Rulebooks with best GM advice

[Aldarc]

Brevity is nice, but it can also be too little advice depending on the game or system. I'm not sure, for example, that the Mausritter advice would be sufficient for running 5e D&D.

4e D&D DMG by James Wyatt (and others). When 5e gets criticized online for its DMG, I have seen a number of content creators point to the 4e D&D DMG 1 as the place new GMs should look for advice. One thing that I think that it does well is in how it organizes information: narrow to wide. It starts from what the GM needs to run the game, encounters (combat, building, and noncombat ones), adventures and rewards, and then finally to campaigns and worldbuilding. So it feeds the more pertinent information towards the beginning and expands its scope outwards.

Stonetop by Jeremy Strandberg. It builds on the advice found in Dungeon World, which itself borrows liberally from Apocalypse World. The book elaborates on the play agenda, principles, and guidelines for the aforementioned games. Where I find Stonetop useful is that it provides a lot more guidance for new GMs, particularly for managing GM and player moves. The author provides plentiful examples as well.

Index Card RPG by Hankerin Ferinale. It distills a lot of advice for GMs playing D&D games into a fairly simple rule set, but Hankerin also provides a lot of straightforward instruction for how to set up things like dungeons and encounters.

 

[innerdude]

Ironsworn and Ironsworn:Starforged both have good advice similar to what is discussed in this thread for their games themselves

Absolutely agree about Ironsworn. Ironsworn has fantastic advice, visuals, and charts for considering how to run a game.

I'd say probably 70% of that advice is portable across systems, and the "Oracles" in Ironsworn are AWESOME for generating ideas as a GM. And seriously, the original Ironsworn system PDF is 100% free.

If you're primarily running "trad" systems, Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master is a pretty darn good resource.

 

[Sacrosanct]

4e D&D DMG by James Wyatt (and others). When 5e gets criticized online for its DMG, I have seen a number of content creators point to the 4e D&D DMG 1 as the place new GMs should look for advice. One thing that I think that it does well is in how it organizes information: narrow to wide. It starts from what the GM needs to run the game, encounters (combat, building, and noncombat ones), adventures and rewards, and then finally to campaigns and worldbuilding. So it feeds the more pertinent information towards the beginning and expands its scope outwards.

It's no secret 4e is probably my least favorite edition of D&D, but I did really like the "Tips from the Pros" call outs in the DMG. It's something I've incorporated into my own books. Not just my own ideas (like how James does in the DMG), but also call outs to other gamers. E.g., I might have a call out that says, "A great piece of advice by Matt Coville in adventure building that has helped me is X, Y, Z".