It’s an interesting question.

Recently, a respected D&DTuber or “DungeonTuber” as some would call them, admitted she had never read the full Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide from cover to cover. My reaction was simple, “Okay, so what?”

Apparently this revelation came as a shock to a lot of older codgers who’ve been playing for 40+ years. Why? Because the young lady gives a lot of advice about D&D 5E on YouTube, Instagram, and elsewhere. She acts as a spokesperson for Wizards of the Coast.

Good for her. She knows how to work the system. Everyone seems to forget that the young lady in question was a cosplayer when 5E first came out. She’s creative, intelligent, pleasant to look at, and apparently around 2018 or so decided D&D was a good meal ticket for someone with a ton of social media clout. I remember watching her videos when I started getting back into 5E before COVID hit.

Disclaimer: Statements expressed in this article are strictly my opinion. If you disagree or have a different opinion, that’s okay. I’m not an expert on everything. I’m not always right. I’m just writing from my experience as I know it. Your mileage may vary.

Long time followers of my blog know I have a bit of a history with the young lady.

It’s okay. The chances of her or any of her people reading this are almost null. She did block me on X (Twitter) and her social media manager never likely passed on my apology from Instagram. (Hey, can’t blame a brother for trying to make amends.)

I think the world of Ginny Di, and I almost always have. It doesn’t mean I blindly follow her or even agree with everything she says. I do admire the fact that she’s out there being a good example of a good example and bringing people into the hobby. She genuinely seems to enjoy D&D. We agree on that much.

Jealousy can be pretty ugly.

Do I wish I was half that successful? You betcha. I’ll get there in my own time, in my own way. There’s room for everyone in the TableTop RolePlaying Game hobby, and I mean everyone.

There’s always room for success. There’s always room for us to grow. Anyone can be the next Ginny Di or beyond. (*I’m not gonna say “better” because we’re only competing with ourselves.)

Now you see why I’m so confused by all of the jealousy, petty bickering and bitching coming from (mostly) the Old School camp in the TTRPG hobby about Ginny admitting she hadn’t read the DMG in full until recently. All it’s doing is reinforcing the long held beliefs by Miss Di and others that all of us crotchety Old Grognards somehow have it in for her and no one over 50 can be trusted. All of the old fartz in the hobby are somehow a threat to all the new, younger, 5E fanatics hold dear.

Yeah, I’m sure plenty of the crotchety old codger crowd that’s been around since 1982 probably are jealous. Would I or they like to run D&D in a Castle? Yeah. Free merchandise delivered to our door? Oh yeah. Free all expense paid trips to Wizards of the Coast HQ to rub elbows with Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins? Definitely.

All that and the massive social media following, convention visits, panels, speaking opportunities, and exclusive interviews do make people ridiculously jealous of Ginny Di. Heck, I’m a touch jealous, too. I often struggle with that particular emotion, but then I remember I live in a benevolent Universe where anything is possible. I’m genuinely proud of her and happy for her massive successes. It means that someone can do it, and maybe with a lot of work others can, too.

Confession: I haven’t read the DMG cover to cover since AD&D 1st Edition.

Before everyone lights the torches and sharpens the pitchforks, please hear me out. As a lifelong gamer and forever GM, I have trained my brain to skim and speed read like a pro. I mine books for content that I’m looking for and disregard most of the rest. Do I look up and retain the stuff I need to know in order to run the game? Definitely.

Have I read through the Dragonbane Core Rulebook and Dragonbane Bestiary pretty much cover to cover? Oh yeah. If I get to dive deep into a game because it interests me, of course I read through the whole book. I have a huge collection of books, including all the editions of D&D up to the new 2024 edition. (*Not likely I’ll be buying that one.) I just choose what I think is a better game from my collection.

Have I gone over the parts of every edition’s DMG to take in the core facts I need to run the game? Most certainly. Combine that with the notion that I’ve run so many TTRPGs, I can walk into a convention cold with no knowledge of any given RPG and still run a session or two with no issue. If you know roleplaying and can pick up the basic gist of the system while running a game, it’s easy to make anything work. I’m sure plenty of people can do it.

Any given gaming book for any system goes through a mental checklist of what I expect to find in it. Everything starts with the table of contents or in rare cases, the index. With 5E my journey screeched to a halt in the Encounter Design section. Later I learned WotC doesn’t even use this system in-house, so why am I reading or trying to use it?

I hate to break it to WotC or anyone else, but the 1E AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide pretty much taught me everything I would ever need to know about running a fantasy roleplaying game. However, I’ve read scores of magazine articles, papers, and books on “How to Be a Better GM.” It’s sort of a niche within a niche in the hobby. Someday I’ll publish an entire bibliography of stuff to read if you want to learn more about the art and craft of being a GM.

