Upgrade your current thrilling adventures in the interactive world of DnD with the must-have Dungeon Master’s Guide. This book has everything in it to expand your worlds in more ways than one.
Is This Book For You?
The real question is, are you a Dungeon Master? If this answer is yes, then definitely get this. However, if the answer is no, then you will definitely not get as much out of this buy, but you will still gain some valuable benefits, such as magic item stats, racial features, and some extra rules.
Contents
Now that you have a rough idea of the book, I will tell you about what it actually contains. Part one provides an overview of how to create our own worlds, including a descriptive table of many mythological gods and goddesses, a more in-depth description of the planes than the Player’s Handbook, languages and dialects, magic, and settlements. Part two contains tips and tricks on actually creating and running your adventures. This entails how to structure adventures, creating NPCs (non-playable characters), making dungeons and wilderness, linking multiple adventures together, and how to use rewards. Part three contains tips on how to actually run the game, including ability scores, exploration, social interaction, inspiration points, combat, and the creation of monsters, spells, magic items, and new character options. Lastly, this book contains four appendices containing randomizing dungeons, monster lists, ready made maps, and inspiration.
Art
I truly think this book upholds the usual DnD standard with outstandingly detailed art. Although one main thing that stood out to me in this book was, specifically, the consistency. Sadly, with most DnD books, the amazing art is usually cancelled out by the inconsistency of it. What I mean by this is that almost every DnD book’s art fluctuates a
lot in detail, as they will often reuse old art from previous editions. Thankfully, the Dungeon Master’s Guide is different. Throughout the entire book, there are barely any annoying inconsistencies that make this rule book stand out above others. Also, like other DnD books, the art is never in the way but also never too subtle. One problem I find with other rulebooks, like the Warhammer codex’s is that the art is either too prominent and distracts you from reading or is black and white and is almost never noticed.
Is it actually helpful?
As a dungeon master myself, when planning my next campaign, I will often give this a quick flick through one night to scan for some inspiration, somewhere in this book. Also, as a new Dungeon Master, it will be such a good help when learning the ropes of campaign planning and seeing what additional rules you can bring to the next game night, such as inspiration points, which will really get people thinking of imaginative ways around obstacles. Also, in my character creation sessions, I always find that when you don’t have a book (like mordenkainen presents monsters of the multiverse) that has racial features in it, the NPC features section in creating a monster is a massive help with all your basic racial features. Finally, the monster lists are a great help for both inspiration for campaign scenes and knowing what monsters to use for certain sessions.
Final Thoughts
Finally, I gave this book an overall 90% for its Zatu score, as it has every rule a dungeon master needs for games, but lacks creativity in both advice and maps. Also, it is annoying when it just repeats rules from other books and cards, so you will likely already have access to many rules in this book. Overall, I would still say this is a great book for starters and veterans, definitely worthy of a 90%. Also, you should keep in mind that if you own Taschas Cauldron of Everything, it contains very different magic items, whereas the dungeon master guide’s magic items are much more combat-based. Therefore, do not rule out this book if you think you already have the magic items.
