Dungeon Master's Guide

• 1. Introduction

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  The Dungeon Master's Guide sits on the table, but only one person is allowed to open it during play. Every player in a game of Dungeons & Dragons needs a copy of the Player's Handbook, which covers the basic rules of gameplay. The Dungeon Master's Guide, along with the monster reference book called the Monster Manual, is meant for a single reader: the Dungeon Master. Together the three books form what the game calls its "core rules." Only the Dungeon Master is expected to actually consult the Guide or the Monster Manual once play begins. This is the book that arbitrates the game rather than teaches it, the rulebook behind the rulebook. Since Dungeons & Dragons first handed a Dungeon Master this book, it has been rewritten again and again. It has passed between different writers, been wrapped in new covers, and been reviewed with wildly different verdicts by the hobby's own critics. Who has actually built this guide, edition after edition, and what does each version reveal about how the game itself was changing?

• 2. Gygax's Vision

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  TSR published the original AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, its title printed without an apostrophe, in 1979. Gary Gygax wrote the 232-page hardcover, which carried a cover painting by David C. Sutherland III. A 1983 printing swapped that cover for new art by Jeff Easley. Mike Carr edited the book and wrote its foreword. Interior illustrations came from Sutherland alongside D. A. Trampier, Darlene Pekul, Will McLean, David S. LaForce, and Erol Otus.

  Gygax packed the book with everything a Dungeon Master needed to run a campaign. It laid out game statistics for magic items and treasure and explained how to run random monster encounters. It also supplied stats for some of the game's basic monsters. New magic items appeared in its pages for the first time, alongside scores of tables and charts for figuring damage and resolving encounters.

  One feature drew special notice: the random dungeon generator, which let a Dungeon Master roll dice to build a dungeon "on the fly." A complete dungeon, with passageways, rooms, treasure, and monsters, could take shape this way for a single player or a full group. Later editions dropped the generator, though it would resurface decades afterward in the fifth edition guide. A companion product, the Dungeon Masters Screen, packaged two heavy-duty tri-fold boards printed with the most frequently used tables. Its 1979 second edition described its purpose as shielding maps from players while doubling as quick reference. The original stayed in print for decades: a paperback reprint appeared in 1999, followed by a premium hardcover reprint on the 17th of July, 2012.

  White Dwarf magazine reviewed the book in issue #16, spanning December 1979 and January 1980. Critic Don Turnbull wrote that "only the most severe critic could point at a minor omission, let alone a serious one." Writing for Black Gate in 2014, Scott Taylor ranked the Jeff Easley re-cover among his Top 10 TSR Cover Paintings of All Time. He also placed the same guide second on a separate list of orange-spine AD&D hardcovers. In his 2023 book Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, RPG historian Stu Horvath called the guide "strange and deeply idiosyncratic." He added, "Without a doubt, I believe it's also a masterpiece." Horvath went further still, describing it as an accidental portrait of Gygax's own mind, circa 1978. Later writers would have to decide how much of that idiosyncratic vision to keep.

• 3. A Streamlined Second Edition

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  David "Zeb" Cook designed the second edition Dungeon Master Guide, released by TSR in 1989 as a 192-page hardcover. Jeff Easley painted its cover. Interior illustrations came from Easley alongside Clyde Caldwell, John and Laura Lakey, David Dorman, Douglas Chaffee, and Jean E. Martin.

  Cook's revision reorganized and streamlined the rules for a Dungeon Master running the game. It set out options for character creation, handled the alignment rules, and rewrote guidance on money and equipment, treasure and magical items, and encounters. It also covered time and movement and how to manage non-player characters. The finished book was indexed throughout and filled with numerous full-page color illustrations.

  The second edition Dungeon Master Guide won both an ORIGINS award and a Gamer's Choice award. In his 1991 book Heroic Worlds, game historian Lawrence Schick praised it for containing "lots of excellent new advice on how to run AD&D." TSR reissued the book in 1995 as part of the company's 25th anniversary, keeping Cook's original text intact but giving it new art and layout.

  Stephan Wieck reviewed the second edition in White Wolf issue #17, published in 1989. He wrote that "there are no great changes to the DMG." Yet he added that it had become as much a guide of advice for Dungeon Masters as a manual of specific information. The book stayed available for decades afterward: a premium reprint reached shelves on the 21st of May, 2013. A different design team, and a different publisher, would take up the challenge next.

• 4. Splitting The Writing Room

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  Wizards of the Coast published the third edition Dungeon Master's Guide in September 2000. Monte Cook, Jonathan Tweet, and Skip Williams all contributed to the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and the Monster Manual. Each designer then wrote one book built from those shared contributions. Cook is credited with the Dungeon Master's Guide's design. Henry Higginbotham painted the cover. Interior art came from Lars Grant-West, Scott Fischer, John Foster, Todd Lockwood, David Martin, Arnie Swekel, Kevin Walker, Sam Wood, and Wayne Reynolds.

  A slightly revised edition followed in 2001, correcting a handful of errors from the original printing. In 2003, Wizards of the Coast revised the book again for the 3.5 rules update, crediting David Noonan and Rich Redman for the new edition. Higginbotham's cover carried over. The interior art list grew to include Matt Cavotta, Ed Cox, Jeremy Jarvis, John and Laura Lakey, Raven Mimura, Scott Roller, and Brian Snoddy. Several artists from the original edition returned as well.

