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Type of bind: Hardcover
Brand: Wizards of the Coast
Dewey Decimal Number: 793.93
EAN num: 9780786948802
ISBN number: 0786948809
Label: Wizards of the Coast
Manufacturer: Wizards of the Coast
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 224
Printing Date: June 06, 2008
Publishing house: Wizards of the Coast
Release Date: June 06, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 12532
Studio: Wizards of the Coast
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
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.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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I love the 4th ed. all I can say is that flows smooth when played, is fast and easy to develop and understand (even for my 6 year old son) forget the hundreds of tables and modifiers of 3.5, D&D4 is far better than that edition.
Rated by buyers -
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 grey 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 very 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 very first three chapters are devoted almost entirely to those folks who are DMing for their very 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!
Rated by buyers -
This DMG is a decent read and somewhat interesting. I have allot respect for James Wyatt however find this edition to be pretty much a snore. It has a lot of good points to consider when running a 4.0 game, however its more of a book of systems to keep a game on track rather than a cool guide for bringing your world to life.
Rated by buyers 
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I had been running a game for about a year when I picked up the 4th Edition Dungeon Master's Guide. I have to say, it improved my game tremendously, and I highly recommend it, especially to relatively new dungeon masters. Here's why.
The book provided the guidance I needed without getting in my way. No assumptions were made about my DMing style, or the style and motivations of my players. Instead, the authors recognized D&D as a flexible game played by very diverse people, and provided advice to make the game work for everyone.
There is a section on the different archetypes of players and what their strengths, needs, and motivations are. I swear in my group I have one of each, and could never quite figure out how to deal with that. The DMG didn't pass judgment and say my power gamer was bad and how to force him to be more like my storyteller, it gave tips on keeping everyone happy but keeping them from stepping on each other's toes.
The encounter design section not only talks about how to make balanced encounters, but also how to make them interesting. There are ideas about terrain, monster roles, and hazards that help a lot. Last night, an encounter I previously would have done as "3 goblins pop out from behind a tree and whack you with swords" turned into a flaming arrow whizzing past them, setting trees behind them on fire and scaring their horses tied to the trees. They look up in time to see another flaming arrow coming from a single but powerful-looking hobgoblin sniper high in another stand of trees, and the arrow promptly sets one of the party members on fire. The melee fighters ended up trying to chop down the tree he was in, which I didn't expect, but I figured it's a large wooden object and quickly flipped to a page in the DMG that told me about how difficult it should be. A lot of advice scattered throughout the book combined to make it a much more interesting encounter than I previously would have done.
There are also sections on improvisation and what to do about actions the rules don't cover. A lot of people have complained about the lack of specific rules for things like craft and trapmaking, but I found I preferred using the general guidelines laid out in the book. There were less rules for me to keep track of, it sped up the game by not having to look up obscure rules all the time, but it was still easy to scale the difficulty as appropriate.
The one thing I dislike about the book is the huge number of mechanical mistakes. Almost all of these have been fixed in an errata which is freely downloadable from the website, but it is still annoying to have to consult the errata when something doesn't seem right.
Rated by buyers 
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I have been playing Dungeons and Dragons since the very first boxed set and I have looked forward to each new version and this is no exception. Each new version has tried to improve on the core Dungeon and Dragon experience until now. This new version is not really a new version but an entirely new game with very little of the flavor or magic feeling of the original. Now it feels more like a version of WOW or another of the online games. I am not knocking the online games they can be great if that is what you want to play but if you are looking for an intense good old fashioned role playing session with a group of your friends this new version is not for you unless you are under 12. If you are an experienced role player I would suggest that you save your money and stick to 3.5 there should be a lot of second hand material for that around and several other good companies are still supporting it like Necromancer Games. I wish those people bought Dungeons and Dragons as they know what D&D should feel like. Also look for the games put out by pazzio publishing the company that used to put out the Dragon and Dungeon. In short if you are a veteran of the Dungeons and Dragons and enjoyed the old game save your money or better yet spend it elsceware there are a lot of fine games out there unfortunately this company is no longer make such products.
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