The Dungeon Master's Guide, released in 2000, is one of three core rulebooks for the initial release of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition. If provides the rules and advice for Dungeon Masters to run the D&D game.
It is commonly abbreviated DMG or DMG3E, and unofficially termed the DMG 3.0. It was superceded by the Dungeon Master's Guide (3.5) (2003).
Content[]
The Dungeon Master's Guide contains rules, advice, and tables of information useful to the Dungeon Master, who runs the game.
- Chapter 1: Dungeon Mastering describes the role of the Dungeon Master, including such important factors as game balance, knowing the rules, and pacing.
- Chapter 2: Characters provides additional rules for races and classes, including variant races, monsters as races, and advice on creating new or variant classes. It introduces the concept of prestige classes, detailing the arcane archer, assassin, blackguard, dwarven defender, loremaster and shadowdancer. It introduces the NPC classes adept, aristocrat, commoner, expert and warrior, describes rules for multiclassing and starting characters above level 1, organizations in society, the leadership feat, and finally rules and tables for creating NPCs.
- Chapter 3: Running the Game provides rules and advice for running a D&D game, including encounters, combat, variant rules for attack and damage, aerial movement, and special abilities of monsters such as energy drain and regeneration. It details environmental rules, suchas falling, surviving wilderness, and finally advice for adjudicating skills and the use of magic.
- Chapter 4: Adventures describes adventure structure, encounter difficulty, dungeon ecology, and settlements.
- Chapter 5: Campaigns describes more long-term rules such as variant upkeep rules and fleshing out NPCs.
- Chapter 6: World-Building details things like ecology, demographics, political and economic systems, and variant magic and technology levels.
- Chapter 7: Rewards details both standard and variant rules for awarding treasure and experience points.
- Chapter 8: Magic Items is a huge section listing a large number of magic items, as well as rules for magic item creation and use.
This is followed by an appendix of quick-reference tables and an appendix.
Development and release[]
Development[]
- Main article: Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition#Development
Around December 1997, following Wizards of the Coast's acquisition of TSR earler that year, RPG R&D director Bill Slavicsek initially selected Skip Williams, Rich Baker, and Monte Cook as the lead developers of a new edition of what was then known as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Monte Cook was selected to write the new Dungeon Master's Guide, although ultimately the design phase would be a collaborate effort.[2]
Cook's goal was to capture the feeling of Gary Gygax's original AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide (1e) (1979). His goal was to create a book which gave advice to Dungeon Masters, both new and experienced, and which respected the reader's intelligence without talking down to them. Cook intended to be direct with the audience, updating formal terminology to match how players really talked (e.g. "magic items" rather than "magical items"). Cook also aimed to communicate design reasons to players, pushing for the "Behind the Curtain" sidebars which would become a common feature in later third edition sourcebooks.[3]
Ongoing changes to the Player's Handbook (3.0) (2000) necessitated continual changes to the DMG, in a few cases leaving errors which were not caught before printing; for example, the vorpal sword had a creation prerequisite of death spell, which no longer existed in the Player's Handbook. While Cook was the primary author, major contributions by other writers included environment rules moved from the PHB, some magic items taken from early playtest rules, encounter tables by Jonathan Tweet, charts by editor Dave Noonan, and others. The development process also included playtest feedback.[3]
Original cover sketch.
Prestige classes were a a relatively late addition to the sourcebook. The price guidelines for magic item creation were added after the magic items had been written, aiming to retroactively create price calculations based on the existing manually-chosen item prices.[4]
The cover of the book was crafted as a physical artifact, then photographed. Work on this occurred in March 2000, following the completion of the 3.0 cover. The theme of the cover is "mechanics".[5]
Release[]
The Dungeon Master's Guide was released in September 2000 as a 224-page hardback sourcebook. It released with a recommended retail price of US $19.95 or $30.99 Canadian. It used the product code TSR11511 and an ISBN of 0-7869-1551-X.[1]
An unused early preview version of the cover depicted the book with a variant of the Player's Handbook (3.0) (2000) cover, except bound in blue and silver instead of brown and gold.[1] The final release used its own unique cover.
An errata document was produced, which was last updated on August 24, 2001. Errata corrections were incorporated into the second printing. Changes included corrections of spell names in the witch spell list, pricing of magic traps, inserting the missing kusari-gama melee weapon, changing the katana from Large to Medium-size, and the pricing of some magic items.
Unlike most first-party D&D third edition sourcebooks, the D&D 3.0 core rulebooks did not receive a later digital release, presumably due to being wholly superceded by the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 core rulebooks.
Reception and influence[]
Gary Gygax, author of the original AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, praised its third edition counterpart, saying that it taught him new things about being a Dungeon Master. Monte Cook considered this a highlight of his career.[3]
External links[]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Previews, Dragon #275 (Sep 2000), p.24.
- ↑ Line of Sight: Full Circle, Part 1. Monte Cook, April 28, 2001.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Line of Sight: Full Circle, Part 2. Monte Cook, May 11, 2001.
- ↑ The Group Process of Revising the Dungeon Master's Guide - Wizards.com (archived)
- ↑ D&D: The Cover Story. Wizards.com, 2000.
| Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guides |
|---|
| Dungeon Masters Guide (1e) • Dungeon Master Guide (2e) • Dungeon Master Guide (2e revised) Dungeon Master's Guide (3.0) • Dungeon Master's Guide (3.5) • Dungeon Master's Guide II (3.5) Dungeon Master's Guide (4e) • Dungeon Master's Guide 2 (4e) Dungeon Master's Guide (5e) • Dungeon Master's Guide (5e revised) |
| Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 |
|---|
| Core rules |
| Player's Handbook • Dungeon Master's Guide • Monster Manual • Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Game |
| Supplements |
| Arms and Equipment Guide • Book of Challenges • Book of Vile Darkness • Defenders of the Faith • Deities and Demigods • Enemies and Allies • Epic Level Handbook • Fiend Folio • Ghostwalk • Hero Builder's Guidebook • Living Greyhawk Gazetteer (Gazetteer) • Manual of the Planes • Masters of the Wild • Monster Manual II • Oriental Adventures • Psionics Handbook • Savage Species • Song and Silence • Stronghold Builder's Guidebook • Sword and Fist • Tome and Blood |
| Adventures |
| The Sunless Citadel • The Forge of Fury • The Fright at Tristor • The Speaker in Dreams • The Standing Stone • Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil • Heart of Nightfang Spire • Deep Horizon • Lord of the Iron Fortress • Bastion of Broken Souls • City of the Spider Queen |