Ring Side Report-Dungeon Master’s Guide

Product-Dungeon Master’s Guide

System– Dungeons and Dragons, 5th Edition

Producer– Wizards of the Coast

Price– ~$50 here http://www.amazon.com/Dungeon-Masters-Guide-Core-Rulebook/dp/0786965622/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417382314&sr=8-1&keywords=dungeon+masters+guide

TL; DR– Bands all together, let’s rock! 98%

 

Basics– Let’s get ready to roll!  The Dungeon Master’s Guide is the final book of the core three for Dungeons and Dragons.  This book covers all the behind the Dungeon Master’s screen aspects of the game.  It is roughly broken into three sections: creating a world/universe, creating adventures, and the math of the game/how to run Dungeons and Dragons.

 

Mechanics or Crunch– Ya’ know what I HATE in a RPG designed for the Dungeon Master?  No random tables!  Yes, I know they are a crutch that bad GM’s use when they don’t prep for an adventure.  But, I don’t want to have to figure out what I’m doing every second of the game, and sometimes the players will want to do something and having a random answer will really help make their choices happen at a moment’s notice.  This book as random tables out the wazoo-from making a complete random dungeon to a random adventure and the encounters between!  Also, this book goes into great detail on how to make the adventures in a non-random thought out way.  From the math behind monsters to how to hand out items and treasure, the book does an excellent job at making your life as a DM as simple as it can explaining how to set up a game in a manner where it won’t crash and fail from problems on the DM’s side of the screen.  Also, found the missing monster by CR guide from the Monster Manual!  It’s good to see it here, but it would be better to see it also in the Monster Manual. 5/5

 

Theme or Fluff-This book is full of content and absent of any content in the right ways.  The book goes into how to make a game work as a story and how to fill that story with people to meet and to kill while providing the default multiverse a bit of background too.  From the geography of the multiverse to how a circle of elders works in a feudal village, the game explains how to design a world and a story.  It’s a little light on advice on how to handle players.  That’s an experience thing, but some more sage wisdom on how to handle different kinds of people is always appreciated my new RPG fans.  The book does point to a reading list of books on how to GM, so that does cover kind of what I was hoping this book would have for the newer GM’s out there.  Overall, it’s got great story and tips on how to build your own story!  4.75/5

 

Execution– Just like the other two DnD 5e books, this one is well done!  There are enough words per page to inform, but not enough to bore.  There are lots of pictures to make the reader think of ideas to throw at their players, and almost all of them are new!  I used to play “spot the old art” in my DnD books, but I only saw one reused piece of art in this book which makes me extremely happy (along with the random tables!).  And, the new art is awesome!  If you want to learn how to make a book great from a layout, art, and design sense, then it’s this and Paizo’s books. 5/5

 

Summary– Look, if you’re running DnD, you bought this on Black Friday like the rest of us.  It’s that simple.  WotC spread out the core three books, and if you’ve bought the first two, then you bought this one too. If you’re new to RPGs, then get this book as well as the Player’s Handbook and Monster Manual.  This book has an awesome layout, great story ideas, and some randomness to help you get your players into the action as quickly as possible.  If you love Dungeons and Dragons, you need this book.  If you want to learn how to run Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition, this is an awesome book that will give you all the tools you need to build the games you want and have a blast doing it.  This is a great capstone for the basic trinity of 5th edition DnD.  98%