Part 1 is about keeping it consistent and determining the details of the world, and how that world should interact with the players and vice versa. It should be something the characters are part of, and that's part of the characters.
The setting is more than just a backdrop. This one is split into three parts - the first about deciding what kind of adventure you want to run, the second helps you create the adventures, and the third is the part with the actual rules in it. Then we get the description of the book itself and, although it's been a while, it's rather different than the previous DMGs I've read, which were mostly about rules. Basically, it says "don't get hung up on the rules, just have fun."
The Introduction is, for the most part, what you'd expect if you've played D&D for a while a brief explanation of what a Dungeon Master is, how it involves varying levels of being an inventor, writer, storyteller, actor, improvisor and referee, and that the rules are meant to help the game, rather than put everything into tiny inflexible boxes. Frist, though, we get the Introduction section. 320 pages including the index, so a fair bit to work with. Getting ideas is why this book was pushed at me, after all. Some bits might be short, and others will probably involve long, rambling tangents as they give me ideas. Take a good long look at this book, and write up my thoughts as we go along. As far as I can tell, the Dungeon Master's Guide doesn't usually get looked at too much - the only one I could find was the 1st edition one - so I figured I might as well combine the two. (And as a final note, we offer the following preview art from the DMG: The Great Modron March by Justin Gerard.So, I have been given a reason to read this in-depth, rather than simply use it to look things up as needed, and I've also recently been quietly reading the other Let's Reads going on/that have happened. We truly believe that once you have the DMG in your hands, it will be worth it. However, we believe that accepting a few additional weeks of work on our end, and waiting on yours, is worth the years of enjoyment provided by a rock solid Dungeon Master's Guide that has followed in the footsteps of the Player's Handbook and Monster Manual. For those stores that take part in our early release program, the book goes on sale November 28th.īelieve me, we did not make this decision lightly. The new release date for the Dungeon Master's Guide is December 9th. Therefore, the only choice we had is to push back the release date by three weeks. We examined a number of possibilities, but none gave us the additional time we needed to put into the DMG without sacrificing content or quality. We know that people are eager to get their hands on all three core rulebooks, but we cannot compromise our commitment to excellence at this time. Unfortunately, that additional effort came at the expense of the development schedule for the Dungeon Master's Guide. That extra time proved to be a huge boon, as the designers had the chance to go through each book page by page to make sure everything fit perfectly. The layout and visual design was the result of hours spent carefully handcrafting the books. We added an entire additional cycle of design and editing to ensure that the books were as close to perfect as humanly possible. The text of both books received a level of review and oversight that sets a new standard for D&D. The extra time we put into those books is clear when you notice the polish on both the text and the layout. We've been very happy with the overwhelming response to the Player's Handbookand the excitement we've seen among people who have gotten early access to the Monster Manual. One of the nice things about releasing the core rulebooks over the course of a few months is that we've had the opportunity to use the feedback from one book to help shape the later ones. Even when we announced our release dates, we knew that there could be risks we would face to hit the deadlines we had established. Mike talks about the Dungeon Master's Guide in this week's Legends & Lore.īack when we first started the process of creating fifth edition, we made it clear that we're committed to taking the time to get things right.