Dungeon Master's Guide

Dungeons & Dragons

by Wizards of the Coast, Matt Sernett (Contributor)

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.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Gaming, Fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons, Reference, Games, Magic

224 pages, Hardcover

First published June 6, 2008

About the author

Wizards of the Coast LLC (often referred to as WotC /ˈwɒtˌsiː/ or simply Wizards) is an American publisher of games, primarily based on fantasy and science fiction themes, and formerly an operator of retail stores for games. Originally a basement-run role-playing game publisher, the company popularized the collectible card game genre with Magic: The Gathering in the mid-1990s, acquired the popular Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game by purchasing the failing company TSR, and experienced tremendous success by publishing the licensed Pokémon Trading Card Game. The company's corporate headquarters are located in Renton, Washington in the United States.[1]

Wizards of the Coast publishes role-playing games, board games, and collectible card games. They have received numerous awards, including several Origins Awards. The company has been a subsidiary of Hasbro since 1999. All Wizards of the Coast stores were closed in 2004.

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Odd as it may seem, I often read game books for pleasure, even if I may never get to play the game. My wife reads cookbooks the same way. She can taste the food through the text. I can feel the adventure (or not) while reading.
I am playing in a 4E campaign, but not Dungeon Mastering. So I figured I could save the money and just buy the Player's Handbook(s). I have to say the 4E Player's Handbooks are mind numbing to read. They work great as a reference book, but they are all numbers and powers, there is no sense of adventure beyond the art.
The new Dungeon Master's Guide is quite different. I picked it up because I was interested in one rule my DM kept springing on us: the skill challenge. I wondered if I could convert that for use in my Dark Heresy game.
I was pleasantly surprised to find this a very good read, and full of very good advice for taking on the role of a Dungeon Master. In fact, most of the techniques can be used with any role playing system. I'll be raiding this book for ideas for some time to come.
And yes, there is plenty to transfer over to my Dark Heresy game, including skill challenges.

[Micah Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good times.

[Victoria Hawco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surely I am the master of dungeons by now.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The 4e DMG is quite a good book, offering solid advice to the novice DM. The section on player types and social dynamics is probably the best one for DMs who feel they need the book's permission to do their job, enabling DMs to be a lot more flexible at the table and even allow their players an amount of authorship that I don't recall being explicitly advised in previous editions. It is rounded with the usual sections on monster creation and adaptation, as well as NPC and dungeon creation (including the tables for quick generation). The included sample base of operations, Fallcrest, is actually pretty neat, and the sample initial adventure, while super simplistic, does a nice job of putting all the info from the DMG together into a koboldy cohesive whole.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

In keeping with the rest of the edition, the rules are big on "telling the story" and light on crunchy, math-based, rules. I'm warming to this as of the DMG which combines the wisdom of many editions worth of campaign management. These rules are vague and that vagueness is liberating. If you drink the Kool-aide and accept that the story is greater than the game then this IS a 5 star book. After 4th edition's pop-rock-video-game, I was thirsty.

[Taddow · Rating 4 out of 5]

So 4th Ed. D&D has taken a lot of flak from those not fond of the system but I think I'll save my likes and dislikes of that edition when (if) I review the 4th Ed. Player's Handbook. Regarding the 4th Ed. Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG) I was pleasantly surprised. While veteran gamers might not get much out of this, I think that Wizards of the Coast (WotC) did a great job of producing an informative book for a new Dungeon Master (DM). I wish some of the older edition DMGs followed this approach, and perhaps that might have saved some time learning what I had to learn through trial and error and experience (but I guess new DMs will still have to go through this no matter how much advice they get, though I believe that every bit of information still helps the learning curve).

There is a lot of advice on how to set-up and run an encounter and a campaign, how to make a game appealing to players and a pretty detailed starting point (Fallcrest and the surrounding area) for a new campaign. I wonder if perhaps all this information was possible because (unlike other editions of the DMG) sections on magic items (and other topics) were included in the Player's Handbook instead.

