The classic TTRPGs like Pathfinder and D&D (along with 5e fork Tales of the Valiant) have at least 3 main sourcebooks. (See my previous post about expanding those options) Many newer systems like Daggerheart or Cosmere have only one book that contains both player and game master sections. On the one hand, it’s nice to just have to buy one book and have everything all together - there’s often a lot of overlap in what content is for the player and what is for the GM. That said, in a previous iteration, Pathfinder had all the information in one book and people complained that the book was too massive.

The main problem with having a Game Master’s Guide (Or Dungeon Master’s Guide) as a separate book is the need for items that might be a better fit in the Player’s Guide. Otherwise, an experienced game master would not need to pick up your game master’s guide. A lot of the game mastering content is the same (or near enough the same) across all the books I’ve read (whether it’s a separate book or a chapter of the one book for that system). Once you’ve read how to prep for a TTRPG session, you don’t need to read it again and, for the most part, there isn’t enough of a difference between systems to make it worth buying a new GMG - whether you’re moving to a new system or a new edition of the same system. Therefore, the publishers have to include spells, items, vehicles, pantheon details, and world details. This blurs the line between what the GM needs to buy and what the player needs to buy. If your player is a Warlock (ToV or D&D) or a Witch (Pathfinder) they need to know who their potential patron is - that information is in the Game Master’s Guide. Maybe they want to know the full suite of options for downtime - that’s in the Game Master’s Guide. The 2024 D&D DMG has a whole section on Greyhawk - that could be in the player’s guide or a separate gazetteer. So out of the core 3 books, we have the Player’s Guide clearly meant for players and the Monster Guide/Vault/Core clearly meant for the GM. The Game Master’s Guide, however, has some player and some GM information.

However, let’s test my two points. Point number 1 being that all GMGs are created equal and point number 2 being that there’s both player and GM info in the GMGs. Let’s look across Pathfinder, D&D, and Tales of the Valiant.

Tales of the Valiant - Game Master Guide

How to Be a GM - GM content

The Game Master’s Guide starts off with how to be a GM! How appropriate! However, we will see later that this is not always as obvious as it seems. One of the most important sections here is on play styles. Until I read about this I had been doing my players a disservice. I was just running the campaigns as written and not thinking about how each person at the table would get the most enjoyment out of the campaign.

After this are a bunch of tips that I didn’t know when I first started running games and mostly learned through YouTube videos - things like how to prep for the game, how to run a Session 0, and Safety Tools. Also very important is a section on how to keep a game going. If you spend enough time in the hobby, you see that many grows tend to fade away before any epic campaigns can come to a close.

Adventures and Campaigns - GM Content

Many tips in here about what Adventures and Campaigns are as well as tips on how to run them.

Worldbuilding - GM Content

It would be easy to confuse this with homebrewing, which is a later chapter. Actually, while it pairs well with homebrewing, it contains information for the GM to consider that is important whether they are running a homebrew setting or a published adventure. This chapter could also have been called “immersion”. It’s about helping the GM learn how much of the world to have “answers for” so that it seems lived in. It has the GM consider things like the religion or politics of a region and how that might affect the way NPCs act or what the townsfolk are up to. New GMs try and flesh out the whole world and there’s a balance to be found, especially if it’s planned to be a shorter campaign.

Advanced Combat - Mostly GM content, some Player Content

This chapter starts off with a few rules clarifications on combat. After that it moves on to lots of sections that would be very important for a GM who is creating their own combat encounters (not pre-written) to make sure they are challenging, fun, and engaging.

Some of the later sections of this chapter have variant rules for combat that the GM would definitely want the players to read and understand. Otherwise they might feel that combat is not proceeding the way they expect and they would feel it’s unfair.

Advanced Exploration - Mostly GM, some player information

This chapter is actually partially about environmental hazards and environment traversal rules. There’s then a HUGE section about designing your own dungeons. Both this chapter and the one above pair very well with the homebrew chapter below, but it’s hard to organize information in a book (as opposed to a hyperlinked medium like a website). After a section on puzzles, there are more player rules for advanced traveling.

Again, it’s MOSTLY GM information, but if the GM were to introduce the rules related to traveling and environmental hazards, they would need to make sure the players understood them well.

