is the playtest feedback. If we don't use it, we don't get what we want and are left to the whims of the design team.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
If waiting years for an update to the DMG or some sort of fix to playing the game with level 10+ characters is being impatient in your eyes, then I don't wanna know what your definition of patience is dude.
If waiting years for an update to the DMG or some sort of fix to playing the game with level 10+ characters is being impatient in your eyes, then I don't wanna know what your definition of patience is dude.
Listen Gus, the process has just begun, and we've already got people sitting in the back seat asking: "Are we there yet?"
We're 4 months into at least a year process. Not years into a process that takes 4 months. You want the game designers to stop what they're doing, and slap together a half-arsed product that doesn't do what you want it to, and to what end? So that we can all sit here and lament the poorly written, slapped together product that we are somehow forced to use?
I would prefer that they get it better than it is. Not perfect, 'cause there is no such thing. Ranting and railing about how poorly we're being handled, and how long it takes for the re-write to take, and how brokey everything is points towards impatience and expectance.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
While I agree in general that DMs are encouraged to modify the ruleset to their own needs, I have to say that I think addressing the PHB first is a mistake.
The problems with the DMG as it exists isn't the DMG or confident/experienced players. Instead, it's the new DMs. I have GM'd a LOT of different systems. And hands down, D&D (3.5 and 5e) are the worst in terms of learning curve. It's just far too steep mostly because of the incredible variety offered by the system. This is actually the reason that I encourage people not to start with D&D. Instead systems like FATE (a well updated version of the old school FUDGE system) offer what I genuinely believe to be the most fundamental lesson that all GMs need to learn...storytelling comes first. That is after all what we are doing when roleplaying.
I've always maintained that given a shortage of DMs, and the prominent (though not necessary) role of a DM the designers of D&D could, and should do a huge amount more to enable and encourage new DMs. Having experience as a player shouldn't be a requirement for being a DM though many players see it as one 'how can I DM when I don't know all the rules'. This is where I highlight Johnny Chiodini's video series on Dicebreaker, their advice in this series does a lot of providing good advice that will encourage new DMs.
So, we come to the prominence that the writers and designers of One D&D are giving to DMG in these playtests. Frankly, the major problem with delivering DMG before PHB content is that you haven't developed the ruleset yet, which makes it hard to understand how you can teach DMs to run a game to those rules. However, if you look at Game Design or frankly any creative design project the realities are that everything should be developed in parallel. You wouldn't have a story editor only enter the development process after the level designer in any reasonable size project the creative overlap and combined vision helps to shape the project overall.
My biggest issue though is with the concept of One D&D full stop. It's a massive gateway to content as a service (subscription models) that never ends well. More than that, I'd love to see the writers turn their attention to different systems. We've got five editions of D&D in existence...wouldn't having a different system taking all that was learnt from D&D be more exciting to people...it would to me at least.
If waiting years for an update to the DMG or some sort of fix to playing the game with level 10+ characters is being impatient in your eyes, then I don't wanna know what your definition of patience is dude.
Listen Gus, the process has just begun, and we've already got people sitting in the back seat asking: "Are we there yet?"
We're 4 months into at least a year process. Not years into a process that takes 4 months. You want the game designers to stop what they're doing, and slap together a half-arsed product that doesn't do what you want it to, and to what end? So that we can all sit here and lament the poorly written, slapped together product that we are somehow forced to use?
I would prefer that they get it better than it is. Not perfect, 'cause there is no such thing. Ranting and railing about how poorly we're being handled, and how long it takes for the re-write to take, and how brokey everything is points towards impatience and expectance.
It's not so much "are we there yet" as it is "did you miss the highway exist we needed to take?"
As to this: "you want the game designers to stop what they're doing, and slap together a half-arsed product that doesn't do what you want it to, and to what end? So that we can all sit here and lament the poorly written, slapped together product that we are somehow forced to use? "
Where do you see anything like that said? All we are saying is that they concentrating on things that are way less pressing that some of the issues mentioned.
Without straw-manning like you did, can you really argue against this when they are playtesting the 25th-ish animal based race option, when encounter building doesn't work and the issues with the rest of the things mentioned?
It's not so much "are we there yet" as it is "did you miss the highway exist we needed to take?"
As to this: "you want the game designers to stop what they're doing, and slap together a half-arsed product that doesn't do what you want it to, and to what end? So that we can all sit here and lament the poorly written, slapped together product that we are somehow forced to use? "
Where do you see anything like that said? All we are saying is that they concentrating on things that are way less pressing that some of the issues mentioned.
Without straw-manning like you did, can you really argue against this when they are playtesting the 25th-ish animal based race option, when encounter building doesn't work and the issues with the rest of the things mentioned?
I'm not straw-manning the general sentiment that has been expressed regarding the comments that are made, not only here in this discussion, but also in a myriad of other threads on this website's forums lamenting and bemoaning how poorly DMs are handled, vague rules, barely usable guidelines, poorly written spell descriptions in the PHB... the list goes on for quite some time, I'm sure you're familiar with many of these.
So, yes, the sentiment that I get here is that the product is poorly constructed and needs remedied. Claiming that you're somehow not saying that is fictitious, at best. My summary of the sentiment that has been expressed by some of those here in this discussion, and those expressed elsewhere is not me making shit up.
As to your analogy about missing the exit.... we just left the gas station and got everyone snacks... we haven't gotten on the highway yet. We still have a full year before the first expected product will be released and already there are questions about the generally 2nd-in-line DMG.
I've always maintained that given a shortage of DMs, and the prominent (though not necessary) role of a DM the designers of D&D could, and should do a huge amount more to enable and encourage new DMs. Having experience as a player shouldn't be a requirement for being a DM though many players see it as one 'how can I DM when I don't know all the rules'. This is where I highlight Johnny Chiodini's video series on Dicebreaker, their advice in this series does a lot of providing good advice that will encourage new DMs.
I agree that the popular misconception regarding knowledge of the rules, or having been a player first, is a major distractor from people becoming DMs, or just playing the game period. I can get behind the push for more products like the Starter Set, or even the Moldvay Boxed Set that walked a DM through the running of a game, step-by-step. I'm not convinced that we can just lay the whole burden of enabling and encouraging new DMs solely at the feet of the designers. We DMs, might be able to do a better job of not scaring people off by overcomplicating and bewailing the plight DMs have in building and running a game. I'm of the thought that we DMs are better positioned for setting that example than the designers.
So, we come to the prominence that the writers and designers of One D&D are giving to DMG in these playtests. Frankly, the major problem with delivering DMG before PHB content is that you haven't developed the ruleset yet, which makes it hard to understand how you can teach DMs to run a game to those rules. However, if you look at Game Design or frankly any creative design project the realities are that everything should be developed in parallel. You wouldn't have a story editor only enter the development process after the level designer in any reasonable size project the creative overlap and combined vision helps to shape the project overall.
