Customer Reviews

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeon Master's Guide

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Here's the ultimate version of the DMG for Gygax purists. You get all of the charm, advice, and "dark stuff" that was frowned upon as being "too esoteric" in the cleaner versions to come... Highlights include classic illustrations, using monsters as PCs, assassins and the use of poison, tribal spell casters (makes those giants and orcs a lot more interesting!), magic items with XP AND GOLD PIECE values (WHY did they stop doing this? WHY? ), old school psionics (for all those Illithids in GDQ1-7), the original "down to the last hit point" monster XP value charts, building NPCs and evocative dungeon settings the "Gygax way," player creation of spells and magic items, and much more; my personal favorite touch is the endless extolling of the virtues of encouraging the PCs in the early levels, while only a few pages later, we're treated to a graphic depiction of a game in progress that STRONGLY implies it's good to kill the PCs at 1st level, even if they do everything right... :) (see pp. 97-100) Hehe! A highly recommended pride piece for your retro-AD&D collection.

Yes I roleplay 3rd edition, but I know that this ... the 1st edition AD&D is the best there is. The rules are simple but strong enough to provide hours and hours of games. I would suggest that you get this and the player's manual (and the Monster manual 1 and 2 from G.G.). Have hours of fun in this game.

What's good about this game manual for DMs is that there are so many suggestions, explorations of the different faces of the game, enough to make the DM ready for most anything the players might throw at him.

This is a fantastic book, if purely because it shows the roaming imagination of Gary Gygax. Future editions of the game have cut down on the unplayable aspects of the first edition (with elegant variations in bonuses tables for different ability scores, impossibly low level limits for various non-human characters, terrible encumbrance tables, etc) but the first edition contains a darker side which feeds the imagination and was supported by a fantastic group of modules. Worth getting whether you play 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 3.5 or 4th edition as it contains plenty of detail on roleplaying and random things of interest. Almost like an unedited journey through Gygax's head.

The wonderfully unique writing style of Gary Gygax shines through on just about every page of this book.

This work is an essential companion to the 1st Edition AD&D Players Handbook. It gives you combat charts, rules for followers, average sale values for magic items (something left out of the 2nd Edition Dungeon Masters Guide), general advice on how to run a game, several pages of artifact descriptions (fascinating descriptions that give amazing depth to the objects), random monster encounters for different environments and dungeon levels, random dungeon generation tables and even several pages of monsters from the monster manual in abbreviated form. This book is packed with great information from cover to cover.

Maybe what I like most about this book is its almost total lack of political correctness. From the nudity in the artwork (the topless mermaid on page 180) to the descriptions of various disgusting diseases and forms of insanity, it gives you a raw, gritty version of the game full of style and flavor. Unfortunately, this is something the Dungeons & Dragons game will never likely see again.

The only thing I dislike about the book is the combat system. Although playable, especially with a few house rules thrown in to smooth things over, its hard to get an understanding of exactly how combat is supposed to work just from reading the text.

If you can find a used copy of this book, I recommend you pick it up. It's definitely worth a read.

This book harkens back to the "good old days" when playing the paper and pencil D&D used to be new and fun. There have been several reincarnations of this manual and I've thumbed through them but they just don't hold a candle to the original, despite the fancier artwork and rule changes. I remember spending hours combing tables as I built a new dungeon. I am not at all happy with the direction TSR took after Mr. Gygax was booted out (or left, can't remember which) and one big loss was the original manuals. They are now up to version 3 something of the rules but I do not even know what they are because I just play computer games now. All I know about the new rules is that multi-class characters are easier to work with. It was an exciting time, a different era. I still have this manual and will always treasure it. If you can find one, pick it up just to see how things used to be done. Highly recommended.