Advanced Social - mostly GM, some player information

The chapter is primarily about creating and roleplaying NPCs and creating and roleplaying factions. There are also player rules for more advanced social interaction. Again, this would need to be communicated and agreed upon by the players.

Adventuring Options - mostly GM, some player information

A detailed list of curses, traps, and environmental hazards. Also, more downtime actions, dread rules, firearms rules, advanced magic items, rewards, more vehicle options, chase encounters, and basic monster harvesting rules. This is definitely one of those chapters that teeters between GM-specific things and Tales of the Valiant-specific things that could have been in a Player’s Guide.

Homebrewer’s Toolbox - GM information

A VERY comprehensive guide on creating your own elements, with a huge focus on creating your own monsters - with lots of examples.

Appendices - encounter tables, campaign dressing, fantasy inspiration

Conclusion

This Game Master’s Guide has a good focus on very important information for the game master. While it does have a lot more that could be player information near the end, it does have a great amount for the game master. The information up from is GREAT information for a new game master. I think the first two chapters are examples of what is needed for a game master to learn the craft. The rest of the book is Tales of the Valiant specific.

Pathfinder - GM Core

Before I get into the chapter content, I want to call out Paizo for doing something great here with the GM Core that I haven’t seen done nearly as well by any of other GM or DM books. In the introduction (just before chapter 1) there are 4 paragraph headings: “I’m a New Game Master”, “I’m Running a Published Adventure”, “I’m Making my Own Adventure”, and “I Need Items!”. Each paragraph has a little information and then points the reader to the chapter where they can get the information they seek. In a way, the 3 central books of any game system are reference materials. If the reader is the type of read from cover to cover, they’ll probably only do that once. So a good table of contents or index is important. This little section provides a nice midpoint between a table of contents and index by providing a little extra context - especially great for the reader who just wants to jump to the information they need and not have to read cover to cover.

Additionally, it helps prove my point that if someone is not a new GM, they probably don’t need to read the first chapter that teaches someone how to run a TTRPG.

Running the Game - mostly GM information, some player information

As with the Tales of the Valiant GMG, this book also mentions Safety Tools. I don’t know if it’s because the concept wasn’t mainstream back when the 2014 D&D Dungeon Master Guide came out (or if I missed it - more on that later), but it’s only recently that I started hearing a lot about it. The Pathfinder GM core has a nice large sidebar about “Lines and Veils” and “X-Cards”. Tales of the Valiant GMG doesn’t have this information, but (perhaps better?) it’s in the Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide. However, I think Paizo does something great and takes the concept one step further than what is in the ToV PG. Paizo lists “The Pathfinder Baseline” as a set of basic assumptions that a table can use as a starting point for these discussions to make sure everyone is on the same page. (If a player hasn’t done Lines/Veils before, they might not even know where to start - what someone else might consider fine that they would not like)

The closest I’ve seen to this elsewhere is in The Cosmere TTRPG - specifically the Stormlight setting. Because one potential reason to play The Cosmere TTRPG is to “live” in Sanderson’s canon setting, the book lists topics that come up in the books (eg slavery, mental illness, discrimination, disability, and more) that tables may or may not want to deal with. (Or may want to handle with care)

Overall, this introductory chapter is in line with other introductory chapters in modern game master books. It does seem to combine some of what is split out into multiple chapters in other game master books, making it a little longer of a chapter than other books. As I mentioned with Tales of the Valiant, there are a bunch of rules and sections in this chapter that the GM would need to share with the players to make sure they understand the rules - such as for downtime.

Building Games - GM information

It’s interesting that Paizo doesn’t use the term homebrewing, but perhaps the term has a more subtle meaning for Paizo players compared to D&D and Tales of the Valiant. This chapter combines what is split into multiple chapters in the Tales of the Valiant GMG. It covers creating campaigns, adventures, monsters, hazards, and so on.

Age of Lost Omens - GM and Player information

This whole chapter DEFINITELY should be in a Player reference instead of simply a GM reference (assuming that we’re asking Players to only buy the Player Core while the GM has to get PC, Monster Core, and GM Core). It’s the history of Golarian (the default Pathfinder setting) and the GM needs to know it for setting purposes and the players need to know it for realistic player roleplaying.

