Slashdot Mirror
Dungeon Master's Guide II
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.
Running a tabletop role playing game easy enough. Just take your laptop, run "nethack", and it takes care of itself. That is, until you get a message like
"You fall into a pit! You land on a set of sharp iron spikes!--more--
The spikes were poisoned! The poison was deadly...--more--
Do you want your possessions identified?"
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Okay, roll for geekdom :P
Get some.
I know what I'll be reading next Friday night.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
also so does every reply in this forum decrease one's chances of ever having sex?
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
If they were truly skilled at this would they be a dungeon master????
I will likely stick with the original manuals and my creativity and leave it at that. Besides by burning hatred for WotC, I feel AD&D has been mismanaged to the hilt ever since Gygax left and I'd rather play old-school with plain blue dice from the D&D boxed set than electronic doo-dads, manuals taking all the creativity out of everything down to the smallest thing, and AD&D being made more like M:tG than the trippy blaze your own trail thing it used to be.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
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.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"Guide to Never Getting Laid. Ever."
You're no geek. Saying "too geeky for /." is clear proof that you had way too life a teen. You probably have sex on a regular basis, too.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
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.
I believe it was the first DMG by EGG who wrote that all rules were optional. Too many rules and books get in the way of the true goal of RPGs: telling a good story.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
Much harder than DM'ing is trying to teach a new player how to play. Trying to get across that a new character isnt rolled each session (most love the character creation, but suck at roll playing) Does anyone have suggestions on reading material for a new D&D player that goes over the basics from a higher level?? I tried to get my wife to read parts of the Players guide, and she got a bit glossed over at all the statistical tables.
No I didnt spell check this post...
When I ordered it, I got a free copy of 101 Ways To Keep Your Virginity
OK, I cheated. That last one was professional acting rather than something from a D&D game.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
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.
KTHXBYE
Tell your mommy you're not allowed to use the computer anymore.
No Longer a Menace to Society.
Alexandria Morrigan born 2/22/01 l. 20.5in wt. 7 lbs. 5 oz.
Me: I rolled a 1...
DM: A critical failure, you fumbled.
DM: "You dropped your linux mug full of coffee on yourself."
Me: Can I roll for a saving throw.
DM: No, coffee stains are irresistable, your charisma is 4 until 6pm.
So where do I get the official slashdot d20?
As a veteran gamer and more often DM, I always chuckle when people quip at gamers about not having a life. The game is all about social interaction and without a group there is no game, only a dream.
One of the many drawbacks of D&D is that it trivializes day to day activities and only focuses on the "fun" stuff. Fun here is a relative term and left to the definition of the players and DM of any game. Because of this one of the most common complaints by players is a lack of realism. If this book can help me/them establish realism for players who want realism while maintaining the fantasy element for the escapists in all gamers then I'm all for it.
Many of WotC recent books have been virtually useless to me and many gamers I know, simply because the deluge of material is not anything I will be able to incorporate into my worlds soon. But at least it is there for those who want it.
D&D was the first MMORG (oops MMRG).
Let's listen in for a couple of minutes while the DM runs the game using Nethack for his source:
"Blue screen of death? I make a saving throw!"
"What do you mean, I am attacked by a Bonzi Buddy?" "Donno. It just appeared on the screen."
"This is interesting. Did you know that if you give this guy in Nigeria 13,000 gold pieces, he will pay you back 30,000,000 gold pieces and bump you up to a tenth-level character?"
"What do you mean, my sword's damage was not increased +20? I used C1ALiS on it!"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I'm sorry, but the original DM guide was from 1979.
I bought DMG2, and I'm a new DM so I suppose I'm reasonably qualified to comment.
I used to role-play, back 20 years go, during the days of 1st Ed. Then I fell out of it. Now, a friend and I play again, using 3.5e rules. He's massively more experienced than I am. He's great at presenting material to me smoothly, and as a player, I quite like 3.5e ("we" started with 3.0) However, when I try to spin the table around and run a campaign trying to challenge and engage him, an experienced player, it's really not an easy task. The original DMG helps in terms of providing quick & dirty sample NPCs and tables, but the DMG2 covers more important matters: when and how to use those things. It's not so much a rulebook as a style book. And having read the thing, I found myself repeatedly saying "hey, I do that" or "hey, I SHOULD do that". DMG2 provides content that is valuable to me, the newbie DM. And I, surprisingly, am the target market. Go figure.
As an aside, on the topic of a moneygrab, I think you're missing the point. Those people who own 3.0e manuals don't HAVE to purchase 3.5e materials. There's enough similarity that adventures and other supplemental materials make complete sense to someone using 3.0e core rules. To people who don't already have 3.0e manuals, given that 3.5e offers more content at the same price-point, how can this possibly be construed as a moneygrab?
