The Dungeon Masters Guide is the second of the New D&D core rulebooks, which deals with the basics and tips in actually running the D&D game. Of course in the new edition, a lot of the rules (the stats for magic items, for instance) are now in the Players Handbook (PHB) so the new DMG is a slimmer book that focuses on gamemaster-specific tips and charts that are only relevant to the DM (tables for generating treasure and XP, for instance).
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Chapter 1: How to be a DM is an introductory chapter that starts with certain premises. For instance, the game design means that the game is best played with six players. (More and the group tends to fragment, less and the 'roles' aren't covered) One interesting bit about the new DMG is that several D&D veterans offer "Tips From The Pros" in sidebars. It also acknowledges that game tools include PDAs and other digital equipment for scanning in the middle of a session, not to mention snacks.
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Much like Aaron Allston's classic Strike Force book for Champions, the new DMG classifies certain player types in addition to character types. Here they're described as the Actor (immersive role-player), the Explorer (who wants to discover new things about the game world), the Instigator (who likes to trip traps and provoke NPCs 'just to see what happens'), the Power Gamer and the Slayer (self-explanatory), the Storyteller (who emphasizes the overall narrative over the characters), the Thinker (who enjoys problem-solving and planning) and the Watcher (who's just kinda there). In these descriptions, the book emphasizes what a particular player type is in the game for, what the DM should emphasize with that player- e.g. by "never forcing (a Watcher) to be more involved than he wants" - and what aspects of each type the DM should watch for (e.g. be sure the Actor doesn't justify disruptive actions as being 'in character').
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There are several bits of advice for setting up a group of PCs, some obvious and some not so obvious. It's even proposed that groups can rotate the GM role, or shift between a long-term campaign or episodic games. The pros and cons of each are discussed. Certain bits of in-game etiquette are discussed, like showing up on time or contributing for food, whether one is speaking "in character" and so forth. Also: "Agree on some ground rules before naming characters. In a group consisting of Sithis, Travok, Anastrianna, and Kairon, the human fighter named Bob II sticks out. Especially when he's identical to Bob I, who was killed by kobolds."
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Chapter 2: Running the Game goes over "what a DM does." However the chapter also emphasizes that running a game includes the players' role in running everything smoothly. It starts by reviewing the time requirements of a usual session, stating that if a game session has up to 30 minutes to "ease into" the game and 30 minutes of wrap-up time and the average group gets through an average encounter in one hour, then a one-encounter session is two hours of time. That ease-in time includes settling in and doing recaps of what happened last time, which can be fairly important.
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Description is important, not simply for flavor purposes but in terms of giving the players the information they actually need to use their skills and operate in combat. For instance, you want to tip off players to a monster's special abilities that are in fact perceptible so the players aren't surprised by a game detail. For instance, when running a pit fiend, the DM is advised to state: "The heat emanating from the devil is intense even at this distance. You know that getting within five squares of it is going to burn you." (I probably wouldn't phrase that part so mechanically, but it's good advice.) The standard is called the Information Imperative: "If there's information the PCs absolutely must have to continue the adventure, give it to them."
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Other bits of advice here are guiding your inevitable moments of improvisation with mini-dungeons and other aids to cover unforeseen situations, easing out of bad judgment calls (e.g., generally it's easier to scale up a too-easy combat encounter than to scale back an encounter that's too hard), dealing with problem players, and teaching the game to newbies, which is basically a matter of going over one page of core mechanics.
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Chapter 3: Combat Encounters concentrates on what the book describes as the "basics" of the game. It is basically the counterpart to the combat chapter in the PHB; whereas that described the basic combat rules, this chapter describes what the DM needs to do to run a combat encounter. It starts with some fairly common-sense stuff, including advice for what the rules don't cover, or clarifications. For instance: "When a power has an effect that occurs upon hitting a target- or reducing a target to 0 hit points- the power only functions when the target in question is a meaningful threat. Characters can gain no benefit from carrying a sack of rats in hope of healing their allies by hitting the rats." (Damn.) Among other things, it's advised that you have some method of keeping track of ongoing conditions that PCs and monsters place on each other, and the back of the book has print-out cards for this. This is also the chapter with definitions for surprise; whereas in Chapter 2 the DM is advised to inform players of everything the characters would know, to set up the possibility of surprise or ambush he has to examine the factors that would undermine PC (or enemy) preparation and readiness.
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Under "Actions the Rules Don't Cover," there's also a master list of Difficulty Class and average Damage by Level, so you have numbers for improvised actions. For instance, if the Rogue wants to swing on a chandelier and kick the Ogre into burning coals, you can set both the appropriate Difficulty for the skill required (Acrobatics) and appropriate damage for the effect.
