Product Description

The third of three core rulebooks for the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons® Roleplaying Game.

The Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game has defined the medieval fantasy genre and the tabletop RPG industry for more than 30 years. In the D&D game, players create characters that band together to explore dungeons, slay monsters, and find treasure. The 4th Edition D&D rules offer the best possible play experience by presenting exciting character options, an elegant and robust rules system, and handy storytelling tools for the Dungeon Master.

The Dungeon Master's Guide gives the Dungeon Master helpful tools to build exciting encounters, adventures, and campaigns for the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game, as well as advice for running great game sessions, ready-to-use traps and non-player characters, and more. In addition, it presents a fully detailed town that can serve as a starting point for any D&D game.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8564 in Books
• Brand: Wizards of the Coast
• Published on: 2008-06-06
• Released on: 2008-06-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Customer Reviews

A volume of what you need, rather than what you'd expect
This would be the third major re-imagining of the DMG I've experienced and this time WotC has very nearly made the book I wished I'd read before I first became a DM.

The fact that I've DM'ed for decades doesn't diminish the enjoyment of this version, either.

As with 3rd edition - A sizable amount of the book is devoted to telling DMs what to expect and what is expected of them. It boils down gamers and gaming sessions to a degree that more thematically-minded players might find offensive.

Seeing the framework of an encounter spelled out in stark language (e.g. "Wolf Pack-Hard: 6 skirmishers of level n+2") or having player archetypes defined (e.g. "The Actor: Be sure the Actor Doesn't Bore the other players by talking to everyone and everything [or] Justify disruptive actions as being 'in character'") might ruffle a few feathers.

There will likely be (yet another round of) accusations of WotC playing to the number-crunching wing of the gaming community.

Here's the thing:

Boiling the game down to its essential components is not limiting - it is instructive. Seeing the numeric skeleton of a gaming session does not mean that players will feel less inclined to flesh it out. I'd argue they'd have a better understanding of what they were doing when did so. Broad brush gamers are still free to ditch the lot and just improvise.

In the big picture - the advice section is not essential content for seasoned DMs, but it's not throwaway material either. The troubleshooting section is a great collection of things I've learned the hard way. It's gratifying to see those lessons in print (obviously, I'm not the only one who keeps making some of those mistakes).

For the number crunchers there are solid attempts at rules for disease and poison. In 3.0/3.5, they were two laughably inept concepts. In this version they might remain viable threats to upper level characters. (Does anyone in 3.5 have disease play a regular role in their campaigns? There's Lycanthropy and Mummy Rot - and a short list of things that aren't worth using once PCs are level 5).

This time around, diseases and poisons are scaled to the same levels of PCs (witness the Slimy Doom - a Level 23 Disease: Attack +26 vs Fortitude). That's an extreme example - but at least there's some chance it will get noticed by a mid-level character. Poison scales up - but the only way to scale truly fatal toxins away from low level PCs appears to be by price (Pit Toxin, Level 25 Poison costs 156,250 gp. Don't freak out, though the game economy has been re-imagined - so a +6 Holy Avenger now costs over 3 million).

Traps have been given a similar re-imagining, so there is the possibility that traps can matter above 10th level. It's still unclear to me if 4th edition rogues will be the chosen way to negate them (again, how often does any 15th level rogue in 3.5 roll to disarm a trap?).

I was very impressed with the skill challenge rules. Rather than a simple up-or-down roll on something that matters, the entire party can be involved in attempting to net a given number of successes as a group. The bonus is, they must achieve the right number of successes BEFORE they fail a set number of times (e.g. make 6 successes before accumulating 4 failures).

This makes big non-combat rolls less anti-climactic - and allows a challenge to involve the whole party. For example, say the whole party needs to "work the crowd" at a market to get information in a hurry. Everyone rolls and hopes that their tactless fighter doesn't sink their chances. This is a good game mechanic. I wish I'd thought of it.

There are extensive sections on balancing XP rewards, creating settings and encounters (complete with examples) as well as rules for creating custom monsters. 3.0/3.5 came with guidelines for PC treasure by level, and this book has them as well.

