The first, quintessential DMG has rules on all kinds of things, including:

- GM advice.
- Random tables for adventure/setting creation.
- Character rules (keen hearing, attack matrices, etc.)
- Interpretations, additions and explanations of existing rules (spells, weapons versus armor, etc.)

But nowadays we have books dedicated to GM advice, random tables, etc. Also, these things are not the same - GM advice is for learning random tables are for reference (usually).

And most player-facing rules (attack matrices etc.) are in the PHB.

5e has three sections: creating worlds, creating aventures, and messing with the rules. About 25% deals with magical items.

I'm wondering if PHB, DMG and MM are the best format for organization. I've been thinking of the BECMI model as an alternative, i.e., having books dedicated to the various "tiers" of adventuring. You don't even have to worry about domain management until level 9, you get more spells and options as you go, etc.

Then here is the original D&D:

- PCs.
- Monsters and treasure.
- Rules.

I have been guilty of mixing random table with essays and GM advice - organizing my little books by theme: monsters (including monster creation), magic, characters (including NPCs), settings, etc.

And single-book RPGs such as the RC, SotDL (including Pcs, rules, setting and monsters - leaving alt-rules and setting details for modules), etc.

What is your favorite format?

If you're buying a new RPG, how much GM advice do you need?

If this is compatible with most OSR stuff, do you need monsters and advice at all, or system rules would be enough?

As far as GMing advice, you're right -- there's plenty of the generic stuff. What I want to know from the game's published materials is information specific to running that game.

I want to know about the game's design decisions, so I can respect them when adjudicating.

How does the game's scale map up against real world ideas?

In what ways and degrees are bonuses and penalties best applied, and what system pitfalls might I encounter in doing so?

Examples of adjudicating specific scenarios likely to arise during game play. Does your game use skills? Are some some skills less obvious than others? Here's a great place to elaborate.

Guidelines to create new everything, not just monsters: magic items, spells, weapons, armors, classes, races ... whatever. For example, if your classes include some vectors of character ability, and races other sorts of vectors, this is a good place to explain those philosophical differences. Are there certain effects Spells should avoid because you've reserved them to be the purview of another class? Are there important considerations within your system with regard to magical attribute boosts?

Etc.

GM facing game mechanics should be a major part.  Elements of the game that the GM specifically runs and have any actual mechanical system should be in the GMs guide.  If there's a NPC interaction mechanic (like a favor-ability metric) then that definitely belongs here.  Time keeping procedures as well as managing meta currencies in the game should be in the GM's handbook.

Also, there should be a section on combat and resource management.  A good example is that Pathfinder is built around 3 small encounters and 1 big encounter and then a rest.  A guide to adjusting the difficulty of an encounter or a specific challenge.  It should cover how to evaluate the party as far as stats, skills, and levels so that you are putting the pressure on the  players you want.

Another thing that should be included is a bit of a fiddly issue.  The GM should have enough educations from a GM handbook so that he can look at the monster stats and challenge ratings and be able to read out the rough possibility of outcomes. There should be a section on the core mechanics design and use.  This should cover target numbers for challenges, how much a shift affect the success rates of a roll, and the stats and bonuses vs the challenges.

It depends on how many pages the game would have in total. Once you hit a certain page count it makes sense to split it up, and you need to make some decisions about what goes where.

If the book is already long enough for creating characters and how to play, you make that the PHB. D&D has a lot of monsters, so it makes perfect sense to have a separate MM. Then everything else goes in the DMG. Castes & Crusades recognises this, and keeps it to PHB and M&T, with the CKG being optional extras. That's probably the best solution, as since as of 2e the most important stuff is in the PHB, the only crucial part of the DMG that remained was magic items.

The above two answers and also:

How different is your gameworld from other OSR games?

For example Warriors of the Red Planet by Night Owl Workshop IS an OSR game, you can import monsters from other OSR games with very little/zero conversion, same goes for exporting them to other OSR games.

But I think we all agree that the stats for a White Ape should be there.

Or take my monster hunting game, I'm taking the trouble/work to create a MM with all sorts of different Vampires, have created a Therianthropy transmission mechanic (shared it here sometime ago (still needs work) and lots of cryptids and other mythological monsters not usually found on your regular MM.

Or my Pulp game, it has most of the above monsters plus aliens and prehistoric beasts (way more than your regular MM) and other races not usually found on other games thrown together with the kitchen sink.

I'm including an alien fauna/flora generator with advice on how to populate your own worlds in my Sword and Planet one besides the monsters native to MY version of Venus.

In short everything/anything where you depart from vanilla should have some advice/explanation.

Think it depends on the volume and the breakdown of the content.  The only thing I'm sure of is that if there is more than 1 book, then 1 book should be specifically for players.  Ideally, that's the only book they need.  Which is not great if you are trying to sell a lot of books, but is great for your customers.  Then whether the GM needs that book and 1 other or several others depends on how much material you have. 

