Dungeon Master’s Guide
Dungeon Master’s Guide (2024 Edition) is a core rulebook for the epic fantasy Dungeons & Dragons, written by Christopher Perkins, James Wyatt, Jeremy Crawford, F. Wesley Schneider, and Ray Winninger and published by Wizards of the Coast.
By Aaron T. Huss
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The tabletop role-playing industry is flooded with different publishers, but only two sit at the top of the pyramid. In the middle of that pyramid is a myriad of publishers with unique settings, special licenses, and popular products you frequently see at conventions. Filling the base of that pyramid is a plethora of independent publishers, content creators, and casual licensees that rely on those top two publishers to bring new gamers to the hobby and teach them what it means to run or a game. The purpose of the Dungeon Master’s Guide is obvious enough based on the title, but it doesn’t really capture what Wizards of the Coast has done for this 2024 edition.
I am going to approach the book in three different ways – the first is the content usable for any action/adventure game, the second is the content usable for any fantasy game, and the third is the Dungeons & Dragons piece. This last one is easier to quantify because it includes 120 pages of treasure that are mechanically D&D and require the game’s mechanics to use them. Although you could translate them to other games, it would take a lot of time. Those other two approaches are much different.
Other than the Treasure section, Dungeon Master’s Guide includes the following guidance – What it means to be the person running a role-playing game, how to successfully run a tabletop role-playing game, using fantasy themes, creating adventures, creating campaigns, the multiverse and alignment, PC-controlled strongholds, and maps. As a bonus, there is a section thrown in that focuses on Greyhawk. The majority of this content is presented in a very system-agnostic way with much of it being usable for any genre that features adventure-type games (as opposed to survival or investigation).
First you have a good amount of content that can aid any DM/GM to run any type of adventure game (fantasy, sci-fi, modern, etc.). The content presents the reader with an understanding of what it means to not only be a DM/GM, but be a fair, memorable one who creates games that everyone can enjoy. This includes a focus on building your gaming group and creating a game that meets the needs of everyone at the table. There is a sprinkling of D&D mechanics thrown in, but only for the purpose of scaling the games. This is easy to convert to other systems as you simply adjust the mechanics to match the scale.
Second is the majority of the game’s content that is mostly fantasy, but could easily be leveraged for non-fantasy games. Although not presented in this order, this includes a collection of tips, tricks, tools, and guidance for creating adventures and the art of running those adventures to keep things interesting. The content then moves on to creating campaigns and what the scale of a campaign means from the PC’s perspective. It even includes guidance on creating campaigns other than straight, vanilla epic fantasy and finishes off with a delve into Greyhawk. For running those adventures and campaigns, the content provides a toolbox meant for the DM for handling different in-game situations, using different types of encounters to keep things interesting, and how to play on the opposite side of the DM’s screen. To fill those adventure, over a dozen pages of maps are provided for different types of conflicts.
Cosmology is a mainstream of D&D and many fantasy games and gets is a considerable focus of one entire chapter. You will learn about the multiverse, alignments, and traveling throughout. Much of this is system agnostic and can easily be used for any fantasy game.
Almost as a bonus is this chapter on bastions. It includes a full write-up of mechanics for PCs to use to maintain their own stronghold. Of course, this would require you create a game where the PCs could stay somewhere, as opposed to the constant travel from one place to another, defeating the roadblocks the big bad has put in place. This is obviously only usable for a specific type of game, but is another option and seems to pair well with Greyhawk.
Wizards of the Coast has no shortage of controversies, but then so does every major publisher in the hobby industry. However, hundreds of publishers still rely on them to bring new players into the hobby and provide DMs/GMs with a good understanding of how to run a memorable game. This 2024 edition of the Dungeon Master’s Guide is a valuable tool usable not only with Dungeons & Dragons, but really with a pile of different gaming systems (based on how much value you want to get out of the book). If you’re willing and able, you can easily convert what mechanics there are and use the entire book for other games – Pathfinder, Starfinder, Savage Worlds, Dragonbane, BareBones Fantasy, Legend, RuneQuest, Castles & Crusades, and on and on. For the fledgling DM/GM, it’s a great entry into that role and for the advanced DM/GM, maybe you’ll find something new you didn’t think about before. Plus, if you are running D&D, you will find 120 pages of treasure to use in your games.