And herein lies another overlooked notion. Claiming that the design team is *not* working these changes in parallel with the PHB is potentially false. We know that they are working on the PHB. We don't know that they're *not* working on the DMG. We also don't know that they *are* working on the DMG. I haven't found a projected publication date for the DMG to base any of these speculations on. And since we don't know, what we don't know, claiming that something is, or is not, happening is abject speculation.
My biggest issue though is with the concept of One D&D full stop. It's a massive gateway to content as a service (subscription models) that never ends well. More than that, I'd love to see the writers turn their attention to different systems. We've got five editions of D&D in existence...wouldn't having a different system taking all that was learnt from D&D be more exciting to people...it would to me at least.
I'm not a fan of the subscription model either, any subscription model. As to your suggestion about looking back at older editions to pull from, I think there is a hint that this is being done with the Class Groups that resemble the classes and roles of previous editions. There's also a plethora of things to avoid, namely THAC0.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I feel like DM support comes more from adventures than from the DMG. Even if you homebrew, reading through adventures I tend to pick up more from seeing things in practice in specific cases than I do from the DMG vaguely trying to cover all eventualities.
For example, the chase rules in one of the Radiant Citadel adventures are WAY better than the chase rules in the DMG, and quickly became my default rules whenever running a chase.
With that, I think it's understandable that most of the One DnD DM support will come when they start publishing adventures.
It's not so much "are we there yet" as it is "did you miss the highway exist we needed to take?"
As to this: "you want the game designers to stop what they're doing, and slap together a half-arsed product that doesn't do what you want it to, and to what end? So that we can all sit here and lament the poorly written, slapped together product that we are somehow forced to use? "
Where do you see anything like that said? All we are saying is that they concentrating on things that are way less pressing that some of the issues mentioned.
Without straw-manning like you did, can you really argue against this when they are playtesting the 25th-ish animal based race option, when encounter building doesn't work and the issues with the rest of the things mentioned?
I'm not straw-manning the general sentiment that has been expressed regarding the comments that are made, not only here in this discussion, but also in a myriad of other threads on this website's forums lamenting and bemoaning how poorly DMs are handled, vague rules, barely usable guidelines, poorly written spell descriptions in the PHB... the list goes on for quite some time, I'm sure you're familiar with many of these.
So, yes, the sentiment that I get here is that the product is poorly constructed and needs remedied. Claiming that you're somehow not saying that is fictitious, at best. My summary of the sentiment that has been expressed by some of those here in this discussion, and those expressed elsewhere is not me making shit up.
As to your analogy about missing the exit.... we just left the gas station and got everyone snacks... we haven't gotten on the highway yet. We still have a full year before the first expected product will be released and already there are questions about the generally 2nd-in-line DMG.
I've always maintained that given a shortage of DMs, and the prominent (though not necessary) role of a DM the designers of D&D could, and should do a huge amount more to enable and encourage new DMs. Having experience as a player shouldn't be a requirement for being a DM though many players see it as one 'how can I DM when I don't know all the rules'. This is where I highlight Johnny Chiodini's video series on Dicebreaker, their advice in this series does a lot of providing good advice that will encourage new DMs.
I agree that the popular misconception regarding knowledge of the rules, or having been a player first, is a major distractor from people becoming DMs, or just playing the game period. I can get behind the push for more products like the Starter Set, or even the Moldvay Boxed Set that walked a DM through the running of a game, step-by-step. I'm not convinced that we can just lay the whole burden of enabling and encouraging new DMs solely at the feet of the designers. We DMs, might be able to do a better job of not scaring people off by overcomplicating and bewailing the plight DMs have in building and running a game. I'm of the thought that we DMs are better positioned for setting that example than the designers.
So, we come to the prominence that the writers and designers of One D&D are giving to DMG in these playtests. Frankly, the major problem with delivering DMG before PHB content is that you haven't developed the ruleset yet, which makes it hard to understand how you can teach DMs to run a game to those rules. However, if you look at Game Design or frankly any creative design project the realities are that everything should be developed in parallel. You wouldn't have a story editor only enter the development process after the level designer in any reasonable size project the creative overlap and combined vision helps to shape the project overall.
And herein lies another overlooked notion. Claiming that the design team is *not* working these changes in parallel with the PHB is potentially false. We know that they are working on the PHB. We don't know that they're *not* working on the DMG. We also don't know that they *are* working on the DMG. I haven't found a projected publication date for the DMG to base any of these speculations on. And since we don't know, what we don't know, claiming that something is, or is not, happening is abject speculation.
My biggest issue though is with the concept of One D&D full stop. It's a massive gateway to content as a service (subscription models) that never ends well. More than that, I'd love to see the writers turn their attention to different systems. We've got five editions of D&D in existence...wouldn't having a different system taking all that was learnt from D&D be more exciting to people...it would to me at least.
I'm not a fan of the subscription model either, any subscription model. As to your suggestion about looking back at older editions to pull from, I think there is a hint that this is being done with the Class Groups that resemble the classes and roles of previous editions. There's also a plethora of things to avoid, namely THAC0.
"Things to Avoid, #1 - #482: THAC0"
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Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
I feel like DM support comes more from adventures than from the DMG. Even if you homebrew, reading through adventures I tend to pick up more from seeing things in practice in specific cases than I do from the DMG vaguely trying to cover all eventualities.
For example, the chase rules in one of the Radiant Citadel adventures are WAY better than the chase rules in the DMG, and quickly became my default rules whenever running a chase.
With that, I think it's understandable that most of the One DnD DM support will come when they start publishing adventures.
While I can see the adventures being an argument for DM support, if we compare this to another TTRPG it all falls short on a number of counts.
Comparing to Blades in the Dark for example, a little under half the book is essentially Player material, the other half is GM materials. More than that there aren't hundreds of official adventure books to choose from. It's a TTRPG in a single book. That makes it massively more accessible to new GMs and players than D&D. Much like the very original Tomb Raider game in the 90s, the limitations make it far more fun for me than the more modern games bearing the franchise name. Complexity and options do not always equal better.
My point here is that D&D already has the problem of being a very expensive game to play and holding the adventures up as a solution just highlights and accentuates that issue.
Of course FATE as a system has several books, but can easily played just from one core resource...the major difference is that Evil Hat published something that needs to be in everyone's game library - the accessibility toolkit which is of far more value to game groups than any adventure or additional source book could ever be.
Don't misunderstand, I love D&D and have enjoyed playing it over the years, but it is a far more costly endeavour than most other TTRPGs and that presents barriers to play rather than opportunities as many people like to suggest.
Given that they’ve put out only 3 play test documents, and all of them are specifically for the new PHB, I don’t see why there’s a problem. We have quite a while still before the 2024 books will come out; give ‘em a chance to do DM materials before you assume they won’t.
