Rating: 
Summary: Very well done, WotC!
Review: The DMG looks great. It is well written, and full of useful information for your 3rd Edition campaign. I've only seen better writing at 3rdedition.org. Time to get reading!
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Summary: Man if you thought the players handbook ruled.
Review: Man, this book is really beautiful, the art work is very good and the rules are so easy to understand, if you havent gotten your copy yet, then get it now!
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Summary: Hats off to Monte Cook!!!
Review: The perfect mix between old D&D and a skill-based system like rolemaster! Very professionally illustrated and excellent use of pictures. The miniatures-based system will revolutionize how the masses play D&D. Quit wasting time reading this and go to AMAZON and but your DMG right now!
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Summary: The 3rd edition Monstrous Manual
Review: Compared to the 2nd edition, this little masterpiece is in a world of its own... The details are fantastic... the pictures are great... the description of each monster (including the 'old' ones) are clear and up to date for the new 3rd edition rules...In our game, this book is somewhat of a new bible... Anything you need to know on a monster is listed... For example, you can look up how many medium sized creatures fit in the belly of a Great Feyr, how to get out, the DC for such a thing... anything you can think of is listed under that monster's entry... This is a must for any D&D game master... forget the old books... buy this one !
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: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Nice
Review: A nicely presented book that doesn't really get bogged down at all, and has plenty of useful information in it. I am new to D&D gaming, and had little trouble reading and understanding this book.
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Summary: 3e Just Gets Better and Better
Review: This guide is the ultimate must-have for a 3rd Edition DM. It is amazing. It has just about everything you'd like to know about running the game. There is but one drawback I find, although it does not take away from the value of this book. Unlike the Players Handbook, which was readable in a manner that you would a novel, this book is full of tables and such, making it very difficult to see through. You'll probably only read the first six chapters, and use the rest for quick reference during play. Still, it is definitely a five-star buy.
Rating: 
Summary: Very disappointed
Review: After the more recent editions of this book in 2nd Edition, I felt disappointed in the lack of information this book contains. There should have been more on the creation of Character and Prestige classes and the treasure tables are very scattered, the collected tables in the 2E books were far superior. However, splitting the treasure into mundane, minor, etc... is a good idea. WotC haven't spoiled the game, though they almost did with the d20 system. Thankfully, the system makes more game universal and interaction between them more possible. The chapters on running games are interesting, but only for new DMs, they are utterly wasted on experienced DMs such as myself, wasting almost half the book. Hopefully, if this is ever reprinted, it will be corrected to make it easier to use for generating treasure, I have never flicked through so many pages whilst handing out magic items before in all my 15 years of gaming.
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