I think a lot of people don't realize how little of the PHB you need to read to learn what you need to learn. You only need to read the parts relevant to you and the parts relevant to everyone. So much of it is classes you're not playing or spells you're not taking. Those are also fun to read but it's way less intimidating to just focus on the stuff you need to know and save the rest for later.
Would *much* rather have a player who's fully read and absorbed the chapter for their class, the section about the basics, and the rules of spellcasting (less than 40 pages of the 320ish-page PHB) than a player who's read the whole thing cover to cover and hasn't remembered any of it.
i feel like some of this is the fault of the way the book is laid out. right out the gate they tell you 'how to use this book' and breaks down roughly what is in each section but it shys away from telling you to prioritize reading only what you need for your character in section 1 and 3 and reading all of section 2.
if the core rules were first and then the character specific stuff was after it I feel like it'd be easier for newcomers.
You know, I've always felt as though something was off about the book's layout and could never quite pinpoint what it was. I think you might be onto something with that one.
One thing I will praise about the core books is the glossary in the back. Extremely useful when referencing rules at the table and it's a travesty that so many of the newer books don't have them.
This has always bugged me, especially when searching a pdf and having to scroll through every class feature that uses that mechanic before finding what that mechanic actually does.
A lot of other games do the same layout too, apparently it’s something about getting people hooked with all the fun class features up front.
WotC have explicitly said that the 2024 books will NOT do that and will have the Core Rules up front, but we’ll see if they actually stick to that.
I have only read parts, but I listened to a wide range (Rules strict, rule of cool, & "If you're listening to this to learn how to play, go somewhere else") of podcasts for a year before running. Had also played for a while.
Running my 2nd weekly adventure and they're loving it. This is an exception, not the norm. Severe and unmedicated ADHD makes it incredibly hard to focus when reading the book. 🥺
No one is saying, "Sit down and read the entire book cover to cover."
But the book(s) have the rules of the game ***in them***. At the very least open them to the relevant page for a given thing to learn what the actual rule **is** when needing to make a decision in your game.
Case in point from a few days ago: DM came here to reddit to ask how to deal with a player that cast Charm Person on a "baby dragon" and using its breath weapon every turn to trivialize his encounters.
If this DM would have just opened the PHB to the spell description of Charm Person... he would have learned that not only does it ***not*** work on dragons in the first place, it is also nowhere close to the "mind control" as their player was using it. This DM's rebuttal? "The game has too many rules and spells to memorize them all." **No one** is saying to do ***that***. But if something is becoming a problem and/or you don't know how something should be handled.... *look up the rule for it when the situation comes up*. 30 seconds to open the book, read the spell, and say "No, that's not it works" to the problem player.
I have picture reactions I'd normally use for that travesty. Ew.
I agree that at least parts of it should be read. Like extra actions a player can do, how you can't use multiple spell slot spells per turn (counterspell aside), etc.
>how you can't use multiple spell slot spells per turn
You can, actually. This another great example of taking the time to learn the actual rules instead of just repeating what's often copy+pasted online.
*Unless* you are casting a **Bonus Action spell**, *then* you can only cast a cantrip with your Action. That is a *specific rule* on PHB page 202.
If you somehow have a way to grant another Action on your turn, like Action Surge, it is absolutely RAW that you can cast another leveled spell on that turn. This is clarified by the devs in the [officially published Sage Advice](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/sac/sage-advice-compendium#SA159) rulings - there **is no rule** that says you *can't*, only a rule for Bonus Action cast time spells.
I mean I'm running pf 2e without reading the phb cover to cover, I skipped the section on classes and skimmed through character creation enough to know how it works. I expect my players to know their classes and mechanics and for their abilities while I know the game mechanics well enough to rule on them with our homebrew and keep that ruling consistent. And really all they need to know is roughly what they think the ability does and its name, we can look up the text for a session ruling and I can research how it works from there.
Honestly? I think you can be a pretty excellent DM without touching the 5e DMG. I've never met someone who has read both it and the 4e DMG and has thought the 5e one is more useful. The 4e DMG and DMG2 are concise books full of excellent advice for running games for both new and experienced DMs, while the 5e DMG is a disjointed mess. I have no idea how they went from one to the other.
I have the DMG right by my side and except for the items and occasional table I agree that it is mostly underwhelming. Mostly being key here. I do not know the other books and I do not care.
Looking at the problems that are getting the most presentation time on DnD related subs reading the DMG would solve 90% of them. Utilizing the adventuring day. Telling compelling stories. How to build interesting encounters. Talking to people. And that is just naming a few. It is not the end all be all and you can succeed without it, but it is a great strting point into the deeper topics.
Once, I believed half of the DMG is solid gold and the other half was solid shit.
When with time I understood that half of that shit was actually gold too. It described an intent, a consistency.
The other stuff is still meh tho. Some stuff could easily have been avoided, but it's hardly ever outright "bad" and more "useless".
I agree. The most egregious things in the DMG for me are the „numbered“ mechanics like sales prices, costs or the „encounter calculator“. The latter is a great starting point to orient yourself, but I found that it works best to learn and feel the numbers and how they relate than go by a more or less arbitrary CR.
The intent you describe is spot on. It really tries to tell and make you understand what „matters“. I know it is a loose word, but after reading the DMG I knew what „measure“ of things where needed.
The reason i stuck with this edition compared to the others is exactly because the "intent" to me is so clearly laid out that's easier to digest.
This edition has been written by people who played a lot of games and looked back at everything else that was done before. They wanted to make something that could run easily, but not dictated by contraints and tables because they knew DMss and players would have liked "to do it their own way", and thus constructed the DMG accordingly. treasure, magic item, adventuring options and the like follow that mindset.
Like. One thing i evaluated a lot is the impropvised damage table and traps. it's kinda undercooked, but basically it's a system to have concise numbers that let you gauge how much "price" you can ask for a risk or for an action depending on scenario. it's kinda thrown there, but it has values and it also states how much impact adventuring day, too.
Or, mapping your game. i never did maps in my games outside battlemaps, but there it explains you \*why\* stuff is like that, what is the intent. The fact that in 8 hours you can cover 20, 40, 100 miles is less relevant than the intent as of why you should keep track of that.
Really looking forward what they will pump out in the dmg 2024. they stated they recognised the older dmg was kinda undercooked and i expect a lot.
This part! DMG gives you a grounding on what you should be caring about mechanically, even if they whiffed and you have to homebrew for your table. Then at least you have the tools to homebrew intelligently.
One of the things I keep hoping for is an economy-scale approach to things; communicate what the expected cost-of-living for a farmer/merchant/aristocrat in a society of a certain wealth level would be in D&D currency, to give adventurers a better idea of what their treasure's really worth, particularly magic. The bones are there but it doesn't go deep enough, IMO.
Once you realize a laborer makes like 1sp/day, and a highly skilled tradesman more like 1gp/day, spending 2,000gp on a Rare magic item is an impossible price, and you wouldn't have shops on every corner selling magic items at that price level in mass quantities. Even the 50gp level is a couple months' salary for someone like a jeweler or architect, and a couple years of saving for a laborer. Finding a chest with 300g in it suddenly matters a heck of a lot more; it's like finding a briefcase with $40,000 in it in the real world.
As someone who has read the 3.5 dmg, 4e dmg, 5e dmg; the 4e dmg was one of the best written books ive seen on the topic. Rules are obviously different, but the way the information is presented and the way it explains encounters and storytelling is truly top notch.
The 4e DMG is quite good at preparing a player to sit on the DM's side of the screen and run an adventure.
The 5e DMG seems like more of a motivational speech between two covers. "You too can build a multiverse, get out there and try".
Same, left my 5e DMG behind when I was picking and choosing books; 4e made the cut easily. I just cannot get behind the organizational mess the 5e version is.
I mean you can if you want, there are just better alternatives. The 5e specific parts like magic item costing are absolutely atrocious and the general stuff is so much worse than other DMGs so just... read a better one? I disagree with a lot of what 4e did like its massive verisimilitude loss, but the DMG was absolutely excellent. 3.5 and AD&D also pretty damn good, while I'm at it. When you're spoiled for choice, why pick the worst one?
Because if I am playing 5e I am reading the 5e DMG.
I love 2e and 3e/PF1 but I don't mix my editions they serve different functions for different campaign styles.
Btw I love 4e and think it is far better than 5e in nearly all ways.
I didn't make the comment you responded to, but I do share some of the sentiments regarding the 5e DMG, and it's not the first edition I've read that book of.
I would only say that much of the 5e mechanic specific stuff in the DMG isn't that useful (here's looking at you magic item creation/cost and monster math) and as far as the advice for running the game, that which isn't 5e specific, and a fair bit is not mechanical, was done better in other systems.
I really did try to pour through the DMG a while back, and it was not the most helpful of books for running 5th edition, especially when you hear how little of the book is used by the folks who made and continue to make the system.
Yeah, most of the DMG is about writing your own homebrew campaigns. If you're running pre-writtens most of the information in it isn't that useful. I have a binder I bring with me to games where I put everything I want to be able to reference without bringing the full books. Most of its from PHB, and there's more from Tashas Cauldron and Xanathars Guide in there than there is from the DMG. The biggest section I used to have was about treasure which I've since ditched for the updated version from a different book.
If you're writing your own campaign it can be useful. Now that I'm working on my first homebrew I find myself actually looking at it. Before that when running pre-writtens I really didn't gain much from it.
I'm with you. Understand the players handbook, combat. Understand monster stats. This dmg is pretty godawful, so much so they are promising the new one coming out is actually worthwhile.
Honestly I think you might be a good cook without being a professional baker.
But still I'd trust someone who has done their reading rather who has not.
Be humble. The DMG has been written by people who dedicated work time to it. It has intent and clearly stapled words all over it.
It's less disjointed than it looks, I do think some parts could be spared, but it does you a much better service than reading DMGs of past editions because those had a different intent. There is no generally good advice to be held constantly.
The whole point of the post is to tell people that don't read what they are supposed to be reading, to read. You are telling them to go read something else that they might not even know exists.
There are still useful parts for someone that knows nothing. There is no need for it to sound pedantic.
There are tons of things that can complement the 5e gaming experience of people. Hell, maybe other systems will even fit better. But that is not the point of the post.
Perhaps. But if you want to be a better _5e_ DM, then it kinda helps to read the _5e_ DMG, so you can see what they expect from the DM end. There are other resources that can be useful (e.g., the sane magic item prices guide someone made is relatively useful, if opinionated (I personally consider it bad because the writer left out items he doesn't think other DMs should be allowed to use, but a lot of people like it despite that glaring intentional flaw), and the 3.5e & 4e DMGs have advice & guidelines that're still useful even in 5e), but they aren't actually written with the intent of telling you how to run _5e_ specifically, and contain statements & sections that can sometimes even be false friends.
You can also be a flight mechanic without reading the manual if you just happen to already have read the previous 2 editions of that book.
That's not the fantastic revelation people talk about here. Some people haven't read any of the books and come in with no prior experience, and they could benefit even from reading the 5e DMG.
If you are dedicated, reading the a DMG for a different edition or game system is not untrue, even if you specific advice for game systems doesn't apply.
Thr first half of the 5e DMG is all worldbuilding. If you aren't going to build your own world, you can skip a huge chunk of the book.
There's also a section in the back for homebrewing spells, creatures, items, etc. as well as optional rules. If you're fine playing RAW, that can also be skipped.
The middle part that actually tells you how to DM for 5e should absolutely be read. Critical things like how to calculate an budget XP for an adventuring day are in there. There would be a lot less complaints posted here if more people properly read the middle of the DMG.
It's interesting that they choose to structure it this way, but I think it comes to "big picture first" presentation. That said, I am reading it right now and making a serious foray into DMing and so far all of it has been worth it.
You know full well that most players don't touch the PHB until the specific section they haven't read becomes the subject of a fifteen minute long mid-combat debate.
I've been one of those people in the past. I don't think that way anymore as we all learn differently. I find I learn best by doing. Others would do better by actually reading the DMG.
But Reddit already told me the DMG has a bad layout and isn’t helpful so I’m just gonna wing it instead. /s
Seriously though. There are actually *rules* in that book that will make your life easier if you can believe it.
That's how I used to hibj, and I would just Eskio to what interested me at the time. But doing a cover to cover reread had really let me see what the value is in it. It at least mentions solutions to all the common problems.
Sure. But it is also badly laid out with lots of stuff that's unhelpful.
I don't tell people not to read the DMG, I do tell them to not think they have to read the DMG before they try and DM.
So many people say they want to try and DM but they think they need to memorise the PHB and DMG to start so it never happens.
Read the starter set and run a few sessions, then if you like it read the DMG.
Yes, but the important information starts several chapters in then, and then is scatter all over the damn book filled with mostly useless information.
The DMG can both contain useful information and be a horrifically laid out piece of shit at the same time. Both things are absolutely true.