The moral of the story is: Take what you need and leave the rest.

One of the things I love about gaming books in general is that I can always go back and look something up later if I have to. Some things are always going to be the same. The Light spell in almost every incarnation of the game does the same darn thing. Some games change up the duration or radius. Okay, whatever.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” –Snake Pliskin (Kurt Russell) Escape from L.A.

Life is too short and there are too many gaming books out there to read every fine detail and memorize it all. Players are going to remember what’s important to their characters, hopefully. GMs have a lot more work to do, but I have always found it best to focus on making interesting NPCs, creating challenging locations, making fun magic items, and keeping players actively engaged in the game even on someone else’s turn.

I don’t need 20+ pages of D&D cosmology to do that unless we’re in a planes-hopping game. Even then, I’m just going to throw theirs out and go with mine, anyway. The same could be said for deities and factions.

Now for the Tinfoil Hat Experience of the Day.

Photo by Dids . on Pexels.com

I think the real reason our friend Ginny Di is getting people to raise a ruckus about the Dungeon Master’s Guide is no coincidence. I don’t believe in coincidences. What I do see is Wizards of the Coast and their very short attention spans combined with their inherent greed and corporate marketing strategies getting past the PHB release and moving onto the “next big thing.” The new 2024 DMG drops in November.

My unproven as of yet, but educated guess is that all of the key influencers have their digital copies of the new 2024 DMG already in front of them with physical copies probably being shipped out in early October. Heck, the D&DTubers had their PHB copies in hand in what? August? Maybe July with the NDA?

Regardless of the shipping status of the product, the WotC hype engine undoubtedly already has their gears grinding toward the DMG release. Any day now we’ll see good old Bob, Ted, Luke, Will, and several others talking about how awful the 2014 DMG was and how wonderfully wonderful awesome terrific the 2024 DMG is going to be. Repeat ad nauseum with ads all the way through a month before the Monster Manual drops in 2025 when we hear about that for hours on end.

Side Note: Of the three core D&D books, the 2024 Monster Manual is the only one I’m really halfway interested in. I love monster books. It’s my favorite part of D&D as a Dungeon Master. Maybe the DMG will have an encounter building system and monster creation rules if we’re lucky. If we’re unlucky, the new DMG and MM will be artsy fartsy coffee table books with some stats and junk much like the PHB. Pretty pictures are great, but I personally want substantive content if I’m going to spend money on a book.

Hooray for these young people giving out gaming advice.

First of all, stop bagging on Ginny Di for giving advice. So what if she just read the DMG cover to cover? She’s run D&D in a Castle on at least two occasions now, and I’ve read what those DMs go through. It’s fun and rewarding, but lots of work. It requires a solid social media following, but also some substantial DMing chops. Don’t undersell it. Anyone can apply, but getting through the screening process is another story.

Some of the D&D books are being written by seemingly random people who only have a year or two in the game design or rpg writing business. (Talk about making me jealous.) If they’re writing full D&D sourcebooks or contributing significant amounts of material, that’s pretty cool (for them.) Getting a start in the industry doesn’t have to be a long, painful, drawn-out affair like it once was as long as you have the DMsGuild and Paizo out there. (Not that I’m wicked jealous.)

Ginny Di and others might not have 40+ years of gaming behind them, but they’re still doling out the same solid advice about how to run the game that appeared in Dragon Magazine and other T$R publications 30 or 40 years ago. Most of them know what they’re talking about however they came by their information. Just because someone is younger, doesn’t mean they don’t know what they’re talking about.

I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of drama surrounding any given D&DTuber.

As long as we have people on YouTube and social media, there will be some kind of drama over what they said or did. When it comes to D&D, I’m pretty much over it. I honestly think WotC sees all press as good press. I also think someone in that office at WotC wants to drive a wedge between us old codgers and the new kids so they can better sell their upcoming digital gewgaws and do-widgets. Good for them.

I hear “Don’t trust anyone over 30” was a good slogan. Maybe they can bring that back around. Personally, I find that attitude tiring when it comes from the youths, but whatever. What do I know?

I would ask anyone who loves gaming, wants to work in the industry, or just wants to casually play a TTRPG to be kind to all the Ginny Di’s of the world. You never know when you might run into one of these people online or in person. I think it’s best to have a halfway decent reputation going into that conversation. We can disagree and still be polite to one another.

Thank you for being here today with me. I appreciate you. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy.