Dungeon Master's Guide II

Running a table-top roleplaying game is, to put it mildly, a challenge. A prospective Game Master (or Dungeon Master) has to utilize interpersonal communications, mathematics, creative writing, acting, and endless stores of patience in order to successfully draw a group of players into a gaming experience. With that in mind, most wise DMs use every tool they can lay their hands on to make the job easier. Wizards of the Coast's sequel to the Dungeon Master's Guide may just be the toolkit you've been looking for. Read on for my impressions of WotC's Dungeon Master's Guide II. Dungeon Master's Guide II author Jesse Decker, David Noonan, Chris Thomasson, James Jacobs, Robin D. Laws pages 288 publisher Wizards of the Coast rating 8 reviewer Zonk ISBN 0786936878 summary A worthy successor to the D&D core book with advice for the starting DM. Like all gaming communities, the table-top community is filled to the brim with nit-picking critics. WotC has gotten a lot of flack for churning out books that are filled with prestige classes, feats, and spells ... and not much else. While I think they're doing much better of late on that front, if you've found this to be your experience this book will convince you there is more than just numbers to the west coast wizards.

DMG II is a deeper mirror of the first Dungeon Master's Guide. Each chapter in the first book is reflected in the sequel, providing more explanation and a deeper look at the subject matter showcased in the original. In addition to mechanics, which was the primary focus of the first Guide, the DMG II examines the process of running a Dungeons and Dragons game by breaking it into discrete elements.

The first few chapters of the second Guide are entirely devoted to the experience of the game from the Dungeon Master's side of the screen. Like another good book on the subject, Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering , DMG II goes into the psychology of the rules arbiter by laying out what will likely be required from you in your role as DM. The Guide also goes inside the heads of players to offer up to the reader possible motivations for a player coming to the gaming table.

From the broad scope of running a game, the book focuses in on the campaign and adventure specific levels. An examination of campaigns covers a large amount of terrain, starting with game styles and character creation suggestions, and ending up in a discussion of the medieval-renaissance flavor of the default Dungeons and Dragons setting. Adventures as discrete entities get something of a short shrift in the book, with heavy discussion of iconic adventure settings taking up most of that chapter. If you've ever wanted to run a battle in the sky, this tome has what you need. The adventure chapter does have a few worthwhile tips on incorporating material from outside sources into your own campaigns, making a Dungeon Magazine subscription more tempting than it might otherwise be.

Beyond the basics, the mission of the second DMG seems to be to allow DMs with a limited amount of time maximum flexibility. Where the original title had pre-generated NPC statistics to utilize, the second book has chapters on making NPCs more interesting, ways to integrate your players more fully into the campaign world, and an entire mapped out and catalogued city for you to insert into your game. The character chapter includes a system for allowing players to run their own businesses. It abstracts out a good number of factors, keeping the focus of the game on fun and adventure while allowing players to put down roots and make some money. While more realistic campaigns may not find it worthwhile, the average dungeon-crawl will benefit from a small business run using these rules. Similarly impressive is the canned city, Saltmarsh. Saltmarsh is a good-sized town, with plots aplenty and several interesting adventure opportunities spread throughout the different districts. Like the campaign chapter, the city of Saltmarsh gives a window into the standard setting that a first time DM might not otherwise have available.

For a veteran Dungeon Master, there are a few gems that stand out as making this book worthwhile. The sections on Saltmarsh, the business system, and the various tips on tweaking your gameworld (including suggestions for creating prestige classes) would all be handy to have at your fingertips. Newer Dungeon Masters should not miss the opportunity to take a look at this book. The chapters on pacing, performance, and campaign preparation are very well written and will provide some much needed advice for someone just cutting their teeth. Players need not apply. The information a Player would get from this book is simply not worth the money to pick up, unless you're planning on getting into the DM gig.

Wizards of the Coast has created a worthy successor to the original Dungeon Master's Guide. Providing a deeper examination of the original tome's content and a reflection on the performance art that is DMing, to new DMs the DMG II is definitely worth the price-tag.

You can purchase Dungeon Master's Guide II from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Optional literature?

[AtariAmarok]

The best RPG campaign I remember is one where the DM had no books, no maps, no rules. He had just a ten-sided die. It beat just about all campaigns where there are books and graph paper scattered all over the table.

D&D

[Anonymous Coward]

I may likely get Trolled for this, but I wish people would realize how poor a system strict adherance to D&D rules produces. Philosophically, the purpose of these games is to be given freedom to pretend you are a person in a world that we could never really have (and likely wound not want) so why is it that D&D must tabularize everything? A game founded on imagination tries to eliminate almost every shred of it and instead replaces creativity with canned cities/NPCs/damage-amounts-for-falling-on-hard-sur faces etc. When I have played/DMed something somewhat D&D related, all I use are books cataloging spells and equipment. Damage amounts, loot etc. I create based upon judgement, or as a player allow the DM to control. People are so nitpicky and so concerned with getting something that is "+4" than actually having a fun and challanging experiance that they refuse to trust the DM, and instead make him into a sort of catch all LUT/Name generator. The game is about imagination, why stifile with with a million dice rolls and the demand that damage be down according to a table, not according to what the DM judges makes the game the most enjoyable.

creating atmosphere

[loudmax]

The original Palladium Beyond the Supernatural game had a very good chapter on creating suspense and atmosphere in a game. For example don't say "You hear someone's guts being torn out in the room next door." Instead say "You hear tearing, then a squishy sound followed by a scream. It happened nearby." You can also freak your players out by asking them questions which cause them to think about potential scary consequences (even when there aren't any): "So, are you going to turn that doorknob with your right hand, or your left had?"

Ideas like these are applicable to almost any Role Playing Game, not just horror games. Creating tension and atmosphere makes role playing much more enjoyable. Personally, I find this kind of advice much more valuable than pregenerated NPC tables.

RPGs have missed the point

[pfafrich]

Its always seem to me that all these new fangled computer games like Doom and Diablio took the wrong bit of D&D. The lifted all the rules, dice roling, Hit Points, Strength points, lots of wapons, magic and monsters, but missed the heart of D&D. What made D&D was the fact that you could spend three hours talking to a Dragon, or with a sutibally lenient dungon master you could add a bit of imagination, say take one clock of flying and two wands of fire and pretend to be the red barron. Computer gamres have so far to go if they are ever going to match D&D for the posibilities. GTA getting closer in the fredom aspect but still so limiting. Computer RPGs don't deserve the title Role Playing.

Re:Nethack

[Rei]

Oh, come on, you have to love a game that takes so much attention to detail that there's code like this in it (god_zaps_you function). This function would be quite simple in most games - a god wants to zap you, it zaps you, you die. Not in nethack:

* The god sends down a bolt of lightning at you. Normally, you can only evade the lightning by having reflection or shock resistance (caused by several possible means); otherwise you're dead. However, if you were engulfed by a monster trying to eat you, the lightning strikes the monster instead, and if it's not resistance, the game kills it and gives you the experience (since it really takes guts to get your god to kill a monster for you ;) )

* The god is undeterred if you survive. It zaps you with a wide-angle disintigration ray. Again, your god can kill something that is trying to eat you with the ray, or you can use an intrinsic disintigration resistance to survive (prompting your god, shocked by your basking in the black glow, to exclaim "I believe it not!"

* The God gives up trying to kill you themself. If you're near ascention, he gives one last ditch effort, and summons three powerful creatures to kill you (which, if you've survived all of this, you probably have plenty of tricks left to take care of them)

Gotta love a game in which you not only can outsmart a deity's instadeath attack, but can get experience for doing so. ;)

Re:Interpersonal communications???

[jp10558]

Interesting. Personally I just find RPGs as another reason to get together with people and *have something to do*. I never got into the go to a bar, or let's all get together and drink till we pass out. I mean, what do you do there? Stand around, try some small talk, hope there's some interesting conversation.

I mean I just find that unless there's some planned activity, all gatherings sputter out in about an hour - after you've either ran out of small talk with people you don't know well, or ran out of updtates for friends. Then what? Hope you're drunk by then? (A lot of this outlook may have to do with where I grew up and the fact I just graduated college - maybe in big cities outside the college lifestyle things are very different)

Aside from that there are a few reasons I prefer RPGs to say computer games. One is how limited computer games feel - it always seems to come down to one way (or if you are really lucky 2 ways) to solve that puzzle. That might be OK if it's the way to activate the gods scepter, but if it's how to get past a guard - in most situations - it's ludicrous. I mean, why can't I try climing to the roof and crawling by him? Why can't I hang off the cliffedge and see if he walks by me? etc...

Anyway - my main point is that there are lots of things you can do at a party - but one of them is play an RPG. You could also play poker, but to me it seems like after one or two games, it would get pretty repetitive.

Re:Nethack

[snuf23]

Gotta love the comments too:

364 | /* "I am sometimes shocked by... the nuns who never take a bath without
365 | * wearing a bathrobe all the time. When asked why, since no man can see them,
366 | * they reply 'Oh, but you forget the good God'. Apparently they conceive of
367 | * the Deity as a Peeping Tom, whose omnipotence enables Him to see through
368 | * bathroom walls, but who is foiled by bathrobes." --Bertrand Russell, 1943
369 | * Divine wrath, dungeon walls, and armor follow the same principle.
370 | */