Dungeon Master's Guide: A 4th Edition Core Rulebook (D&D Core Rulebook) [ハードカバー]

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!

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.

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.