I'm not assuming they wont
I'm saying that they haven't yet, and that is disappointing because this stuff is a way bigger issue for the game than stuff that is being addressed.
Monster CR doesn't work encounter building doesn't work Item rarity doesn't work There aren't useable guidelines for rewards/magic items Golds value, item costs and gold earned as rewards is way off Overland travel has little to no usable rules Item crafting which is part of the artificer class is poorly defined Overland travel, foraging, and tool proficiencies have rules so vague might as well not exists
My issue is that rather than fixing the parts that don't work at all, they seem to be focused on balancing parts of the game that are already more or less serviceable.
It would be useful for some DMs if the DMG contained more detailed rules for running certain sorts of content - though it does contain some rules and suggestions and refers to the PHB for more.
However, game world content requires the DM to figure out how they want to run it. A book resource may make suggestions but it can't tell the DM the specifics of how to run detailed content when the writer of the book has no idea how the individual DM will plan to use the content. As a result, a lot of the DMG is essentially guidance and suggestions on how to present the material to the group along with some ideas for skill checks and similar that could be used to run such content.
1) As for your specific list ... of course Monster "CR" doesn't work. At best, it is a vague estimate of how challenging a creature may be and it will never be better.
Why?
The actual difficulty of ANY encounter depends on the abilities of the DM, the abilities of the players, the abilities and equipment of the characters AND the dice.
I recently played some published content with a group - it was pretty trivial for the group I was in. However, others have said it was almost a TPK. One of the creatures in the encounter has a CR of 23 and was essentially a kraken from another plane. How can you have such a huge difference of opinion for an encounter with more or less the same creatures involved? In my case, it turns out that the CR23 Kraken look alike doesn't have Legendary saving throws just like an actual Kraken. One of my party cast Banishment on the creature. It failed, disappeared and did not return after a minute since it was from another plane. However, even if it had remained, the party I was with would probably not have had that much difficulty with it.
Different party composition, different characters, different players with different ideas and tactics, different magic items, different DMs with different approaches and choices made by the creatures, different dice rolls. All of these mean that ANY system that tries to assign a meaningful guaranteed numerical value to use for comparing relative strengths of creatures will fail. So asking for a meaningful CR system is meaningless.
Intellect Devourer is another example of a difficult to categorize monster. It has a CR of 2. However, if folks roll badly, make poor decisions and the ID rolls well then losing a party member is a likely outcome. On the other hand, it has an AC of 12 and 21 hit points. All it would take is a couple of characters with initiative and it is likely to die before it does anything. A few IDs can be a challenge for a low tier 2 party, even one could almost be a TPK in tier 1 with bad luck.
2) How does encounter building not work? Because CR is broken? But CR will always be broken. There are some guidelines for creating encounters and guestimates on how easy or hard these might be but they will never be accurate. In my home game, I have a level 10 party going up against a Demilich. Is it balanced? I have NO idea and I've been DMing a long time. Based on CR, it is deadly. Depending on what the characters roll, how they use their spells, their magic items, their class abilities - it could turn into a cake walk or a TPK. Is there anything that WotC could publish that will help with that? No. I can't control the dice, I can't control the choices the PCs make or whether they make best use of the character abilities. From the DM side, I can choose the abilities the Demilich decides to use ... and depending on what results, I'll keep the encounter challenging and interesting but there is no way that anything WotC could supply would make this encounter more balanced in terms of outcome (the encounter is from a published module in Tales from the Yawning Portal).
3) Item rarity doesn''t work? What does that even mean? Are all very rare items supposed to be more powerful than rare which are more powerful than uncommon? Define powerful. Is a necklace of fireballs more powerful or less powerful than Winged Boots? Is a Staff of Power the same power as a Tome of Leadership and Influence? What does Legendary even mean? A ring of invisibility is mechanically far less useful than a cloak of invisibility and yet both have the same rarity. The fallacy here is trying to equate rarity to some sort of power scale. It isn't. Though perhaps it would be nice if they were categorized a bit so that items like the Deck of Many Things were labeled as "Only give out if you want a better than 50/50 chance your campaign will implode". The current rarity system is a label that was inherited from previous versions of the game with little or no adjustment. In terms of handing out treasure, the magic item tables in the DMG do a bit better job of catergorizing by "power" since they don't strictly follow the item rarity. I'm not sure how much more they could do except perhaps go over the tables and move outliers but everyone's opinion on what is powerful is different.
4) The DMG contains random treasure generation tables. It gives a general idea of loot and treasure expected from single creatures and in their lair for a large group of them. The lair tables only have a 25% chance of a significant magic item and it is only 3% for the better items from table G. The guidelines on loot and magic items awarded are essentially IN those tables. Better magic items should be extremely unlikely for any large groups of CR 0-4 creatures. However, awarding magic/treasure etc is a world building decision - does the DM want a high magic or low magic world? Do they want one where wealth is easy or hard to obtain? Do they want the characters struggling to find their next meal?
I will agree that one area that could use additional guidance are things to spend gold on as the character progresses. Buying property, hiring servants, building a business. Suggestions on some of this are available in supplementary books but it could use more. However, this is all part of world building. Chapter 1 contains the basic world building blocks but dealing with the gold surplus that typically develops at higher levels can be a bit of a challenge. Part of this is the underlying assumption that magic items are exceptionally rare even "uncommon" or "common" ones. One sink for gold coins at high levels is to create a market for the purchase/trade of magic items. If the DM has kept the game low magic and resisted the temptation to hand out "really cool stuff" which is hard for a beginner DM then this can work as a coin sink but otherwise the main sink in a campaign is the purchase and maintenance of housing and similar.
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5e is a rules lighter version of the game. As a result, they didn't add a lot of detail to various systems, in part because a lot of DMs just wouldn't use them. Keep in mind that DMs are the minority of D&D players and that content produced which would be exclusively useful to DMs like some of the suggestions in your list needs to be justified as something that many DMs would find very useful and incorporate into their games and game world. In addition, any over detailed rules are likely to be either ignored or simplified in play so there isn't any point in creating simulationist sets of rules to handle overland travel, foraging, etc.
As an example, I am running Out of the Abyss, the second chapter has a detailed section on many different Fungi found in the underdark, how much food, water or other resources can be extracted from each. However, I don't know a single player who will be interested in keeping track of exactly which mushrooms they found and that the first had 3 pounds of food and 2 pounds of water while the second found that morning had 4 pounds of food and 1 pound of water. The point is that the book includes some details for travel in the underdark that I will use for flavor and description but is far to onerous to use as written.
The same would be true for detailed rules for overland travel - are you traveling in hills, mountain, plain, marsh? How far do you move each day by what sort of mode of transportation? What season is it - winter, spring, summer or fall? Has it been a dry, average or wet year? What is the weather? A generic system with a few suggested skill checks (survival etc) is more usable in actual play for most tables (except when the DM wants to make travel a big part of that adventure at that point in time - in this case, the DM has to improvise a few skill checks and describe how it works).
