In the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) role-playing game, the Dungeon Master (often abbreviated as DM) is the game organizer and participant in charge of creating the details and challenges of a given adventure, while maintaining a realistic continuity of events. In effect, the Dungeon Master controls all aspects of the game, except for the actions of the player characters, (PCs) and describes to the other players what they see and hear.
The title was invented for the TSR Dungeons & Dragons RPG, and was introduced in the second supplement to the game rules (Blackmoor). To avoid infringement of TSR's trademarks, and to describe referees in role-playing genres other than sword and sorcery, other gaming companies use more generic terms, like Game Master, Game Operations Director, Judge, Referee or Storyteller.
Also, in Faiths and Pantheons, the Faerunian Overgod Ao answers to a superior entity, insinuated to be the "Dungeon Master".
Read more about Dungeon Master: Role, Gaming Groups
Famous quotes containing the words dungeon and/or master:
“O who shall from this dungeon raise
A soul enslaved so many ways?
With bolts of bones, that fettered stands
In feet; and manacled in hands:
Here blinded with an eye; and there
Deaf with the drumming of an ear;
A soul hung up, as ‘twere, in chains
Of nerves, and arteries, and veins;”
—Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)
“Be real and admirable, not as we know, but as you know. Able men do not care in what kind a man is able, so only that he is able. A master likes a master, and does not stipulate whether it be orator, artist, craftsman, or king.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)