Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide: Roleplaying Game Core Rules, 4th Edition

Ah, 4E. D&D's forgotten edition. It's okay, WOTC. We all make mistakes. There, there. Look, I don't think anyone's coming to this page accidentally. It's a hard one to stumble onto unintentionally. You know what 4E is. You also likely know why it didn't do so hot. And, to be honest, those criticisms are fair - I don't think there's a good reason to ever try running a 4E campaign in 2024, other than perhaps to sate a healthy sense of morbid curiosity. 5E is great for beginners, has a strong community, and has a million products to the point where it's chief limitation is the creativity of the DM and the boldness of the players. 3E, Pathfinder, and the likes provide for a more complex and nuanced environment. There's a million other games out there for anything in between... and those games are probably more fun for your players than 4E. But these books are fun to look through! They're great to look through, and seed inspiration from! If you're creative, then you know that the best creativity is just finding that something that no one else has ever seen before - and trust, no one save the Matt Coville fans touch the 4E stuff. Just embrace that these are probably best for fun reads and less for fun games.

Like most of 4E, the new Dungeon Master's Guide is sleek, easy to use and gets right to the point with useful advice. Others have already listed what the book is actually about, so I will highlight just one point: encounter design. The guidelines for encounter design have been vastly improved and a combination of monsters can be selected or a new monster made on the scale of minutes, with very little bookkeeping that gave me nightmares before. That fact alone makes using the book a joy and, of course, many DMs old and new will find its advice useful in general. The amount of actual fun and playing that the DMG provides has been increased greatly, while preparation time has been vastly reduced. It is a welcome change. Of course, you will hear plenty of negative comments from the edition war(riors). I am appalled at those, since one edition of the game doesn't prevent anyone who likes it to play the previous editions. Ultimately, it should be about fun and not egos - and remember that when 3rd edition came out about a decade ago, there were plenty of hate mails about how it was no longer the 2E D&D peopel knew, even though it revitalized and greatly improved the game. All I can say is that every game has its praises, but also its time and place.

High quality!!

My boyfriend and I just recently got back into D&D, so got the 4e Player's Handbook and DM Guide. The DM Guide is nice and accessible, and does a good job of laying out the rules of 4e in an entertaining way. It also has a ton of really great tips for new DMs or people who haven't played in a while to create a fun world for your adventurers. 4e is not my favorite ruleset for D&D, but this is still a good way to get back into it, or for new players to get an overview of the system. I also love that the orb on the cover is looking at the adventures from the Player's Handbook cover. Nice touch!

I come from 1e. At that time, the DUNGEON MASTER'S GUIDE had all the rules. The PLAYER'S HANDBOOK had the options for your class and the benefits/penalties of your race, but the division was clear-cut. Somewhere along the way, though, that distinction got blurred. Now, the PLAYER'S HANDBOOK has all the rules, especially the all-important rules of combat, while the DM's GUIDE has mostly advice for guiding your campaign, dealing with players, and designing encounter areas. The DM's GUIDE does have some rules, but only a few pages worth: combat rules for flying, rules for determining exhaustion, rules for mounted combat, etc. Thus the first time I read this I was disappointed and a little angry. If you are going to DM soon, you don't need this book at all: simply focus on the "Combat" section from the PLAYER'S HANDBOOK. Hence initially I got nothing out of this. It was only after DMing for about a year that I finally went back to this and read it again. I got a lot of useful advice out of it. So I suggest that you don't bother touching this until you've been DMing for at least a few months: otherwise you're going to get little out of it.

While 4e is the much-maligned edition of D&D, the Dungeon Master's Guide is, by far, one of the best actually guides to facilitating ttrpgs in general. It covers a lot of what the 5e DMG just flat doesn't, and gives guidance to creating a world and a story worth telling.

I bought a boat load of dungeons and dragons rule books all at the same time. My motivation was not to test play each and every addition. I needed them as a research resource for a campaign world that my team is developing. I can tell you after having read every book from every addition there are not huge differences in 3 and 3.5 five unless you are purest. Most of the artwork is recycled. Version four is where the big differences come into play. All that being said let me state that having been a player for more than thirty five years the quality of the books has remained consistent. I am not a fan of breaking up books into multiple volumes to make more money so buy carefully. If you are a real D&D fan and you are considering a purchase, go for it.

First off, I am relatively new to DnD, so my experience in rulebooks is fairly limited. I started a game with some friends using 4e books and they have all been really helpful. The DMG has a lot of good tips and tools, great for people just learning. The guide basically lays out the key elements of the game, gives some examples and templates and you basically just have to plug in your materials. Really well laid out and easy to understand. If you're thinking about getting into DnD, I highly recommend 4e and if you already play DnD I think it would really be worth your time to at least check out what 4e has to offer.

Still using it

Das Buch kommt demnächst in einer neuen Auflage heraus, hat aber dennoch einen Wert. Die 4.te Edition hat einiges an berechtigter Kritik abbekommen, aber dieser Dungeon Master's Guide gibt auch viele allgemeine Tipps zu Tabeltop-Rollenspielen, was sehr hilfreich ist und deckt einiges ab, was in der 5.ten Edition nicht mehr so im Fokus steht.

I'm just getting started in the world of DnD and this book is all I could wish for :) For me it's a great starting point for any fan of DnD and wanna-be dungeon-master like myself.

For a long time I didn't want to switch to 4e cause of the talk about it being worse than 3.5, but after all I'm very happy I did. For those who are happy with the 3.5 ruleset, there is no reason to change it, but those who want a faster paced combat and less out of combat trouble with resting, restocking and all that, will really apreciate 4e. The book came in excellent condition, right on time.

Had every page.