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In my opinion, a lot of the suggestions in the list are either unfeasible, or not worth the design time due to a low level of uptake. In a few cases, I absolutely agree that some additional world building guidance and more fleshed out rules systems (but still not too detailed) would be useful.
Given that they’ve put out only 3 play test documents, and all of them are specifically for the new PHB, I don’t see why there’s a problem. We have quite a while still before the 2024 books will come out; give ‘em a chance to do DM materials before you assume they won’t.
I'm not assuming they wont
I'm saying that they haven't yet, and that is disappointing because this stuff is a way bigger issue for the game than stuff that is being addressed.
Monster CR doesn't work encounter building doesn't work Item rarity doesn't work There aren't useable guidelines for rewards/magic items Golds value, item costs and gold earned as rewards is way off Overland travel has little to no usable rules Item crafting which is part of the artificer class is poorly defined Overland travel, foraging, and tool proficiencies have rules so vague might as well not exists
My issue is that rather than fixing the parts that don't work at all, they seem to be focused on balancing parts of the game that are already more or less serviceable.
It would be useful for some DMs if the DMG contained more detailed rules for running certain sorts of content - though it does contain some rules and suggestions and refers to the PHB for more.
However, game world content requires the DM to figure out how they want to run it. A book resource may make suggestions but it can't tell the DM the specifics of how to run detailed content when the writer of the book has no idea how the individual DM will plan to use the content. As a result, a lot of the DMG is essentially guidance and suggestions on how to present the material to the group along with some ideas for skill checks and similar that could be used to run such content.
1) As for your specific list ... of course Monster "CR" doesn't work. At best, it is a vague estimate of how challenging a creature may be and it will never be better.
Why?
The actual difficulty of ANY encounter depends on the abilities of the DM, the abilities of the players, the abilities and equipment of the characters AND the dice.
I recently played some published content with a group - it was pretty trivial for the group I was in. However, others have said it was almost a TPK. One of the creatures in the encounter has a CR of 23 and was essentially a kraken from another plane. How can you have such a huge difference of opinion for an encounter with more or less the same creatures involved? In my case, it turns out that the CR23 Kraken look alike doesn't have Legendary saving throws just like an actual Kraken. One of my party cast Banishment on the creature. It failed, disappeared and did not return after a minute since it was from another plane. However, even if it had remained, the party I was with would probably not have had that much difficulty with it.
Different party composition, different characters, different players with different ideas and tactics, different magic items, different DMs with different approaches and choices made by the creatures, different dice rolls. All of these mean that ANY system that tries to assign a meaningful guaranteed numerical value to use for comparing relative strengths of creatures will fail. So asking for a meaningful CR system is meaningless.
Intellect Devourer is another example of a difficult to categorize monster. It has a CR of 2. However, if folks roll badly, make poor decisions and the ID rolls well then losing a party member is a likely outcome. On the other hand, it has an AC of 12 and 21 hit points. All it would take is a couple of characters with initiative and it is likely to die before it does anything. A few IDs can be a challenge for a low tier 2 party, even one could almost be a TPK in tier 1 with bad luck.
2) How does encounter building not work? Because CR is broken? But CR will always be broken. There are some guidelines for creating encounters and guestimates on how easy or hard these might be but they will never be accurate. In my home game, I have a level 10 party going up against a Demilich. Is it balanced? I have NO idea and I've been DMing a long time. Based on CR, it is deadly. Depending on what the characters roll, how they use their spells, their magic items, their class abilities - it could turn into a cake walk or a TPK. Is there anything that WotC could publish that will help with that? No. I can't control the dice, I can't control the choices the PCs make or whether they make best use of the character abilities. From the DM side, I can choose the abilities the Demilich decides to use ... and depending on what results, I'll keep the encounter challenging and interesting but there is no way that anything WotC could supply would make this encounter more balanced in terms of outcome (the encounter is from a published module in Tales from the Yawning Portal).
3) Item rarity doesn''t work? What does that even mean? Are all very rare items supposed to be more powerful than rare which are more powerful than uncommon? Define powerful. Is a necklace of fireballs more powerful or less powerful than Winged Boots? Is a Staff of Power the same power as a Tome of Leadership and Influence? What does Legendary even mean? A ring of invisibility is mechanically far less useful than a cloak of invisibility and yet both have the same rarity. The fallacy here is trying to equate rarity to some sort of power scale. It isn't. Though perhaps it would be nice if they were categorized a bit so that items like the Deck of Many Things were labeled as "Only give out if you want a better than 50/50 chance your campaign will implode". The current rarity system is a label that was inherited from previous versions of the game with little or no adjustment. In terms of handing out treasure, the magic item tables in the DMG do a bit better job of catergorizing by "power" since they don't strictly follow the item rarity. I'm not sure how much more they could do except perhaps go over the tables and move outliers but everyone's opinion on what is powerful is different.
4) The DMG contains random treasure generation tables. It gives a general idea of loot and treasure expected from single creatures and in their lair for a large group of them. The lair tables only have a 25% chance of a significant magic item and it is only 3% for the better items from table G. The guidelines on loot and magic items awarded are essentially IN those tables. Better magic items should be extremely unlikely for any large groups of CR 0-4 creatures. However, awarding magic/treasure etc is a world building decision - does the DM want a high magic or low magic world? Do they want one where wealth is easy or hard to obtain? Do they want the characters struggling to find their next meal?
I will agree that one area that could use additional guidance are things to spend gold on as the character progresses. Buying property, hiring servants, building a business. Suggestions on some of this are available in supplementary books but it could use more. However, this is all part of world building. Chapter 1 contains the basic world building blocks but dealing with the gold surplus that typically develops at higher levels can be a bit of a challenge. Part of this is the underlying assumption that magic items are exceptionally rare even "uncommon" or "common" ones. One sink for gold coins at high levels is to create a market for the purchase/trade of magic items. If the DM has kept the game low magic and resisted the temptation to hand out "really cool stuff" which is hard for a beginner DM then this can work as a coin sink but otherwise the main sink in a campaign is the purchase and maintenance of housing and similar.
----
5e is a rules lighter version of the game. As a result, they didn't add a lot of detail to various systems, in part because a lot of DMs just wouldn't use them. Keep in mind that DMs are the minority of D&D players and that content produced which would be exclusively useful to DMs like some of the suggestions in your list needs to be justified as something that many DMs would find very useful and incorporate into their games and game world. In addition, any over detailed rules are likely to be either ignored or simplified in play so there isn't any point in creating simulationist sets of rules to handle overland travel, foraging, etc.
