In the beginning, there was Chainmail. Then came three little brown books, like mischievous hobbits sneaking into Mordor. But in 1979, Gary Gygax dropped the Dungeon Masters Guide a hardcover tome so dense, so esoteric, and so essential that it effectively turned a fantasy pastime into a lifelong lifestyle. If Advanced Dungeons & Dragons were a holy trinity, the Player’s Handbook was the call to adventure, the Monster Manual was the bestiary of beasts, and the Dungeon Masters Guide was the sacred grimoire of divine power at least for the Dungeon Master.

So grab your percentile dice and prepare to learn how to run a campaign like it’s 1979.

The DMG Arrives: At Long Last, Control

To appreciate the Dungeon Masters Guide, we need to understand what came before it—or, more accurately, what didn’t. When the Player’s Handbook (1978) hit store shelves, players were finally armed with spells, equipment, and class tables galore, but DMs were left with vague memories of Original D&D and the whimsical assumptions of the early hobby. There was no proper initiative system. No magic item creation rules. No guidance on running a campaign unless you were best friends with Gary Gygax and could call him on the phone (which, in Lake Geneva, was not unheard of).

Enter the Dungeon Masters Guide in 1979 a book that aimed to codify and contain the wild frontier of early table top gaming. At 240 pages (give or take a few stray errata and a demon lord or two), this was not a manual. It was a manifesto.

It Starts with a Rant (of Course)

Gary Gygax doesn’t ease you into the DMG. He doesn’t start with a table of contents or a friendly “Hey there, friend!” He starts with a preface, which might as well be titled Gary Explains Why You’re Wrong.

From the opening lines, Gygax asserts the Dungeon Master’s role as “creator, designer, arbitrator, and narrator,” and not just a referee no sir! You are the god of your campaign, and this book is your burning bush. He’s already warning against letting players design the world or change the rules. Gygaxian advice is a mixture of practical instruction, stern gatekeeping, and philosophical musings on the nature of gaming. It’s kind of like reading the Federalist Papers if Hamilton were obsessed with wandering monsters.

Randomness, Glorious Randomness

The early pages of the DMG are a delightfully tangled thicket of random tables, and I mean random. Need to know how much damage your character takes if they fall into lava? There’s a table for that. Want to generate the characteristics of a random prostitute? Also there (Table 102, if you’re curious). Wandering monsters by dungeon level? Covered. Random dungeon generation for when your players go off the map? Of course.

If Gygax had his way, you’d never have to make a subjective decision again. You’d just roll d100, consult 12 tables, cross reference with a chart of lunar phases, and voilà instant dungeon.

This approach has aged both wonderfully and terribly. On one hand, it’s absurdly charming and delightfully unpredictable. On the other, it’s a bureaucratic fever dream. But in 1979, this was the Wild West, and Gary Gygax was trying to give DMs some structure, lest their games devolve into Monty Python sketches and bitter disputes over how many hit points a wyvern should really have.

The Rules (Oh So Many Rules)

The Dungeon Masters Guide doesn’t contain just a set of rules it contains all the rules. Some of them contradict each other. Others are implied through stern suggestion. Some are buried in footnotes or tucked away in parentheses like secret handshakes.

Combat & Initiative

Initiative rules in the DMG are famously convoluted, involving segments, phases, weapon speed, spell casting time, and a good deal of arguing. In fact, the initiative section has been studied by scholars with less clarity than the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Want to attack with a longsword against a spellcaster? Check your weapon’s speed factor. What spell are they casting? How many segments does it take? Did you drink a potion last round? Are you surprised? Are they surprised? Are you both surprised? Roll d6. Roll it again. Burn the table. Start over.

Yet for all its confusion, this system birthed the crunchy, tactical combat that defined AD&D and influenced countless games after. It was crunchy. It was chaotic. It was, somehow, beautiful.

Encumbrance, Movement, and The Art of Misery

Encumbrance is one of those things everyone says they use but silently ignores. Not Gary. The DMG not only gives you exact weight values for every item, it tells you how that weight affects movement, initiative, fatigue, and the gravitational alignment of your players’ chakras.