Subsystems - GM and Player Information

This chapter is a consolidation of what the ToV GMG has under each chapter that starts with “Advanced”. As the GM Core explains it, these are fleshed out systems for what the basic rules just have as a roll check. It includes rules for research, dueling, reputation, and more. Again, whilst the GM needs to know how to implement these, the player needs to understand these rules, too.

Treasure Trove - GM info

The treasure trove is a list of treasures, magical and mundane, to give the players. This is a chapter common across all GMG/DMG books I’ve seen. It serves as a reason to buy the book even if the GM doesn’t need advice on how to GM.

Treasure Table - GM info

This is not a rollable table, it’s more of an appendix on treasure rarity, price, and where to find details within this book.

Conclusion

There are many good things about the Pathfinder GM Core, especially the Paizo house style of having a “site map” running along the border letting the reader know where they are in relation to the other sections in the chapter and the different chapters in the book. It makes navigating without having to go back to the table of contents an absolute joy. I wish more companies did something like this in their reference books.

Seemingly moreso than the Kobold Press GMG, this one has a lot of information that would also be needed by players.

Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide

Because I’m covering both the 2014 and 2024 DMGs, the commentary on each chapter may be more abbreviated than the previous ones.

DMG 2014

I remember back when I first got into D&D reading the Dungeon Master’s Guide and just feeling like it was mostly useless for me in that moment. I didn’t want to create my own worlds; not until I understood the game a lot better. As is somewhat of a meme, most people probably barely read or referenced this book.

A World of Your Own - GM info

The book jumps straight into homebrewing by helping the GM build their own world. It also uses contrasts with D&D’s worlds to provide examples to bounce off of.

Creating a Multiverse - GM Info

Again, a homebrew chapter. Once again, it also compares and contrasts with the D&D cosmology to provide examples.

Creating Adventures - GM info

A chapter that gives both instructions and tips on creating adventures and encounters.

Creating Nonplayer Characters - GM info

In addition to providing tips on how to create NPCs, it also shows how to take the D&D hero classes and twist them into villainous classes.

Adventure Environments - GM info

How to create maps and how to populate many different TTRPG environments.

Between Adventures - GM info and some plater info

Provides information on how to link adventures into a greater campaign and also contains some downtime activities.

Treasure - GM info

Treasure lists and descriptions. Again, this is one of the sections of a DMG that is here to ensure the DM buys it even if they already know how to homebrew and/or run games.

Running the Game - GM info

Strangely, compared with Tales of the Valiant, Pathfinder, and the 2024 D&D DMG, this is the penultimate chapter of the book. For someone who perused the book rather than going by the table of contents, this is way too late in the book for this information.

Dungeon Master’s Workshop - GM info

A few more homebrew options to close out the book.

Appendices - GM Info

Random dungeons, monster lists, maps, and DM inspiration.

DMG 2024

As a contrast to the 2014 book, when I got this book, I wished it was the version that existed when I first got into D&D. Because of the way my brain works, I still read through all the basics because when I’m self-taught at anything (photography, programming, TTRPGs), I find that I have little gaps in my knowledge when compared to learning from a book that lays things out in in orderly fashion or taking a class. I did indeed learn a bit that I had missed when first getting into the hobby. I then expanded out to learn the more advanced topics.

I will admit that by the time I got the DMG 2024 (I had ordered the trilogy of books, but Wizards of the Coast had a staggered release schedule), I was not really running D&D games anymore. At home we had switched fully to Tales of the Valiant (other than running the Dungeon in a Box modules) and so I completely skipped the Greyhawk information. If we ever go back to D&D or if another group I’m a part of plays D&D, I’ll go back and take a look at the Greyhawk chapter.

One difference I noticed upon re-reading for this blog post - the 2024 DMG is unique in that it spends a lot more time than the other books on thinking about online play and the differences vs in-person games. I didn’t re-read every single word of the other DM/GM guides, but I think this might have been the only book to cover it; at the very least it’s the only one that covered it extensively.

It’s pretty standard nowadays for any GM/DM book to have examples of play, but the DMG does stand out in a good way for having lots of examples throughout the book.

The Basics - GM info

This is right where it should be - at the front of the book. Rather than lines and veils or X cards, D&D uses the concept of Hard and Soft Limits - same concept, but different name.

Running the Game - GM Info

A mix of the usual tips and a few unique ones - like involving multiple DMs. In fact, their new intro to D&D - the Borderlands set - encourages each player to take a turn as the DM.

