[3] Both the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Player's Handbook give advice, tips, and suggestions for various styles of play.
[6] The book was intended to provide Dungeon Masters all the information and rules necessary to run a campaign for the D&D game.
One supplement to the Guide was the Dungeon Masters Screen: two heavy-duty tri-fold boards with the most frequently used tables printed on them for easy reference.
The 1979 second edition of the screen describes its purpose as "useful for shielding maps and other game materials from the players when placed upright, and also provide[s] instant reference to the charts and tables most commonly used during play."
A dungeon complete with passageways, rooms, treasure, monsters, and other encounters could easily and randomly be constructed as the player progressed.
[9][10] The original Dungeon Masters Guide was reviewed by Don Turnbull in issue #16 of the magazine White Dwarf (December 1979/January 1980).
[11] Scott Taylor of Black Gate listed the Dungeon Master's Guide as #2 on the list of "Top 10 'Orange Spine' AD&D Hardcovers By Jeff Easley, saying "Not taking anything away from EVERYTHING THAT THE DM IS and how well Jeff represents it here, but I still believe when many folks think about an 'orange spine', they are going to remember #1 first, because at the end of the day, this [is] a re-cover, and half the folks out there are going to be about the Sutherland III edition.
"[12] In his 2023 book Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, RPG historian Stu Horvath noted, "The Dungeon Master's Guide is strange and deeply idiosyncratic.
Gygax expresses in it a singular vision that feels true in a way few other RPG books can ever hope to equal — it is an accidental portrait of the man's brain circa 1978.
[6] The book featured interior illustrations by Easley, Clyde Caldwell, John and Laura Lakey, David Dorman, Douglas Chaffee, and Jean E. Martin.
[6] A new version of the Dungeon Master Guide, with new art and layout but the same text, was released in 1995, as part of TSR's 25th anniversary.
Cover art is by Henry Higginbotham, with interior art by Matt Cavotta, Ed Cox, Lars Grant-West, Scott Fischer, John Foster, Jeremy Jarvis, John and Laura Lakey, Todd Lockwood, David Martin, Raven Mimura, Wayne Reynolds, Scott Roller, Brian Snoddy, Arnie Swekel, and Sam Wood.
The front cover illustration was by Wayne Reynolds and the back cover illustration is by Brian Hagan, with interior illustrations by Rob Alexander, Steve Argyle, Wayne England, Jason Engle, David Griffith, Espen Grundetjern, Brian Hagan, Ralph Horsley, Howard Lyon, Lee Moyer, William O'Connor, Wayne Reynolds, Dan Scott, Ron Spears, Chris Stevens, Anne Stokes, and Eva Widermann.
However, there is much more in the book too, including storytelling advice, skill challenge and monster customization, and the return of one of D&D's most beloved settings".
On the staggered release schedule, Jeremy Crawford wrote "our small team couldn’t finish the books at the same time and also ensure their high quality.
[26][27] Henry Glasheen, for SLUG Magazine, wrote "Fifth Edition, to my eyes, is the new gold standard for D20-based tabletop RPGs.
I’ve often found that the Dungeon Master’s Guide was the most vestigial of all the D&D manuals, but Fifth Edition has elevated this previously tertiary book into something far more important and useful".
The versatility of this tome is nowhere more obvious than amongst the flavor filled side panels, which further detail the lower magical level of the main setting, before explaining all of the variable options a DM has in bringing to life a world of their own.
Where Gygax made the assumption that an aspiring DM needed to sit at a table as a player and learn the system from another, become inspired, and then extrapolate on what they'd learned firsthand, the folks [at] Wizards of the Coast have gone in the opposite direction and believe anyone buying this book has never really played D&D before and needs instruction on how to DM the game.