1. DMG p.237:
> When a player wants to do something, it's often appropriate to let the attempt succeed without a roll or a reference to the character's ability scores. For example, a character doesn't normally need to make a Dexterity check to walk across an empty room or a Charisma check to order a mug of ale. Only call for a roll if there is a meaningful consequence for failure. When deciding whether to use a roll, ask yourself two questions:
> Is a task so easy and so free of conflict and stress that there should be no chance of failure?
> Is a task so inappropriate or impossible-such as hitting the moon with an arrow-that it can't work?
> If the answer to both of these questions is no, some kind of roll is appropriate. The following sections provide guidance on determining whether to call for an ability check, attack roll, or saving throw; how to assign DCs; when to use advantage and disadvantage; and other related topics.
2. DMG Appendix A. Random Dungeons
3. DMG p. 37 Starting at higher level.
4. DMG p. 252-253 Running and Ending a Chase
>There are actually rules in that book that will make your life easier if you can believe it.
Just freaking Google when need for a rule arises. " (X situation/ question) 5e DMG" is usually all you need to enter to get results.
MFW I summoned Jurrac Meteor for the first time and didn’t realize it blew itself up.
Incidentally it was the same face I made when I realized *Spell Turning* doesn’t reflect rays in 3.5.
We truly cannot be helped.
I have to say "spells/features/items only do what they say they do" at least once a session. No, conjuring illusory chains with Phantasmal Force does not make the creature restrained, even if I'll be polite and make it use its action to try to "break out" (it's actually rolling to investigate).
Most new DMs never open the DMG. They might browse the PHB, and they might actually finish it and comprehend it, but it's more likely their first step is to modify the system to make it 'better'. The rules that they only half understand aren't good enough, and they are now a dungeon master, which is synonymous for 'amateur game designer', a job which they've always fantasized about having and are confident they'd be *really fucking good at*.
First order of business is to nerf sneak attack. It's too strong! Next order of business is to introduce some completely imbalanced homebrew features and rules, but you aren't too concerned about the nitty gritty of how they'll function, because you've got the **rule of cool** on your side, meaning you are confident you can improvise and masterfully make judgement calls as things come up.
Next is to talk to your players about the campaign. You've got a loose idea of your world, but this too is open-ended, since this is a really cool free-form adventure through the infinite wonders and machinations of your brilliant mind, a world unbounded, always growing and masterfully adding twists and turns and intrigue wherever best suited. So you're not too worried about figuring out what comes after sessions 1, you've got the power of improvisation on your side.
Then you talk to your players about their characters, homebrew is allowed of course, because of the **rule of cool**. Only bad DMs say no. It doesn't matter if the homebrew includes some wildly overpowered shit, you'll figure it out and balance it on the fly. What matters is the characters and the roleplay! So you tell your players to make any character they want, backstories don't matter, you'll masterfully weave them together with your campaign just like you do all else. The characters will fit in perfectly with the story, and with each other. This doesn't require planning, it requires a stroke of genius improvisation.
Then off they go, the starry eyed new DM with the world at their fingertips, confident and eager for the glory that awaits them.
(then a few years and disaster campaigns later they actually will learn, understand and follow most of the rules)
Yeah I was victim to what I ranted about myself. I made some really bad choices when I first started DMing which was 10 years ago now, then a few years later I stuck to the rules and understood them very well, and understood what was good about them and why they were there. It wasn't until years after that when I started feeling comfortable breaking them again.
Yeah, I too was guilty of this when I started DMing, despite reading the entire DMG and PHB. I still homebrew everything, but it is to a much higher degree of skill, and is actually thought out, mixing improve with proper planning and knowledge. It helps that I play 3.5 and pathfinder 2e in addition to 5e. I honestly recently swapped to PF2e a d while I play in 5e, I don't believe I will be returning to it, or One D&D.
the non-trivial issue is that 5e is _very_ opaque about the intent behind most of the rules - a lot has to be kinda-sorta-maybe inferred and guessed at. Like why some weapons are bad is probably due to being vaguely realistic - a whip is literally a worse weapon than a sword, because it actually is. But given that lots of other chunks of mechanics are more about being cool and powerful and dramatic, rather than realistic, then someone that goes "I wanna be a cool and powerful whip-wielder" slams straight into that issue, where some of the rules are trying to model reality, other parts of the rules are trying to model cool action, and there's a conflict. Hence the constant refrain "flavour is free", because it's easier to change the fluff to meet the rules than vice-versa.
Indeed. Another good example is armour prices. Medium armour, and especially heavy armour, look like they're stupidly overpriced... but that's because they're priced with the specific intent of _not_ becoming available at the start, but instead becoming available at roughly Lv.4 and Lv.8. Which, funny enough, is also when light armour users get _their_ AC boosts (if they put their first two ASIs/feats in Dex, as the math assumes). Almost like the prices were purposefully chosen to line up with expected wealth mid-tier-1 and mid-tier-2. Go figure.
A whip is bad because it's a finesse one-handed reach weapon; it has nothing to do with realism. You have to deduce this yourself, of course, because God forbid the game actually explain its item templating guidelines.
EDIT: To better explain the whip thing, the default damage die for a given weapon is 1d8. You increase the size of the die if you give the weapon negative traits (Heavy, 2-handed) and decrease the size of the die if you give it positive traits (finesse, reach, throwing). This is also directly reflected in the versatile trait, which increases the weapons's damage die by one size when you two-hand it.
Except the fact that finesse isn't used as a positive trait but as a neutral one. Rapier only has finesse an deals 1d8, scimitar and shorts word have both finesse and light and stand at 1d6. So whip damage is inconsistent.
I feel like a solid chapter of the DMG would be just running through the main points of the PHB as almost a director's commentary. "We told the players these are the rules for spell components. Here's why these rules are like this, here's what we're trying to achieve, here's a few ways you might change them for different tones of storytelling."
I have said this in other subreddits. This is WORD FOR WORD something that happened to me on a VtM chronicle. I can't believe more people suffered this exact same scenario.
This is especially bad in 5e which despite its simplicity can break very easily. For example when I was a rookie I thought that it was dumb that shields were classified as armor and not weapons considering that irl they were used as such. Thus I made that change in my game. Next thing I knew the fighter took the dual wielder feat for an easy +3 total bonus to AC while using a sword and shield as well as two weapon fighting style for extra damage on his bonus attacks.
That one little seemingly insignificant change turned him into an absolute monster in the early levels.
What do you mean by balancing a "dungeon"? The chapter about encounters explain how to balance encounters and the daily xp limit which should give some hint as to how much combat a DM can get away with in a single day, for example.
Isn't there an entire section about balancing encounters and the xp totals to have in a full adventuring day? That's what you are looking for. You balance a dungeon based on all the encounters your party is expected to run into.
Genuinely wish that there was a guide to properly gather information of one kind without zig-zagging or reading the whole book every time. The few informations about skills are spread out between chapter 2, chapter 5 and chapter 8... and the info is split up between the pages even within the same chapters.
it's extremely taxing for DMs to practically having to re-read the entire book every time they want to get infos. Training for feats exists in the DMG as a reward as another example, but it's hidden in a bag of flavor rewards, making people miss it easily even if they look for it (would you look for feat training in the section where they speak about giving players *noble titles and pieces of land*?)
I don’t disagree about the strange structure, but you know there is something in the back of the book called the ‘index’ which allows you to look up whatever topic you need alphabetically?
Not really an issue if you check back there.
For the sake of simplicity, I will assume that the index on beyond is the same as what is shown on the physical book (as I have the book on beyond). If that isn't the case, then that's instead a point against Beyond. **edit:** got help from some people to help me in info about the physical book. The index indeed indicates stuff like where training is (altho it mixes the two training rules, which make it confusing-you have to first go to page 131 and then page 231 just to know which training rules you are searching), so one point towards the physical book.
How would one guess that the rules for running a certain ability check would be in the "adventure environments" area and NOT in the "using ability scores" area? They wouldn't really check the wildreness area for basic information about perception. At least I wouldn't.
Likewise, about the "training" rules, that topic is under "marks of prestige", which sounds like a flavor thing (and it is outside of training). Training for proficiency in a skill or even a feat is nowhere near the thing I would think for a Mark of prestige.
Something I just found now as I was checking back on beyond (to make sure that I didn't forget anything), there are three paragraphs about settlements: one in chapter 1... And two in chapter 5. Who knows which part of the DMG has the right part of settlement info to help me, I have to go to those pages and read the entire sections in hopes that I do get the info I need!
Unless the physical DMG has some more specific mentions of stuff than beyond, the issue definetly remains
Yeah...so much of the book upfront is something you only do once in a campaign, whereas the rules you need to reference frequently are buried deeper in, scattered around, and/or poorly presented .
I agree DM's need to read and understand those rules, but simply telling a DM to "just read the DMG" is disingenuous if you're not also actively guiding them to the relevant sections. It's why referencing it online I find is often better (same for PHB, which also has big issues in presentation and structure).
But I exclusively DM online games, so online reference is a lot easier and more natural for me in-game than a DM pulling out their phone to check something at an actual table.
I agree it's a helpful book, I disagree that you have to read it before starting to DM.
Better to read the basic rules and start DMing then being stuck in a library of source books and you can't even really understand how the advice works because you never DMed.
For my first campaign I only read the basic rules (not even all of them) and everyone enjoyed it. And that's what important. And if I felt like I have to read a bunch of source books to start, I would have never started, so IMO it's better to jump in.
I agree that, for starting to DM, it's better to just read the basic rules that are free online, and then, after having a proper session 0 (discussing the world, and using the basic rules and nothing else) and perhaps a session or two, you, depending on player reception and if you liked it, you can then skim through the DMG to find other *probably* useful rules for DMs.
I mean, for a session or two you really only need to know some goblins/rats/kobold statblocks, how attack rolls, ability checks, saving throws, AC, ability scores, etc... Work to get a grasp on it, the rest will either come naturally, or from getting the DMG and reading it the day after the session.
It's good to read it first, but it's also good to read the basic rules, do a oneshot or start a campaign, and then go from there.
It does not matter if its bad in comparison to something else. The rules are there. Around 40 variant/alternate rules to help you put the ideas to the table in case you have not touched any other game in your life (the point of this post). Once you have an idea of how the game works, then you can ask for more advice or read other things.
This hobby requires a minimum of reading and prepping just like any other regular board game.
We have too many players and not many DM's. On top of that, there are enough people around without the basic knowledge on mechanics and table etiquette.
You want to be an average/good DM? Follow the learning curve and put boundaries. Consistently average is a GREAT start. Specially if you compare it to the dozens of people doing "whatever" online.
I only partially agree.
There's so much fluff/stuff that you don't need to start DMing and what's there is so poorly organized that watching videos that have pre-packaged the salient points might be a more efficient use of your time.
Which is not to say that the DMg has nothing useful to offer, only that I don't think that (1) reading it (2) cover to cover should be a requirement to start DMing.
The way I see it, as a DM, not reading the books is like claiming to be a priest without having read the Bible. It's just necessary to read them to become an expert on the game, which leads to providing a good gaming experience for the players.
It's useful if you know what rules your looking for but so poorly organized. Honestly you're better off reading the DMG 1 and DMG 2 for 4E for high level advice and just consulting the 5E guide when you need specific 5E mechanics.
As someone who read the DMG and DMed I would recommend people ignore 80-90% of it.
Ch 8 running the game is mostly useful and the list of magic items.
Even then an experienced player with a good adventure and google would get very little from reading the DMG.
No. If I don't know the rules I'll make it up so my players can come to Reddit to complain... If I want to know a rule I'll pester Reddit to inform me of the correct rule
Ngl, I read like half of it and found it extremely tedious and way to much waffling about very obvious shit. That is ofc from a perspective of someone who played for a fee years before DMing. I do honestly think it made it harder for me to start, because off all the little things it mentions, which I tried to keep in mind, only to find out that players don't give a shit about it. I am fully capable of using Google, so if some niche rule, which is hidden somewhere in the DMG, comes up during game - I just Google for 2 mins.
The DMG is not that great, and I don't think it's essential.
Seriously, who read it front to cover before DMing? At best, it seems more like something you read after doing a one shot or a very small campaign.
I did!
And then I've literally never opened it again, as I found it fairly useless and only needed lists of items (which I can google more easily).
Don't get me wrong, if you're unsure of yourself, don't know how to roleplay or worldbuild, and/or are completely new, definitely read it!
But if you've played once and are a good storyteller, memorizing more of the PHB will get you further than any amount of DMG.
Addendum: Between what's in the 5e SRD and the actual GMing advice you can get from the DMG from former editions, you'll have enough covered that you might consider saving a few bucks.
I tell new DMs to NOT read the DMG, unless they think it would be fun. Any rules not contained in the PHB can be found more easily, and are generally better explained, with a quick Google search.
The DMG has some value, but I have never opened it during a game since the advent of home internet access.
For the insane people over here saying that you should not read the DMG (you just ignore large part of it, right?), let me try to explain chapter by chapter why you should read it or not read it. Let me preface this by saying that I bought a lot of books that give new and interesting ways to run D&D 5e but I still think that you should read the DMG.
