"The DMG is going to be much better laid out in a logical order. Speaking of logical order, let's jump all over the DMG in this video to talk about whatever wherever!" I certainly hope this one will be useful, it does sound like it will potentially be quite good.
While I get the irony, it's completely logical that the best order for building interest and the best order for providing instructions will be different. They aren't starting the video being like, "OK guys, the new DMG is so exciting and you should spend fifty bucks on it. Now the book starts with, 'the basics!' Hell yeah!"
In my experience as a mtg player... wotc loooves saying the right words, but having no implementation. Small things like you point out. . All the way up to endless screw ups followed by "we hear you" followed by yet another foreseeable screwup.
Chris Perkins said in a video a while ago that one of the most common things he heard people say about the DMG was “oh, I didn’t know that was in the book!” I still find stuff i didn’t know about to this day because it’s not where I expect it to be, and the stuff I know is in there takes a while to find (that’s why I only use a digital version that I can CTRL+F stuff). I feel like THIS is the 2024 book to look out for, and even those not on board with 5.5e will likely want to get for that reason!
@@mke3053 Maybe make the book actually well written then? Tell me why the DMG decides to first dump lore about all the different planes and how the laws of the universe work BEFORE giving you actually useful info like... idk... TELLING YOU HOW TO RUN A GAME?
I have long been looking for a better way to encourage gold sinks. Bastions are huge to me for this reason and magic item prices are a huge godsend. I'm so done trying to play fantasy economist!
I was just about to jump down to the comments to say you could always make any weapon a Flame Tongue. Then you made my comment moot in the next sentence. But I came down here to say it anyway. Ha! Thanks for making good videos. I appreciate them.
I really appreciate your optimism. I think there is a lot of negativity around WoTC releases and it’s warranted, but I think that constant negativity makes the community worse overall. I think we can be critical but optimistic when something actually looks good.
Some people are just addicted to drama and are unable to see a company as anything else then a single entity. It's very obvious that the vast mayority of wizards are just people passionate about their job and want to give us something we would enjoy. I'm not going to hate an entire group of people cause a couple of their bosses pull some scum move. Carrot and stick is what i say. I'm all for speaking up when they do something bad but then the praise needs to also be there when good stuff is done
@@KiallVunMyeret I agree, a lot of people are still mad about the OGL. But we forced them back on that one. Carrot on a stick like you said. I don’t think we should view a multi-billion dollar corporation as a friend, we will always need to keep an eye on what the executives are doing and it won’t always be a comfortable relationship. It’s just not possible for a company of this size to be your friend. But like you said the passionate people working at the company can be our friends and we can support them when they put out a good product. Some people are going to draw a line at giving money to WoTC, I think they are entitled to choose what they buy. But pretending that WoTC/Hasbro is any worse a corporation than those we buy things from daily is a little disingenuous. I don’t think we should be shaming people who buy WoTC products when there currently isn’t a target boycott with a clear goal. I’m mostly just agreeing with you here but expanding some of my thoughts on what you said.
@Gorjiba yeah I made similar points during the OGL and layoffs. Hasbro and WotC as corporations have made some verrry questionable decisions, but, at the end of the day I fully believe that the people actually working on and making these products are doing so because they genuinely love D&D and are often forced into bad positions because of corporate decisions far outside of their control. And exactly. We all give our money to faceless horrible billion dollar corporates every single day. I just choose to not draw the line when it comes to a fun make believe game lol.
To steal a point Ginny Di made in her video on the DMG: it is filled with excellent ideas and advice, almost all of which is impossible to find. For instance: I will always pontificate about how amazing the spell point rule variant is for sorcerers. Totally should be the default option. Hardly anyone knows of it and therefore almost no one plays with it. Because it’s tucked away in the final third of the book in a section that might as well be called “trivial after thoughts”.
1000000% accurate lol There’s SO much in there that’s just impossible to find. I’ve been playing for years and years and still I’ll randomly come across something I’ve missed entirely lol
The only thing I want out of the new DMG book is the custom backgrounds section so I can stop being mad how some of them dont work with my character concepts. (Even if the custom rules will probably be pretty obvious)
Let me be helpfull instead of being an ass for no reason. The rule you want to see already is kinda in the PHB24. On page 38 there is a blurb about how to use backgrounds from previous books. You can use that for custom backgrounds. Tldr is increase one ability score by 2 and another by 1 or three ability scores by 1. And gain an origin feat of your choice. For skill profeciencies and other stuff you can use the old rules for custom backgrounds.