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This is also the chapter with the rules for special combat situations like flight and aquatic combat. Chapter 3 then gives us the rules for disease; this format lists diseases on a staged format where the first stage is cured, the second stage is the "initial effect" where you roll an Endurance check to see if it improves or worsens, and then you get to progressive or final (terminal) stages. Poisons are similar but are bought as items and their format description resembles that of a character attack, since mechanically the poison is an "attack power".
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Chapter 4: Building Encounters shows how to actually design a combat encounter.
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In designing opponents for a PC group to fight, the game creates a separate set of monster roles, analogous (but not identical) to character class roles, like Artillery (basically, ranged striker), Brute (deal lots of close-in damage), Controller (manipulate the PCs or the combat environment), Lurker (strike from surprise and then retreat) and Minions (as in other games, Minions are intended to display PC combat prowess by being easy to take out in numbers; an attack that does any damage at all destroys a minion, and minions are worth 1/4 the experience of a standard monster of their level). There are also Skirmishers (who attack with mobility) and Soldiers (who attack from fixed positions in units and control their enemies with tactics). There are also "Elite" monsters (worth twice the XP of another monster of their level) and truly nasty solo monsters that are intended to take on an entire group by themselves and are worth five times their level in XP.
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Oh yeah, then you get the rules for XP. In determining how much experience a party gets, a DM first has to determine the encounter level (where a standard encounter is the same as the average PC level, an 'easy' encounter is up to two levels below that and a 'hard' encounter is two to four levels above that), then multiplies a standard monster's XP by the number of PCs and that yields an "XP budget" for the mix of monsters the DM wants to put in the encounter. So with 5 1st-level PCs and a standard monster being 100 XP, a minion being 25, an elite being 200 and a solo being 500, the DM gets a budget of 500 XP worth of monsters to threaten the PCs with, which can be one solo monster, twenty minions, five standard or some combination in between. This format then leads to a small list of encounter templates like a commander and soldiers, or a "wolf pack" of skirmishers, along with rules for tweaking each encounter type.
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There are also rules and suggestions for encounter settings, since the setting not only adds flavor (with the possibility of fantasy elements like floating platforms, faerie woods, or the like) but adds complications such as obstacles or cover.
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Chapter 5: Noncombat Encounters states that (contrary to popular belief) "No D&D game consists of endless combat." In Chapter 8 of the PHB, the concept of "skill challenges" was introduced, including the use of skills for various encounters where success or failure is critical. This category also includes the classic dungeon elements of puzzles and traps. Because a skill challenge does not rely on character level so much as player decision, "a skill challenge is defined by its context in an adventure." Generally skill challenges require X number of successes, and if half that number of failures occur on the skill rolls, the challenge is failed. The number of required successes depends on the level of the challenge on a scale of 1 to 5, where level 5 is considered to have "the same weight" as a combat encounter, and requires 12 successes to prevail, or is lost after 6 failures. In some cases (like climbing a cliff where the lead character has the rope) "group" efforts may add a bonus to the lead character's roll (like Complementary Skills in HERO System). Conversely, a skill challenge may involve separate elements requiring each party member to use specialized skills- the example given is where the group Cleric uses his Religion skill to guess where cultists would build their temple, and the Fighter uses Athletics skill to get to a certain vantage point to search for it. Thankfully there are several detailed examples as to how all these elements would work, including an example of a skill challenge mixed with a combat encounter (a gas fills the room as monsters attack and the PCs have to figure out where the trap is an disarm it before the gas takes them down). Likewise there are rules and examples for puzzles, traps or hazards ('If it can hurt the party, but it isn't a monster, it's either a trap or a hazard').
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Chapter 6: Adventures teaches how to run adventures, on the premise that an adventure "is just a series of encounters." It gives advice on tweaking published adventures for use in the particulars of your campaign, fixing problems (like, your PCs killed the big boss a bit too early) and building your own adventures. In terms of using published stuff, the main advice is to change the flavor text (if your campaign is in the equivalent of Arabian Nights Baghdad and the module is in the arctic tundra, describe hot and dusty wind instead of snowstorms). If the big boss gets killed, you can try to resolve the narrative in terms of the setting; like say you promote the guy's lieutenant to be the leader of the dungeon. And if the PCs blow through half of what you were going to use and bypass the other half, well you can always use that unseen material for the PCs in another adventure. In building your own adventure, the book goes over a basic beginning-middle-end narrative structure with points from how to get through each and what each should include. The book uses the game term "quest" to describe the "fundamental story framework" of an adventure, or its general intent or goal. This serves as a basic organizing structure and the book actually encourages handing out "quest cards" for players to keep track of what quests they're on, somewhat like how World of Warcraft can have multiple quest goals in the same adventure. (For instance in the PHB, the example was given of going to a certain castle for a quest and then finding that the monsters had enslaved several humans to work for them, so another quest develops to free the slaves.)