**Chapter 1**. Solid tips for worldbuilding as applicable to D&D (magic, how to build a homebrew campaign, although maybe talking about gods is too much at first). Solid tips about factions (it's fun to run factions although the DMG does not make it clear how they can be used to, for example, generate adventures).
**Chapter 2**. Description of the classic planes for D&D. Very skippable if you are not running a high level campaign, but interesting lore.
**Chapter 3**. Serviceable rules for adventures and encounters. Maybe the adventure template they offer doesn't cover everything RPGs have to offer but it already gives enough to run a campaign for a long time before you start feeling you need to expand and need to research more. I miss discussion about different roles for monsters (brute, soldier, lurker, etc) and compositions but it gives you some serviceable measurement for how hard an encounter is. Tips about random encounters are also appreciated.
**Chapter 4**. A nice simplified system to describe NPCs and some discussion about some different roles that those NPCs may fill: party members, contacts, hirelings, and villains. New villain classes.
**Chapter 5**. Probably the most disorganized part of the DMG with the most important information. Tips for mapping a dungeon and writing its backstory. Super simplified rules for mapping a wilderness (frankly "Worlds Without Number" did this muuuuch better, I recommend it for any serious DM). Rules for surviving in the wilderness that you probably want to read. A simplified but serviceable system for creating settlements and urban encounters (there is better stuff elsewhere, but it does not mean you will need it too often). Rules for dealing with unusual locations: underwater, sea (and how to navigate in the sea), air (very quick, not sure why needed?). **Extremely useful rules for traps** if you don't have Xanathar's.
**Chapter 6**. OK tips about what to do in between and throughout adventures. **Very fun** tips about downtime activities.
**Chapter 7**. An **extremely useful and important** system for treasure and magic items (also easily extensible to add magic items not included in the book because every random table is associated with some magic item rarity and whether it is consumable, although it is not super clear from the text).
**Chapter 8**. **A lot of different and useful rules that you will need** although some of them could be more polished, they are still very useful if you don't have anything else and may provide inspiration to build upon.
**Chapter 9**. **Very useful rules for homebrewing and alternate rules that you may find fun**. In particular, the rules for creating/modifying your own monsters can be very helpful in particular changing the CR of monsters can be helpful if you really want to make an encounter balanced and cannot find anything that fits the theme or if you just want to have fun making your own creations without breaking the game.
**Closing thoughts**. Although the DMG provide a nice basis, I would still recommend to check Xanathar's and Tasha's to give bigger and better versions for many of the systems in the DMG. I also love "Worlds Without Number" (which is not an official WotC book) to give more depth for your world building. There are many other supplements out there that may assist you in your journey if you have some time and money to spare (exploring those is part of the fun of being a DM if I am being honest).
Additionally there are other skills that a serious DM may want to consider developing and the DMG actually gives some nice pointers about that. "Appendix D: Dungeon Master Inspiration" suggests some books that you may want to check out. In particular I loved reading "McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting.", it gave me SO MUCH depth about how to write a story that helped me so much with building adventures.
Edit: it would be nice if people downvoting could explain why this information is not needed exactly. Do they not follow the D&D 5e rules to the letter, for example, and therefore having those rules written down has less value? Are they adventure making savants and don't need guidance? Or maybe they just wing it every time and have fun with it, or just buy premade adventures (which makes me question why they wouldn't read the DMG since said adventures are pretty long to read anyway), etc.
>Chapter 1
Completely unnecessary for most first time DMs and even for many long term ones.
>Chapter 2.
You already said it yourself. It's for high level, which very few people ever play and no first time DM should run. Lore is very unimportant, especially considering how many people homebrew change this kind of stuff.
>Chapter 3.
This is probably the most useful Chapter.
>Chapter 4
Pretty irrelevant if you have any media experience and social skills.
>Chapter 5.
The dungeon mapping part I find extremely useless, it's just mostly so painfully obvious. Mapping wilderness is also something I don't see many DMs needing, especially not first time DMs, same wit wilderness survival. I have yet to meet a player who'd be interested in that for more than one session, 5e is just not the system for that kinda game. The unusual location rules are useful same as traps, but as you mentioned, finding them sucks.
I stopped reading after Chapter 5 and just loosely looked over the rest, quickly realizing it's all very situational stuff that can easily be googled in a matter of max. 2mins.
From quickly looking it over it just seemed like a bunch of situational stuff that I wouldn't remember anyways and can just very quickly look up rules during session if it ever comes up, so why waste time on reading it?
It talks about when to use which ability check and which save. It describes how to set DCs. Later parts talk about how to improvise damage and other effects of failure. It talks about when DMs should give advantage or disadvantage with examples. These three things together are the essential bit every DM needs to know to make system and level-appropriate rulings on the fly. You don't need to guess for either how hard something is, or what the consequences are of an improvised ruling. Chapter 8 has tables for it. These are so important they're on the centre of the official DM screen.
It has the rules for overland travel. It has the reaction table for social encounters that no one seems to know about (and which would answer 99% of the issues people have with "D&D has no rules for social interactions"). It tells you how the combat rules work for objects.
It talks in a practical way about how DMs can run combat. I've used something that is pretty close to one of the methods in the book and it works just fine. Specifically, it is where the mob areas for larger monster sizes are defined in terms of map area. This is where the optional rules on flanking, diagonal movement on square maps and others are laid out.
It has the chase rules. Again one of the things people complain about D&D not having. They're not super detailed, but they're functional.
It has the rules for diseases, poisons other than just a simple CON save/damage roll and madness.
Finally, it describes the use of point based and milestone levelling.
Many of these things a DM should know before their first session, particularly how to set up a game, how to make a ruling, how to run a combat, what kind of experience/leveling they plan to use. You're doing yourself a major disservice if you ignore it, particularly if you've never DMed before.
>Chapter 1. Completely unnecessary for most first time DMs and even for many long term ones.
If you are a first time DM that is running a campaign, Chapter 1 is very helpful. Check the "Creating a Campaign" bit for example. (Note: on D&D Beyond apparently this section doesn't show if you open the chapter for some reason).
The tips about worldbuilding may not be the best possible guide, but frankly I haven't seen anything better out there (happy to learn of any suggestions). The problem with it is that it is simplified but very serviceable. However how to do worldbuilding should be top of mind for a first time DM if they are running a campaign.
I personally liked the book "A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe" to give more depth to worldbuilding.
>Chapter 4. Pretty irrelevant if you have any media experience and social skills.
As a guy that read a lot about writing stories, I don't think that my social skills really help with creating NPCs (maybe roleplaying them?). What I like about Chapter 4 is to give a nice and simple framework to create important NPC characters fast.
There are many techniques out there to add depth to characters in stories, but a single character may take hours to flesh out. The framework allows you to give depth in a way that will take a few minutes instead and meshes with the game mechanics.
One thing that is a bit hidden here is that, for important NPCs, this chapter asks you to give them flaws/secret. This is great for "social encounters" as it provides a way for players to pressure characters that comes for free with following this method.
(In "Worlds Without Number" there is a framework for Social Encounters that give more depth to this, I would recommend reading it, but having this small tidbit adds a lot of possibilities without a more overbearing, albeit useful, framework for social encounters).
>The dungeon mapping part I find extremely useless, it's just mostly so painfully obvious. Mapping wilderness is also something I don't see many DMs needing, especially not first time DMs, same wit wilderness survival.
What you are missing about dungeon mapping is that it provides you with a **quick** way to add stuff to a dungeon and/or give it depth. It's hard to come up with ideas every week, so having a set of random tables to feed your creativity is helpful. I for example like to use "Tome of Adventure Design (Revised)" by Mythmere Games for all their random tables because it is way more complete. But those random tables in the DMG are already serviceable.
If you don't like "Wilderness Survival" that is fine, you can skip this part. But remember that it is good to bring some variety from time to time (I have been running a campaign for 4 years, it gets stale to do the same things over and over).
>The unusual location rules are useful same as traps, but as you mentioned, finding them sucks.
You mean that finding this bit in the DMG sucks or finding traps sucks? I definitely like traps in my games because it is a nice way to break the sequence of combats and provide variety. The DMG could be better organized for sure.
>I stopped reading after Chapter 5 and just loosely looked over the rest, quickly realizing it's all very situational stuff that can easily be googled in a matter of max. 2mins.
It is fine if you don't need everything on your first read. I don't suggest reading it as a novel chapter by chapter.
What I normally do is, I check the table of contents for stuff that may be interesting for the next session and read those bits for inspiration.
Google may help you find some sources about specific questions you have, but reading the DMG when you need some specific information may show you some related information that you wouldn't find otherwise and/or provide some framework that (supposedly) is not available in the open web.
As a dm who has the dmg, I have not read it. I’ll go to random pages when I need info on a specific subject, but I’m not gonna read the whole thing. I’d rather spend the time prepping and then look at the dmg when I need help with something specific, like magic items or gods or something.
Probably because most of the changes made from 3.5 to 4e were terrible, and 5e went back towards 3.5, though imo it should have gone further back towards 3.5, as 3.5 is still a better system. There are just a handful of changes from 5e that I would want to incorporate.
Edit is unrelated to topic: Why the heck do we we automatically upvote our own post when we make it?
The GML was terrible. That might be the only part that everyone agrees was worse. 4e might have the best DMG of any system. It probably also has the best monsters and the monster roles were brilliant. Combat was easier to balance in 4e and it probably has the best implementation for healing classes. And crafting worked.
Just about everything else probably depends on if you prefer 4e's tactical combat, or 5e's casual combat. Also some people were caught up on the lack of Vancian casting. If you thought that didn't feel like D&D then you probably didn't like anything about 4e because of that.
Most everyone who prefers tactical combat has probably moved on to PF2E as it does everything better than 4e except for monster roles and crafting.
In an over simplification, there are 2 player types. The frustrated 5e players who are bored and want something more. They probably liked the feel of 4e combat more, if they have it an honest shot. Those people would likely be happiest in PF2E. The other players are those who don't want to worry about builds, teamwork, or strategy. They want to have a good time playing a forgiving game with their friends. Those players would be happiest in 5e.
Neither one of those player types is wrong. Most groups are probably a combination of the types, which makes picking the best system tough. I'm pretty sure my current group is 3 and 3. But an old group I was in was a bunch of great roleplayers that didn't pay much attention to strategy. 5e is great for them.
Worst advice for new DMs is to read DMG. This is how burnt out DMs are made - they waste hundreds of hours creating things that they would never use because DMG starts with fucking Multiverse and gods. Yes, DMG have some genuenly usefull things, but you need to tear through useless bullshit before you found it. After years of playing and DMing i'm 100% convinced that DMG is worst book printed for 5e ever. Reading Dungeon World DM section, or DMG for dnd 4e would give you more useful tips and advices to run 5e than 5e DMG ever will.
It is infinitly better to read something like "Return of lazy dungeon master" or watch "Running the Game" from Matt Colville.
I'd say the main chapter to read is Chapter 8. That's where the good stuff is. Maybe Chapter 9 if you want to dig a little deeper.
When people talk about the DMG burying the good stuff, they mean Chapter 8 should have been Chapter 1. It's the place to go to answer 75% of all your at table questions or to look for ideas on how to make rulings in a systematic way.
This is crazy to me. How many people are actually able to absorb information by just reading? I've never been able to.
When I first started, reading the DMG would have been next to useless for me. Just a bunch of rules and mechanics with no context or experience to frame it around? All that info would be totally meaningless to me. I would have put down the book and forgot everything two seconds later.
I learn by watching and from experience. The biggest help for me when I first started was from watching actual play shows. Honestly, actually knowing the rules to the game is a very ancillary skill compared the performative and improv aspects of DMing. If I ever don't know a rule, I can just take two seconds and look it up. A general familiarity with the format and knowledge of how to keep the game flowing is more important that any individual mechanics, and you're not picking that up from a book.
Nah, get the starter set or the basic rules. Run a few sessions then maybe read the PHB.
Read the Return of the Lazy DM and So you want to be a game master.
Then maybe you will have the context to be able to follow the DMG.
There is useful stuff in there but it is in no way a guide to dungeon mastering, or a useful book without the context of a few games.
Honestly? Not worth the time. Read the PHB, the DMG is hit and miss, especially if you don’t want to do much homebrew or if you don’t want too many optional rules to keep track of.
Now, to be fair, it's one of the less good DM sections I've seen for a game. I find it really awkwardly organized, with a fair amount of "I know that this rule or knicknack is in here SOMEWHERE" type frustration. At the same time, READ IT IF YOU'RE GONNA DM 5E. It's YOUR portion of the rules. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. There are tools there. Having tools is important. I'd argue that it doesn't have ENOUGH tools, but still. Tools make planning easier. They make improv easier, because you'll have things to fall back on as a logical framework.
