4 out of 5 rating for D&D 5th Edition Dungeon Master's Guide
This is the best 'main' DMG of any edition of D&D to date. And, since that could be considered damning with faint praise, I'll also say: this is an extremely good DMG. (The previous best was the 1st Ed version, but the extremely flavoursome language sometimes impeded comprehension. The 2nd Ed version was almost devoid of worthwhile content beyond the magic items. The 3e version was okay, but did we really need endless pages about doors and walls? The 3.5e took the same material and reorganised badly, and added the broken Epic rules. And the 4e version was long on triviality and painfully short where detail was needed. Not an impressive bunch.)
This DMG has 9 chapters and 4 Appendices. It opens with two chapters on being Master of Worlds: A World of Your Own and Creating a Multiverse. These reminded me, more than anything, of the 2nd Ed "Campaign Supplement and Catacomb Guide" - an extremely impressive book that in many ways is the missing half of the 2nd Ed DMG. Excellent stuff, and a good start.
Part Two is five chapters on being Master of Adventures. Unfortunately, this was where I hit my few caveats about the book. In both the discussion of Mystery adventures and also in creating NPCs, I found the book very good at stating the bleeding obvious, but painfully lacking on specifics. There are some hard-won lessons that veteran DMs pick up along the way, and that are ideal fodder for a DMG (allowing a new DM to skip the pain of learning them the hard way). For example, it reminds the DM to include lots of clues for a mystery (good), but could profitably have talked about the Three Clue Rule. (The TCR isn't holy writ, of course, but it's an extremely good rule of thumb... and exactly the sort of starting place a new DM would benefit from.)
My second caveat mostly concerns the placement of the magic items in the book - the items presented are pretty good, and there's a good range, but they'd have been much better placed at the back of the book, in a second appendix. This would allow a time-pressed DM to find them much more easily for later reference. A nitpick, perhaps, but something that bugged me.
Part Three is two chapters about being Master of Rules, and consists of two chapters. The first of these is additional applications and expansions of the existing rules, while the second is a grab-bag of optional rules and systems. The final chapter also guides the DM in developing new monsters, backgrounds, magic items, classes, and so forth. Really good stuff.
Finally, the Appendices detail Random Dungeons, give useful lists of monsters sorted in various ways (good, but should have been in the MM), a handful of maps, and a recommended reading list just for DMs. All good stuff, though sadly not matching the 1st Ed DMG appendices, which were far and away the highlights of that book.
One last caveat: the binding on my copy is already cracking, after just a read-through and no use in-game at all. A shame.
All in all, though, this is an excellent book, and highly recommended.