  Asked what had changed from the previous guide, Rich Redman said "the most immediate, obvious, and dramatic change is the reorganization." He explained that earlier books had assumed a separate adventure game would teach new players the basics. That freed the Dungeon Master's Guide to work as a reference catalogue of rules. With that adventure game discontinued, Redman said the team needed the 3.5 books to introduce the game to players directly. That meant reorganizing the Dungeon Master's Guide "in particular." Years of published material citing the old page numbers and chapters limited how far that reorganization could go.

  The 3.5 Dungeon Master's Guide reached collectors again as a premium reprint on the 18th of September, 2012. The next Dungeon Master's Guide would arrive attached to an entirely new team once again.

• 5. A New World, New Team

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  Wizards of the Coast released the fourth edition Dungeon Master's Guide on the 6th of June, 2008, alongside its companion volumes. James Wyatt wrote the 224-page hardcover, whose front cover came from Wayne Reynolds and whose back cover was painted by Brian Hagan. Interior illustrations filled the book from a large team: Rob Alexander, Steve Argyle, Wayne England, Jason Engle, David Griffith, Espen Grundetjern, and Brian Hagan. Ralph Horsley, Howard Lyon, Lee Moyer, William O'Connor, Wayne Reynolds, Dan Scott, Ron Spears, Chris Stevens, Anne Stokes, and Eva Widermann also contributed art.

  Wyatt's book covered building encounters, aquatic and mounted combat, skill challenges, traps and hazards, and rewards. It also covered non-player character creation, artifacts, monster creation, and templates. A sample town and a short adventure let a Dungeon Master start running a fourth edition game right away. Even though it kept artifacts, this was the first Dungeon Master's Guide with no standard magic items. Those moved into the Player's Handbook for this edition instead.

  Shannon Appelcline, author of Designers & Dragons, credited the book with introducing a "new style for adventure encounters" and a "skill challenge system." Both were central to fourth edition's design philosophy. Appelcline wrote that the edition "revamped the game's standard world model and its cosmology." It also introduced a setting that became popularly known as Nentir Vale, though that name designated only a small part of the wider world.

  In September 2009, Wizards released the Dungeon Master's Guide 2, written by James Wyatt with Bill Slavicsek, Mike Mearls, and Robin D. Laws. Appelcline noted that the original guide had covered heroic adventuring at levels 1-10, so the sequel detailed paragon adventuring at levels 11-20. It also added storytelling advice, skill challenge and monster customization, and the return of a beloved setting. That setting, the "fan-favorite" world of Sigil, had last been explored in depth in the Planescape Campaign Setting back in 1994.

  As part of the Essentials line aimed at new players, Wizards of the Coast released a Dungeon Master's Kit in 2010. It packaged a digest-sized book covering much of the same material as the fourth edition Dungeon Master's Guide. The kit also included a two-part adventure module and a set of cardboard monster tokens. It gave newcomers a lighter path into the job. The game's next edition would once again put that job inside a single core rulebook.

• 6. The Long Wait For Fifth

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  Dungeons & Dragons released its fifth edition Dungeon Master's Guide in 2014, the last of three core rulebooks to reach shelves. Lead designer Jeremy Crawford explained the staggered rollout: "our small team couldn't finish the books at the same time and also ensure their high quality." He added that the team could either stagger the releases or sit on all three books until every one was finished. Crawford co-led the fifth edition's design together with Mike Mearls.

  Polygon described the finished guide as "by far the densest of the rulebooks yet released." It still carried the same fifty-dollar price in the United States as its companions. In an interview with Escapist Magazine, Mearls explained the book's purpose. It was for a Dungeon Master who wanted something more exotic than "core fantasy." That could mean adding technology to a campaign or building a "grim and grittier," horror-tinged game. He added that the guide also supplied tools for building dungeons, adventures, monsters, spells, and even character classes. He called it the place for "getting under the hood of how the system works."

  The fifth edition Dungeon Master's Guide won the 2015 ENnie "Best Supplement" Gold award. It also won the 2015 Origins awards for "Best Role-Playing Game Supplement" and "Fan Favorite." Henry Glasheen, writing for SLUG Magazine, called fifth edition "the new gold standard for D20-based tabletop RPGs." Glasheen said the guide, once "the most vestigial of all the D&D manuals," had become "far more important and useful" in this edition.

  Jonathan Bolding, reviewing the book for Escapist Magazine, wrote that it confirmed the game rather than reinventing it. He called it "a living history of D&D, a collection of what the game has been so far." He summed it up as "perfection, not innovation." Chuck Francisco of mania.com praised its "miles of treasure tables" and random adventure tables. He pointed to its "flavor filled side panels" for detailing the game's lower-magic setting options.

  Writing for Black Gate, Scott Taylor observed that the fifth edition guide spends its first 127 pages on one task. It teaches a novice how to run the game at all. Gygax had assumed an aspiring Dungeon Master would first learn the system by sitting at another player's table, Taylor wrote. The designers at Wizards of the Coast instead assumed their reader had "never really played D&D before." They built the guide to give direct instruction from page one.