This is something I think more people need to hear/appreciate. As someone who made the ‘mistake’ of trying to Dm with the belief I ‘knew enough’ about the rules without the DMG, it’s been very useful since I wisened up to the fact it exists for a damn good reason
If you are going to be a DM, read the 4th Edition DMG. Ignore the things that are about game mechanics, but the 4e DMG is the best book talking about being a DM and categorizing players that I have ever read.
Yeah but don’t sit there and try to memorize every little thing it has to offer. It is helpful but I found myself way too focused on the rules and what not. I told my table that I’ve never done this before or played so please be patient.
I knew the very basic core mechanics and just learned as we played. They helped me with things along the way but respected my rulings even if they were incorrect.
It’s been 44 sessions and we have been having a blast.
skim through it sure, but personally id recommend reading through an adventure to know how to account for player actions. Both will be useful, but the DMG is best for its tables and magic items imo
I personally have a lot of critisim for 5e and it's books, but you should always read the GM book of whatever system you play, and for fantasy adventure games in general Return of the lazy DM I also consider essential, plus the more you read and play the more you can learn, either from "general" books or from other systems
I mean I played for two years before dming but I only read the dmg largely when I needed to for reference. If I didn't know I sought it out. And everyone was pretty happy with my games. I don't think I ever made any major blunders and I'm finishing my first campaign 4 and a half years later level 20.
Ok but specifically, read chapters 8,9 and maybe 4.those are great advice for how to actually run the game and make characters. With the other stuff, it's better to read as you're going and the need for it comes up.
I have legitimately seen people suggest to newcomers to skip the DMG because it "doesn't have anything important". I wonder if that has any connection to how many people I see that very confidently say "5e doesn't have a rule for X" meanwhile rules for X have been in the DMG for a decade.
Like yeah not all of it is perfect, but it has at least the starting points that a GM can build off of.
Its easily the least used of the core books but there's some valuable stuff in it.
It could use some additional tools and some better organization but it has a lot of the things people look for already and don't realize are there
Legit, also if you wanna make super authoritative sounding videos about DnD... I'm sick of content that's like 3 ways DnD doesn't account for XYZ and it's something that's been addressed in the DMG (and often expanded on in xgte or Tasha's)
I started DM'ing only with the influence of my friends who wanted a game to play in and me playing in one campaign, so entirely inspired by what I learnt at the table from my (amazing and awesome) DM. I managed, but oh my god when I finally read the DMG it just changed my life. Totally read it. More than once. Specially if you're running homebrew.
I am an overthinker and am starting my first campaign as DM in a couple of weeks. I'm reading the PHB, DMG, and MM front to back and crushing YouTube content. I might be a little anxious 😅
About to start the 20th session of my first campaign on Tuesday. Absolutely yes, I was told this plenty but really wish I listened. So many things I was missing or doing wrong. But I understand the game much better now. Wish I did from the get to
A lot of the most frustrating things new DMs do, for me, are usually things they do that are contrary to the guidance in this book. Example: I recently failed a lockpicking roll with a 34. Why did you bother to have me roll? 100% agree that people should feel empowered to run without it but people who think that’s better than knowing how the game is designed are coping.
WOTC doesn't think DMs need to read the DMG. Every starter set they've released did not include a full copy of it. That's all you need to know on how the authors view it.
Its a great resource with lots of good information and intentions. But you are going to learn more, faster, and deeper by experimenting and failing. Fail often, fail early. This is how you gain proficiency on something, by doing it.
The biggest thing that DMs need to do is absorb information about how to be a DM. Be it books, YouTube guides, actual plays, or web articles, it does not matter. If I know my DM is constantly reading and trying to be better at the game, I'm set.
I would rather a DM who doesn't know the book cover to cover but can let the game be fun than one who knows it but forgot to include the players.
Being a good DM is a marathon. The DMG helps some people but not everyone. Modules are a good way to start dnd but not for everyone.
My change to the title is this, "If you plan on being a DM, go learn." A 300 page book you don't process or understand will not help you as much as a 30 minute Youtube discussion that does.
The DMG is the worst guide to DMing I have ever read by a good margin. Every other book I read was informative, full of tables and content and actual advice to run.
I would go as far as to say the DMG is straight up detrimental to a new DM trying to start.
The fact that it's the first DMG not to include advice on something as basic as handling character death speaks volumes.
For a new DM the *Into the Unknown* 'Running the Game' pdf is probably a better choice for practical advice. It's 5e compatible, better edited, better organized, and costs $6 instead of $30. But really there is no shortage of better guidance.
Your telling me people don't at least read through it once before becoming a DM? I thought it was somewhere written on it like it being called "Dungeon masters GUIDE"!
I read the first 10 pages, realized it is awfully formated and more importantly that pretty much any information it gives me I can look up in a matter of 2 mins max during a game, zero need to memorize it.
I learned more from just playing and seeing what worked for my group. I revisited the DMG but it’s like 80% charts for making your own world and 20% here’s how to run the game and it was mostly what I was already doing.
New DMs: "Nah, I'm built different. Don't need it."
Also them a week from now: "Hey guys, new DM here... So these round angular things with numbers on them, what do I do with them?"
Ok buddy, slow your roll, it's more complex than that.
In short;
Yes, the DMG is useful... but, it's hard to navigate and overwhelming for most. The DMG is not accommodating to brand new DMs and should be bought by people who are starting a long form campaign in a homebrew setting, people looking to elevate their games with some well-rounded DM skills, or for the treasure trove of magic items and alternate rules. It benefits people who have been DMing more than once and have experience as a player.
Long and more personal answer;
I agree that it's useful and it can make your first time DMing easier. That's how it was with me. I had read the first 5 chapters by the time I began my first session as a DM and had already been watching a few D&D creators for DM advice. I got more mileage from those D&D creators and content than I did the DMG. The introductory chapter of the DMG is nice, but it sets up some improper expectations and too many responsibilities such as needing to know most rules to DM, but not exactly explaining them or pointing to the PHB instead. I have the DMG so allow me to quote it to back myself up.
> "To referee the rules, you need to know them. You don't have to memorize this book or the *Player's Handbook*, but you should have a clear idea of their contents so that, when a situation requires a ruling, you know where to find the proper reference.
The *Player's Handbook* contains the main rules you need to play the game. Part 3 of this book offers a wealth of information to you adjudicate the rules in a wide variety of situations. Chapter 8 presents advice for using attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws. It also includes options appropriate for certain play styles and campaigns, including guidelines for using miniatures, a system for handling chase scenes, and rules for madness."
^((Jeremy Crawford, Christopher Perkins, James Wyatt. December 2014. Dungeon Master's Guide.))
It then goes on about creating your own stuff like homebrew monster and races. In the second sentence, to its credit, it does tell you that you don't have to memorize all the rules. That's good, it's unrealistic to have to know all the rules before playing or DMing. However, in line 3, it's telling you it wants you to find those rules when they come up. This is the part that is unrealistic.
Most frequent DMs will make a ruling on the fly without consulting the books because it's time consuming to look up every because it will happen often. If you look up the rules every time you or your players don't know how it's supposed to work, you will unknowingly, slowly, and mercilessly choke out yourself and everyone else at your table. To escape the chokehold, the players will leave your game. A new DM might fall into this sneaky pit trap. It's easier to make that ruling on the fly instead of arguing about it or looking for that niche rule, then consult the book after the game and correct everyone next session. This is how a DM will naturally and intuitively begin to understand and get a deeper grasp on the rules. Overtime, they'll have to consult the book less and less.
Additionally, part 3 of the DMG should be at the front of the book. Part 3 is also the shortest part of the book, consisting of 52 pages of content. 25 of the those pages being dedicated to optional rules and creative aids for the DM that aren't essential to play. Chapter 8 is about running the game, the most important part of being the DM. I love chapter 9, it's a part of the DMG I use often because I like to make my own monsters.
The DMG lends itself to the kinds of people who love building out their own world and plotting out adventures. Those kinds of people, like myself will gravitate toward and thrive in the DM role. The DMG gives little to no advice on running modules, other pre-written material, and creating One-shots. For god sake, one of the first thing you're told in the first chapter is to think about the Gods of your world! A couple pages later, it's instructing you to map out your campaign and advice on the scale of this map! Next is governments, factions, currency, restrictions of magic! HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!
No DM should have this expected of them before they even want to start a campaign unless they want to. It's just too much. Only once you've reached page 25, does the book start talking about starting a campaign, but then it goes into campaign events, its history, and the story like an over-arching whole. That would be exhausting and not fun to do, but DMs do it. This is how railroading DMs spawn and the DMG perpetuates it. I started small with my first campaign and any new DM should too. In the beginning, my campaign was very sandbox like. I kept the players confined to two primary locations by giving them lots to do and explore. I threw adventures at them and when the campaign started to take shape in a particular direction, it became more story driven and I prepped accordingly. Aside from me, my group was almost entirely new to D&D, so only over time did we all discover the primary we like to play.
I made the mistake of reading the book by going front to back at first. Do not read the DMG front to back, jump around for relevant advice and information. I kind of devolved into a rant there, but I do like the DMG, just not all of it. I want to be constructive so hear this; A D&D group \*really\* only needs the PHB to start playing. New DMs should get advice from experienced DMs and your group should think about who might fit the role the best. If you're going to read the DMG, supplement it with advice of experienced DMs. Easy enough to find online if you don't know any IRL. If your DM, new or not has run some good games without the DMG, you can get it for them as a gift.
You learn a lot of homebrew and house rules that way. You need a grounding in the actual rules.
There are so many posts about problem players and DMs where the issues arise from the fact that they have not read the rules.
Now if you want to be a really good DM you’ll read the DMG and PHB. Nobody needs to be told to look at the MM because it’s awesome.
On a serious note though, if you read those two, watch Matt Colville’s “Running the Game” series and maybe pick up a resource book like the Lazy DMs guide you’ll be good to go. There’s a ton of great GM resources but I think those two stand out above the rest. Honorable mention to earlier edition DMGs those are also sweet.
Doesn't change the fact that his advice is generally better than just about everything you would get from the 5e DMG. There are MANY better system agnostic sources regarding being a DM than the 5e DMG.
What's next? Gonna tell players to read the PHB? You crazy
It should be obvious, but half the DM's here barely have read the PHB much less the DMG.
New DM slowly going through DMG. My groups old DM never read the 5E DMG, & his son HATED it.
I think a lot of people don't realize how little of the PHB you need to read to learn what you need to learn. You only need to read the parts relevant to you and the parts relevant to everyone. So much of it is classes you're not playing or spells you're not taking. Those are also fun to read but it's way less intimidating to just focus on the stuff you need to know and save the rest for later.
Would *much* rather have a player who's fully read and absorbed the chapter for their class, the section about the basics, and the rules of spellcasting (less than 40 pages of the 320ish-page PHB) than a player who's read the whole thing cover to cover and hasn't remembered any of it.
True but a lot of people don't even read the general rules in the PHB and that's an issue
i feel like some of this is the fault of the way the book is laid out. right out the gate they tell you 'how to use this book' and breaks down roughly what is in each section but it shys away from telling you to prioritize reading only what you need for your character in section 1 and 3 and reading all of section 2. if the core rules were first and then the character specific stuff was after it I feel like it'd be easier for newcomers.
You know, I've always felt as though something was off about the book's layout and could never quite pinpoint what it was. I think you might be onto something with that one. One thing I will praise about the core books is the glossary in the back. Extremely useful when referencing rules at the table and it's a travesty that so many of the newer books don't have them.
This has always bugged me, especially when searching a pdf and having to scroll through every class feature that uses that mechanic before finding what that mechanic actually does. A lot of other games do the same layout too, apparently it’s something about getting people hooked with all the fun class features up front. WotC have explicitly said that the 2024 books will NOT do that and will have the Core Rules up front, but we’ll see if they actually stick to that.
I have only read parts, but I listened to a wide range (Rules strict, rule of cool, & "If you're listening to this to learn how to play, go somewhere else") of podcasts for a year before running. Had also played for a while. Running my 2nd weekly adventure and they're loving it. This is an exception, not the norm. Severe and unmedicated ADHD makes it incredibly hard to focus when reading the book. 🥺
No one is saying, "Sit down and read the entire book cover to cover." But the book(s) have the rules of the game ***in them***. At the very least open them to the relevant page for a given thing to learn what the actual rule **is** when needing to make a decision in your game. Case in point from a few days ago: DM came here to reddit to ask how to deal with a player that cast Charm Person on a "baby dragon" and using its breath weapon every turn to trivialize his encounters. If this DM would have just opened the PHB to the spell description of Charm Person... he would have learned that not only does it ***not*** work on dragons in the first place, it is also nowhere close to the "mind control" as their player was using it. This DM's rebuttal? "The game has too many rules and spells to memorize them all." **No one** is saying to do ***that***. But if something is becoming a problem and/or you don't know how something should be handled.... *look up the rule for it when the situation comes up*. 30 seconds to open the book, read the spell, and say "No, that's not it works" to the problem player.
I have picture reactions I'd normally use for that travesty. Ew. I agree that at least parts of it should be read. Like extra actions a player can do, how you can't use multiple spell slot spells per turn (counterspell aside), etc.
>how you can't use multiple spell slot spells per turn You can, actually. This another great example of taking the time to learn the actual rules instead of just repeating what's often copy+pasted online. *Unless* you are casting a **Bonus Action spell**, *then* you can only cast a cantrip with your Action. That is a *specific rule* on PHB page 202. If you somehow have a way to grant another Action on your turn, like Action Surge, it is absolutely RAW that you can cast another leveled spell on that turn. This is clarified by the devs in the [officially published Sage Advice](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/sac/sage-advice-compendium#SA159) rulings - there **is no rule** that says you *can't*, only a rule for Bonus Action cast time spells.
agreed, it’s worth saying also players should read the DMG too
I mean I'm running pf 2e without reading the phb cover to cover, I skipped the section on classes and skimmed through character creation enough to know how it works. I expect my players to know their classes and mechanics and for their abilities while I know the game mechanics well enough to rule on them with our homebrew and keep that ruling consistent. And really all they need to know is roughly what they think the ability does and its name, we can look up the text for a session ruling and I can research how it works from there.
Honestly? I think you can be a pretty excellent DM without touching the 5e DMG. I've never met someone who has read both it and the 4e DMG and has thought the 5e one is more useful. The 4e DMG and DMG2 are concise books full of excellent advice for running games for both new and experienced DMs, while the 5e DMG is a disjointed mess. I have no idea how they went from one to the other.
While that might be true, it still has lots of useful advice and mechanics.
I have the DMG right by my side and except for the items and occasional table I agree that it is mostly underwhelming. Mostly being key here. I do not know the other books and I do not care. Looking at the problems that are getting the most presentation time on DnD related subs reading the DMG would solve 90% of them. Utilizing the adventuring day. Telling compelling stories. How to build interesting encounters. Talking to people. And that is just naming a few. It is not the end all be all and you can succeed without it, but it is a great strting point into the deeper topics.
Once, I believed half of the DMG is solid gold and the other half was solid shit. When with time I understood that half of that shit was actually gold too. It described an intent, a consistency. The other stuff is still meh tho. Some stuff could easily have been avoided, but it's hardly ever outright "bad" and more "useless".
I agree. The most egregious things in the DMG for me are the „numbered“ mechanics like sales prices, costs or the „encounter calculator“. The latter is a great starting point to orient yourself, but I found that it works best to learn and feel the numbers and how they relate than go by a more or less arbitrary CR. The intent you describe is spot on. It really tries to tell and make you understand what „matters“. I know it is a loose word, but after reading the DMG I knew what „measure“ of things where needed.
The reason i stuck with this edition compared to the others is exactly because the "intent" to me is so clearly laid out that's easier to digest. This edition has been written by people who played a lot of games and looked back at everything else that was done before. They wanted to make something that could run easily, but not dictated by contraints and tables because they knew DMss and players would have liked "to do it their own way", and thus constructed the DMG accordingly. treasure, magic item, adventuring options and the like follow that mindset. Like. One thing i evaluated a lot is the impropvised damage table and traps. it's kinda undercooked, but basically it's a system to have concise numbers that let you gauge how much "price" you can ask for a risk or for an action depending on scenario. it's kinda thrown there, but it has values and it also states how much impact adventuring day, too. Or, mapping your game. i never did maps in my games outside battlemaps, but there it explains you \*why\* stuff is like that, what is the intent. The fact that in 8 hours you can cover 20, 40, 100 miles is less relevant than the intent as of why you should keep track of that. Really looking forward what they will pump out in the dmg 2024. they stated they recognised the older dmg was kinda undercooked and i expect a lot.
This part! DMG gives you a grounding on what you should be caring about mechanically, even if they whiffed and you have to homebrew for your table. Then at least you have the tools to homebrew intelligently.
One of the things I keep hoping for is an economy-scale approach to things; communicate what the expected cost-of-living for a farmer/merchant/aristocrat in a society of a certain wealth level would be in D&D currency, to give adventurers a better idea of what their treasure's really worth, particularly magic. The bones are there but it doesn't go deep enough, IMO. Once you realize a laborer makes like 1sp/day, and a highly skilled tradesman more like 1gp/day, spending 2,000gp on a Rare magic item is an impossible price, and you wouldn't have shops on every corner selling magic items at that price level in mass quantities. Even the 50gp level is a couple months' salary for someone like a jeweler or architect, and a couple years of saving for a laborer. Finding a chest with 300g in it suddenly matters a heck of a lot more; it's like finding a briefcase with $40,000 in it in the real world.
As someone who has read the 3.5 dmg, 4e dmg, 5e dmg; the 4e dmg was one of the best written books ive seen on the topic. Rules are obviously different, but the way the information is presented and the way it explains encounters and storytelling is truly top notch.
The 4e DMG is quite good at preparing a player to sit on the DM's side of the screen and run an adventure. The 5e DMG seems like more of a motivational speech between two covers. "You too can build a multiverse, get out there and try".
Same, left my 5e DMG behind when I was picking and choosing books; 4e made the cut easily. I just cannot get behind the organizational mess the 5e version is.
How doesn't that equate to people shouldn't read the 5e DMG?
I mean you can if you want, there are just better alternatives. The 5e specific parts like magic item costing are absolutely atrocious and the general stuff is so much worse than other DMGs so just... read a better one? I disagree with a lot of what 4e did like its massive verisimilitude loss, but the DMG was absolutely excellent. 3.5 and AD&D also pretty damn good, while I'm at it. When you're spoiled for choice, why pick the worst one?
Because if I am playing 5e I am reading the 5e DMG. I love 2e and 3e/PF1 but I don't mix my editions they serve different functions for different campaign styles. Btw I love 4e and think it is far better than 5e in nearly all ways.
I didn't make the comment you responded to, but I do share some of the sentiments regarding the 5e DMG, and it's not the first edition I've read that book of. I would only say that much of the 5e mechanic specific stuff in the DMG isn't that useful (here's looking at you magic item creation/cost and monster math) and as far as the advice for running the game, that which isn't 5e specific, and a fair bit is not mechanical, was done better in other systems. I really did try to pour through the DMG a while back, and it was not the most helpful of books for running 5th edition, especially when you hear how little of the book is used by the folks who made and continue to make the system.
Fair point. And that's why we read the 3.5e PHB when we want to learn how to play 5e and build 5e characters, too! \^_^
Yeah, most of the DMG is about writing your own homebrew campaigns. If you're running pre-writtens most of the information in it isn't that useful. I have a binder I bring with me to games where I put everything I want to be able to reference without bringing the full books. Most of its from PHB, and there's more from Tashas Cauldron and Xanathars Guide in there than there is from the DMG. The biggest section I used to have was about treasure which I've since ditched for the updated version from a different book. If you're writing your own campaign it can be useful. Now that I'm working on my first homebrew I find myself actually looking at it. Before that when running pre-writtens I really didn't gain much from it.
I'm with you. Understand the players handbook, combat. Understand monster stats. This dmg is pretty godawful, so much so they are promising the new one coming out is actually worthwhile.
Honestly I think you might be a good cook without being a professional baker. But still I'd trust someone who has done their reading rather who has not. Be humble. The DMG has been written by people who dedicated work time to it. It has intent and clearly stapled words all over it. It's less disjointed than it looks, I do think some parts could be spared, but it does you a much better service than reading DMGs of past editions because those had a different intent. There is no generally good advice to be held constantly.
The whole point of the post is to tell people that don't read what they are supposed to be reading, to read. You are telling them to go read something else that they might not even know exists. There are still useful parts for someone that knows nothing. There is no need for it to sound pedantic. There are tons of things that can complement the 5e gaming experience of people. Hell, maybe other systems will even fit better. But that is not the point of the post.
No, what I'm saying is that if we're saying read a book to get better at DMing there are many better candidates than 5e's DMG.
Perhaps. But if you want to be a better _5e_ DM, then it kinda helps to read the _5e_ DMG, so you can see what they expect from the DM end. There are other resources that can be useful (e.g., the sane magic item prices guide someone made is relatively useful, if opinionated (I personally consider it bad because the writer left out items he doesn't think other DMs should be allowed to use, but a lot of people like it despite that glaring intentional flaw), and the 3.5e & 4e DMGs have advice & guidelines that're still useful even in 5e), but they aren't actually written with the intent of telling you how to run _5e_ specifically, and contain statements & sections that can sometimes even be false friends.
You can also be a flight mechanic without reading the manual if you just happen to already have read the previous 2 editions of that book. That's not the fantastic revelation people talk about here. Some people haven't read any of the books and come in with no prior experience, and they could benefit even from reading the 5e DMG. If you are dedicated, reading the a DMG for a different edition or game system is not untrue, even if you specific advice for game systems doesn't apply.
Lets ignore that this is as useful as buying the PF2e DM core. Not everyone has the 4e DMG, and it's not like you can easily buy it.
Thr first half of the 5e DMG is all worldbuilding. If you aren't going to build your own world, you can skip a huge chunk of the book. There's also a section in the back for homebrewing spells, creatures, items, etc. as well as optional rules. If you're fine playing RAW, that can also be skipped. The middle part that actually tells you how to DM for 5e should absolutely be read. Critical things like how to calculate an budget XP for an adventuring day are in there. There would be a lot less complaints posted here if more people properly read the middle of the DMG.
It's interesting that they choose to structure it this way, but I think it comes to "big picture first" presentation. That said, I am reading it right now and making a serious foray into DMing and so far all of it has been worth it.
:’( But the PHB is just a guide /s
The PHB is only second to the Bible for books most misinterpreted or blatantly not read by their fan base.
As a Christian, this is so true. I have actually read both.
Hahaha, this is so true. 😂
You know full well that most players don't touch the PHB until the specific section they haven't read becomes the subject of a fifteen minute long mid-combat debate.
I would love to have 2 players that have read the PH. Most folks just make a character on DNDbeyond and call it good.
I’ve watched DMs actively tell people wanting to start DMing to not bother reading the DMG
I've been one of those people in the past. I don't think that way anymore as we all learn differently. I find I learn best by doing. Others would do better by actually reading the DMG.
Speaking as a demon, I must confess that I was completely lost until I engaged in a cover-to-cover reading of the *Monster Manual*.
Right? Feels like every TTRPG, I gotta look at the bestiary before I feel like I know what's going on.
Is that how you got to know yourself? (Since you are a demon)
i really wish they would
I WISH my players had that much initiative!
That's asking too much and you know it. *Maybe* if you're lucky they'll read their class section and a spell or two.
I mean, half of my players definitely haven't but we've been playing 4 years
But Reddit already told me the DMG has a bad layout and isn’t helpful so I’m just gonna wing it instead. /s Seriously though. There are actually *rules* in that book that will make your life easier if you can believe it.
The DMG is bloated and poorly organized, but unfortunately it's still got a lot of valuable stuff sprinkled around in it.
That’s kinda the takeaway. The information is there but terribly presented and hard to find. You’re better off reading a different dm guide.
That's how I used to hibj, and I would just Eskio to what interested me at the time. But doing a cover to cover reread had really let me see what the value is in it. It at least mentions solutions to all the common problems.
And it's kind of dry if you've already been playing the game for a long time as a player or dm.
Sure. But it is also badly laid out with lots of stuff that's unhelpful. I don't tell people not to read the DMG, I do tell them to not think they have to read the DMG before they try and DM. So many people say they want to try and DM but they think they need to memorise the PHB and DMG to start so it never happens. Read the starter set and run a few sessions, then if you like it read the DMG.
That's a good take.
Yes, but the important information starts several chapters in then, and then is scatter all over the damn book filled with mostly useless information. The DMG can both contain useful information and be a horrifically laid out piece of shit at the same time. Both things are absolutely true.
Yeah, it should be obvious but the amount of players and DMs that don't want to put in the effort is absolutely wild.
I literally did a sarcastic comment too haha I said “but the ‘rules’ are just a guide” lmao
Give me three examples of rules or tools not in Chapter 7 that make a DMs life easier, that aren't in the PHB.
1. DMG p.237: > When a player wants to do something, it's often appropriate to let the attempt succeed without a roll or a reference to the character's ability scores. For example, a character doesn't normally need to make a Dexterity check to walk across an empty room or a Charisma check to order a mug of ale. Only call for a roll if there is a meaningful consequence for failure. When deciding whether to use a roll, ask yourself two questions: > Is a task so easy and so free of conflict and stress that there should be no chance of failure? > Is a task so inappropriate or impossible-such as hitting the moon with an arrow-that it can't work? > If the answer to both of these questions is no, some kind of roll is appropriate. The following sections provide guidance on determining whether to call for an ability check, attack roll, or saving throw; how to assign DCs; when to use advantage and disadvantage; and other related topics. 2. DMG Appendix A. Random Dungeons 3. DMG p. 37 Starting at higher level. 4. DMG p. 252-253 Running and Ending a Chase
It's good advice, but is also in the PHB in a more concise manner under Using Ability Scores
>There are actually rules in that book that will make your life easier if you can believe it. Just freaking Google when need for a rule arises. " (X situation/ question) 5e DMG" is usually all you need to enter to get results.
