Quick sketch of a text meme recently posted here: https://slrpnk.net/post/11620428
Dude it’s so good
Get you “Fire on the Velvet Horizon” and “Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master” and you’ll be ready to run some awesome games. Maybe get the PHB if you have some money left over and want to know the rules or w/e. Skip the DMG, it is literally 100% worthless.
Okay hold up, the DMG has amazing steps and explanations to world building, with ideas and examples, many great magic items to get started with, steps and explanations to making magic items and player content that fits the game…
Even just for a writer who wants to get into world building, not the game, I’d already recommend it. The 5E DMG is genuinely a great book IMO.
That said, it has caveats; lack of exploration rules and scaring a new GM into over-preparing are the two big ones IMO, Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master helps with the latter and Fire of the Velvet Horizon has good content which can be nice, but doesn’t help you make your own stuff.
Hm. The big list of magic items is quite nice; I’ll give you that. And I won’t say all the special situation rules it contains are useless… I think you hit the nail on the head about over preparing though. It just has all kinds of stuff you don’t need (and places a ton of emphasis on it) and is missing some critical stuff (coherent rules for treasure economy being a big one). In my opinion.
