Dungeon Master's Guide

The Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG or DM's Guide; in earlier editions, the Dungeon Masters Guide or Dungeon Master Guide) is a book of rules for the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. The Dungeon Master's Guide contains rules concerning the arbitration and administration of a game, and is intended for use primarily or only by the game's Dungeon Master. The original Dungeon Master's Guide was published in 1979, and gave Dungeon Masters everything they needed to run a D&D game campaign.

It is intended as a companion book to the Player's Handbook, which contains all of the basic rules of gameplay, and the Monster Manual, which is a reference book giving statistics and characteristics to various animals and monsters. The Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual are collectively referred to as the "core rules" of the Dungeons & Dragons game. Both the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Player's Handbook give advice, tips, and suggestions for various styles of play.

While all players, including the Dungeon Master, are expected to have at their disposal a copy of the Player's Handbook, only the Dungeon Master is expected to refer to the Dungeon Master's Guide or Monster Manual during gameplay.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons


The original Dungeon Masters Guide (sic) was written by Gary Gygax, and published by TSR in 1979 as a 232-page hardcover with a cover by David C. Sutherland III. The 1983 printing featured a new cover by Jeff Easley.

Like other volumes of Dungeons & Dragons handbooks, the Dungeon Masters Guide has gone through several versions through the years. The original edition was written by Gary Gygax and edited by Mike Carr, who also wrote the foreword. The original cover art was by David C. Sutherland III, and interior illustrations were provided by Sutherland, D. A. Trampier, Darlene Pekul, Will McLean, David S. LaForce, and Erol Otus.

The first edition Dungeon Masters Guide covered all the essential rules for the Dungeon Master: creating and maintaining player characters and managing non-player characters, handling combat, and running adventures and multi-session campaigns. The book also included descriptions of magic items and treasure, random monster encounters, and statistics for the basic monsters and creatures of the game. New magic items were introduced, including the Apparatus of Kwalish.

The Dungeon Masters Guide contains scores of tables and charts for figuring damage and resolving encounters in a typical adventure, tables and rules for creating characters, and lists of the various abilities of the different classes of characters.

One supplement to the Guide was the Dungeon Master's Screen: two heavy-duty tri-fold boards with the most frequently used tables printed on them for easy reference. The 1979 second edition of the screen describes its purpose as "useful for shielding maps and other game materials from the players when placed upright, and also provide[s] instant reference to the charts and tables most commonly used during play." The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition screen came packaged with a brief adventure; later editions of that screen, and screens produced for later editions, have instead included character sheets and general reference booklets.

A feature of the first edition Dungeon Masters Guide was the random dungeon generator. The generator allowed the Dungeon Master, by the rolling of dice, to generate a dungeon adventure "on the fly". A dungeon complete with passageways, rooms, treasure, monsters, and other encounters could easily and randomly be constructed as the player progressed. It could be used with several people or a single player. The generator was not included in the subsequent editions of the Dungeon Master's Guide.

The original Dungeon Masters Guide was reviewed by Don Turnbull in issue #16 of the magazine White Dwarf (December 1979/January 1980). Turnbull commented mostly on the size of the book, "I would say that only the most severe critic could point at a minor omission, let alone a serious one."

The 1st edition Dungeon Master's Guide was reproduced as a premium reprint on July 17, 2012.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition


The second edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide was released in 1989. This 192-page hardcover book was designed by David "Zeb" Cook, with cover art by Jeff Easley. The book featured interior illustrations by Easley, Clyde Caldwell, John and Laura Lakey, David Dorman, Douglas Chaffee, and Jean E. Martin.

This Dungeon Master's Guide featured revised second edition rules for the Dungeon Master, totally reorganized and streamlined. The book detailed options for character creation, handling alignment, new money and equipment rules, treasure and magical items, encounters, time and movement, and handling non-player characters. The book is indexed, and contains many full-page color illustrations.

The second edition Dungeon Master's Guide is an ORIGINS and Gamer's Choice award-winner. In his 1991 book Heroic Worlds, Lawrence Schick commented that this book contained "lots of excellent new advice on how to run AD&D". A new version of the Dungeon Master's Guide, with new art and layout but the same text, was released in 1995, as part of TSR's 25th anniversary.

The 2nd edition Dungeon Master's Guide was reproduced as a premium reprint on May 21, 2013.

Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition
The third edition Dungeon Master's Guide was published in 2000.

Monte Cook, Jonathan Tweet, and Skip Williams all contributed to the 3rd edition Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual, and then each designer wrote one of the books based on those contributions. Cook is credited with the book's design. Cover art is by Henry Higginbotham, with interior art by Lars Grant-West, Scott Fischer, John Foster, Todd Lockwood, David Martin, Arnie Swekel, Kevin Walker, Sam Wood, and Wayne Reynolds.

In 2003, the Dungeon Master's Guide was revised for the 3.5 edition. David Noonan and Rich Redman are credited for the Dungeon Master's Guide 3.5 revision. Cover art is by Henry Higginbotham, with interior art by Matt Cavotta, Ed Cox, Lars Grant-West, Scott Fischer, John Foster, Jeremy Jarvis, John and Laura Lakey, Todd Lockwood, David Martin, Raven Mimura, Wayne Reynolds, Scott Roller, Brian Snoddy, Arnie Swekel, and Sam Wood.

When asked about the changes from the previous Dungeon Master's Guide, Rich Redman said: "I think the most immediate, obvious, and dramatic change is the reorganization. When the 3rd Edition books came out, the adventure game was supposed to teach you about D&D (including both playing and DMing) and the adventure path modules were supposed to help you learn more about DMing. That meant that the DMG could be, more or less, a catalogue or encyclopedia of rules information, a reference book for DMs. With the demise of the adventure game (which had stopped printing long before we started on 3.5), we needed to focus the 3.5 books much more on introducing the game to players. That meant reorganizing the DMG in particular. Several years of published books that referred to pages and chapters in the DMG meant we could only reorganize so much, but the copies I've seen stayed pretty close to the way I reorganized it."

The 3.5 edition Dungeon Master's Guide was reproduced as a premium reprint on September 18, 2012.

Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition
The 4th edition Dungeon Master's Guide was released on June 6, 2008, at the same time as its companion volumes. It is a 224-page hardcover written by James Wyatt. The front cover illustration was by Wayne Reynolds and the back cover illustration is by Brian Hagan, with interior illustrations by Rob Alexander, Steve Argyle, Wayne England, Jason Engle, David Griffith, Espen Grundetjern, Brian Hagan, Ralph Horsley, Howard Lyon, Lee Moyer, William O'Connor, Wayne Reynolds, Dan Scott, Ron Spears, Chris Stevens, Anne Stokes, and Eva Widermann. In addition to a comprehensive look at how to DM a 4th Edition campaign or adventure, it contains information on building encounters, aquatic and mounted combat, skill challenges, traps and hazards, rewards, NPC creation, artifacts, monster creation, and template, along with a sample town and short adventure so that DMs can start running their first 4th Edition adventure right away. Although it does contain artifacts, it is the first Dungeon Master's Guide not to contain standard magic items, which were moved into the Player's Handbook for 4th Edition. In addition, a Dungeon Master's Guide 2 was released.

Additional reading

 * "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Combat Tables", White Dwarf #13.
 * "Clerics Turning Undead", Footprints #7.
 * "Expanded Secondary Skills", Footprints #8.
 * "Master Encumbrance Guide: Lessening the Burden of Encumbrance", Footprints #7.
 * "Sneak Preview: AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide", The Dragon #22.
 * "The Complete Attack and Saving Throw Table", Footprints #10.