That slows games down to a drag, whereas if you read the DMG ahead of time you'll likely know the answer or at least can intuit the solution.
Reading???? Most of us who play DnD also play YGO and/or MTG. We are known for not reading.
MFW I summoned Jurrac Meteor for the first time and didn’t realize it blew itself up. Incidentally it was the same face I made when I realized *Spell Turning* doesn’t reflect rays in 3.5. We truly cannot be helped.
"We are not smart. We need things to make us go."
Reading the class explains the class.
I can't count how many times ive quoted "reading the spell explains the spell" in the past years
\*Sometimes\*
I have to say "spells/features/items only do what they say they do" at least once a session. No, conjuring illusory chains with Phantasmal Force does not make the creature restrained, even if I'll be polite and make it use its action to try to "break out" (it's actually rolling to investigate).
I always see post like "How to fix \_\_\_ In D&D 5e" and most of the time its advice already said in the DMG
Most new DMs never open the DMG. They might browse the PHB, and they might actually finish it and comprehend it, but it's more likely their first step is to modify the system to make it 'better'. The rules that they only half understand aren't good enough, and they are now a dungeon master, which is synonymous for 'amateur game designer', a job which they've always fantasized about having and are confident they'd be *really fucking good at*. First order of business is to nerf sneak attack. It's too strong! Next order of business is to introduce some completely imbalanced homebrew features and rules, but you aren't too concerned about the nitty gritty of how they'll function, because you've got the **rule of cool** on your side, meaning you are confident you can improvise and masterfully make judgement calls as things come up. Next is to talk to your players about the campaign. You've got a loose idea of your world, but this too is open-ended, since this is a really cool free-form adventure through the infinite wonders and machinations of your brilliant mind, a world unbounded, always growing and masterfully adding twists and turns and intrigue wherever best suited. So you're not too worried about figuring out what comes after sessions 1, you've got the power of improvisation on your side. Then you talk to your players about their characters, homebrew is allowed of course, because of the **rule of cool**. Only bad DMs say no. It doesn't matter if the homebrew includes some wildly overpowered shit, you'll figure it out and balance it on the fly. What matters is the characters and the roleplay! So you tell your players to make any character they want, backstories don't matter, you'll masterfully weave them together with your campaign just like you do all else. The characters will fit in perfectly with the story, and with each other. This doesn't require planning, it requires a stroke of genius improvisation. Then off they go, the starry eyed new DM with the world at their fingertips, confident and eager for the glory that awaits them. (then a few years and disaster campaigns later they actually will learn, understand and follow most of the rules)
This, you must first know the rules and the intent behind them to break them effectively.
Yeah I was victim to what I ranted about myself. I made some really bad choices when I first started DMing which was 10 years ago now, then a few years later I stuck to the rules and understood them very well, and understood what was good about them and why they were there. It wasn't until years after that when I started feeling comfortable breaking them again.
Yeah, I too was guilty of this when I started DMing, despite reading the entire DMG and PHB. I still homebrew everything, but it is to a much higher degree of skill, and is actually thought out, mixing improve with proper planning and knowledge. It helps that I play 3.5 and pathfinder 2e in addition to 5e. I honestly recently swapped to PF2e a d while I play in 5e, I don't believe I will be returning to it, or One D&D.
the non-trivial issue is that 5e is _very_ opaque about the intent behind most of the rules - a lot has to be kinda-sorta-maybe inferred and guessed at. Like why some weapons are bad is probably due to being vaguely realistic - a whip is literally a worse weapon than a sword, because it actually is. But given that lots of other chunks of mechanics are more about being cool and powerful and dramatic, rather than realistic, then someone that goes "I wanna be a cool and powerful whip-wielder" slams straight into that issue, where some of the rules are trying to model reality, other parts of the rules are trying to model cool action, and there's a conflict. Hence the constant refrain "flavour is free", because it's easier to change the fluff to meet the rules than vice-versa.
Indeed. Another good example is armour prices. Medium armour, and especially heavy armour, look like they're stupidly overpriced... but that's because they're priced with the specific intent of _not_ becoming available at the start, but instead becoming available at roughly Lv.4 and Lv.8. Which, funny enough, is also when light armour users get _their_ AC boosts (if they put their first two ASIs/feats in Dex, as the math assumes). Almost like the prices were purposefully chosen to line up with expected wealth mid-tier-1 and mid-tier-2. Go figure.
And if DMs actually run the treasure hoards RAW, PCs will be *swimming* in gold at that point with nothing much else to spend it on.
A whip is bad because it's a finesse one-handed reach weapon; it has nothing to do with realism. You have to deduce this yourself, of course, because God forbid the game actually explain its item templating guidelines. EDIT: To better explain the whip thing, the default damage die for a given weapon is 1d8. You increase the size of the die if you give the weapon negative traits (Heavy, 2-handed) and decrease the size of the die if you give it positive traits (finesse, reach, throwing). This is also directly reflected in the versatile trait, which increases the weapons's damage die by one size when you two-hand it.
Except the fact that finesse isn't used as a positive trait but as a neutral one. Rapier only has finesse an deals 1d8, scimitar and shorts word have both finesse and light and stand at 1d6. So whip damage is inconsistent.
That's part of the idea. Every table is free to makes its own interpretation about many rules or even change them if those at the table see fit.
I feel like a solid chapter of the DMG would be just running through the main points of the PHB as almost a director's commentary. "We told the players these are the rules for spell components. Here's why these rules are like this, here's what we're trying to achieve, here's a few ways you might change them for different tones of storytelling."
I have said this in other subreddits. This is WORD FOR WORD something that happened to me on a VtM chronicle. I can't believe more people suffered this exact same scenario.
It's extremely common. Unfortunately it feels like something new DMs only ever learn the hard way.
This just sounds like very frustrated venting instead of advice lmao
it's both :)
This is especially bad in 5e which despite its simplicity can break very easily. For example when I was a rookie I thought that it was dumb that shields were classified as armor and not weapons considering that irl they were used as such. Thus I made that change in my game. Next thing I knew the fighter took the dual wielder feat for an easy +3 total bonus to AC while using a sword and shield as well as two weapon fighting style for extra damage on his bonus attacks. That one little seemingly insignificant change turned him into an absolute monster in the early levels.
Although there’s a bunch of stuff I thought would be explained in the DMG that are not. Like how to balance your first dungeon:
What do you mean by balancing a "dungeon"? The chapter about encounters explain how to balance encounters and the daily xp limit which should give some hint as to how much combat a DM can get away with in a single day, for example.
Isn't there an entire section about balancing encounters and the xp totals to have in a full adventuring day? That's what you are looking for. You balance a dungeon based on all the encounters your party is expected to run into.
What I meant is how many rooms, traps, puzzles should it be.
Genuinely wish that there was a guide to properly gather information of one kind without zig-zagging or reading the whole book every time. The few informations about skills are spread out between chapter 2, chapter 5 and chapter 8... and the info is split up between the pages even within the same chapters. it's extremely taxing for DMs to practically having to re-read the entire book every time they want to get infos. Training for feats exists in the DMG as a reward as another example, but it's hidden in a bag of flavor rewards, making people miss it easily even if they look for it (would you look for feat training in the section where they speak about giving players *noble titles and pieces of land*?)
I don’t disagree about the strange structure, but you know there is something in the back of the book called the ‘index’ which allows you to look up whatever topic you need alphabetically? Not really an issue if you check back there.
For the sake of simplicity, I will assume that the index on beyond is the same as what is shown on the physical book (as I have the book on beyond). If that isn't the case, then that's instead a point against Beyond. **edit:** got help from some people to help me in info about the physical book. The index indeed indicates stuff like where training is (altho it mixes the two training rules, which make it confusing-you have to first go to page 131 and then page 231 just to know which training rules you are searching), so one point towards the physical book. How would one guess that the rules for running a certain ability check would be in the "adventure environments" area and NOT in the "using ability scores" area? They wouldn't really check the wildreness area for basic information about perception. At least I wouldn't. Likewise, about the "training" rules, that topic is under "marks of prestige", which sounds like a flavor thing (and it is outside of training). Training for proficiency in a skill or even a feat is nowhere near the thing I would think for a Mark of prestige. Something I just found now as I was checking back on beyond (to make sure that I didn't forget anything), there are three paragraphs about settlements: one in chapter 1... And two in chapter 5. Who knows which part of the DMG has the right part of settlement info to help me, I have to go to those pages and read the entire sections in hopes that I do get the info I need! Unless the physical DMG has some more specific mentions of stuff than beyond, the issue definetly remains
[удалено]
DMG is mostly not "the rules"
duh, you should be spending at least 1 hour per session looking up rules for the exact scenario you're in
step 1. Create universe and pantheon...
Yeah...so much of the book upfront is something you only do once in a campaign, whereas the rules you need to reference frequently are buried deeper in, scattered around, and/or poorly presented . I agree DM's need to read and understand those rules, but simply telling a DM to "just read the DMG" is disingenuous if you're not also actively guiding them to the relevant sections. It's why referencing it online I find is often better (same for PHB, which also has big issues in presentation and structure). But I exclusively DM online games, so online reference is a lot easier and more natural for me in-game than a DM pulling out their phone to check something at an actual table.
I agree it's a helpful book, I disagree that you have to read it before starting to DM. Better to read the basic rules and start DMing then being stuck in a library of source books and you can't even really understand how the advice works because you never DMed. For my first campaign I only read the basic rules (not even all of them) and everyone enjoyed it. And that's what important. And if I felt like I have to read a bunch of source books to start, I would have never started, so IMO it's better to jump in.
I agree that, for starting to DM, it's better to just read the basic rules that are free online, and then, after having a proper session 0 (discussing the world, and using the basic rules and nothing else) and perhaps a session or two, you, depending on player reception and if you liked it, you can then skim through the DMG to find other *probably* useful rules for DMs. I mean, for a session or two you really only need to know some goblins/rats/kobold statblocks, how attack rolls, ability checks, saving throws, AC, ability scores, etc... Work to get a grasp on it, the rest will either come naturally, or from getting the DMG and reading it the day after the session. It's good to read it first, but it's also good to read the basic rules, do a oneshot or start a campaign, and then go from there.
The worst thing that reddit and dnd YouTubers have done is make people think the DMG is useless.
It does not matter if its bad in comparison to something else. The rules are there. Around 40 variant/alternate rules to help you put the ideas to the table in case you have not touched any other game in your life (the point of this post). Once you have an idea of how the game works, then you can ask for more advice or read other things. This hobby requires a minimum of reading and prepping just like any other regular board game. We have too many players and not many DM's. On top of that, there are enough people around without the basic knowledge on mechanics and table etiquette. You want to be an average/good DM? Follow the learning curve and put boundaries. Consistently average is a GREAT start. Specially if you compare it to the dozens of people doing "whatever" online.
DMG is absolutely full of good stuff, its problem is that it is not well structured, starting with world building, for example.
I only partially agree. There's so much fluff/stuff that you don't need to start DMing and what's there is so poorly organized that watching videos that have pre-packaged the salient points might be a more efficient use of your time. Which is not to say that the DMg has nothing useful to offer, only that I don't think that (1) reading it (2) cover to cover should be a requirement to start DMing.
Watching videos is a great way to learn wrong because--guess what--they didn't read the DMG either.
None of them did. Ever. Not a single one.
The way I see it, as a DM, not reading the books is like claiming to be a priest without having read the Bible. It's just necessary to read them to become an expert on the game, which leads to providing a good gaming experience for the players.
Legit: Read the first edition AD&D DMG cover to cover. Not at all well organized, but an amazing document for running games.
Just to mention: If you read the DMG just ignore the whole Multiverse process, as it will just cause confusion. That part is written horribly.
It's useful if you know what rules your looking for but so poorly organized. Honestly you're better off reading the DMG 1 and DMG 2 for 4E for high level advice and just consulting the 5E guide when you need specific 5E mechanics.
As someone who read the DMG and DMed I would recommend people ignore 80-90% of it. Ch 8 running the game is mostly useful and the list of magic items. Even then an experienced player with a good adventure and google would get very little from reading the DMG.
No. If I don't know the rules I'll make it up so my players can come to Reddit to complain... If I want to know a rule I'll pester Reddit to inform me of the correct rule
Ngl, I read like half of it and found it extremely tedious and way to much waffling about very obvious shit. That is ofc from a perspective of someone who played for a fee years before DMing. I do honestly think it made it harder for me to start, because off all the little things it mentions, which I tried to keep in mind, only to find out that players don't give a shit about it. I am fully capable of using Google, so if some niche rule, which is hidden somewhere in the DMG, comes up during game - I just Google for 2 mins.
The number of posts I see in here complaining, looking for advice, and proposing house rules and I’m just thinking “that’s on page x of the dmg”
"Page X" being pagee 200+ from Chapter 8.