As an example, I am running Out of the Abyss, the second chapter has a detailed section on many different Fungi found in the underdark, how much food, water or other resources can be extracted from each. However, I don't know a single player who will be interested in keeping track of exactly which mushrooms they found and that the first had 3 pounds of food and 2 pounds of water while the second found that morning had 4 pounds of food and 1 pound of water. The point is that the book includes some details for travel in the underdark that I will use for flavor and description but is far to onerous to use as written.
The same would be true for detailed rules for overland travel - are you traveling in hills, mountain, plain, marsh? How far do you move each day by what sort of mode of transportation? What season is it - winter, spring, summer or fall? Has it been a dry, average or wet year? What is the weather? A generic system with a few suggested skill checks (survival etc) is more usable in actual play for most tables (except when the DM wants to make travel a big part of that adventure at that point in time - in this case, the DM has to improvise a few skill checks and describe how it works).
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In my opinion, a lot of the suggestions in the list are either unfeasible, or not worth the design time due to a low level of uptake. In a few cases, I absolutely agree that some additional world building guidance and more fleshed out rules systems (but still not too detailed) would be useful.
I don't think you actually disagree with the way I feel, I think you are just assuming I am asking for very specific mathematical rules and formulas for everything when I think the fact they did try to do that might be the root problem.
1 CR, I agree with everything you said, my issue is that even though all that is true, 2 creatures of the same CR can be objectively vastly different in their difficulty regardless of other outside variables. I'm not saying that it needs to be super accurate, of course there are variables that can't always be factored. In general you need to be a somewhat experienced DM who can look at a block and determine how much trouble a creature can be. I get that they aren't going to revise old CRs, but a new dmg could at least address things like "action economy" and "save or suck" spells and other elements that can drastically impact combats and can cause CRs to be inaccurate.
2 Encounter building Encounter building as it's presented in the DMG based on CR isn't a good guide. WotC has mentioned that this needs, and will receive attention which is good. What you are saying is basically that there are random elements that you can't control. This doesn't mean there isn't anything that can be put in a DMG to help inexperienced DMs a better idea of how to attempt to build encounters that are more balanced.
3 Item rarity doesn't work You "The fallacy here is trying to equate rarity to some sort of power scale. It isn't." The DMG "Rarity provides a rough measure of an item's power relative to other magic items" So basically we agree, it doesn't work for the stated use.
4 Loot DMG reward system is based on enemy CR, and based on magic item rarity, both of which you seem to agree are not done accurately enough to be used in a formula like that.
5 Rules light I pretty much agree. The problem is that they did try to make a formulas to help DMs figure stuff out like encounters, loot, etc, and what they came up with isn't good/useful.
I think you are assuming that I'm asking for hard , codified rules for the things mentioned. This is not the case, it's actually the opposite, the DMG has rules for stuff like foraging, how much food/water you need per day, getting lost, high altitude etc, and no one uses them because they are terribly boring and are just a waste of time because they don't impact the story or game in any meaningful way.
What's missing are guidelines on how to make travel fun and interesting. They mention encounter tables but don't give examples. They give tables of settlements monuments, weird locals but nothing that happens if the players actually interact with them.
Just giving examples of interesting fun encounters would do much more to help new DMs than 2 pages of random tables for randomly generating a settlement.
Things like: Ambushes, Traps, lost/fleeing/migrating travelers, merchants, thieves, con-men, attacks when camping, wandering monsters, abandoned wagons/homes, lost pets, etc.
Maybe categories of things like complications, combat encounter, social, skill challenge.
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Anyone else disappointed at the lack of DM support in the playtest?
Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of the mechanical changes they are looking into, but given how much of the DMG is severely inadequate or outdated it's a bit frustrating that we are getting things more species options instead of things that would actually help the game run.
Major issues with the game that need improvement, like encounter balance, overland travel, crafting, foraging, tool/vehicle/instrument/game proficiencies, appropriate magic item rewards for level of play, T
hese kinds of things would add a lot more to the game than another animal themed race no one asked for.
I agree. DMing is becoming an increasingly hard job, and it would be beneficial for everyone involved with the game if more DM support was made for us. In particular, with the power increase in player characters introduced by the 5e expansions (and, apparently, One D&D), I think a new CR system and some tougher, more dynamic monsters would make sense to add. It seems like the current policy is to make monsters suck and PCs be ridiculously powerful, so some new balance is needed.
Panda-wat (I hate my username) is somehow convinced that he is objectively right about everything D&D related even though he obviously is not. Considering that, he'd probably make a great D&D youtuber.
"If I die, I can live with that." ~Luke Hart, the DM lair
Considering the playtests aren't over, no, I'm not disappointed. Not yet.
I would like to imagine that after the classes get set in Jell-O, there might be some attention paid to the items that you mention. There are already some minor changes to some of the action verbiage and conditions, if given enough time, the topics that you want addressed might make it to the table. At the intro to each of the playtests, thus far, is a disclaimer regarding items put forward to the field not being finalized. Best that we can do, is try the material, as presented, as best we can, and provide our honest feedback. Maybe the design team will listen to the feedback that they are asking for.
We won't know, until the final release. I'm not going to pass final judgement until then. A lot can change.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I get that its not over, but that doesn't mean you cant be disappointed that they haven't addressed thing from a DM perspective at all yet.
I think one thing that people who don't DM might not understand is how much of the DMG is totally unusable, or is so loosely covered that you are better off either avoiding those areas all together, or making up your own rules.
IDk, there is some chance that this is just my frustration with the DMG in general. The fact that we have 1 entire chapter in a 9 the chapter dmg dedicated to creating a multiverse, when there aren't useable rules for creating an encounter still boggles my mind.
While you have your perspective and opinions on what is and isn't useful in the DMG, there are others out in the world that find a majority of its content useful. One of its largest guidelines is to encourage you to change the rules, and make up your own. I can see how you might not be all that pleased with the DMG in current form, and that you don't enjoy following the guidelines as presented for encounter building.
I get that might be some impatience for the next new thing, or the big fix to all that was wrong and brokey. To some extent, the fixes to all of the rules, not just the DMG, are being attempted. It might be easier to write the Administrator's Instruction Manual (DMG) after having worked out the Users' Instruction Manual (PHB), and then add on the pertinent bits to run, build and administrate the game world that encompasses all of the rules. The only mention of timeline that I've noticed are that the PHB is supposed to be released sometime in '24, and playtesting is expected to continue through at least the end of '23. We're looking at an entire year projected to be dedicated to untying and retying knots and performing game design-esque cable management.
Your mentioning of having a chapter set to building a multiverse, seems to resonate with a passing mention, that I can't seem to be able to source (or maybe made up in a fever-dream) about One D&D not being centered around the FR. That might be a hint at more campaign settings and guides, like VRGtR, MOoT, GGtR, or Spelljammer. It could indicate that there will be more robust guidelines and instructions for building a world of your own in the new DMG.
