WotC previewed the new 5.5E Dungeon Master’s Guide. Sounds like Chapter 3 is where all the rules no one remembers will be this time around.
Wizards of the Coast gave us a more in-depth look inside the covers of the upcoming 5.5E Dungeon Master’s Guide. The new book, packed full of information for new DMs, would-be DMs, and experienced DMs, has been reimagined from the 5E version. It’s a bigger book, full of more art, more advice, and most importantly, more magic items. But what else can we expect?
Let’s dig in and take a look at the latest Dungeon Master’s Guide preview!
The Dungeon Master’s Guide Preview – First Three Chapters
The first three chapters of the DMG are all kind of lumped together in the video. And it sort of stands to reason why; they’re the “what the heck is DMing anyway” section.
Chapter 1 is a very brief, very broad strokes overview of “what is a DM, and why do they always look so sad when I ask them how this medieval village gets its water without a well or being built near a source of running fresh water?” Aimed mostly at new DMs and the DM curious, this chapter leads into chapter 2, which echoes the PHB by having an example of play.
But the good stuff, the like, hidden rules that may well go overlooked, is in chapter 3. Titled “The DM’s Toolbox” this is a srt of rules-cyclopedia. Which evokes one of the greatest D&D products ever made, the D&D digital rulescyclopedia – a comprehensive list o’ rules. And like its namesake, this chapter is all about those crunchy tools a DM can use. Things like how do siege engines work, or what does a meteorite do if it lands on the party?
This is, I’d wager, where you’ll find the bulk of those little fiddly rules that made the last DMG so versatile and worth it. Only now, instead of being scattered across the book, are they condensed into one place. Maybe. We’ll see when the book actually comes out.
Chapters 4-6: Adventures, Campaigns, and Settings
Chapter 4, meanwhile, is all about adventures. With guides on how to design adventures that you will then turn around and run as opposed to adventures meant to be published and sold to an audience), WotC hopes to arm DMs with tools enough to keep DMs spinning like good little gyroscopes. And for the first time, they’re showing their work in this Dungeon Master’s Guide preview.
In this chapter, you’ll find five short adventures, all made using the template/system included in the 5.5E Dungeon Master’s Guide – in the preview, James Wyatt mentions that this might seem like a lot – but that the adventures are, themselves, pretty short. Shorter than that. They’re all a page or less.
But again, these aren’t adventures meant to be sold and run by someone else – these are the kinds of DM notes that a DM prepping something to run for their home game might have on hand. It’s intended to be “usable”. Which is sort of the tenor for the whole book in the first place. Usability. And, of course, a lot of art.
Chapter 5, meanwhile, takes the ideas in the adventure section and builds them out even further. This is the section on making Campaigns, and it’s the one that, as an experienced DM myself, I’m the most curious about. I’ve never really had an instruction manual for making a campaign like this – there’s a reason that the most popular genre of D&D YouTube seems to be DM advice. They’re the ones who do most of the work, and it’s tricky. Not only do you have to know your players, you have to come up with fun stuff to do.
It’s the equivalent of having to pick a different restaurant for a group of people every week, but you can’t just pick the same old places. Exactly. So, I’m interested to see what the official D&D team thinks building a campaign looks like.
Chapter 6 is all campaign setting all the time. And in this case, that’s Greyhawk. All Greyhawk, all the time. It’s the first campaign setting for D&D (from a certain point of view), and is the sample one that illustrates the DMG’s “how to build a campaign setting”.
This is also roughly where you’ll find the new Lore Glossary.
Lore & Loot & Bastions
Lore & Loot take up the rest of the book. With a big Lore Glossary identifying a lot of the “D&D canon.” All the named characters, like Mordenkainen and Vecna, or new mentions of old favorites, like Bigby and Jallarzi, or places like Waterdeep all get a mention in this big glossary.
And then the bulk of the book. The biggest chapter is the Magic Item chapter. Magic items have a lot more illustrations and newer art. So you can not only read what the magic items do but see what they look like. With new artwork for potions and new looks for old sets of armor, you’ll find enough to spark the imagination and then some. This is also the chapter in which players will be most interested. That’s where all the good stuff will be.
After that, it’s into the Bastion system, the D&D guide to base building in a fantasy realm. We got to see a sample of the rules in this Dungeon Master’s Guide preview, but they have apparently been overhauled since the Unearthed Arcana playtest.
I don’t know how “overhauled” that actually means – some stuff is pretty cut and dry with minor tweaks that WotC has said are “majorly different,” while other stuff actually is totally overhauled. I’m also excited for this section. Make more castles in D&D! Then it’s off on a grand tour of the D&D cosmology, and then an appendix full of 30 battle maps ready to go.
Happy adventuring!
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