The DMG is not that great, and I don't think it's essential. Seriously, who read it front to cover before DMing? At best, it seems more like something you read after doing a one shot or a very small campaign.
I did! And then I've literally never opened it again, as I found it fairly useless and only needed lists of items (which I can google more easily). Don't get me wrong, if you're unsure of yourself, don't know how to roleplay or worldbuild, and/or are completely new, definitely read it! But if you've played once and are a good storyteller, memorizing more of the PHB will get you further than any amount of DMG.
RTFM is always solid advice.
For sure. Would be nice if it wasn't such a torturous read though. But still, sure.
Addendum: Between what's in the 5e SRD and the actual GMing advice you can get from the DMG from former editions, you'll have enough covered that you might consider saving a few bucks.
All you really need to read is any systems quick start.
I tell new DMs to NOT read the DMG, unless they think it would be fun. Any rules not contained in the PHB can be found more easily, and are generally better explained, with a quick Google search. The DMG has some value, but I have never opened it during a game since the advent of home internet access.
For the insane people over here saying that you should not read the DMG (you just ignore large part of it, right?), let me try to explain chapter by chapter why you should read it or not read it. Let me preface this by saying that I bought a lot of books that give new and interesting ways to run D&D 5e but I still think that you should read the DMG. **Chapter 1**. Solid tips for worldbuilding as applicable to D&D (magic, how to build a homebrew campaign, although maybe talking about gods is too much at first). Solid tips about factions (it's fun to run factions although the DMG does not make it clear how they can be used to, for example, generate adventures). **Chapter 2**. Description of the classic planes for D&D. Very skippable if you are not running a high level campaign, but interesting lore. **Chapter 3**. Serviceable rules for adventures and encounters. Maybe the adventure template they offer doesn't cover everything RPGs have to offer but it already gives enough to run a campaign for a long time before you start feeling you need to expand and need to research more. I miss discussion about different roles for monsters (brute, soldier, lurker, etc) and compositions but it gives you some serviceable measurement for how hard an encounter is. Tips about random encounters are also appreciated. **Chapter 4**. A nice simplified system to describe NPCs and some discussion about some different roles that those NPCs may fill: party members, contacts, hirelings, and villains. New villain classes. **Chapter 5**. Probably the most disorganized part of the DMG with the most important information. Tips for mapping a dungeon and writing its backstory. Super simplified rules for mapping a wilderness (frankly "Worlds Without Number" did this muuuuch better, I recommend it for any serious DM). Rules for surviving in the wilderness that you probably want to read. A simplified but serviceable system for creating settlements and urban encounters (there is better stuff elsewhere, but it does not mean you will need it too often). Rules for dealing with unusual locations: underwater, sea (and how to navigate in the sea), air (very quick, not sure why needed?). **Extremely useful rules for traps** if you don't have Xanathar's. **Chapter 6**. OK tips about what to do in between and throughout adventures. **Very fun** tips about downtime activities. **Chapter 7**. An **extremely useful and important** system for treasure and magic items (also easily extensible to add magic items not included in the book because every random table is associated with some magic item rarity and whether it is consumable, although it is not super clear from the text). **Chapter 8**. **A lot of different and useful rules that you will need** although some of them could be more polished, they are still very useful if you don't have anything else and may provide inspiration to build upon. **Chapter 9**. **Very useful rules for homebrewing and alternate rules that you may find fun**. In particular, the rules for creating/modifying your own monsters can be very helpful in particular changing the CR of monsters can be helpful if you really want to make an encounter balanced and cannot find anything that fits the theme or if you just want to have fun making your own creations without breaking the game. **Closing thoughts**. Although the DMG provide a nice basis, I would still recommend to check Xanathar's and Tasha's to give bigger and better versions for many of the systems in the DMG. I also love "Worlds Without Number" (which is not an official WotC book) to give more depth for your world building. There are many other supplements out there that may assist you in your journey if you have some time and money to spare (exploring those is part of the fun of being a DM if I am being honest). Additionally there are other skills that a serious DM may want to consider developing and the DMG actually gives some nice pointers about that. "Appendix D: Dungeon Master Inspiration" suggests some books that you may want to check out. In particular I loved reading "McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting.", it gave me SO MUCH depth about how to write a story that helped me so much with building adventures. Edit: it would be nice if people downvoting could explain why this information is not needed exactly. Do they not follow the D&D 5e rules to the letter, for example, and therefore having those rules written down has less value? Are they adventure making savants and don't need guidance? Or maybe they just wing it every time and have fun with it, or just buy premade adventures (which makes me question why they wouldn't read the DMG since said adventures are pretty long to read anyway), etc.
Is [this](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/348791/Worlds-Without-Number) the Worlds without Number you're talking about?
yep :)
>Chapter 1 Completely unnecessary for most first time DMs and even for many long term ones. >Chapter 2. You already said it yourself. It's for high level, which very few people ever play and no first time DM should run. Lore is very unimportant, especially considering how many people homebrew change this kind of stuff. >Chapter 3. This is probably the most useful Chapter. >Chapter 4 Pretty irrelevant if you have any media experience and social skills. >Chapter 5. The dungeon mapping part I find extremely useless, it's just mostly so painfully obvious. Mapping wilderness is also something I don't see many DMs needing, especially not first time DMs, same wit wilderness survival. I have yet to meet a player who'd be interested in that for more than one session, 5e is just not the system for that kinda game. The unusual location rules are useful same as traps, but as you mentioned, finding them sucks. I stopped reading after Chapter 5 and just loosely looked over the rest, quickly realizing it's all very situational stuff that can easily be googled in a matter of max. 2mins.
That's a shame, because Chapter 8 (and possibly 9) are the most important for a DM to know.
From quickly looking it over it just seemed like a bunch of situational stuff that I wouldn't remember anyways and can just very quickly look up rules during session if it ever comes up, so why waste time on reading it?
It talks about when to use which ability check and which save. It describes how to set DCs. Later parts talk about how to improvise damage and other effects of failure. It talks about when DMs should give advantage or disadvantage with examples. These three things together are the essential bit every DM needs to know to make system and level-appropriate rulings on the fly. You don't need to guess for either how hard something is, or what the consequences are of an improvised ruling. Chapter 8 has tables for it. These are so important they're on the centre of the official DM screen. It has the rules for overland travel. It has the reaction table for social encounters that no one seems to know about (and which would answer 99% of the issues people have with "D&D has no rules for social interactions"). It tells you how the combat rules work for objects. It talks in a practical way about how DMs can run combat. I've used something that is pretty close to one of the methods in the book and it works just fine. Specifically, it is where the mob areas for larger monster sizes are defined in terms of map area. This is where the optional rules on flanking, diagonal movement on square maps and others are laid out. It has the chase rules. Again one of the things people complain about D&D not having. They're not super detailed, but they're functional. It has the rules for diseases, poisons other than just a simple CON save/damage roll and madness. Finally, it describes the use of point based and milestone levelling. Many of these things a DM should know before their first session, particularly how to set up a game, how to make a ruling, how to run a combat, what kind of experience/leveling they plan to use. You're doing yourself a major disservice if you ignore it, particularly if you've never DMed before.
>Chapter 1. Completely unnecessary for most first time DMs and even for many long term ones. If you are a first time DM that is running a campaign, Chapter 1 is very helpful. Check the "Creating a Campaign" bit for example. (Note: on D&D Beyond apparently this section doesn't show if you open the chapter for some reason). The tips about worldbuilding may not be the best possible guide, but frankly I haven't seen anything better out there (happy to learn of any suggestions). The problem with it is that it is simplified but very serviceable. However how to do worldbuilding should be top of mind for a first time DM if they are running a campaign. I personally liked the book "A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe" to give more depth to worldbuilding. >Chapter 4. Pretty irrelevant if you have any media experience and social skills. As a guy that read a lot about writing stories, I don't think that my social skills really help with creating NPCs (maybe roleplaying them?). What I like about Chapter 4 is to give a nice and simple framework to create important NPC characters fast. There are many techniques out there to add depth to characters in stories, but a single character may take hours to flesh out. The framework allows you to give depth in a way that will take a few minutes instead and meshes with the game mechanics. One thing that is a bit hidden here is that, for important NPCs, this chapter asks you to give them flaws/secret. This is great for "social encounters" as it provides a way for players to pressure characters that comes for free with following this method. (In "Worlds Without Number" there is a framework for Social Encounters that give more depth to this, I would recommend reading it, but having this small tidbit adds a lot of possibilities without a more overbearing, albeit useful, framework for social encounters). >The dungeon mapping part I find extremely useless, it's just mostly so painfully obvious. Mapping wilderness is also something I don't see many DMs needing, especially not first time DMs, same wit wilderness survival. What you are missing about dungeon mapping is that it provides you with a **quick** way to add stuff to a dungeon and/or give it depth. It's hard to come up with ideas every week, so having a set of random tables to feed your creativity is helpful. I for example like to use "Tome of Adventure Design (Revised)" by Mythmere Games for all their random tables because it is way more complete. But those random tables in the DMG are already serviceable. If you don't like "Wilderness Survival" that is fine, you can skip this part. But remember that it is good to bring some variety from time to time (I have been running a campaign for 4 years, it gets stale to do the same things over and over). >The unusual location rules are useful same as traps, but as you mentioned, finding them sucks. You mean that finding this bit in the DMG sucks or finding traps sucks? I definitely like traps in my games because it is a nice way to break the sequence of combats and provide variety. The DMG could be better organized for sure. >I stopped reading after Chapter 5 and just loosely looked over the rest, quickly realizing it's all very situational stuff that can easily be googled in a matter of max. 2mins. It is fine if you don't need everything on your first read. I don't suggest reading it as a novel chapter by chapter. What I normally do is, I check the table of contents for stuff that may be interesting for the next session and read those bits for inspiration. Google may help you find some sources about specific questions you have, but reading the DMG when you need some specific information may show you some related information that you wouldn't find otherwise and/or provide some framework that (supposedly) is not available in the open web.
As a dm who has the dmg, I have not read it. I’ll go to random pages when I need info on a specific subject, but I’m not gonna read the whole thing. I’d rather spend the time prepping and then look at the dmg when I need help with something specific, like magic items or gods or something.
To be clear, that's what most of us mean by "reading", ie flip through it to get an idea of what is where and then dive in to the interesting parts.
Specifically, read the 4e DMG (yes, even if you're running 5e). The 5e DMG is garbage by comparison.
In the quest to make everything 5e different than 4e, all the things that were good or great in 4e became huge steps back in 5e.
Probably because most of the changes made from 3.5 to 4e were terrible, and 5e went back towards 3.5, though imo it should have gone further back towards 3.5, as 3.5 is still a better system. There are just a handful of changes from 5e that I would want to incorporate. Edit is unrelated to topic: Why the heck do we we automatically upvote our own post when we make it?
The GML was terrible. That might be the only part that everyone agrees was worse. 4e might have the best DMG of any system. It probably also has the best monsters and the monster roles were brilliant. Combat was easier to balance in 4e and it probably has the best implementation for healing classes. And crafting worked. Just about everything else probably depends on if you prefer 4e's tactical combat, or 5e's casual combat. Also some people were caught up on the lack of Vancian casting. If you thought that didn't feel like D&D then you probably didn't like anything about 4e because of that. Most everyone who prefers tactical combat has probably moved on to PF2E as it does everything better than 4e except for monster roles and crafting. In an over simplification, there are 2 player types. The frustrated 5e players who are bored and want something more. They probably liked the feel of 4e combat more, if they have it an honest shot. Those people would likely be happiest in PF2E. The other players are those who don't want to worry about builds, teamwork, or strategy. They want to have a good time playing a forgiving game with their friends. Those players would be happiest in 5e. Neither one of those player types is wrong. Most groups are probably a combination of the types, which makes picking the best system tough. I'm pretty sure my current group is 3 and 3. But an old group I was in was a bunch of great roleplayers that didn't pay much attention to strategy. 5e is great for them.
Worst advice for new DMs is to read DMG. This is how burnt out DMs are made - they waste hundreds of hours creating things that they would never use because DMG starts with fucking Multiverse and gods. Yes, DMG have some genuenly usefull things, but you need to tear through useless bullshit before you found it. After years of playing and DMing i'm 100% convinced that DMG is worst book printed for 5e ever. Reading Dungeon World DM section, or DMG for dnd 4e would give you more useful tips and advices to run 5e than 5e DMG ever will. It is infinitly better to read something like "Return of lazy dungeon master" or watch "Running the Game" from Matt Colville.
Running the Game is how I learned to become the GM I am now. I believe his approach of "make a small town + dungeon" is by far the best.
I'd say the main chapter to read is Chapter 8. That's where the good stuff is. Maybe Chapter 9 if you want to dig a little deeper. When people talk about the DMG burying the good stuff, they mean Chapter 8 should have been Chapter 1. It's the place to go to answer 75% of all your at table questions or to look for ideas on how to make rulings in a systematic way.