All I'm really getting to here is, we haven't been told to expect to see a new DMG in the immediate future. It took the team at WotC five years to produce 5e. And that was in an attempt to get away from "The Edition That Shall Not Be Named". Not seeing anything that pertains strictly to DMG stuff isn't all that disappointing from the viewpoint that we haven't been told to expect to see one.... Yet. I'm more expectant of the results of the PHB rework, as most, at least half, of the encounter balance spectrum comes from PCs and their abilities. This may provide some relief to the oft touted "unusable encounter building and garbage CR system" in D&D. Then again, could break it entirely and send it hurtling through Wild Space into the depths of the Far Realm.
Who's to say that all of the feedback that is being received is being done, using current bias towards the encounter building and CR system in 5e, and provide skewed playtest results that lean this iteration back towards "The Edition That Shall Not Be Named". Then, I'll be on the disappointed bus with you, I might even be driving it.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Given that they’ve put out only 3 play test documents, and all of them are specifically for the new PHB, I don’t see why there’s a problem. We have quite a while still before the 2024 books will come out; give ‘em a chance to do DM materials before you assume they won’t.
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
I too am disappointed. Everyone here is just saying to wait and see, but look when the DMG came out, and nothing else further was touched upon by WOTC. That besides the fact that DM/Player have a ratio I'd be willing to bet of something like 1 DM for every 50 players has me concerned that DMs are not in the agenda at the moment. I think people are far too forgiving of how WOTC handles DMs. The balancing issues in combat are a huge concern is a prime example of something that has been a problem for years and they never fixed.
1 shot dungeon master
I'm not assuming they wont
I'm saying that they haven't yet, and that is disappointing because this stuff is a way bigger issue for the game than stuff that is being addressed.
Monster CR doesn't work
encounter building doesn't work
Item rarity doesn't work
There aren't useable guidelines for rewards/magic items
Golds value, item costs and gold earned as rewards is way off
Overland travel has little to no usable rules
Item crafting which is part of the artificer class is poorly defined
Overland travel, foraging, and tool proficiencies have rules so vague might as well not exists
My issue is that rather than fixing the parts that don't work at all, they seem to be focused on balancing parts of the game that are already more or less serviceable.
Knowing the DMG could "do more," especially for new DMs new to TTRPGs has been mentioned by D&D's present design team before. Will we see some sort of DM UA? I'd like to and I certainly can't declare One D&D a disappointment after three relatively scant playtest documents.
PHBs traditionally precede DMG, let's wait and see.
EDIT: whoops, significant typo
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The DMG is not in the agenda at the moment, it's no secret. The PHB is set to release at the end of '23. That's the apparent priority... for right now. I'm blissfully unaware of how poorly WotC "handles DMs", as I've not been treated poorly by anyone from that company, and can't think of anyone I know or game with that has. Your assumption about the ratio of DMs to Players points more towards the popular misconception that being a DM is hard, and a lot of work. And now we're being handled poorly by our corporate overlords? Who would want to take on the role of DM if it were so miserable? The balancing issues in combat are far deeper than "the designers need to fix this". Many of those balancing inadequacies stem from the popular misconception that you can do the same amount of work with one encounter that is supposed to be spread out over many.
You feel that you are being forgotten about, because you don't see any attention being paid to your current role in the game. I get it, and that's your perspective. You're welcome to your opinion, I just don't agree that being impatient is the best course of action right now.
Part of fixing the bits that don't work is to certify those things that appear to be working, as working *as intended*. This prevents "fixing" something that produces a wildly unexpected result. Is that what's happening in this case, I don't know. Fact is, you don't know that this isn't what is happening either. (Unless you do, and then... details...)
Every one of your items on your list are not codified requirements or rules. They are guidelines, suggestions on how to implement this into your game. Expecting that there is some defined mathematical equation that will provide a definitive outcome to combat, or travel, or anything is moot. We use dice. The best we can hope for is a probability or generally expected outcome. Setting a requirement that each PC *has to have* X/uncommon, X/rare, and x/very rare by Y/level, might suit your style of game, but strains every other game simply by forcing a DM to work their game the way you do. This is the blessing of vague, and often merely suggested, guidelines about how to run a game, and what to include in it. Same thing with amount of Gold, or how much xp, or when to level....all of it. You have the flexibility to set this at your table, without screwing up mine. More importantly, if I decide to use overland travel rules at my table, no one is requiring you to use them at your table at all, let alone making you use my ruleset.
If we gander back at previous editions, the source book release trend is PHB, DMG a few months later, and the MM and few months later. 5e is different in that the MM was released prior to the DMG. Regardless, the PHB generally proceeds the DMG. The most productive tool we have at our disposal is the playtest feedback. If we don't use it, we don't get what we want and are left to the whims of the design team.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
If waiting years for an update to the DMG or some sort of fix to playing the game with level 10+ characters is being impatient in your eyes, then I don't wanna know what your definition of patience is dude.
1 shot dungeon master
Listen Gus, the process has just begun, and we've already got people sitting in the back seat asking: "Are we there yet?"
We're 4 months into at least a year process. Not years into a process that takes 4 months. You want the game designers to stop what they're doing, and slap together a half-arsed product that doesn't do what you want it to, and to what end? So that we can all sit here and lament the poorly written, slapped together product that we are somehow forced to use?
I would prefer that they get it better than it is. Not perfect, 'cause there is no such thing. Ranting and railing about how poorly we're being handled, and how long it takes for the re-write to take, and how brokey everything is points towards impatience and expectance.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
While I agree in general that DMs are encouraged to modify the ruleset to their own needs, I have to say that I think addressing the PHB first is a mistake.
The problems with the DMG as it exists isn't the DMG or confident/experienced players. Instead, it's the new DMs. I have GM'd a LOT of different systems. And hands down, D&D (3.5 and 5e) are the worst in terms of learning curve. It's just far too steep mostly because of the incredible variety offered by the system. This is actually the reason that I encourage people not to start with D&D. Instead systems like FATE (a well updated version of the old school FUDGE system) offer what I genuinely believe to be the most fundamental lesson that all GMs need to learn...storytelling comes first. That is after all what we are doing when roleplaying.
I've always maintained that given a shortage of DMs, and the prominent (though not necessary) role of a DM the designers of D&D could, and should do a huge amount more to enable and encourage new DMs. Having experience as a player shouldn't be a requirement for being a DM though many players see it as one 'how can I DM when I don't know all the rules'. This is where I highlight Johnny Chiodini's video series on Dicebreaker, their advice in this series does a lot of providing good advice that will encourage new DMs.