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In creating adventures, Chapter 6 also advises a certain encounter "mix" that engages players, plays up the fantasy setting, and appeals to the various player types (like Power Gamer) mentioned in Chapter 1. In this it goes over the various adventure settings available in D&D, including the Underdark and the "planar" settings including the dominions of the gods. Each setting has elements that contribute to its atmosphere and personality. Many sample physical elements (doors, machines, etc.) are mentioned along with fantastical elements like fey gardens or an artificial sun. This leads to how to map out these elements for a dungeon, including how to map diagonal lines for the game's square-based mapping (start at the middle of a square's edge to the middle of the adjacent square's edge so that you know if a character can occupy the area). This chapter also discusses the proper use of NPCs, including party allies. It's advised earlier to go with stereotype here, because the "subtle nuances of an NPC's personality are lost on the players."
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Chapter 7: Rewards details how characters get stuff. Such as experience. The master experience point chart for monsters by level is here (on page 120) with a noncombat encounter being treated as a "Standard Monster" of that level. The options for varying XP gain are given, including just assigning level advancement every eight encounters or so without bothering to keep track of precise points. Quests are worth a certain amount of XP for their level. Characters can also get extra action points per every milestone (two encounters), which the introductory page states as an incentive "to take on more encounters before stopping to take an extended rest."
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This chapter also includes the random treasure tables, which are not dissimilar to those in prior editions of the DMG. These are generally organized in treasure "parcels" of monetary treasure, art objects, and magic items appropriate to the treasure level rolled.
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Chapter 8: Campaigns states that just as an adventure is a series of encounters, "a campaign is a larger story that ties those adventures together." Each published setting has a campaign guide, the primary example of which is the FORGOTTEN REALMS Campaign Guide (making this chapter something of a plug). Each campaign guide gives ideas and places for starting a campaign, and for story hooks to get the PCs together. After the first few adventures it's expected that the DM will develop a "theme" for further games. This theme sets a direction for the campaign and "gives the players a sense of purpose." It could be an organization that sponsors adventures (like the Harpers, or at least like the old Harpers, in FR), or a need to face a certain master villain, or the like. In this section, one of the tips is: "Don't be afraid to steal... The DM's job is to entertain, not to be original." This chapter also discusses certain campaign subgenres, like Horror, Mystery or even Wuxia. (You may have to wait on the next PHB for decent Monk/unarmed martial arts rules for that last one, though.) It also brings up the concept of the "super adventure", like Greyhawk's Temple of Elemental Evil, where several levels could be spent dealing with the monsters of a single dungeon/setting and roleplaying the intrigues of the area. They generally allow for "nonlinear" ways to accomplish the goal of the adventure; for instance with the old Vault of the Drow you reached the Drow city and had the options of dealing with the various things there, starting conflicts with the nobles in the adjacent estates, or bulling through the estates to the main Temple of Lolth to reach the Demonweb Pits.
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If running a campaign boils down to running a series of adventures, this chapter gives advice on how to link the adventures into a campaign. Having ideas for "what went before" is one way to do this, giving hooks for the PCs to explore the history that led things to where they are. Examples of these elements are maps and NPCs. Learning about that history naturally leads to foreshadowing of events that will involve the PCs as they become more involved with the world.
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Chapter 8 also goes over New D&D's level tier system, since each new tier gives the PCs new abilities and alters the scope of what is or is not possible for them (and therefore what the DM can use against them). Note that while the PHB mentioned that the Epic Tier campaign culminates with a Destiny Quest to achieve immortality and exit the material realm, and that it is "described more thoroughly in the Dungeon Masters Guide" there really aren't any details given for it here.
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It's also mentioned that you don't have to end the campaign at 30th level, but "at some point though, your campaign will have to end- and it's better to do it with a thrilling quest and final victory than to let it fizzle out."
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Chapter 9: The World gives us a little more detail on the background of the new game setting, which came in bits and pieces with the PHB. But it says flat-out that you won't find a world map in the core D&D books. The idea is that D&D games operate on certain core assumptions but each DM fills in the essential details or customizes the setting. Most of these core assumptions are based on fantasy fiction, such as "The World is a Fantastic Place." They do pose the idea that the DM can change these assumptions, for instance maybe it isn't a fantastic world and all characters use Martial powers and no magic. But given how strongly oriented New D&D is on those assumptions (what happens to a party without magical artillery and healing?) it's probably best not to stray beyond them.