The Dungeon Masters Guide (1979) is THE ULTIMATE AD&D book to own. This incredibly-detailed book has everything that one needs to know about the game--not just for Dungeon Masters, but for the player character as well. I read somewhere that Gary Gygax was voted the biggest nerd of all time, even ahead of Bill Gates!!! This isn't anything to be ashamed of, because D&D is a thinking man's game, and Gygax is the MASTER of intellect. True D&D fans shouldn't be without this "bible" of sorts. Subsequent versions of this book have been watered-down to accomodate various rules changes, and the speed of life these days. As far as the content of the book, you'll find hundreds of pages filled with intricate details about creating a player character, disease and death, armor and weapons, hirelings and henchmen, time in a campaign, spells, combat, treasure, and a host of other relevant components of the gaming experience. There are various complex but easy to decipher tables to aid in the game's progression. This book is truly mesmerizing to not only the beginner, but never ceases to amaze the experienced player as well. This book is a flawless work of art by the greatest Dungeon Master of them all, the legendary Ernest Gary Gygax.

I was given this book for Christmas in 1983 and have treasured it ever since. The version I have is the one with the Efreet on the front fighting some heroes outside the Fabled City of Brass on the Elemental Plane of Fire.

It has lots of appendices with cool things like dungeon dressing, tricks and traps, random monster encounters and even a random dungeon generator that can be adapted for solo play! The recomended reading appendix has led me to seek out the books of several authors who I would not otherwise have read.

The book is full of atmosphere, arcane ideas and oldschool art work. Gary Gygax likes to use interesting words like mileu and dweomer which makes it fun to read.

The DM Guide has plenty of ideas and advice that is still extremely useful for the modern version of the game.

And it looks cool - like some kind of weird tome.

This book has everything a DM needs! I was just a newbie when I bought this, because I'd heard so many good things about it. Why buy that that 3rd edition crap when this has so much more? 1st edition kicks a$$,2nd edition is ugly, and 3rd edition is just downright annoying to me. I just don't know why. This book is the best of the best. The only problem is, it doesn't show how to divide treasure among the PC's, as does the Player's Handbook, which is also a fine book by Mr.Gygax. My advice is, BUY IT!

This is my all time favorite RPG game, when I saw that this copy looked as if I could have bought it today at my local bookstore I knew I just had to have it.

Everyone talks about how this system had flaws in it, but it really is just what you make out of it, as it says in the there by Mr. Gary Gygax " Naturally, everything possible cannot be included in the whole of this work. As a participant in the game, I would not care to have anyone telling me exactly what must go into a campaign and how it must be handled; if so, why not play some game like Chess?"

In other words as David "Zeb" Cook wrote in the preface of AD&D 2nd Edition Dungeon Masters Guide

"Take the time to have fun with the AD&D rules. Add, create, expand, and extrapolate. Don't just let the game sit there, and don't become a rules lawyer worrying about each piddly little detail. If you can't figure out the answer, MAKE IT UP! And whatever you do, don't fall into the trap of believing these rules are complete. They are not. You cannot sit back and let the rule book do everything for you. Take the time and effort to become not just a good DM, but a brilliant one.

At conventions, in letters, and over the phone I'm often asked for the instant answer to a fine point of the game rules. More often than not, I come back with a question--what do you feel is right? And the people asking the questions discover that not only can they create an answer, but that their answer is as good as anyone else's. The rules are only guidelines.

At the beginning of the first Dungeon Master Guide, Gary Gygax stressed that each of us, working from a common base, would make the AD&D game grow in a variety of different directions. That is more true today than ever. Don't be afraid of experimentation, but do be careful. As a Dungeon Master, you have great power, and "with great power comes great responsibility." Use it wisely."

David "Zeb" Cook
(Preface to the AD&D 2nd edition Dungeon Masters Guide)
2/9/1989

What they are saying have fun with the game do not be bogged down with rules, that has become the latest version of Dungeons & Dragons.

I prefer to have fun and not be bogged down by rules that someone has to keep looking up and slow down my time having fun with the game, that is why there is a thing called House Rules if something does not work throw it out and make a call on what to do, once you have too many rules the game grinds to a halt.

People say that AD&D had flaws, I think it is perfect just the way it is.

This is a must for any dungeon master. It gives detailed descriptions of treasure, monsters, and extra information above and beyond that of the players handbook on almost everything! This may even be useful to players, helping them to remember the rules and tables so that the dm doesn't have to constantly be checking the book, because no one can remember everything in this book. Overall a great buy, and even better if you can pick it up for cheap.