I'm so glad to hear they organized it better. As someone who has a homebrew world that requires homebrewed monsters, having some of the information for making a balanced encounter scattered all over the place was driving me crazy.
Im just interested if theres a half decent crafting system.... im not expecting it but it would be a nice surprise. Prices are nice, but something like the Minor or Major items from Xanathars but pushed a bit further would be great. Between price, rarity and whether the item is major or minor, a simple but effective crafting system is possible.
Yeah, like I said in the video, I don’t need anything revolutionary. I don’t want them to (and don’t expect them to reinvent the wheel here) but I would love something with at least a little bit of crunch, though I am doubtful.
@@Enkidu659 I'm hesitant about an inbuilt crafting system because it will inevitably require downtime and nothing kills a session as a player saying they want to hunker down for a few months to build something.
It's not likely. Many, many systems have tried, and retired during revised editions to make it. People either think it's too OP so everyone does it, or they think the time needed is bonkers, or it would take too much effort to track. Crafting doesn't work.
I like bringing back the home base thing (Been playing since first edition) but at 5th level ? That seems kind of soon, but maybe a fifth level character's bastion is quite small.
I notices a same possible oversight about the new crafting rules (RAW that I'm sure is not RAI). To craft a spell scroll, you need to have the spell prepared (and arcana or calligrapher's supplies) and cantrips, technically, are not prepared, they are either know or learned. So RAW (and I'm sure is NOT RAI) you can't make a cantrip spell scroll. I also think that even the basic crafting system in the new PHB could have used a little more work. Someone with a tool proficiency can make 5gp a day (6gp if the DM would allow the discount from the crafter feat to be used to buy raw material) or any 1st level spellcaster can craft a 1st level spell scroll a day and make 25gp a day. Sound like I found the reason spellcasters are so poor.
I'm just going to point out that in the back of the book is an index containing the page numbers of every time they mention what your looking for. Use it and cut down your search.
@@InsightCheckappreciate the candor. It’s refreshing to see after so many channels have moved to farm clicks through negativity and negative speculation.
Exactly this - D&D on UA-cam used to be about informing and supporting people who wanted to play and run D&D. Now it's become more about "here's the latest shock news about how **** Wotc and Hasbro are". Yes, they have deserved negativity, but this shouldn't impact the 2024 core rulebooks. They improve 5e, and some UA-camrs like Insight Check are rightly focussing on the improvements
The PHB promos made me think "I already have Tasha's, so I dunno that I need to shell out for this." But the updated Greyhawk (would a Gary Gygax name-drop really make their legal department have an aneurysm?!) & the bastions sections seem worth the price by themselves. If it's better organized than 2014, that's icing on the cake.
12:10 you say save the comment because "that's not the point" but, well, what is the point? What more have they done over the 2014 DMG which already said you can change magic items? Infact, flame tongue was the exact same example used in the 2014 DMG
The point was just that there are so frequently comments saying “you can just X thing because you’re the DM!” And like.. yeah obviously lol. But there’s a big difference between an option being buried in the DMG somewhere and the item description itself demonstrating that it can be any type of weapon.
@@InsightCheckI guess that will depend on the execution, if they are putting it in the descriptions They tried that with putting "typically " onto statblocks, but it didn't really do anything except add clutter, so they've gone back to just printing the alignment, we already understand, and the monster manual already tells us the alignment on the statblock is a suggestion If they are just going to do something similar with magic items, I don't think it's really a big difference at all
@lukedesmith magic items. I would make a book of just magic items. I'd also prefer if magic spells were thier own book, so they're easier to reference. I'm fine with them being the last chapter, they just were annoying in the middle of the DMG because you don't "reference" those pages the same way. Like once I've given an item out I rarely need to find it again, but there are rules I actually do want to reference multiple times so having to flip through the middle 100 pages because they don't have anything to do with actual dungeon mastering. And if you only run modules like one of my buddies you don't even need them in the DMG at all because the module tells you which items can be found where. I understand why it's DM knowledge, it's just not reference material like the rest of the book.
