Xanathar's Guide to Everything

This book is another* of the recommended reads for new Dungeon Masters and their ilk. The eponymous Xanathar is a beholder** who is generally disparaging of humanoids and as such the information laid out here - which is ample, and of a most generous help to the discerning Dungeon Master in their trials and work - is accompanied by misanthropic comments and snide little "ooh look at you lot all being magical and whatnot" type comments, which I found amusing, and they don't really detract from the main content at all. Not one of the core books but a viable case could be made that it should be just to have all bases properly covered.

* That link should bring you to a web page wherein you can access and download pretty much all the main books from Fifth edition. If it doesn't work cut it down to just the initial web address and hunt through the clicky lists for the resource you want.

** And if you don't know what one of them is, you should read the D&D lore books as I am.

Dungeon Master's Guide

This book (again, a free pdf available) is another of the Wizards of the Coast's core rulebooks for fifth edition. I would strongly recommend reading this if you are a games master - and would conversely strongly recommend against reading this if you're only a player as it helps maintain the mystique and narrative quality of the roleplaying element when the PCs are frequently given fresh new methods of stumping themselves or winding up in plot corners at the DM's behest... It's a license for all manner of cruelty should you wish to see it as thus, for Dungeon Masters must practice that sanest of all game-management principles: it's kinder to be cruel, to be the "bad guys" and give the Player Characters something to really strive for - it's more fun that way! 

Dark Matter

This book is an expansion for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition by Mage Hand Press, being effectively a total integration of science fiction elements into the gamiverse. All the races get a nice update, plus there's six new ones; there's a new Gadgeteer class, several pretty interesting factions, and buttloads of excellent worldbuilding material with ships, blasters and whatnot as techno-magical items - and of course loads of new spells. I've been using this to flesh out our campaign for which I'm DM, as we'd initially started playing a Savage Worlds campaign which blended fantasy and sci-fi elements - but it's just not as good as D&D, so we've kept all elements on the table for Full-Fat Fantasy with All the Science-Fictional-Additives - and, though it's been a lot of work for me to leap from the RPG-for-dummies* model we started out on, and admittedly there is probably still about 10% of our campaign that's technically homebrew because I've not been able to find anything in either here or the WotC books that properly maps onto things we'd had running in the story, it's so much bloomin' fun I can't even - if you're a dungeon-master** looking for cool new shots in the arm of your campaigns, do a sci-fi overhaul with full retention of all the classic bits - I can vouch for Dark Matter being the perfect add-on for such a campaign.


* No offence to any Savage Worlds players, it's a fun enough game, but you know I'm right.

** Or galaxy master, as I not-at-all-megalomaniacally now refer to myself as. The players are meant to hate me anyway, right? I mean, I am all the bad guys...

Dungeons & Dragons: Player's Handbook

This book (available online as pdf in many places, if that link doesn't work any more give it a google as good grief don't Wizards of the Coast charge a lot for the real deals) should, I hope, be pretty self-explanatory. It's one of three core rulebooks for the fifth edition of an outrageously effective Satanist sociocultural plot than works through the indoctrination of children, and vulnerably nerdy adults, through emulation of what some may consider "fun". I jest. I'm the Dungeon Master for our campaign, so I need to get into the habit of telling casual lies. No! Stories! Anyway, if you've never had your pickle tickled or boat floated by D&D-etc then I'm hardly going to convince you here, so go away and find some better more entertaining means of getting an introduction if you want one.