Dungeon Master's Guide

The Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG or DM's Guide; in earlier editions, the Dungeon Masters Guide or Dungeon Master Guide) is a book of rules for the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. The Dungeon Master's Guide contains rules concerning the arbitration and administration of a game, and is intended for use primarily or only by the game's Dungeon Master. The original Dungeon Master's Guide was published in 1979, and gave Dungeon Masters everything they needed to run a D&D game campaign.

It is intended as a companion book to the Player's Handbook, which contains all of the basic rules of gameplay, and the Monster Manual, which is a reference book giving statistics and characteristics to various animals and monsters. The Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual are collectively referred to as the "core rules" of the Dungeons & Dragons game. Both the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Player's Handbook give advice, tips, and suggestions for various styles of play.

Dungeon Master

In the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) role-playing game, the Dungeon Master (often abbreviated as DM) is the game organizer and participant in charge of creating the details and challenges of a given adventure, while maintaining a realistic continuity of events. In effect, the Dungeon Master controls all aspects of the game, except for the actions of the player characters (PCs), and describes to the players what they see and hear.

The title was invented for the TSR Dungeons & Dragons RPG, and was introduced in the second supplement to the game rules (Blackmoor). To avoid infringement of TSR's trademarks, and to describe referees in role-playing genres other than sword and sorcery, other gaming companies use more generic, terms, like Game Master, Game Operations Director, Judge, Referee or Storyteller, with some using more esoteric titles related to the genre or style of the game, such as Keeper of Arcane Lore, or even completely surreal titles such as Hollyhock God.

Also, in Faiths and Pantheons, the Faerunian Overgod Ao answers to a superior entity, insinuated to be the "Dungeon Master".

Dungeon Master (disambiguation)

Dungeon Master may mean:

Dungeon Master (video game)

Dungeon Master (short: DM) is an early grid-based 3D realtime action role-playing video game. DM was developed and published by FTL Games for the Atari ST in 1987. It reportedly sold 40,000 copies in its year of release alone, and went on to become the ST's best selling product of all time.

Series overview

Description

Dungeon Master was a realtime game in contrast to the traditional turn-based approach that was, in 1987, most common. Other factors in immersiveness were the use of sound effects to indicate when a creature was nearby, and (primitive) dynamic lighting. Abstract Dungeons and Dragons style experience points and levels were eschewed in favor of a system where the characters' skills were improved directly via using them. Dungeon Master was not the first game to introduce these features. Dungeons of Daggorath for the TRS-80 Color Computer first employed them in 1982. Dungeon Master was, however, responsible for popularizing these elements. Other features of Dungeon Master included allowing players to directly manipulate objects and the environment by clicking the mouse in the enlarged first-person view. It also introduced some novel control methods including the spell casting system, which involved learning sequences of runes which represented the form and function of a spell's effect. For example, a fireball spell was created by mixing the fire symbol with the wing symbol. This kind of attention to detail and focus on the user interface was typical of the game and helped create an often captivating sense of craft and ingenuity.