Rating: 
Summary: Moreso than ever before...
Review: The third edition Dungeon Master's Guide details a DM's options as they've never been presented before. While previous DMGs have mainly been a compendium of rules, this is more of a guidebook, with a lot of tips for DMs that could only be picked up through experience in the past. The book talks extensively about game balance, gives pointers on dealing with different player types, and more than anything else emphasizes the DM's power and responsibility over his game. There's a lot here for experienced DMs as well, though: Details on creating new races and classes, including the "witch" example and some new example "prestige classes". Solid info on creating game worlds, designing adventures, and awarding experience points. A ton of new material on magic items, finally giving real detailed information on how a player character can create his own items. This book is amazing. It revitalizes the whole game of D&D.
Rating: 
Summary: DM'ing Made Simple
Review: Let's face it. All my fellow DM's know Dungeon Mastering is hard. You need to be in tune with the entire game enviornment, and every NPC and every monster and...I could go on, but I'm not going to bore you. Anyway, I think 3rd Edition rules are pretty darn good, but this Dungeon Masters Guide is useless for experienced DM's. There are many useful tables throughout the book based on almost everything imaginable. They are quite useful for in-game reference. The classes included are quite interesting. My personal favorite is the "Paladin Gone Bad." It's real name is the Fallen Blackguard, and he is very bad-arse. They have other interesting ones, like the Arcane Archer, and Loremaster. There are tips in the first chapter of the book for beginners, that could come in handy. The problem is this book is geared for neophyte DMs. Experienced ones can rip out Chapters 1,4, and 5, because they just give you pointers on what adventures and campaigns are and how to control them. Trust me, If you've DMed for a fair amount of time, don't even bother buying this, and stick with your 2E Dungeon Master's Guide for reference. iF you are new to DMing, this is the perfect review for you.
Rating:
Summary: This and the 3rd Edition player's handbook are near perfect
Review: This book is excellent. It give the Dungeon Master exactly the information he needs on how to run a campaign and it does it in a very flexible yet comprehensive way. Out of all the editions of this game, this Dungeon Master Guide is probably the best due to sheer amount of good advice it gives. Artwork is also excellent as it is in all the three core 3rd edition rulebooks. I was initially against the 3rd Edition of the game because it's produced players who are overly concerned with getting the highest modifier for their characters and powering up, leveling up, etc... but this book (and the player's handbook) are so well designed that I was won over (at least in the short term). Anyway, this is a great book. Buy it now.
Rating:
Summary: Superb redo of a classic game book
Review: This is an excellent 'renovation' of the DMG which will be useful both to veterans and beginners. It details large numbers of magic items, gives demographic design tips to DMs (i.e. how many levelled characters there are in a town/village/city of a certain size), has intriguing prestige classes (which are like add-on character classes allowing characters to get special abilities -- sometimes at a price), and plenty of plain, solid information for running a good game. I'm a DM with 17 years experience and I've owned all editions of the game, and I can say that this book is an invaluable updating of D&D. The one criticism I hear a lot about 3rd edition is that it is for 'power gamers' or 'munchkins', but I can assure you that even if the characters are a little tougher than their 2E counterparts, so are the monsters; the game is better balanced, as far as I can see (there are even challenge ratings so that you can determine just how many encounters of a certain toughness a party can handle). An excellent book -- if you like D&D or are interested in finding out about it, buy this volume!
Rating: 
Summary: They Keep Getting Better
Review:
I must say, this 3rd edition Dungeon Master's Guide is absolutely fantastic. Just as in the Player's Handbook, the team at WotC has worked to streamline all of the rules and clarify a whole lot of little things. Not to mention, the artwork is awesome. I love the look of the new books -- much cooler than the drab, red-and-black of the old 2E tomes.
Anyway, I must recommend this book to everyone who's interested in playing this game. If you're not a DM, you may not actually have to own one, but it's nice to have as a resource, so you can know what's going on...
Oh yeah - possibly the most welcomed improvement in these books is the price: $20.00 in stores! That's a bit of a drop, considering the last books were all around $30.00. [The reason it gets 4 stars is because the binding of my book is already starting to break. Hopefully this wont happen to everyone.] So pick yourself up a copy of this book! Good Gaming!
Rating:
Summary: The How and Why of D&D3e
Review: The 3rd Edition Dungeon Master's Guide is exactly what it should be - a description of the how and why of 3rd Edition rules. It is so much more than a collection of tables and charts. Sure, those are there as a short cut, an easy reference. What the book really brings to the table, though, is a system for knowing how to modify the system and add things to the game without throwing the power balance all out of whack. An example of the is the "Most important thing for a DM to know:" a quick and easy rule for modifying a situation. If it's easy, give a +2 bonus. Difficult? -2. REALLY difficult? -4. After the session is over, look up the actual 'rule' on the situation, and most times you'll find that you were right. Most importantly, though, is that the book does this without cramming a default campaign setting down your throat. Many DMs out there, myself included, want to play in our own worlds that we've created, and the DMG lets you do exactly that. This book is better laid-out than the Player's Handbook, which is why I gave it 5 stars. If half stars were available, I would have given it 4.5, since the book isn't perfect. Sure, there are some problems, but they're so much more minor than 2ed, with so many more possibilities for expanding the system that they're easily overlooked. 3rd Edition is what brougth my circle of gamers back to the table. It's so much easier to play that I can't imagine how we ever dealt with other systems. Much more time to roleplay, and less time taken looking up rules!
