D&D Dungeon Master's Guide: A Dungeons and Dragons Requirement!
Written: Feb 18 '06 (Updated May 06 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: All the detail you need to run a Dungeons and Dragons game!
Cons: Errata.
The Bottom Line: If you are running a game of Dungeons and Dragons, you cannot play without this.
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| brentp256's Full Review: Dungeons & Dragons - Dungeon Master's Guide: Core ... |
"The long-dead king raises his skeletal arm toward you, as his apparition floats above the sarcophagus. ‘You will serve me…or die!’"
The dungeon master (DM: the person who runs the game) describes the situation to the players seated at the table. As the players take in the information given to them, the DM announces that five skeletons emerge from the shadows with their rusty swords drawn. He let's them know that battle is about to begin if they don't agree to the dead king's terms.
“Dungeons and Dragons virtually created the hobby of role-playing games back in the 1970's. It has remained steadily popular while waning a bit in the 90's. In 2000, Wizards of the Coast (after buying TSR, the original company) decided to revamp the franchise with Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition. This edition of the game revitalized the game, and its open gaming license allowed for third party to create compatible products, which helped build up the entire industry! After several years on the market, long-term flaws in third edition showed up, and Wizards of the Coast created the 3.5 edition to make the game work better. 3.5 Edition was re-released in July of 2003.
To play in a Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game, a gaming group needs several items: a Player's Handbook, a Dungeon Master's Guide, a Monster Manual, dice, miniatures or tokens to represent battles, paper, pencils, pizza and imagination! (Okay, pizza is not required, but helps!)
This book review is on the 3.5 version of the Dungeon Masters Guide, also known as the Revised Dungeon Master’s Guide.
The Dungeon Masters Guide is a necessary book for the person who will be running a game of Dungeons and Dragons (DM). It lays out the rules and options for the DM to use.
The Dungeon Master’s Guide is an attractive 320 page hardcover book that walks Dungeon Masters through the rules to run Dungeons and Dragons, running campaigns, special character-types, magic items, and more. Written by Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, and Skip Williams, it offers charts, text-based descriptions and illustrations where appropriate. Many of the illustrations are in full color, including diagrams that show how to use miniatures and a battle-grid. Some of the pictures are black and white line drawings and the background lines on many charts can get somewhat distracting. Overall, though, the look/feel of the book is great.
The Dungeon Masters Guide is divided into the following chapters:
Chapter 1: Running the Game
This short chapter breaks out the basic elements of running a game that the DM needs to know. This includes writing adventures, using published adventures, teaching the game (a primary component for Dungeon Masters), refereeing, non-player characters, moving the game forward, and providing for different styles of play. This section also gives a nice example of a part of a game session. This part really helps those who have never played before get a feel for how the game should run.
Chapter 2: Using the Rules
This includes such vital rules as movement and using a battle-grid, bonuses, combat, skill checks, saving throws, magic, and rewards. This is a vital section to learn for the Dungeon Master, as these are the basic components of a game. This section nicely details each of these sections, with examples and variants if you don’t like the rules as exactly written.
Chapter 3: Adventures
Adventures are one of the best parts about being a Dungeon Master. DM’s generally are a creative force that love to create worlds, situations, events, cities, monsters, and adventures to go in them. This chapter details many types of adventures and tips and tricks to creating adventures. This includes setting the right balance of toughness for the encounters, the right amount of treasure, how to build and populate dungeons with furnishings and traps, and the ecology of dungeons, or where to place monsters. A small sample dungeon is supplied. This chapter also deals with setting up outdoor adventures and how terrain, weather, and even being underwater affect gameplay. Several tables of random monsters are included by terrain type.
Chapter 4: Nonplayer Characters
Everyone else in the world besides your players is a Nonplayer Character (NPC). The DM needs to be able to play every other character, know what their abilities are, and know how to play them. This section details that information, from hirelings to high-level locals. Plenty of tables are provided to help quickly roll up townsfolk. Sample characters at all levels up to 20th are also provided for quick creation.
Chapter 5: Campaigns
Now that the DM has created an adventure, how does he create a larger-scope for his world? The campaign. Campaigns are a series of adventures strung together for multiple gaming sessions. Campaigns can be of set duration, or last for many, many years. This section deals with how to tie your adventures into a campaign and make it feel real. How does this campaign world deal with war? Magic? Social Structures? Religion? The rest of the universe? This section helps you work on those aspects of your campaign. It also introduces the reader to the D&D cosmology. Where does the world you are playing on fit in with different planes of the universe? Where do souls go when they pass on? Where do the gods live? These answers are touched on in this section (For more data, see Deities and Demigods and the Planar Handbook).
Chapter 6: Characters
The Players Handbook devotes a nice large section to characters and classes, and the Dungeon Masters Guide expands on the idea with the introduction of prestige classes. These are classes that a player (or NPC) can take when they have met certain requirements, such as being a certain level, or having a specific skill. This section also deals with races and subraces (modifying, creating). This section introduces 16 prestige classes, including the Arcane Archer, Arcane Trickster, Archmage, and Red Wizard. Also detailed in this chapter are wizard’s familiars (creatures that enhance a wizard) and mounts. This section also touches on Epic-level characters (later expanded in the Epic Level Handbook).
Chapter 7: Magic Items
This is a very detailed chapter on various magical items, their costs, creation, descriptions, and powers. Table and charts nicely lay out all of the detail. Drawings accompany some of the items to give a better feel for what it looks like. Also touched on are cursed items and the negative consequences a character receives from these items.
Chapter 8: Glossary
A very nice to have section: A glossary of terms.
Extra
Also included in the back of the book are various templates for spells that can be copied or cut out, to show the area of affect of certain spells. Several tokens are included that can be cut out and used on a battlemat to represent treasure chests, statues, stairs, and more. And finally, a very useful index is in the back of the book.
Final Thoughts:
For the list price of $29.95, this book is a must-have for any Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master, and a nice-to-have for the player who must know everything.
Unfortunately, play testing and editing have created several errors and changes in rules since this was printed. To make sure you have the most up-to-date rules, visit Wizards.com and download the latest errata and FAQ list.
Errata
The latest errata for this product can be found at: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/er/20040125a
Web Enhancement
A web enhancement has been included on the Wizards of the Coast website. This enhancement is a tool for quickly creating cities. It can be found at:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20030719a
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Other Required books for Dungeons and Dragons:
Player's Handbook
Monster Manual
Other Recommended tools for Dungeons and Dragons:
Battlemat
Dice
Character Sheets
Dragon Magazine
Dungeon Magazine
Related D&D Miniatures: (referenced or appearing in this book)
Harbinger
Arcane Archer (page 176)
Archfiends
Red Wizard (page 37)
Giants of Legend
Eberk, Adventurer (iconic dwarf cleric; page 165)
Regdar, Adventurer (iconic human fighter; page 39)
Lidda, Adventurer (iconic Halfling rogue; page 50)
Angelfire
Archmage (page 179)
Recommended:
Yes
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Member: B. Austin Price
Location: Glen Ellyn, Illinois
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