@@TiberiusX They did that. The Book of Many Things. The DMG is a core book, it would be incomplete without the magic items chapter. You shouldn't have to buy a separate 4th book to get the full game, 3 is already a lot. Layout was always a problem with the 2014 DMG, and it's one of the main issues the 2024 version is meant to fix.
@lukedesmith we can agree to disagree. There are a few systems that have separate books for magic items, and it's much more useful. It is good they basically put them in the back this time, that's acceptable. Most modules come with magic items detailed in the module, magic items are also extremely easy to find online, and cutting the page count on the books could mean cheaper books. I understand your point of view and it's valid, I just don't agree. I have read the 2014 DMG and the only section I rarely reference is magic items, having 90 pages in the middle of the book taken by magic items is silly, it makes it challenging to navigate the book, and honestly, how many magic items do you need per game? I ran 6-8 games a month and rarely needed to look in the DMG for magic items, they were *always* in they modules, or I made them up as the DM (and my players loved those items). It's not actually a DM only thing to reference, either, why not include it in the PHB if it needs to be in a core book?
Experienced DMs really don't need a guide. I don't think I ever opened my DMG back up after looking through it initially, not that I'm an expert or anything, but there are so many resources available on-line that are much faster. I just leaned on those. 3e did the same thing with weapons. 4th and 5e moved away from it. I'm glad to see it return. 3e also had rules for crafting, and crafting magic items.
I'm not that interested in a DMG (I can make up my own rules to cover most things not in the phb and its often faster to do this than even try and make it RAW compliant and i can make up my own settings and lore) but Bastions are a draw.
Honestly the only rule the DMG needs is “You are the DM all of these rules are optional should you wish them to be.” Not sure if that is a hot take or something.
@@Eisenbrei That's incredibly glib and false. A DM who uses homebrew rather than the rule is still playing D&D - almost every DM does at some point. IC I can't believe you liked this weird gatekeepy comment.
The comment just made me laugh, hence the like lol, it’s not that deep. But, since I’m here I will say that I don’t really agree with the OP either. I will assume they were being at least somewhat facetious, but to say that the only thing the DMG needs is a line that says make up whatever you want does a massive disservice to the community more broadly, especially those who want to start playing and learning the game and in particular how to be a Dungeon Master. I would never tell my players that the only rules that matter are the ones that I want to use or that I agree with. I include my players and take their feedback and we play the game *together*. To be abundantly clear, that takes nothing away from their ability to play the game however they want, including to ignore any and all rules they please. But it’s important to note that providing options and guidance for those who don’t want to play that, doesn’t detract from their play experience in any way. The DMG exists for those who want to use it and, as they have pointed out, can easily be ignored by those who don’t.
"The DMG is going to be much better laid out in a logical order. Speaking of logical order, let's jump all over the DMG in this video to talk about whatever wherever!"
I certainly hope this one will be useful, it does sound like it will potentially be quite good.
Hahahaha this was so real. I actually laughed while watching the reveal, the irony was palpable.
While I get the irony, it's completely logical that the best order for building interest and the best order for providing instructions will be different. They aren't starting the video being like, "OK guys, the new DMG is so exciting and you should spend fifty bucks on it. Now the book starts with, 'the basics!' Hell yeah!"
In my experience as a mtg player... wotc loooves saying the right words, but having no implementation.
Small things like you point out. . All the way up to endless screw ups followed by "we hear you" followed by yet another foreseeable screwup.
sounds like something someone would say to sell a product nobody needs.
Chris Perkins said in a video a while ago that one of the most common things he heard people say about the DMG was “oh, I didn’t know that was in the book!”
I still find stuff i didn’t know about to this day because it’s not where I expect it to be, and the stuff I know is in there takes a while to find (that’s why I only use a digital version that I can CTRL+F stuff).
I feel like THIS is the 2024 book to look out for, and even those not on board with 5.5e will likely want to get for that reason!
Fully agree. I am one of those people too that is still finding stuff I didn’t realize was in it despite “using” the book for years now lol
People are too lazy to read the book. They dont read it and then act surprised... affff
@@mke3053 Maybe make the book actually well written then? Tell me why the DMG decides to first dump lore about all the different planes and how the laws of the universe work BEFORE giving you actually useful info like... idk... TELLING YOU HOW TO RUN A GAME?