So, we come to the prominence that the writers and designers of One D&D are giving to DMG in these playtests. Frankly, the major problem with delivering DMG before PHB content is that you haven't developed the ruleset yet, which makes it hard to understand how you can teach DMs to run a game to those rules. However, if you look at Game Design or frankly any creative design project the realities are that everything should be developed in parallel. You wouldn't have a story editor only enter the development process after the level designer in any reasonable size project the creative overlap and combined vision helps to shape the project overall.
My biggest issue though is with the concept of One D&D full stop. It's a massive gateway to content as a service (subscription models) that never ends well. More than that, I'd love to see the writers turn their attention to different systems. We've got five editions of D&D in existence...wouldn't having a different system taking all that was learnt from D&D be more exciting to people...it would to me at least.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
It's not so much "are we there yet" as it is "did you miss the highway exist we needed to take?"
As to this:
"you want the game designers to stop what they're doing, and slap together a half-arsed product that doesn't do what you want it to, and to what end? So that we can all sit here and lament the poorly written, slapped together product that we are somehow forced to use? "
Where do you see anything like that said? All we are saying is that they concentrating on things that are way less pressing that some of the issues mentioned.
Without straw-manning like you did, can you really argue against this when they are playtesting the 25th-ish animal based race option, when encounter building doesn't work and the issues with the rest of the things mentioned?
I'm not straw-manning the general sentiment that has been expressed regarding the comments that are made, not only here in this discussion, but also in a myriad of other threads on this website's forums lamenting and bemoaning how poorly DMs are handled, vague rules, barely usable guidelines, poorly written spell descriptions in the PHB... the list goes on for quite some time, I'm sure you're familiar with many of these.
So, yes, the sentiment that I get here is that the product is poorly constructed and needs remedied. Claiming that you're somehow not saying that is fictitious, at best. My summary of the sentiment that has been expressed by some of those here in this discussion, and those expressed elsewhere is not me making shit up.
As to your analogy about missing the exit.... we just left the gas station and got everyone snacks... we haven't gotten on the highway yet. We still have a full year before the first expected product will be released and already there are questions about the generally 2nd-in-line DMG.
I agree that the popular misconception regarding knowledge of the rules, or having been a player first, is a major distractor from people becoming DMs, or just playing the game period. I can get behind the push for more products like the Starter Set, or even the Moldvay Boxed Set that walked a DM through the running of a game, step-by-step. I'm not convinced that we can just lay the whole burden of enabling and encouraging new DMs solely at the feet of the designers. We DMs, might be able to do a better job of not scaring people off by overcomplicating and bewailing the plight DMs have in building and running a game. I'm of the thought that we DMs are better positioned for setting that example than the designers.
And herein lies another overlooked notion. Claiming that the design team is *not* working these changes in parallel with the PHB is potentially false. We know that they are working on the PHB. We don't know that they're *not* working on the DMG. We also don't know that they *are* working on the DMG. I haven't found a projected publication date for the DMG to base any of these speculations on. And since we don't know, what we don't know, claiming that something is, or is not, happening is abject speculation.
I'm not a fan of the subscription model either, any subscription model. As to your suggestion about looking back at older editions to pull from, I think there is a hint that this is being done with the Class Groups that resemble the classes and roles of previous editions. There's also a plethora of things to avoid, namely THAC0.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I feel like DM support comes more from adventures than from the DMG. Even if you homebrew, reading through adventures I tend to pick up more from seeing things in practice in specific cases than I do from the DMG vaguely trying to cover all eventualities.
For example, the chase rules in one of the Radiant Citadel adventures are WAY better than the chase rules in the DMG, and quickly became my default rules whenever running a chase.
With that, I think it's understandable that most of the One DnD DM support will come when they start publishing adventures.
"Things to Avoid, #1 - #482: THAC0"
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
While I can see the adventures being an argument for DM support, if we compare this to another TTRPG it all falls short on a number of counts.
Comparing to Blades in the Dark for example, a little under half the book is essentially Player material, the other half is GM materials. More than that there aren't hundreds of official adventure books to choose from. It's a TTRPG in a single book. That makes it massively more accessible to new GMs and players than D&D. Much like the very original Tomb Raider game in the 90s, the limitations make it far more fun for me than the more modern games bearing the franchise name. Complexity and options do not always equal better.
My point here is that D&D already has the problem of being a very expensive game to play and holding the adventures up as a solution just highlights and accentuates that issue.
Of course FATE as a system has several books, but can easily played just from one core resource...the major difference is that Evil Hat published something that needs to be in everyone's game library - the accessibility toolkit which is of far more value to game groups than any adventure or additional source book could ever be.
Don't misunderstand, I love D&D and have enjoyed playing it over the years, but it is a far more costly endeavour than most other TTRPGs and that presents barriers to play rather than opportunities as many people like to suggest.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
It would be useful for some DMs if the DMG contained more detailed rules for running certain sorts of content - though it does contain some rules and suggestions and refers to the PHB for more.
However, game world content requires the DM to figure out how they want to run it. A book resource may make suggestions but it can't tell the DM the specifics of how to run detailed content when the writer of the book has no idea how the individual DM will plan to use the content. As a result, a lot of the DMG is essentially guidance and suggestions on how to present the material to the group along with some ideas for skill checks and similar that could be used to run such content.
1) As for your specific list ... of course Monster "CR" doesn't work. At best, it is a vague estimate of how challenging a creature may be and it will never be better.
Why?
The actual difficulty of ANY encounter depends on the abilities of the DM, the abilities of the players, the abilities and equipment of the characters AND the dice.
I recently played some published content with a group - it was pretty trivial for the group I was in. However, others have said it was almost a TPK. One of the creatures in the encounter has a CR of 23 and was essentially a kraken from another plane. How can you have such a huge difference of opinion for an encounter with more or less the same creatures involved? In my case, it turns out that the CR23 Kraken look alike doesn't have Legendary saving throws just like an actual Kraken. One of my party cast Banishment on the creature. It failed, disappeared and did not return after a minute since it was from another plane. However, even if it had remained, the party I was with would probably not have had that much difficulty with it.
Different party composition, different characters, different players with different ideas and tactics, different magic items, different DMs with different approaches and choices made by the creatures, different dice rolls. All of these mean that ANY system that tries to assign a meaningful guaranteed numerical value to use for comparing relative strengths of creatures will fail. So asking for a meaningful CR system is meaningless.
Intellect Devourer is another example of a difficult to categorize monster. It has a CR of 2. However, if folks roll badly, make poor decisions and the ID rolls well then losing a party member is a likely outcome. On the other hand, it has an AC of 12 and 21 hit points. All it would take is a couple of characters with initiative and it is likely to die before it does anything. A few IDs can be a challenge for a low tier 2 party, even one could almost be a TPK in tier 1 with bad luck.