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In discussing civilization, the game goes over the essential characteristics of villages and larger settlements. Some of the other core elements come into play here: After the fall of the last human empire, the "civilized races" who were all subjects in that empire remained in contact through surviving settlements, and much like medieval Europe, nobles of various ranks rule these areas based on authority handed down from the days of empire. It is also assumed, however, that the universe caters to the adventurer in that there is actually a magic item economy to sell items the PCs can't use, that there are wizard colleges, permanent teleportation circles between cities and so on. Also as in medieval Europe, there are great stretches of wilderness between outposts of civilization, and of course these are the spots where adventurers will usually be headed, in hopes of finding lost relics and treasure from the ruins of bygone nations. In this section you get the environmental hazard rules for starvation, exposure and such. The Endurance skill is used for survival in most of these situations.
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Then the cosmology of the D&D "world" is given, with the Astral Sea containing the heavenly abodes of the gods (including evil gods) and the Elemental Chaos at the foundation of the world. The Primordials of the Elemental Chaos gave the world its material form, but the gods gave it a permanence hostile to the Primordials' nature, and thus the gods exiled them. One of these exiled beings planted a seed of evil in the foundation of the world, and thus at the eye of the whirlpool of Chaos lies the Abyss where demons dwell, standing against even other evil beings like devils and the evil gods. In the interaction between the gods and Primordials during creation, certain "echoes" developed outside the main world, creating the Feywild, home of eladrin and other fae creatures, and the Shadowfell, a dark realm of death through which mortal souls travel on to the afterlife.
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There is a brief discussion of the gods and a presentation of the "malign gods" in the same format as the good/unaligned deities presented for PCs in the PHB. Most of these are old Greyhawk classics (including Tiamat, queen of evil dragons and Asmodeus the lord of Hell) and there is also an evil god of snakes and poison named Zehir. It's noted here that while paladins (like clerics) can have any alignment, those NPC paladins devoted to evil gods probably shouldn't have radiant damage effects and other powers associated with holy light. Depending on the case, the DM should give such paladins necrotic/darkness effects instead.
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While most of the magic items in-game are now listed in the PHB, examples of legendary artifacts are given in this chapter. What's interesting about the new rules is that the artifacts have a "concordance" mechanic measuring how pleased the artifact's guiding intelligence is towards the owner. Concordance is measured on a scale from 0 to 20 and starts at 5. Generally a higher concordance will add to the base level of an artifact's powers, and a concordance below 5 will cause problems. Another characteristic of artifacts is that like the One Ring, they can "move on" and desert an unworthy owner or seek a more worthy one. Even a worthy owner will never have the artifact longer than is required to accomplish its primary goals.
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Finally, the chapter goes over game languages in one page. As they put it, "A universe with ten languages might seem improbable, but it's explainable in the context of the D&D world and better for the play of the game." Of these ten, one (Supernal) is the primal language of creation (shades of Mage: The Awakening) while Abyssal is a corrupted version of the Primordials' original language. PCs can't learn these languages at start, and it's implied that their use in tomes gives the pages artifact-level power.
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Chapter 10: The DM's Toolbox is basically a grab-bag, and as the name implies, it gives various options a DM can use for making scenarios. These include random encounter tables which can (in theory) be used to run a game without a DM, random dungeon generation, tables for NPCs, "who work much as the players' characters do, using the same classes and the same basic rules", adjusting monster level (including adjustments to account for magical equipment and the like), actually creating your own monsters, and templates, which like 3rd Edition take a monster/character of another type and overlay another type on it, as with the Lich (for undead spellcasters) or the Battle Champion (added to an NPC or monster battle leader).
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Chapter 11: Fallcrest is an example of a "base town" where characters can buy gear, rest and interact with natives to spark new adventures. The fact that the game uses a term like "base town" instead of just "town" or even "home" indicates that even this basic aspect of a game world isn't immune to being reduced to a rules element. But anyway, the town started up in the uncivilized Nentir Vale, as a hero from the empire of Nerath obtained a charter to set up a fortress at the falls, around which the town developed. It's mentioned here that Nerath began to crumble around a century ago, and around this point a tribe of Orcs rampaged and devastated the area. Since this "Bloodspear War" the town was barely able to reestablish itself, and the town is once again at the edge of civilization. The major buildings and NPCs of the town are described, and the features of the Vale are described with certain story hints. There are also notes for how PCs of each race and class might have ties to the area. Finally, there's an actual dungeon, Kobold Hall, which includes various 'hooks' (quests) to get the party involved, and serves as an example of how encounters and XP awards are set up. Fitting the nature of Kobolds, there are a lot of defensive traps, and a little surprise at the end.
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James Gillen
November 14, 2008
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