Movement is tracked to the inch. Time is tracked by segment. There are ten segments in a round, ten rounds in a turn, and six turns in an hour. Every piece of this math was designed to simulate realism or what a wargamer in 1979 thought realism meant. Bring a calculator and maybe a stiff drink.

Experience Points and Treasure

One of the most defining and oddly controversial parts of the DMG is how it handles experience. Gygax’s preferred method? Give players XP for treasure. Yes, gold for XP. The more you steal, the more powerful you become. Like capitalism but with more kobolds.

This led to some… interesting behavior. Entire dungeons were looted not for the glory but for the GP-to-XP conversion rate. It’s like turning a fantasy adventure into a particularly lethal episode of Storage Wars.

Magic Items: Cursed, Confusing, and Cool

The magic item section of the DMG is practically its own book. Potions, scrolls, rings, rods, staves, wands, and weird relics litter these pages like loot pinatas. The descriptions are often terse but evocative, full of words like “insidious,” “chaotic,” and “beware.”

Cursed items abound. The Sword of Berserking will make your fighter attack his friends. The Helm of Opposite Alignment turns your lawful good paladin into a chaotic evil nightmare. Why include these? Because Gygax believed DMs should punish curiosity and reward caution with brutal glee.

This philosophy, in its own Gygaxian way, reminds DMs that a good game isn’t always about fairness. It’s about drama. And maybe a little spite.

The Appendices: Glorious Grab Bag of Geekdom

The DMG’s appendices are where Gygax gets delightfully nerdy.

Appendix A: Random Dungeon Generation gives you a way to build an entire labyrinth by rolling dice. Many a solo DM spent weekends rolling up endless corridors and doors that led nowhere. It’s janky, sure but also oddly hypnotic.

Appendix N: Inspirational and Educational Reading is a cornerstone of D&D history. This is Gygax’s personal reading list his literary DNA. It includes luminaries like Tolkien, Vance, Howard, Leiber, and Moorcock. It’s a list that has shaped countless campaigns and introduced generations of gamers to the pulpy roots of fantasy.

You want to understand D&D? Read Appendix N. It’s like the Rosetta Stone of roleplaying.

Other appendices include the official list of known artifacts and relics (some of which have no purpose beyond confusing your players), rules for siege warfare, and conversion guides for turning Boot Hill and Gamma World characters into your campaign (because why not have a cowboy with a laser pistol show up in Greyhawk?).

Art and Layout: Organized Chaos

The art in the DMG is mostly black-and-white illustrations by D&D regulars like David C. Sutherland, Dave Trampier, and Erol Otus. Some pieces are iconic others look like they were drawn in the margins of a teenager’s math notebook. But they’re all full of charm and character.

The layout is notoriously… “fluid.” Tables pop up in the middle of sections, some rules seem to be referenced before they’re explained, and the index is less a map and more of a cryptic riddle. But all of this adds to the DMG’s mystique. It’s not a book you read it’s a book you study.

Legacy: The Most Important Book You Can’t Read Straight Through

The 1979 Dungeon Masters Guide is not a page-turner. It’s a reference manual, a design manifesto, a toolbox, a rulebook, a grab bag of errata, and a love letter to the complexity of the game.

To this day, no other RPG rulebook feels quite like it. Later editions of the DMG became more streamlined, more reader friendly, and arguably more useful. But none ever matched the wild ambition, Gygaxian flair, or encyclopedic madness of the original.

Reading the DMG feels like cracking open a spellbook written by an eccentric wizard who’s more interested in sharing obscure knowledge than making things easy. And for many of us, that’s exactly what we want.

Final Thoughts: In Gary We Trust

The 1979 Dungeon Masters Guide is not just a book. It’s a monument. It’s the obsessive, baroque, and oddly inspiring product of a singular vision. It assumes its reader is intelligent, curious, and maybe a little masochistic. And while some of its advice may be outdated, and some of its systems overwrought, it’s still a masterclass in worldbuilding, improvisation, and game philosophy.

Running a game with the original DMG is like conducting a symphony while juggling fire and rolling dice and loving every minute of it.

So the next time your players go off-map, argue about initiative, or start interrogating a magic item, just crack open that old, orange spined tome, flip to a random page, and do what Gary would do: Roll some dice, ignore the results, and pretend you had it planned all along.