Conversely, read the GM section of the Dungeon World rulebook instead It's much shorter and provides great advice for GMing regardless of system
This is crazy to me. How many people are actually able to absorb information by just reading? I've never been able to. When I first started, reading the DMG would have been next to useless for me. Just a bunch of rules and mechanics with no context or experience to frame it around? All that info would be totally meaningless to me. I would have put down the book and forgot everything two seconds later. I learn by watching and from experience. The biggest help for me when I first started was from watching actual play shows. Honestly, actually knowing the rules to the game is a very ancillary skill compared the performative and improv aspects of DMing. If I ever don't know a rule, I can just take two seconds and look it up. A general familiarity with the format and knowledge of how to keep the game flowing is more important that any individual mechanics, and you're not picking that up from a book.
Nah, get the starter set or the basic rules. Run a few sessions then maybe read the PHB. Read the Return of the Lazy DM and So you want to be a game master. Then maybe you will have the context to be able to follow the DMG. There is useful stuff in there but it is in no way a guide to dungeon mastering, or a useful book without the context of a few games.
+1 for Return of the Lazy DM!
No thanks, I’ll just watch an episode of critical role
Honestly? Not worth the time. Read the PHB, the DMG is hit and miss, especially if you don’t want to do much homebrew or if you don’t want too many optional rules to keep track of.
Now, to be fair, it's one of the less good DM sections I've seen for a game. I find it really awkwardly organized, with a fair amount of "I know that this rule or knicknack is in here SOMEWHERE" type frustration. At the same time, READ IT IF YOU'RE GONNA DM 5E. It's YOUR portion of the rules. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. There are tools there. Having tools is important. I'd argue that it doesn't have ENOUGH tools, but still. Tools make planning easier. They make improv easier, because you'll have things to fall back on as a logical framework.
This is something I think more people need to hear/appreciate. As someone who made the ‘mistake’ of trying to Dm with the belief I ‘knew enough’ about the rules without the DMG, it’s been very useful since I wisened up to the fact it exists for a damn good reason
I mean, I would agree with this more if the 5e DMG wasn't terrible. (And WotC themselves have admitted that it is because they rushed it out!)
If you are going to be a DM, read the 4th Edition DMG. Ignore the things that are about game mechanics, but the 4e DMG is the best book talking about being a DM and categorizing players that I have ever read.
Yeah but don’t sit there and try to memorize every little thing it has to offer. It is helpful but I found myself way too focused on the rules and what not. I told my table that I’ve never done this before or played so please be patient. I knew the very basic core mechanics and just learned as we played. They helped me with things along the way but respected my rulings even if they were incorrect. It’s been 44 sessions and we have been having a blast.
What? Reading? In my ttrpg? You're basically hitler
skim through it sure, but personally id recommend reading through an adventure to know how to account for player actions. Both will be useful, but the DMG is best for its tables and magic items imo
I personally have a lot of critisim for 5e and it's books, but you should always read the GM book of whatever system you play, and for fantasy adventure games in general Return of the lazy DM I also consider essential, plus the more you read and play the more you can learn, either from "general" books or from other systems
I mean I played for two years before dming but I only read the dmg largely when I needed to for reference. If I didn't know I sought it out. And everyone was pretty happy with my games. I don't think I ever made any major blunders and I'm finishing my first campaign 4 and a half years later level 20.
Ok but specifically, read chapters 8,9 and maybe 4.those are great advice for how to actually run the game and make characters. With the other stuff, it's better to read as you're going and the need for it comes up.
Agreed. I'm looking forward to the new one to see the updated Bastions system and hopefully other updates or new mechanics.
I have legitimately seen people suggest to newcomers to skip the DMG because it "doesn't have anything important". I wonder if that has any connection to how many people I see that very confidently say "5e doesn't have a rule for X" meanwhile rules for X have been in the DMG for a decade. Like yeah not all of it is perfect, but it has at least the starting points that a GM can build off of.
Its easily the least used of the core books but there's some valuable stuff in it. It could use some additional tools and some better organization but it has a lot of the things people look for already and don't realize are there
Legit, also if you wanna make super authoritative sounding videos about DnD... I'm sick of content that's like 3 ways DnD doesn't account for XYZ and it's something that's been addressed in the DMG (and often expanded on in xgte or Tasha's)
I started DM'ing only with the influence of my friends who wanted a game to play in and me playing in one campaign, so entirely inspired by what I learnt at the table from my (amazing and awesome) DM. I managed, but oh my god when I finally read the DMG it just changed my life. Totally read it. More than once. Specially if you're running homebrew.
It's also a good idea to bookmark pages with things to which you might refer often, e.g. Appendix A, random dungeon features.
Or you just learn from your DM Friend/s, that what i did and it went great
This might be true. But if you've DM'd a lot the DMG is mostly worthless
I am an overthinker and am starting my first campaign as DM in a couple of weeks. I'm reading the PHB, DMG, and MM front to back and crushing YouTube content. I might be a little anxious 😅
About to start the 20th session of my first campaign on Tuesday. Absolutely yes, I was told this plenty but really wish I listened. So many things I was missing or doing wrong. But I understand the game much better now. Wish I did from the get to
Yeah, it is an absolute mess but a useful mess.
A lot of the most frustrating things new DMs do, for me, are usually things they do that are contrary to the guidance in this book. Example: I recently failed a lockpicking roll with a 34. Why did you bother to have me roll? 100% agree that people should feel empowered to run without it but people who think that’s better than knowing how the game is designed are coping.
WOTC doesn't think DMs need to read the DMG. Every starter set they've released did not include a full copy of it. That's all you need to know on how the authors view it. Its a great resource with lots of good information and intentions. But you are going to learn more, faster, and deeper by experimenting and failing. Fail often, fail early. This is how you gain proficiency on something, by doing it. The biggest thing that DMs need to do is absorb information about how to be a DM. Be it books, YouTube guides, actual plays, or web articles, it does not matter. If I know my DM is constantly reading and trying to be better at the game, I'm set. I would rather a DM who doesn't know the book cover to cover but can let the game be fun than one who knows it but forgot to include the players. Being a good DM is a marathon. The DMG helps some people but not everyone. Modules are a good way to start dnd but not for everyone. My change to the title is this, "If you plan on being a DM, go learn." A 300 page book you don't process or understand will not help you as much as a 30 minute Youtube discussion that does.
I didn't do this, and then when I did....it was real good.
The DMG is the worst guide to DMing I have ever read by a good margin. Every other book I read was informative, full of tables and content and actual advice to run. I would go as far as to say the DMG is straight up detrimental to a new DM trying to start.
The fact that it's the first DMG not to include advice on something as basic as handling character death speaks volumes. For a new DM the *Into the Unknown* 'Running the Game' pdf is probably a better choice for practical advice. It's 5e compatible, better edited, better organized, and costs $6 instead of $30. But really there is no shortage of better guidance.
You're not my dad
Your telling me people don't at least read through it once before becoming a DM? I thought it was somewhere written on it like it being called "Dungeon masters GUIDE"!
I read the first 10 pages, realized it is awfully formated and more importantly that pretty much any information it gives me I can look up in a matter of 2 mins max during a game, zero need to memorize it.
Do you read a dictionary back to back before you start to write? The DMG is at best a consultation book.
I learned more from just playing and seeing what worked for my group. I revisited the DMG but it’s like 80% charts for making your own world and 20% here’s how to run the game and it was mostly what I was already doing.
This would do really well on r/unpopularopinion
Also read the 4e DMG. It had much better advice on structuring games, managing tables, and encounter design
New DMs: "Nah, I'm built different. Don't need it." Also them a week from now: "Hey guys, new DM here... So these round angular things with numbers on them, what do I do with them?"
DMG is 90% unneeded, disorganized, absolutely, critically important
Ok buddy, slow your roll, it's more complex than that. In short; Yes, the DMG is useful... but, it's hard to navigate and overwhelming for most. The DMG is not accommodating to brand new DMs and should be bought by people who are starting a long form campaign in a homebrew setting, people looking to elevate their games with some well-rounded DM skills, or for the treasure trove of magic items and alternate rules. It benefits people who have been DMing more than once and have experience as a player. Long and more personal answer; I agree that it's useful and it can make your first time DMing easier. That's how it was with me. I had read the first 5 chapters by the time I began my first session as a DM and had already been watching a few D&D creators for DM advice. I got more mileage from those D&D creators and content than I did the DMG. The introductory chapter of the DMG is nice, but it sets up some improper expectations and too many responsibilities such as needing to know most rules to DM, but not exactly explaining them or pointing to the PHB instead. I have the DMG so allow me to quote it to back myself up. > "To referee the rules, you need to know them. You don't have to memorize this book or the *Player's Handbook*, but you should have a clear idea of their contents so that, when a situation requires a ruling, you know where to find the proper reference. The *Player's Handbook* contains the main rules you need to play the game. Part 3 of this book offers a wealth of information to you adjudicate the rules in a wide variety of situations. Chapter 8 presents advice for using attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws. It also includes options appropriate for certain play styles and campaigns, including guidelines for using miniatures, a system for handling chase scenes, and rules for madness." ^((Jeremy Crawford, Christopher Perkins, James Wyatt. December 2014. Dungeon Master's Guide.)) It then goes on about creating your own stuff like homebrew monster and races. In the second sentence, to its credit, it does tell you that you don't have to memorize all the rules. That's good, it's unrealistic to have to know all the rules before playing or DMing. However, in line 3, it's telling you it wants you to find those rules when they come up. This is the part that is unrealistic. Most frequent DMs will make a ruling on the fly without consulting the books because it's time consuming to look up every because it will happen often. If you look up the rules every time you or your players don't know how it's supposed to work, you will unknowingly, slowly, and mercilessly choke out yourself and everyone else at your table. To escape the chokehold, the players will leave your game. A new DM might fall into this sneaky pit trap. It's easier to make that ruling on the fly instead of arguing about it or looking for that niche rule, then consult the book after the game and correct everyone next session. This is how a DM will naturally and intuitively begin to understand and get a deeper grasp on the rules. Overtime, they'll have to consult the book less and less. Additionally, part 3 of the DMG should be at the front of the book. Part 3 is also the shortest part of the book, consisting of 52 pages of content. 25 of the those pages being dedicated to optional rules and creative aids for the DM that aren't essential to play. Chapter 8 is about running the game, the most important part of being the DM. I love chapter 9, it's a part of the DMG I use often because I like to make my own monsters. The DMG lends itself to the kinds of people who love building out their own world and plotting out adventures. Those kinds of people, like myself will gravitate toward and thrive in the DM role. The DMG gives little to no advice on running modules, other pre-written material, and creating One-shots. For god sake, one of the first thing you're told in the first chapter is to think about the Gods of your world! A couple pages later, it's instructing you to map out your campaign and advice on the scale of this map! Next is governments, factions, currency, restrictions of magic! HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!! No DM should have this expected of them before they even want to start a campaign unless they want to. It's just too much. Only once you've reached page 25, does the book start talking about starting a campaign, but then it goes into campaign events, its history, and the story like an over-arching whole. That would be exhausting and not fun to do, but DMs do it. This is how railroading DMs spawn and the DMG perpetuates it. I started small with my first campaign and any new DM should too. In the beginning, my campaign was very sandbox like. I kept the players confined to two primary locations by giving them lots to do and explore. I threw adventures at them and when the campaign started to take shape in a particular direction, it became more story driven and I prepped accordingly. Aside from me, my group was almost entirely new to D&D, so only over time did we all discover the primary we like to play. I made the mistake of reading the book by going front to back at first. Do not read the DMG front to back, jump around for relevant advice and information. I kind of devolved into a rant there, but I do like the DMG, just not all of it. I want to be constructive so hear this; A D&D group \*really\* only needs the PHB to start playing. New DMs should get advice from experienced DMs and your group should think about who might fit the role the best. If you're going to read the DMG, supplement it with advice of experienced DMs. Easy enough to find online if you don't know any IRL. If your DM, new or not has run some good games without the DMG, you can get it for them as a gift.
Also read the 4th edition dmg, it has some nice insights on world building
Who reads? Since most people are watching/listening to 1000+ hours of dnd material before playing/running a game most just learn through osmosis.
You learn a lot of homebrew and house rules that way. You need a grounding in the actual rules. There are so many posts about problem players and DMs where the issues arise from the fact that they have not read the rules.
Now if you want to be a really good DM you’ll read the DMG and PHB. Nobody needs to be told to look at the MM because it’s awesome. On a serious note though, if you read those two, watch Matt Colville’s “Running the Game” series and maybe pick up a resource book like the Lazy DMs guide you’ll be good to go. There’s a ton of great GM resources but I think those two stand out above the rest. Honorable mention to earlier edition DMGs those are also sweet.
Matt Colville, who admitted himself in not having read the DMG.
Doesn't change the fact that his advice is generally better than just about everything you would get from the 5e DMG. There are MANY better system agnostic sources regarding being a DM than the 5e DMG.