I have long been looking for a better way to encourage gold sinks. Bastions are huge to me for this reason and magic item prices are a huge godsend. I'm so done trying to play fantasy economist!
I feel this in my bones lol
Bastions were in the Acquisitions Incorporated book. I've been using them for years.
This video was exactly what I needed to grasp the subject better!
Congrats on hitting the goal! I've always been rooting for you!
I was just about to jump down to the comments to say you could always make any weapon a Flame Tongue. Then you made my comment moot in the next sentence. But I came down here to say it anyway. Ha! Thanks for making good videos. I appreciate them.
Congrats on 10k subscribers! Happy to help you on the way there, and I’m looking forward to your future content 🙂
I really appreciate your optimism. I think there is a lot of negativity around WoTC releases and it’s warranted, but I think that constant negativity makes the community worse overall. I think we can be critical but optimistic when something actually looks good.
Some people are just addicted to drama and are unable to see a company as anything else then a single entity.
It's very obvious that the vast mayority of wizards are just people passionate about their job and want to give us something we would enjoy.
I'm not going to hate an entire group of people cause a couple of their bosses pull some scum move.
Carrot and stick is what i say. I'm all for speaking up when they do something bad but then the praise needs to also be there when good stuff is done
@@KiallVunMyeret I agree, a lot of people are still mad about the OGL. But we forced them back on that one. Carrot on a stick like you said.
I don’t think we should view a multi-billion dollar corporation as a friend, we will always need to keep an eye on what the executives are doing and it won’t always be a comfortable relationship. It’s just not possible for a company of this size to be your friend. But like you said the passionate people working at the company can be our friends and we can support them when they put out a good product.
Some people are going to draw a line at giving money to WoTC, I think they are entitled to choose what they buy. But pretending that WoTC/Hasbro is any worse a corporation than those we buy things from daily is a little disingenuous. I don’t think we should be shaming people who buy WoTC products when there currently isn’t a target boycott with a clear goal.
I’m mostly just agreeing with you here but expanding some of my thoughts on what you said.
@Gorjiba yeah I made similar points during the OGL and layoffs. Hasbro and WotC as corporations have made some verrry questionable decisions, but, at the end of the day I fully believe that the people actually working on and making these products are doing so because they genuinely love D&D and are often forced into bad positions because of corporate decisions far outside of their control.
And exactly. We all give our money to faceless horrible billion dollar corporates every single day. I just choose to not draw the line when it comes to a fun make believe game lol.
To steal a point Ginny Di made in her video on the DMG: it is filled with excellent ideas and advice, almost all of which is impossible to find.
For instance: I will always pontificate about how amazing the spell point rule variant is for sorcerers. Totally should be the default option. Hardly anyone knows of it and therefore almost no one plays with it. Because it’s tucked away in the final third of the book in a section that might as well be called “trivial after thoughts”.
1000000% accurate lol
There’s SO much in there that’s just impossible to find. I’ve been playing for years and years and still I’ll randomly come across something I’ve missed entirely lol
@@HorizonOfHope Spell Points works wonders for Order Domain Clerics & Drakewarden Rangers
The only downside to it is that it limits 6th level and up spells to one a day. Not a big problem, but most players will see that as a loss…
10101 is 21 in binary. I'm glad you're getting out there for people to see!
The only thing I want out of the new DMG book is the custom backgrounds section so I can stop being mad how some of them dont work with my character concepts. (Even if the custom rules will probably be pretty obvious)
LOL do you actually NEED the DMG to tell you how thats going to work? really?
Let me be helpfull instead of being an ass for no reason.
The rule you want to see already is kinda in the PHB24.
On page 38 there is a blurb about how to use backgrounds from previous books. You can use that for custom backgrounds.
Tldr is increase one ability score by 2 and another by 1 or three ability scores by 1.
And gain an origin feat of your choice.
For skill profeciencies and other stuff you can use the old rules for custom backgrounds.
I'm excited for it for Lore & Bastion, and magic items
Same! There really is a lot to look forward to with the new book!
Congrats on 10k+ well deserved
Awesome video, i was surprised you were only at 10k! Im happy to sub
I'm so glad to hear they organized it better. As someone who has a homebrew world that requires homebrewed monsters, having some of the information for making a balanced encounter scattered all over the place was driving me crazy.
Don't expect much encounter balancing in the DMG, they're saving that for the Monster Manual.
Finally what feels like a pretty big improvement
Absolutely, and the DMG truly needed the upgrade haha
Lol totally forgot I joined and it surprised the heck out of me to hear my name. 😂
Hahaha well I appreciate it :)
I’ve looked up Firearms dozens of times, and every time I need to search on D&DBeyond because it’s in some random chapter with an unrelated name.
Exactly! It makes zero sense!
“The Remembered Realms” 😂
Your channel is awesome
Thank You for sharing your content with us
Im just interested if theres a half decent crafting system.... im not expecting it but it would be a nice surprise. Prices are nice, but something like the Minor or Major items from Xanathars but pushed a bit further would be great. Between price, rarity and whether the item is major or minor, a simple but effective crafting system is possible.
Considering the section on crafting in the phb this seems unlikely.
Yeah, like I said in the video, I don’t need anything revolutionary. I don’t want them to (and don’t expect them to reinvent the wheel here) but I would love something with at least a little bit of crunch, though I am doubtful.
@@Enkidu659 I'm hesitant about an inbuilt crafting system because it will inevitably require downtime and nothing kills a session as a player saying they want to hunker down for a few months to build something.
@@20storiesunder Then it should be optional like Bastions, but still exist and actually work.
It's not likely. Many, many systems have tried, and retired during revised editions to make it. People either think it's too OP so everyone does it, or they think the time needed is bonkers, or it would take too much effort to track.
Crafting doesn't work.
I like bringing back the home base thing (Been playing since first edition) but at 5th level ? That seems kind of soon, but maybe a fifth level character's bastion is quite small.
I'm loving your videos more and more. Fair to things (criticism where it's warranted, etc) but a genuine excitement to engage with the content.
This truly has been my philosophy behind every video so I am very happy to know it comes across, thank you for this :)
I notices a same possible oversight about the new crafting rules (RAW that I'm sure is not RAI). To craft a spell scroll, you need to have the spell prepared (and arcana or calligrapher's supplies) and cantrips, technically, are not prepared, they are either know or learned. So RAW (and I'm sure is NOT RAI) you can't make a cantrip spell scroll.
I also think that even the basic crafting system in the new PHB could have used a little more work. Someone with a tool proficiency can make 5gp a day (6gp if the DM would allow the discount from the crafter feat to be used to buy raw material) or any 1st level spellcaster can craft a 1st level spell scroll a day and make 25gp a day. Sound like I found the reason spellcasters are so poor.
They really need to make all magic items that grant flying rare or higher. Well....need is a strong word. I think it's just sensible is all.
I'm just going to point out that in the back of the book is an index containing the page numbers of every time they mention what your looking for. Use it and cut down your search.
Whoa, positivity?? In a dnd channel on UA-cam?? I’ll sub to this.
Hahaha I value just being honest and when the honest opinion is positivity, I will gladly share that :)
@@InsightCheckappreciate the candor. It’s refreshing to see after so many channels have moved to farm clicks through negativity and negative speculation.
Exactly this - D&D on UA-cam used to be about informing and supporting people who wanted to play and run D&D. Now it's become more about "here's the latest shock news about how **** Wotc and Hasbro are". Yes, they have deserved negativity, but this shouldn't impact the 2024 core rulebooks. They improve 5e, and some UA-camrs like Insight Check are rightly focussing on the improvements
You can separate WOTC from 5.24e and still criticize it, 5.24e is an improvement but it’s still really disappointing for me and a lot of other fans.
@FromMan2Monkey-nb5fq I'm going to have to ask that if it's "really disappointing", what were you expecting?
The PHB promos made me think "I already have Tasha's, so I dunno that I need to shell out for this."
But the updated Greyhawk (would a Gary Gygax name-drop really make their legal department have an aneurysm?!) & the bastions sections seem worth the price by themselves.
If it's better organized than 2014, that's icing on the cake.
