D&D 5: Life After the DMG?

So, the next obvious question to living without the DMG is, what is needed after the DMG?

For one, more player options. Second, more monsters. Third, more magic items. Fourth, more spells!

Fifth, no more of any of that.

I want more, but do I really need more? Pathfinder has gotten so heavy with a shelf-and-a-half full of books I can't wrap my mind around the game and its options anymore. I want more, but I don't want more.

I have a shelf full of D&D 4 books, and now a shelf full of Pathfinder books, and I am not looking forward to a third shelf for another collection. Just leave me at my basic three books, thank you, and we will part ways here.

What ever happened to those eighty's 64-page games that had everything? You know, the ones where everything and a sample adventure could fit in one softcover book?

You can pick the books you want to play with, yes. But you always need that one more book, because adding another book to your collection will make the game that much more awesome! It feels like the super-sizing of roleplaying games, endless streams of books to buy and collect, while no thought is paid to what we actually need and can support.

Simplicity and design are discarded in favor of rules systems that can expand infinitely.

I don't blame game companies, after all, these are niche products selling to a smaller audience. They need to ship and sell books to survive. But I feel after a while, the nasty specter of sustainability raises its head. At this point, the game can continue on in a bloated and heavy state, or a new edition is announced to "fix" the old bloated system once and for all.

DarkgarX and I have this joke, "It's not a real game until it's out of print. That way, you can finally play it by the rules."

But no one is forcing you to buy books! Correct, but the problem is, the game is designed to. If character options are limited in the first book, you will eventually need another book with more options to make the game 'complete.' You can design a game that is mostly complete out of the box, or leave things for expansions. There is a strong tendency to leave things for future books in the gaming industry.

Pathfinder did a good job with its basic book, it's huge, but it is mostly complete. They did a wonderfully terrible job with the metric ton of expansion books, I love them, but taken together, they are way too much for me to love as a single game. There's at least six games on my Pathfinder shelf I swear.

So after the D&D 5 DMG, what do I want? What could I absolutely stand for, and what would I despise?

First off, no new classes and core content in a worldbook, like D&D 4 did with the swordmage and the Forgotten Realms guide. Core material goes in core books.

I would tolerate another Monster Manual, there are too many classics and fun monsters missing. I would say no to a DMG 2, because you know right off they would have put the rest of the missing magic items from the DMG 1 in there and you will need it anyways for those lists. The rest of DMG 2 would likely be fluff, kingdom management, more world creation stuff, or tangential material to support the lists we didn't get in DMG 1. The DMG 1 must be complete!

I am up in the air about a PHB 2. In some ways I want it to support more character builds, but in others I know it will cause class, spell, and feat bloat.

A tabletop play book would be appreciated, and I know they have said things about this in the past about "an add-on supporting tabletop and figure play." If you can combine that with the missing character-build options you would have put in PHB 2, we may be onto something, and now the book has two uses. A better value, and two things I would like to see in one book. That is a sale.

New worldbooks for Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms? I can do without them and use my old ones, really, plus any changes they make are bound to anger someone - unless it is a reboot. If they reboot the settings back to 1.0 with a fresh start, NPCs, and a new take on things, then I am in.

But the question of a DMG 2 comes up again. Where would you put magic item expansions, or at least the ones the left out? I don't like DMG 2's by principle, I like my game master options to be in one book, with a single focus. Possibly in a Manual of the Planes book? Or a book on Adventure Design? I don't know.

Now I've committed to buying six books instead of three. Oh, roleplaying games, I do not have enough shelves to love you with. Perhaps I'll just stick with these three and call it good.