Overall, I think this is a great book, mainly as a guide for new DMs (and Game Masters) and those looking for new traps, obstacles, and puzzles to flesh out their encounters, dungeons, etc. I currently run a 5th ed. campaign and I got some ideas from this book that I'm going to try to incorporate into that campaign (DMs and GMs can pretty much get inspiration from everywhere, even 4th ed.).

[Anelya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great book, so much information, really interesting. I can't wait to read through the 5th Edition version and see what changed in the meantime. Otherwise it was quite interesting, and especially the part about creating your own world inspired a lot of ideas for me.

[Iain · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having read every DM's guide I have to say that this one does the best job of actually explaining how to DM a game of D&D.

[Caleb Neal]

Caleb

[Avery · Rating 4 out of 5]

Genuinely don't get the Hate toward this edition. The DMG details how you could run a noncombat campaign

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

4th edition is a lot different than 5th

[Randy Lander · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a huge fan of the D&D 4th Edition, but the Dungeon Master's Guide is definitely the weak link in the core rulebook set. In fact, it's mostly an argument for eliminating the DMG in the inevitable 5th edition. There's a lot of good material for the first GM, but as someone who has run tons of games before, seeing "types of players" yet again, or being told to wing it when the rules don't cover something, is not useful information.

The rules section is light as well, with skill challenges introduced but not really fleshed out, and the puzzles/traps section is likewise slim. There are 17 pages given over to these three topics, which are arguably the most important rules sections of the book. And the town of Fallcrest, realized in 14 pages, is a nifty little generic town setting. The overview of The World is mildly interesting, but it omits a lot of the interesting info (and art) that was in the preview books about D&D 4th Edition.

In general, though, this is a book for RPG newbies, not for anyone who has ever done any GM-ing before. And while I can appreciate that, it does make it a bit on the useless side for me, and for those who played a fair amount of D&D before 4th edition.

[Reba Reads]

I'm not rating this because I have no idea how to, honestly. I started closely reading this guide a while ago, taking extensive notes throughout. At the same time as doing this, I was reading informational articles online and other tabletop nonfiction titles like Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It. At this point in my research, I've realized 4th edition is not really the kind of campaign I want to run. This is an awkward realization, as I've spent way too much time reading 4th edition materials. I'm going to start reading the 5th edition to this guide and will hopefully finish it waaaayyy faster than this one; it's one book instead of two and is (for the most part) universally accepted to be the simpler of the two versions. As I'm planning to run a simpler, more laid back campaign, I think I'm justified in putting this 4th edition guide down mid-read to pick up the 5th edition instead. Don't make the mistake I did! Read lots of comparison materials online before you start heavy reading on any particular edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

[Jacek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Drugi wydany w Polsce podręcznik z linii wydawniczej czwartej edycji D&D różni się nieco od swojego odpowiednika z edycji poprzecznej. Książka jest cieńsza, ale treściwsza w opisy. Foliał ten miał za zadanie zapoznać Mistrza Podziemi z zasadami obowiązującymi w trakcie sesji tego systemu. Rozwiązań mechanicznych jest tutaj mniej, co nie znaczy, że nie znajdą się tutaj pewne narzędzia dla prowadzących grę.

Wydanie to wypełnione jest po brzegi radami i świetnie nadaje się dla każdego mistrza gry, czy to dopiero wkraczającego w świat gier fabularnych, czy też starego wyjadacza. Osobiście księga ta bardzo przypadła mi do gustu i żywię nadzieję, że wszystkie publikacje na temat prowadzenia RPGów będą przypominały ten tytuł.

[Eleanor Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am relatively new to D&D, but I done a bit if GMing before. I liked how the book gave templates did creating your own versions of things as well as some if their own. I wish that it had given a more detailed description of how to start a campaign or adventure, and how to get to a certain point in it, however, and that it told you what D&D combat was.
I did enjoy how it left so many details and so much lore open ended. I have had fun, as I think my players will, developing artifacts to add to stories, and deciding exactly what the Far Realms are like.
I also like how it gives you ideas of what you could do, but does not make you feel compelled to use a published campaign or adventure. It gives you enough ideas to think of your own, but not so many that you don't think you can.