However, I do lean towards several other ideas in most cases:

- The player book should have the things that all players will need, including typical options, but not every option.  There's no point in confusing them and/or making the GM's life harder or upping the page count.  OTOH, if you intend for gnomes and kobolds to be a commonly playable race, then put them in the player book.  If you intend for some monster to occasionally be a character race as it works in the campaign, then don't put those in there just in case.

- Same goes for rules that provide the basics of the game, plus the stuff the players will often directly use, or will feature as optional rules in many games. 

- With D&D style magic, I like the idea of splitting spells, though.  Having spells that every player can see as the "common" spells in the game, and then another section of spells for the GM to use as monster spells, special treasure for casters, etc.  Partly this is because I think a relatively short list, as with B/X, is a huge boon to getting started. And face it, the more spell there are, the more likely some of them will be crummy.

- Some design decisions pertain to players.  Put those in a player book.  Most players won't care, and won't read it, but it shouldn't take up too much room.  The ones that do will really appreciate it. 

- If the player book is focused on building characters and rules, then there should be room for examples.  I've yet to see a game that has as many examples as it should.

- The character sheet is not the only hand out.  Have a separate PDF of things that everyone needs to get started, such as cheat sheets for learning to play, character option summaries, etc.

Beyond that, I also think that I'd rather have a single GM book with everything I need to run--GM systems, design notes, examples, monster list, magic items, etc.  If that means an expansion builds on that, so be it.  It's true that having a stand-alone monster book is handy when browsing and building an adventure, but that's what PDFs are for now. 

I think it should include designer's notes.   Too often GMs change mechanics without understanding the intent.  The declaration of intent is pretty easily dropped in D&D but scrapping it in Rolemaster pretty much breaks the system.

I really like mass combat, ship to ship combat, and siege rules in my DM's guide.

If we're talking physical books, I definitely prefer to have a separate Players Handbook. The idea is players will only need to buy the PHB. Or the DM can keep extra copies on hand. Anyway you cut it, 1 GM and 5 or so players amounts to a very different demand for player material than for the rest of the game making it a good, practical dividing line.

As for how to separate out the GM stuff, I'm looking at two things. Reference during play. And reference during prep. During prep, if it's organized right, it's advantageous to have the GM info spread out to two, maybe even three books. The idea being is having multiple open books side by side at the table while doing prep work. So maybe it does make perfect sense to have a book of rules and a separate book of monsters. Or whatever other separation would be practical for the subject matter of the game in question.

As for the best in-play organization, I'm afraid what I consider to be the very best organization possible is one in which a lot of gamers consider poorly organized or not organized at all. And that's the 1E DMG. One example I'll give to how the book really is organized, and organized well and consistently, and how it's just gone completely over the heads of even the crustiest of curmudgeons is boats.

If I want to buy a merchant galley, the price is in the PHB. If I want to know how long it takes to get my merchant galley to some far away city, that's in the travel section of the DMG. If I want to know combat stats for the boat, that's in the combat section. If I want to know about the crew, that's in the hirelings section. So, yeah, if your idea of a great RPG product is it looks good on the shelf and only comes off the shelf to look something up to argue with idiots on a forum, then you're going to hate this because you can't find all things ship in one place.

However, if you're actually using the book to play the game, you're never going to be both shopping for a merchant galley and ramming one at the same time. I'm never going to be sailing across the ocean and hiring a crew at the same time. It doesn't make sense to put all these things together. Rather, if I'm in naval combat and I need to combat stats for my ship, it's actually really helpful to have the stats for the other ships right there. It's helpful to have the table that tells me what happens if someone fireballs the ship right there.

So that's my thing. I'm coming at it from a perspective of what's practical if I'm actually going to be playing the game.

Now if we're talking about digital products, it's a completely different thing. The reason why most people see the 1E DMG as a train wreck of an organization is because it is literally physically impossible to put all the relevant bits on the same page or the same section. It's parts are too interconnected. The notion that it could be better organized is delusion. Hyperlinking changes everything, though. For a digital product, using the same example of a merchant galley, THEN I think it actually makes sense to put all things merchant galley in one place. And when it comes to the combat section, there can just be a table of filtered embedded data that I'll need on that ship, and the others, to run the combat.

For digital products, it's also less important to have the players stuff and DMs stuff separate. If I'm running the game, I'd probably just drop the game book on a shared google drive folder that the players can access. No more buying multiple copies. If I'm doing prep, I can pull up 2, 3, 4 instances of the book and have them up in different windows on my monitors. Virtually everything that's important to me regarding organization in physical gaming books gets flipped on its head in digital format.


As for presentation of the rules themselves, I prefer a layered design. Which I guess is really a matter of rule design, but I consider it to be organization because "layered" design has something to do with how we assimilate the information. Here's a super simple example of what I mean. Look how Weapon Speed is used in 1E initiative vs 2E initiative.

