Product Description

The second 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 Masters 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: #4729 in Books
• Brand: Wizards of the Coast
• Published on: 2008-06-06
• Released on: 2008-06-06
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Customer Reviews

A worthy successor
As I noted in my review of the PHB, 4e is a worthy successor to 3.5, but it isn't a must have. If you are just starting in D&D, 4e is the way to go, but if you are happy with your 3.5 or earlier campaign, there is no big rush to end it and switch.

This edition of the DMG is focussed on designing and running good encounters, campaings and game. Specifics such as Magic Items have been moved out of the DMG and into the PHB, which is good since in the end players need to access that information. Oh, there is still specifics for less common aspects of combat, but the emphasis is on running a fun game.

For some, the DMG (and 4e in general) may be a bit heavy on defining specific roles, but the roles can be good tools for building a better game. Where the PHB classifies character roles, the DMG talks about player roles - not in terms of what to force your players into, but in terms of classifying how different people play the game so you can make sure you are giving everyone what they play to get. To old hands, these classifications may be obvious and intuitive, but they certainly can help many DMs create a better game for all.

The DMG also defines monster roles and ways of building good encounters by using monsters filling a mix of roles. It also gives structure to non-combat skill challenges.

For me, one of the big successes was in combat encounter building. In 3.0 & 3.5, combining monsters of different challenge ratings (CRs) to a final encounter rating (ER) was difficult. You could do it, but it wasn't straight forward. It was much easier to use a bunch of the same monster. Even then, you had to look up the ER for each different character level involved to determine the XP awarded.

In 4e, each monster has a role and a fixed XP ammount and you just pick monsters to fill the roles you want and have the total XP you want for the encounter, which is divided equally among the player characters. This makes it much easier to use a variety of monsters for a more interesting encounter.

Terrible - Unless You Don't Like D&D
This is not D&D. It's a new game, not a particularly good one, with the D&D "logo" slapped on the front. Third Edition tinkered a little bit with the iconic elements of D&D, but could still be seen as an upgrade. For fourth edition however, all prior editions might as well have never existed. It is obvious that the publisher's driving motivation was to trade on the D&D label, while making absolutely certain that no prior edition products would be in any way useful for this game. Great way to alienate your entire market Hasbro. Thanks.

Top Notch
D&D continues to refine, define and improve the icon of all role playing games. 4th edition proves to be the best rendition of the game yet. It offers smoother combat mechanics, easy to "learn and play" rules and best of all a revamped and, gratefully, improved Magic system! And for classes, there are no more "to be avoided" classes as they are all good to play and balanced. Monsters in the series are easier to plan and run with the new streamlined system and its dependance on minitures to operate combat. And the Dungeons Master Guide, once relagated to the "other stuff" book, now actually tells you how to narrate the system and tips on how to be a better Dungeon Master! The only drawback to this otherwise superior system, is that it seems to have removed most of the background roleplaying aspects that rounded out a character, such as the Craft, Perform and even Ride skiils that were present in previous editions. But, given the overall improvement of the system, it's well worth the investment!