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Overview

In the second of three Dungeons and Dragons Fourth Edition core rulebook reviews I am covering the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Earlier this week I took an in-depth look at the Player’s Handbook, and you can expect a short review of the Monster Manual soon. The Player’s Handbook review discussed game mechanics and playability as well as the general presentation of Fourth Edition, and in the DMG I intend to take a critical look at the tools Fourth Edition gives the dungeon master.

Player Management and Game Basics

The first several chapters of the new DMG are a sort of “Dungeon Mastering for Dummies” guidebook, covering basics of the Dungeon Master’s role, and providing tips on how to engage players. It opens with a Bartle-style breakdown of player personality types, discussing what motivates them, what they find rewarding and what bores and angers them. The knee-jerk reaction might be to call this stereotyping, but I’ve been using Bartle-inspired pop-psychology on players in tabletop and online games for over a decade now and I find it very effective in creating a good game environment that addresses the interests of all my players. Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised that the authors chose to include it.

The rest of the first section covers basic conflict resolution and gives some tips on how to deal with common problems. There’s a great section on building improvisational aids, as well as a brief introduction on the theory behind Fourth Edition’s three-tiered 30 level character progression. I’m still not completely sold on the idea but they make a good argument.

Encounters

The next three chapters discuss the DM’s role in creating and managing challenges and encounters. I found the guidelines for creating skill challenges somewhat obtuse, in that they refer frequently to tables and guidelines laid out in an earlier chapter; I spent a lot of time flipping back and forth on the first read. Fortunately the system is simple enough that with a little bit of practice you’ll have it all memorized. Combat encounters are very streamlined in Fourth Edition and the DMG doesn’t spend much time on elaborating rules. As you’ll see in the forthcoming Monster Manual review, Fourth Edition’s monsters have very clearly defined combat roles, and most of the chapter on combat addresses NPC tactics. Although somewhat arbitrary in nature, the roles they define and the tactics they suggest are a good jumping-off point for encounter design, especially considering the highly strategic nature of the combat system. They provide outlines of a few encounter templates for quick plug-and-play action when you’re short on time, but the system is robust enough to allow for plenty of tweaking and creativity.

Game Design

Most of the latter half of the book is devoted to campaign and adventure design. I found this section somewhat disappointing. Dungeons and Dragons has always tried to walk the middle road between providing a generic game system and a full-fledged campaign setting, and they continue that trend in Fourth Edition with the typically bland outcome. The DMG presumes you want to comply with the defaults provided in the Player’s Handbook and don’t even touch on the theory behind class, race or cosmology design. This is fine for DMs who just want to run a light and simple Tolkienesque game, but it leaves those of us who enjoy creating rich and unique campaign settings out in the cold. If you intend to create your own races, classes, powers, or invent your own religion and cosmology you are on your own.

Once you get past that issue they do give you a good breakdown on creating adventures or customizing them from packaged adventure books, as well as tips on campaign design. They don’t give you a full campaign setting so you’re expected to come up with geography, social and political schemes (beyond the basics described in the race entries in the Player’s Handbook) and all the other things that flesh out a world, but they do give you some good advice to help get it done.

DM’s Toolbox and Fallcrest

Last but not least is a chapter devoted to monster and NPC design, a small entry on house rules and a system for generating random dungeons and encounters, and then another chapter detailing a sample starting area called Fallcrest. This is pretty standard stuff, so I won’t get into it here. I’ve used random generators for fun on-the-fly games before to kill an afternoon or a long road trip, but for serious games I don’t recommend them.

Fallcrest is everything you would expect in a generic starting adventure: a small, remote village with a few notable characters and a low-level monster problem awaiting destruction by a band of inexperienced heroes. It contains a great selection of maps and a few solid encounters in an easily readable format with plenty of tips and advice for new DMs. I doubt an experienced gaming group will get much out of Fallcrest, but they’re not the target audience.

Conclusion

The first half of the DMG is a great read for anyone interested in running a roleplaying game, with solid advice from experienced DMs and plenty of effective techniques for game management. I would suggest at least browsing through it even if you’re not planning to run a Fourth Edition game.
I could take or leave the rest of the book. It leaves me wanting either a fully fleshed out campaign setting or a thorough and detailed guide to world building. It’s clear that WotC wants to reach a broader audience with Fourth Edition, and they may have hit on the right combination of depth and open-endedness for newbie game designers. I just can’t help feeling they could have done more.

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