In 1E initiative, it's roll d6, highest goes first. If it's a tie, then lower Weapon Speed goes first.
In 2E initiative, it's roll d10, add weapon speed, lowest goes first.

The 2E way is more in line with "modern" game design because it gives you one universal rule. Whereas 1E is like 2 rules. Do this if the initiative numbers are different. Do this other thing if they're the same.

And the modern game design conceit (and it is conceited as fuck) is that the one rule is simpler than a rule with exceptions. But here's the thing, by the 2E way, I'm looking at weapon speed every single time initiative is rolled. And I'm adding shit every single time initiative is rolled. The 1E way, weapon speed is entirely ignored more than 83% of the time. And even the other 17% of the time when you do look at it, you still don't go adding shit.

Why I call the old school way "layered" is because all you need to learn to get started is d6, highest goes first. You can learn the exceptions later if you want to or as they come up. Now this is a bit of a silly example because of course in either system you can just opt out of Weapon Speed altogether. Still, the central idea here is having one really simple rule gets you through at least 80% of cases with exceptions to handle the other 20%, versus a single universal rule that is more complex.

The organization bit to this is this: Do I really need to be presenting an equation to roll initiative, to make a hit roll, or to make a skill check? Because that's what the more modern games do while patting themselves on the back claiming to be simpler, more streamlined. I'd rather just get the general idea that works 80% of the time, then go through the "Advanced" material later that goes into detail for the other 20% of the time.

Texture and intricacy are unappreciated game design features these days.

The first consideration for what to include should be the intended audience. In this day and age, are you producing the game for an experienced gamer or is it geared more toward those playing their first rpg? Some things that are critical to the new game master are just useless filler to the experienced game masters. There are are enough differences in desires of new vs experienced GMs to warrant vastly different content in a DMG. So I think deciding who is your game primarily for should be the first consideration.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on October 29, 2023, 09:53:49 AM
The first consideration for what to include should be the intended audience. In this day and age, are you producing the game for an experienced gamer or is it geared more toward those playing their first rpg? Some things that are critical to the new game master are just useless filler to the experienced game masters. There are are enough differences in desires of new vs experienced GMs to warrant vastly different content in a DMG. So I think deciding who is your game primarily for should be the first consideration.

The experienced GM (assuming he's familiar enough with the new system) can just skip the "useless filler" while the new/less experienced GM can't fill the voids if said "useless filler" isn't there.

Ergo making it for the New GM gives you the widest possible audience.

Lots of good stuff here, thanks folks!

About the "new GM" stuff, I'm divided.

I find unlikely that mine is anyone's first RPG.

OTOH, mainstream games like D&D 5e are not great at teaching either.

I did include some "this is how my game is different from classic OSR/D&D" because that is who I taught my audience would be.

Also, I included some "designer notes" (in an appendix) in my Old School Feats book, explaining exactly how I balanced some feats, classes, etc.

I thought that might be useful too in some games - e.g., B/X would void lots of confusion by explaining how a thief climbs a rope (RAW, it is an ability check - very likely worse chances than climbing sheer walls).

Examples are nice too. My first PDF didn't have enough of them because I want it to be short and terse, but someone convinced me that a PDF has no page limits to justify that.

There's lots of room on the market for a generic GM guide to help new GMs.  Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master is pretty good but there's so much more out there that could be put into a book.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on October 29, 2023, 05:37:11 PM

Quote from: Exploderwizard on October 29, 2023, 09:53:49 AM
The first consideration for what to include should be the intended audience. In this day and age, are you producing the game for an experienced gamer or is it geared more toward those playing their first rpg? Some things that are critical to the new game master are just useless filler to the experienced game masters. There are are enough differences in desires of new vs experienced GMs to warrant vastly different content in a DMG. So I think deciding who is your game primarily for should be the first consideration.

The experienced GM (assuming he's familiar enough with the new system) can just skip the "useless filler" while the new/less experienced GM can't fill the voids if said "useless filler" isn't there.

Ergo making it for the New GM gives you the widest possible audience.

All of that stuff that brand new GMs (and players) can be included in a starter booklet. That way page count in the main volume can be used by everyone whenever they play the gamewithout chunks of it being irrelevant after playing a few sessions.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on October 29, 2023, 06:00:47 PM

I did include some "this is how my game is different from classic OSR/D&D" because that is who I taught my audience would be.

This is where I think you can square the circle of beginner versus experienced player.  Instead of explaining how your game is different from something else, just explain how it is.  That's another place where examples help.  Experienced people will read between the lines and realize what is different.  Beginners don't have a point of reference anyway, and that difference stuff will just confuse them.  This way also have the advantage of being shorter.

A comparison to other games really goes into a marketing spiel, where you need to emphasize why anyone who already is playing something else might be interested.  The closest that might come to a main book is buried in the introduction or a few bullet points on a back cover.