Rating: 
Summary: So much less than it seems...
Review: The Third Edition DMG is not the book it should have been. It is a disjointed collection of rules that really don't fit together very well. The most important flaw is the experience and rewards systems. It's designed to rocket the characters to 20th level without ever placing them in any real danger. Please, since when is one lone 4th level NPC a challenge for four 4th level characters? Any why are 1st and 3rd level characters treated the same on the experience chart? A 3rd level party is going to have more than triple the resources that a 1st level party has available. Combined with a reward chart that puts a truckloads of magical items into the characters hands, this book puts Third Edition D&D solidly into the munchkin world (For the RPG terminology impaired, that's like a Monty Haul campaign but without any danger of loosing). Other irregularities include the fact that there are rules on drowning and being crushed to death by water pressure (deep under the sea), but no rules for actually moving in water or fighting under water. There are rules for generating towns and cities. Those rules do not function in a reasonable manner, unless the DM manually saturates the cities with specifically placed characters. Even something as simple as using the tables to determine what the levels of the high priests of the religions present in a city breaks down unless there are less than four seperate religions present in the city. The section on magic items is poorly laid our and difficult to use for anything other than random magic item rolls. Some of the magic items are undervalued, overly powerful, or both. A lot of space is devoted to incomplete tutorials on how to be a game master. Ironically, that's not matieral that should actually be in the Dungeon Master's Guide. This is supposed to be a reference book for running a campaign, not "The Dummies Guide to Dungeon Masterery". The rules for gunpowder weapons and lasers are useless filler that takes up space that could have been devoted to environments that average game master would actually like to see his characters in, like say astral combat rules and underwater combat rules. Who cares how much damage a laser might do if it were in the hands of a barbarian. Anyone who actually wants to use laser weapons is just going to use a d20 modern or futuristic sourcebook anyways. The D&D economy is so disfunctional that no wizard or sorceror who can create any magic items (including scrolls) should ever be allowed to die. It's always worth a cleric's while to bring the chump back from the dead and make him work off the investment. Also it becomes blatantly clear that NPCs are supposed to give special respect to the PCs simply because they are PCs, otherwise how can you explain the fact that a character can earn a wage of 15 gps a week as a stablehand but only needs to pay his stablehands 1 gp per week. The section on special abilities is redundant because most of it is repeated in the Monster Manual and the encounter tables are useless without the Monster Manual. Since they were also rendered useless by the first expansion printed for the Monster Manual, it is very obvious that they should have been printed in the Monster Manual itself. Half of an entire chapter is dedicated to charts of stats for average characters of each of the classes at each level. This space is completely wasted. Overall, the DMG is first book produced for Third Edition that was simply bad. No attempt was made to turn a collection of notes and rules into a good refence book for Third Edition D&D. Instead it seems to have been thrown together with a nice binding and cover and some artwork and rushed out the door. Not all of the material is bad, but all you have to do is try to use the book to realize how useless it really is. I would only recommend this book to someone who is being forced to run Third Edition D&D.
Rating:
Summary: Simply Great
Review: The PHB was awesome, and the DMG is doulbly so. Prestige classes are a great tool. What's more are the very useful NPC classes. Finally there are rules for making magic items. I don't know why 2nd edition rules assumed that only NPCs can make these things. Now I have something for my players to strive for!
Rating:
Summary: DM's best friend
Review: This book is the best of a D&D DM who wants his world and adventures just unique. the book has EVERYTHING a DM needs no matter if he is a new one or an experienced, no matter if he was a DM for a long time in the AD&D(2nd edition). A friend of mine had almost no idea of the D&D game rules but he wanded to be the DM. He made up several terrible campaigns and all mi friends were diappointed. one day I gave him the DMG and in only 3 days later he had read the DMG and now he is the best DM I know. (without having actually read the players handbook).
Rating: 
Summary: Horrible¿
Review: ...It is just a collection of rules that most serious players will no doubt memorize anyway. So I ask: why not include these rules in the player's handbook? The Player's Handbook places extra fluff at the end (various ads for Chain mail and such). Aside from the rules there are sections dedicated to how to be a DM and how to world build. The how to DM section is a chapter that anyone with common sense would already know, such as what to do with unruly players (answer is that you don't invite them to play). The world building section is inane, with the 'variant cultures' amounting to no more than weapon tables for machine guns (!) and laser grenades (!!). Other than that the only thing that's not pure rules are magic items, which could also fit at the end of the player's handbook. I've seen the Star wars and Wheel of Time role-playing games fit all the D20 rules into one book, and it is lowdown and unethical for Wizards to divide the rules in two, and fill the Player's book with the boring example of the four characters of Tordek, Melannie, Linda, and Jozan and the DM's book with an uncompleted sample dungeon, NCP Generator that gives only one NCP for each class (!), and other banalities. Protest by finding the rules online or borrow it from a friend, unless you're the type of geek that drools over magic items, then you deserve to be fleeced.
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