D&D’s worst book needs an update, and that’s an opportunity for creators of all stripes

14.08.2023 - 14:47 / polygon.com / Of All / An Update

Currently in my home there are six copies of the Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition Player’s Handbook — one for me, one for my 13-year-old daughter, and four for the other kids that we play with from time to time. But there’s only one copy of the Dungeon Master’s Guide. In fact, after the first readthrough, that book has seen hardly any use in the Hall household at all. That’s likely to change in 2024, because the DMG is getting a dramatic facelift.

D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast has been talking about revised versions of its three core rulebooks for a long time now. The length of that promotional period is due, in part, to its ambitious slate of playtests that have already garnered nearly 500,000 written responses. Good feedback is hard to find, and when you’re getting it in volume it’s hard to make use of. Of course, the duration is also because Wizards sort of bungled the original announcement and spent a good chunk of 2023 clarifying its intent. But the D&D publisher appears genuinely motivated to make the books better — easier for players to find what they’re looking for, with richer guidance for every skill level. And the book that clearly needs the most work is the DMG, a fact that was made clear during a private press event in Seattle earlier this year.

“I don’t know if you recall,” said rules architect Chris Perkins at the time, “but chapter one of that book is on building a campaign, and one of the first things you’re told is the difference between a meritocracy and a plutocracy. It’s like, OK. I’m a new DM. Is this the most important thing I need to know about my campaign? No. [...] Chapter two is all about the D&D cosmology. Here are the Outer Planes and the Inner Planes. And it’s like, Is this the first thing I need to know to be a DM?”

That’s basically the response that my 13-year-old had the week before Gen Con. “I want to be a DM,” she said, and my heart sorta skipped a beat. So I handed her the DMG. I found her drooling into it a few hours later. So when I bumped into game design architect Jeremy Crawford at this year’s Gen Con, I wanted to know: How’s that DMG going? That’s when things turned a little philosophical.

“Why do people DM?” posited Crawford. “What causes them to stick around as DMs? What might cause burnout? What would excite them to be DMs longer?” These are the most important questions to answer, he said, and those answers should be what fills the new DMG.

When you open the next version of the 5th edition Dungeon Master’s Guide, Crawford said, you can expect it to be much better organized. You’ll learn how to roll dice, for instance, in chapter one, not chapter eight as it sits now. The book will also be a tad bit longer than the original. And you can also expect to