12:10 you say save the comment because "that's not the point" but, well, what is the point? What more have they done over the 2014 DMG which already said you can change magic items? Infact, flame tongue was the exact same example used in the 2014 DMG
The point was just that there are so frequently comments saying “you can just X thing because you’re the DM!” And like.. yeah obviously lol. But there’s a big difference between an option being buried in the DMG somewhere and the item description itself demonstrating that it can be any type of weapon.
@@InsightCheckI guess that will depend on the execution, if they are putting it in the descriptions
They tried that with putting "typically " onto statblocks, but it didn't really do anything except add clutter, so they've gone back to just printing the alignment, we already understand, and the monster manual already tells us the alignment on the statblock is a suggestion
If they are just going to do something similar with magic items, I don't think it's really a big difference at all
Honestly, magic items should be separate they just don't need to be *in* the dmg or at the end
It seems right to me. They don't belong in the PHB or MM, which book would you put them in?
@lukedesmith magic items. I would make a book of just magic items. I'd also prefer if magic spells were thier own book, so they're easier to reference. I'm fine with them being the last chapter, they just were annoying in the middle of the DMG because you don't "reference" those pages the same way. Like once I've given an item out I rarely need to find it again, but there are rules I actually do want to reference multiple times so having to flip through the middle 100 pages because they don't have anything to do with actual dungeon mastering. And if you only run modules like one of my buddies you don't even need them in the DMG at all because the module tells you which items can be found where. I understand why it's DM knowledge, it's just not reference material like the rest of the book.
@@TiberiusX They did that. The Book of Many Things. The DMG is a core book, it would be incomplete without the magic items chapter. You shouldn't have to buy a separate 4th book to get the full game, 3 is already a lot. Layout was always a problem with the 2014 DMG, and it's one of the main issues the 2024 version is meant to fix.
@lukedesmith we can agree to disagree. There are a few systems that have separate books for magic items, and it's much more useful. It is good they basically put them in the back this time, that's acceptable.
Most modules come with magic items detailed in the module, magic items are also extremely easy to find online, and cutting the page count on the books could mean cheaper books. I understand your point of view and it's valid, I just don't agree. I have read the 2014 DMG and the only section I rarely reference is magic items, having 90 pages in the middle of the book taken by magic items is silly, it makes it challenging to navigate the book, and honestly, how many magic items do you need per game? I ran 6-8 games a month and rarely needed to look in the DMG for magic items, they were *always* in they modules, or I made them up as the DM (and my players loved those items).
It's not actually a DM only thing to reference, either, why not include it in the PHB if it needs to be in a core book?
In b4 10k
Experienced DMs really don't need a guide. I don't think I ever opened my DMG back up after looking through it initially, not that I'm an expert or anything, but there are so many resources available on-line that are much faster. I just leaned on those.
3e did the same thing with weapons. 4th and 5e moved away from it. I'm glad to see it return.
3e also had rules for crafting, and crafting magic items.
I'm not that interested in a DMG (I can make up my own rules to cover most things not in the phb and its often faster to do this than even try and make it RAW compliant and i can make up my own settings and lore) but Bastions are a draw.
Most of the art is bland and static; except that picture of the orc monk.
Honestly the only rule the DMG needs is “You are the DM all of these rules are optional should you wish them to be.”
Not sure if that is a hot take or something.
Coldest take
That's called improv theater, not D&D.
@@Eisenbrei That's incredibly glib and false. A DM who uses homebrew rather than the rule is still playing D&D - almost every DM does at some point. IC I can't believe you liked this weird gatekeepy comment.
@@apjapki How is it gatekeeping to be against not giving DMs any advice and to tell them instead to completely winging it?
The comment just made me laugh, hence the like lol, it’s not that deep.
But, since I’m here I will say that I don’t really agree with the OP either. I will assume they were being at least somewhat facetious, but to say that the only thing the DMG needs is a line that says make up whatever you want does a massive disservice to the community more broadly, especially those who want to start playing and learning the game and in particular how to be a Dungeon Master.
I would never tell my players that the only rules that matter are the ones that I want to use or that I agree with. I include my players and take their feedback and we play the game *together*.
To be abundantly clear, that takes nothing away from their ability to play the game however they want, including to ignore any and all rules they please. But it’s important to note that providing options and guidance for those who don’t want to play that, doesn’t detract from their play experience in any way. The DMG exists for those who want to use it and, as they have pointed out, can easily be ignored by those who don’t.