[Mark Austin · Rating 2 out of 5]

★ - Most books with this rating I never finish and so don't make this list. This one I probably started speed-reading to get it over with.
★★ - Average. Wasn't terrible, but not a lot to recommend it. Probably skimmed parts of it.
★★★ - Decent. A few good ideas, well-written passages, interesting characters, or the like.
★★★★ - Good. This one had parts that inspired me, impressed me, made me laugh out loud, made me think - it got positive reactions and most of the rest of it was pretty decent too.
★★★★★ - Amazing. This is the best I've read of its genre, the ones I hold on to so I can re-read them and/or loan them out to people looking for a great book. The best of these change the way I look at the world and operate within it.

[Lance Schonberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes an easy read and sometimes not. Sometimes an easy system and sometimes not.

Picked up in order to be able to run a campaign for my kids, and it's certainly helped me do that, at least after knocking a bit of the rust off my old GM skills.

A lot of what's here is very useful for running the game, but a lot of it could have been accomplished in much less space and with clearer language. Obviously an important reference, and you'll have a tough time running the game without it until you figure out the basic needs of your players and the adventure, but I actually hope the next edition is a bit more streamlined.

[Simone · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Good:

Excellent for beginners, very clear and precise articulation of the core rules, and helpful tips and tricks are plentiful. Makes DMing very accessible for the uninitiated.

The Bad:

Simplistic, although that is more of a criticism of fourth edition itself rather than this particular manual. Some of the finesse is cut in favor of a streamlined approach.

Overall:

Recommended for DMs looking to expand into fourth edition campaigns; house rules will likely have to be instated for the finicky, but generally it acts as a solid introduction.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

The DMG has always been the least useful of the core rule books. Even as the main DM, it got a lot less use than the other two, especially for veteran players that don't need the massive amounts of space explaining the function of the DM, and general imagination advice.

This edition though, the DMG actually has a lot of relatively pertinent information. Explanations of ways to use the new combat rules, and so forth. So It seems much more worthwhile, at least, after a quick read through.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

The new DMG lets a DM just be a DM. With all of the core rules held in the Players Handbook, this freed up a lot of space in the DMG, which I think they put to good use. Full of advice for how to run , plan, and build a campaign, it also advises DM's on how to keep the different player types all interested in the game. Add in the advice from the pros, and this book really helps a DM in running and managing a game.

[Punning · Rating 3 out of 5]

There really is a lot of good information in this book, and I feel a lot more confident about running a game now that I've read it. Nevertheless, I feel like there should have been a bit... more to it. A whole lot of basic information, but not much actual content. How about a section on traps? Or even a few basic pre-rolled monsters?

This is a recommend for any aspiring DMs...

[Clackamas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll stick with 3.5 for now. The advancement in 4.0 is ridiculous. the way my group games, we'd be leveling up twice a session if we tried to go with this. I do think that the younger generation will like this one though. It'll appeal to their shorter attention spans.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like the new DM Guide for 4th edition. It spends more time on crafting the story and less time on complicated game mechanics and tables of exceptions. It is a much more streamlined game and plays faster like the original Dungeons and Dragons basic game.

[Stephen “Boone” · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good reference book for DMs. While not necessarily essential, it does provide enough input from enough people to help a fledgling DM quickly make the leap to pretty-good DM. Plenty of rich, story-telling fodder.

[Ben]

Don't normally list a book like this as reading. But I'm reading it cover to cover, so guess that works.

[Ganglion Bard-barbarian · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pen and paper World of Warcraft.

[Morbus Iff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite good, actually; stronger than 3E's.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

They had some interesting tips in here. Worth a look through.

[Richard]

This doesn't even rate being called a role-playing game. There's nothing in it for directing novices to create stories, only how to read the tables contained within its pages.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book surprised me. Maybe my expectations were low, but it really does help you DM. I'd recommend it for any Dungeon Master.