What you will *not* find in this volume:

Rules for making custom magic items. Having thrown the door wide open in 3.0/3.5, it looks like the 4th ed is pushing it shut. This is a great shame, as players who enjoyed that freedom *will* miss it. While I would expect that these rules will appear in a future supplement - they belong in a core rulebook.

The paradigm shift that began in 3.0 (from "DM has all the secrets," to DM/player collaboration) has resulted in the PHB getting fatter and the DMG getting thinner. 4th edition has continued this, moving magic items into the PHB so that the bulk of this book is adventure-building advice.

It makes the DMG less of a reference book that you use in each session. Now, it's more of a book that you use when you prepare - but don't actually take to the session.

This is not a bad thing - but fans of the old paradigm may think so.

Great for beginners, a bit of a retread for seasoned DMs
This is NOT a review of 4th Edition D&D Rules.

The new Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG) is a very useful reference for new and seasoned DMs alike. Similar to the 3.5 DMG, the 4E DMG is mostly devoted to teaching GMs the black art of creating the adventure and running a game. This may come naturally to seasoned and as such the book is of somewhat less value to those folks.

The book's most easily stated purpose can be found in the title of the first chapter: How To Be A DM. This theme is echoed throughout the book as it goes on to provide reams of inspiration for any DM looking to craft a memorable play experience.

The first three chapters are devoted almost entirely to those folks who are DMing for their first time and want to put their best foot forward. The middling chapters provide guidelines for constructing the actual content of a game: Encounters, Adventures and Campaigns. The final chapters focus on the rules minutae of creating monsters, dealing with environmental hazards and construction of entire worlds. It also presents a completely developed town and area to start your players out in if you so choose. You can also use this area as a useful example when designing your own worlds.

Naturally, however, even experienced DMs would be wise to take a look over this book as it contains numerous useful nuggets of information and guidelines on structuring well paced 4E adventures. It's a great refresher for any DM - especially those who think they know it all. Seasoned D&D DMs are, in my humble experience, usually very thickheaded. They have ONE way they like to run their game and they actively ignore any ideas to the contrary. Every DM has his "way" that he follows like a religion and is very closed off to change or feedback. I am guilty of this myself to some degree, but I try to always remember that I am there to make the game fun for my players. I think some DMs miss these points and these are the type of folks that won't like most of this book.

(FYI, these are most of the people giving this book 1 Star reviews, as they clearly have no grasp of the purpose of this book and are just using Amazon to vent their frustrations with what they perceive the rules are lacking. What these folks are missing is that the rules aren't as important as having fun at the table.)

The bulk of the rules type stuff is contained in the last half of the book. These chapters contain rules on rewarding players, various environmental factors, artifacts, world-forging, monster-making and random dungeons/encounters. For those thickheaded DMs, this is mostly the stuff you will pay for as it constitutes the bulk of what you will need to make 4E adventures. Another interesting thing I personally noticed about the monster creation sections is how easy it would be to "fake" a monster on the fly if the DM needs it. Very cool indeed.

This book's stated purpose is to teach someone how to be a good DM. Truth be told, there are exceedingly few "good" DMs out there and newbie DMs can be advised that if you follow the guidelines in this book then you can't go wrong. With the exception of some seemingly forgotten items like constructing Minions, this book otherwise fulfills it's purpose completely and admirably. The 4E DMG stands as an awesome reminder of what D&D is all about: having fun!

Play D+D before? Skip this book
To start with, this is not a review of Fourth Edition, I have been reading through the character and combat system, and I like 4th edition (and I date back to the days of the original Chainmail). That being said, this book is utterly useless if you have played the game before, any version. There are no charts (other than disease and traps). Most of it is advice on how to roleplay, and what to do if someone has a family member that died and missed 2 months of gaming (I kid you not).

All the rules you need for 4th edition are in the players handbook. Heck, the monster manual is pretty worthless to if you are getting the modules, all the stats are in the modules. Magic Items, Combat Rules, all character powers, that is all in the PH.

There are like 10 pages of stupid made up artifacts that you will never use, pages on how to make maps, how to make encounters, and how many bowls of chips you should have at a game session. Honestly, there is NOTHING in this book that is need to play 4th edition, I would recommend only the PH and the first module if you want a feel for the game.

I do like 4th ediion though.. even though it seems like it was built as a video game engine. I have neices and nephews that it is really easy to explain to.