DM’s Toolbox - GM Info

It’s mostly about creating the details of your own homebrew world or creating your own unique details to stick into pre-written worlds. It also has rules for firearms (pretty typical as something that’s found in GM guides and not in the Player’s Guide/Core), and siege weapons.

Creating Adventures - GM Info

Another homebrew chapter but it does have a great section that shows Adventure examples for player characters from level 1 all the way to level 7.

Creating Campaigns - GM Info, some player info

A lot of people really like to poop on Wizards of the Coast. Sometimes it’s deserved like the OGL scandal and other times it’s just because they’re the big dog in the space (just like everyone hates the Yankees when they’re on top). But this chapter (really this book as a whole) has some top notch advice. Things like talking about a campaign journal and making sure it’s a collaborative effort with the players are tips I had to originally learn on YouTube. Also great is the advice on ending the campaign. As I mentioned in the intro to this blog post, there’s a Greyhawk section that should have been a gazetteer. It’s also something the GM would probably want the players to know, blurring the lines a bit in this book.

Cosmology - GM info, Player info

This is another one of those chapters that really belongs in the Player’s Guide if the DMG is for DMs and not all players. Many players will want to have this background information to inform their characters, especially if they choose one of the classes that interacts with the gods or other extra-planar things. (Similar to the Golarian chapter in the Pathfinder GM Core)

Treasure - GM info

We’ve seen a chapter like this a million times before in the other books.

Bastions - GM info, Player Info

Bastions - or base rules - made official for D&D 5e. This would definitely need to be shared with the players so that they don’t need to keep asking the DM how these things work.

Appendices - GM info, Player Info

The best of the appendices is the Lore Glossary. I really wish this had been a part of the 2014 DMG. Yeah, D&D has been around for 50 years, but for MOST of that time (and even now) it’s a niche hobby. It’s not like Superman or Batman where everyone knows their backstory even if they’ve never read a comic book. Rather than have to find the D&D wikia, it was nice to have this included in the DMG. I was finally able to learn who the heck Tasha was and what her history was in D&D,

Conclusion

If there is a D&D 6e (and this is in question given what happened with 5e 2014 and 5e 2024), I would strongly recommend that Wizards of the Coast take the content and formatting of the 2024 for the Dungeon Master’s Guide. However, there was a lot of good advanced and homebrew knowledge in the 2014 DMG. So I would recommend a second book either called DMG 2 or, to play on an old D&D naming trope, Advanced Dungeon Mastering. This second book would be for the D&D DM that wants to take their DMing to the next level.

Overall Conclusion

Having looked at all of these books in quick succession for this blog post instead of just going by what I remembered, it was fascinating to see where they intersected and where they diverged. If we remove the 2014 DMG, the other 3 are remarkably similar. I think this reflects the current understanding of best practices for DMs/GMs. Not only should the most basic information be presented up first, but there should also be information on how to deal with problems at the table and how to keep a game from fizzling out. While some people have decried the current trends as “woke” (this word has almost lost all meaning at this point in 2025), I applaud the fact that all 3 modern books (and our brief example of the combined Cosmere book) take the time to talk about player comfort via the lines and veils (or hard and soft limits) system. While some tables want to focus on the more wargaming roots of D&D - most of those who came to the hobby after having seen Critical Role or Dimension 20 are here for the roleplay. Good roleplay requires vulnerability and the players can’t be vulnerable if they don’t feel safe.

After going over all of these I almost wonder if there should really be 4 core books for the systems that don’t just have one book. I would probably structure it this way: Player’s Guide (same as now with maybe some of what’s currently being shunted into GMGs), Monster book(s), Intro to Game Mastering (this would be the basics that are essentially the same across all systems), Advanced Options for the Game Master (the rest of what’s currently in the Game Master books). What benefit would this provide? Because all these systems are still printing books (as opposed to being fully electronic) there is a cost associated with the number of pages in a book. Why continue to print the game master advice each time if it’s always the same information? Instead there could be the one evergreen book - Intro to Game Mastering. A GM would buy this book once and not with every new system or edition. This could be a shorter, cheaper book - making it easier for someone who is only considering becoming a GM to buy it. Then what is currently the GMG/DMG could EITHER have less pages (and be cheaper) OR have the same number of pages and fit more advanced options/rules specific to that system or edition of the game.

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