2) How does encounter building not work? Because CR is broken? But CR will always be broken. There are some guidelines for creating encounters and guestimates on how easy or hard these might be but they will never be accurate. In my home game, I have a level 10 party going up against a Demilich. Is it balanced? I have NO idea and I've been DMing a long time. Based on CR, it is deadly. Depending on what the characters roll, how they use their spells, their magic items, their class abilities - it could turn into a cake walk or a TPK. Is there anything that WotC could publish that will help with that? No. I can't control the dice, I can't control the choices the PCs make or whether they make best use of the character abilities. From the DM side, I can choose the abilities the Demilich decides to use ... and depending on what results, I'll keep the encounter challenging and interesting but there is no way that anything WotC could supply would make this encounter more balanced in terms of outcome (the encounter is from a published module in Tales from the Yawning Portal).
3) Item rarity doesn''t work? What does that even mean? Are all very rare items supposed to be more powerful than rare which are more powerful than uncommon? Define powerful. Is a necklace of fireballs more powerful or less powerful than Winged Boots? Is a Staff of Power the same power as a Tome of Leadership and Influence? What does Legendary even mean? A ring of invisibility is mechanically far less useful than a cloak of invisibility and yet both have the same rarity. The fallacy here is trying to equate rarity to some sort of power scale. It isn't. Though perhaps it would be nice if they were categorized a bit so that items like the Deck of Many Things were labeled as "Only give out if you want a better than 50/50 chance your campaign will implode". The current rarity system is a label that was inherited from previous versions of the game with little or no adjustment. In terms of handing out treasure, the magic item tables in the DMG do a bit better job of catergorizing by "power" since they don't strictly follow the item rarity. I'm not sure how much more they could do except perhaps go over the tables and move outliers but everyone's opinion on what is powerful is different.
4) The DMG contains random treasure generation tables. It gives a general idea of loot and treasure expected from single creatures and in their lair for a large group of them. The lair tables only have a 25% chance of a significant magic item and it is only 3% for the better items from table G. The guidelines on loot and magic items awarded are essentially IN those tables. Better magic items should be extremely unlikely for any large groups of CR 0-4 creatures. However, awarding magic/treasure etc is a world building decision - does the DM want a high magic or low magic world? Do they want one where wealth is easy or hard to obtain? Do they want the characters struggling to find their next meal?
I will agree that one area that could use additional guidance are things to spend gold on as the character progresses. Buying property, hiring servants, building a business. Suggestions on some of this are available in supplementary books but it could use more. However, this is all part of world building. Chapter 1 contains the basic world building blocks but dealing with the gold surplus that typically develops at higher levels can be a bit of a challenge. Part of this is the underlying assumption that magic items are exceptionally rare even "uncommon" or "common" ones. One sink for gold coins at high levels is to create a market for the purchase/trade of magic items. If the DM has kept the game low magic and resisted the temptation to hand out "really cool stuff" which is hard for a beginner DM then this can work as a coin sink but otherwise the main sink in a campaign is the purchase and maintenance of housing and similar.
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5e is a rules lighter version of the game. As a result, they didn't add a lot of detail to various systems, in part because a lot of DMs just wouldn't use them. Keep in mind that DMs are the minority of D&D players and that content produced which would be exclusively useful to DMs like some of the suggestions in your list needs to be justified as something that many DMs would find very useful and incorporate into their games and game world. In addition, any over detailed rules are likely to be either ignored or simplified in play so there isn't any point in creating simulationist sets of rules to handle overland travel, foraging, etc.
As an example, I am running Out of the Abyss, the second chapter has a detailed section on many different Fungi found in the underdark, how much food, water or other resources can be extracted from each. However, I don't know a single player who will be interested in keeping track of exactly which mushrooms they found and that the first had 3 pounds of food and 2 pounds of water while the second found that morning had 4 pounds of food and 1 pound of water. The point is that the book includes some details for travel in the underdark that I will use for flavor and description but is far to onerous to use as written.
The same would be true for detailed rules for overland travel - are you traveling in hills, mountain, plain, marsh? How far do you move each day by what sort of mode of transportation? What season is it - winter, spring, summer or fall? Has it been a dry, average or wet year? What is the weather? A generic system with a few suggested skill checks (survival etc) is more usable in actual play for most tables (except when the DM wants to make travel a big part of that adventure at that point in time - in this case, the DM has to improvise a few skill checks and describe how it works).
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In my opinion, a lot of the suggestions in the list are either unfeasible, or not worth the design time due to a low level of uptake. In a few cases, I absolutely agree that some additional world building guidance and more fleshed out rules systems (but still not too detailed) would be useful.
I don't think you actually disagree with the way I feel, I think you are just assuming I am asking for very specific mathematical rules and formulas for everything when I think the fact they did try to do that might be the root problem.
1 CR,
I agree with everything you said, my issue is that even though all that is true, 2 creatures of the same CR can be objectively vastly different in their difficulty regardless of other outside variables.
I'm not saying that it needs to be super accurate, of course there are variables that can't always be factored. In general you need to be a somewhat experienced DM who can look at a block and determine how much trouble a creature can be.
I get that they aren't going to revise old CRs, but a new dmg could at least address things like "action economy" and "save or suck" spells and other elements that can drastically impact combats and can cause CRs to be inaccurate.
2 Encounter building
Encounter building as it's presented in the DMG based on CR isn't a good guide. WotC has mentioned that this needs, and will receive attention which is good. What you are saying is basically that there are random elements that you can't control. This doesn't mean there isn't anything that can be put in a DMG to help inexperienced DMs a better idea of how to attempt to build encounters that are more balanced.
3 Item rarity doesn't work
You "The fallacy here is trying to equate rarity to some sort of power scale. It isn't."
The DMG "Rarity provides a rough measure of an item's power relative to other magic items"
So basically we agree, it doesn't work for the stated use.
4 Loot
DMG reward system is based on enemy CR, and based on magic item rarity, both of which you seem to agree are not done accurately enough to be used in a formula like that.
5 Rules light
I pretty much agree. The problem is that they did try to make a formulas to help DMs figure stuff out like encounters, loot, etc, and what they came up with isn't good/useful.
I think you are assuming that I'm asking for hard , codified rules for the things mentioned. This is not the case, it's actually the opposite, the DMG has rules for stuff like foraging, how much food/water you need per day, getting lost, high altitude etc, and no one uses them because they are terribly boring and are just a waste of time because they don't impact the story or game in any meaningful way.
What's missing are guidelines on how to make travel fun and interesting. They mention encounter tables but don't give examples. They give tables of settlements monuments, weird locals but nothing that happens if the players actually interact with them.
Just giving examples of interesting fun encounters would do much more to help new DMs than 2 pages of random tables for randomly generating a settlement.
Things like:
Ambushes, Traps, lost/fleeing/migrating travelers, merchants, thieves, con-men, attacks when camping, wandering monsters, abandoned wagons/homes, lost pets, etc.
Maybe categories of things like complications, combat encounter, social, skill challenge.