My point: if you, an experienced RPG player feel the compulsion to buy manuals you don't like or feel give you value, you've got a sickness, just like the guy who has to pick up the copy of Dark Side of the Moon with "new" cover-art, just because it exists.
"Oh no... he found the
I DM'd late 1970's to early 1980's.
I quit because, it be came work and was not fun any more. I had to spend hours getting game together, adventures, random monster tables, etc.
I wanted a game where this could all be generated so I could actually "have fun", which is how it used to be when I first started to play.
Now, with the adult restraints on my time, I do occasionally play an MMORPG, I have fun and do not have to "work at it".
Just hope that the people that still play the "table" version have fun doing so!
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.
There are four sorts of people in the world: fools, lunatics, idiots and morons. - Umberto Eco, Foucaut's pendulum.
Bram Stoker's Dracula soundtrack, Glen Danzig's Black Aria, Gustav Holst: The Planets Suite, and O Fortuna from Carmina Burrana for epic boss fights. :)
While i unfortunately feel as if i've 'outgrown' such games (at the age of 30)....
I'm glad to see that people are still playing them and that they're still alive. My friends and I put in a lot of hours to D'n'D and similar, creating and playing our worlds and characters. And this was back in the late 1980s/early 1990s when video games still rawked!
Oddly, i feel the same way about a lot of video games as i do about tabeltop games.... Strange predicament- I feel "too old" to get interested in them, but rationally I can't figure out why my age would matter at all.
-hopeless....
do() || do_not();
I'll tap 3 lands and play an instant, the "Moderation of Doom". All D&D nerds take -5/-5, immunity to blue, green and black.
Has anyone besides myself noticed that at some point, the games became less about roleplaying and more about the rules? When did the rules lawyers become the new priesthood? People collect D&D3 books like they were stamps or baseball cards.
I can name a dozen RPGs that have rules so simple you can learn them in five minutes. The only thing they have in common is that they are usually superior in imagination and quality to the popular games, as well as unknown and ignored by the majority of roleplayers, as you can see simply by glancing at the games being run at conventions like GenCon. Page after page, and nothing but D20 and derivatives.
The rules aren't optional for the players. For this new breed of gamer, if it's written, it's the law. They've paid their thirty dollars for Tips and Tricks of Thievery Volume 7 Version 5 and by god, that book is the final word. How many games have you been in where one of the players tries to use these rules to push the GM around, and gets angry if they are denied?
Watching two rules lawyers at odds is like watching some perverse mental fencing match, and for fifteen minutes nothing gets done while the sacred rules of the game are read from dusty tomes in voices of hused awe and righteous fury. I used to laugh at it, but now it's just getting old.
D20 strikes me as one of the worst things to ever happen to the industry, and I mean that very sincerely. The unique, creative rules for each individual game used to be part of that game's atmosphere. Learning the new rules and seeing the new ways of doing things was part of the fun of playing a new game. It was not work. I can still remember how pleased I was when I first picked up Deadlands (a wild west RPG) and found the designers had worked in poker chips and playing cards as part of the system.
Now everything new just slaps D20 on because it's easy instead of getting creative, or because if they don't they'll be ignored by gamers who can't be bothered to learn a different paradigm for a change. D20 became the mindshare monopoly that GURPS always wanted to become.
If you like your D20, that's fine, but don't laugh when I tell you that you simply don't know what you're missing. There are games where the game is about what happens in the game, not about the rules defining the way the game works.
I can take one of these simple games, walk into a convention, pick up a half dozen gamers, and usually give them a session better than anything they've had in the last couple of years, all on a game they didn't even know how to play ten minutes ago. I am not that good at GMing, either. I much prefer to play. The reason they enjoy it is because it is unknown. They don't know the setting, they don't know all the rules or all the details, they can't predict every nuance of the game in their heads, and they know there's no arguing with the GM... things are just too simple. All that's left is story and roleplaying. That's where most of the fun is.
Sorry for the rant, but I was laughing at the idea of needing another revised expanded edition of the Dungeon Master's Guide. A stack of all of WoTC's D20 books over the last couple of years could probably build a bridge over the Mississippi river.
Hell is being intelligent in a world full of idiots.
the fool who deigns to comment on said fools. Or the fool who comments on the foolishness of the aforementioned fool. Or the fool who....STACK OVERFLOW
Jesus saves...everyone else takes 2d20 crushing damage
But really, the best rules were the totally incoherent 2nd edition rules for AD&D. Yes, I loved that it was a pain in ass and led to so many arguments. That was part of the game! Now everything is too sterile.
But the 2nd edition rules also pushed me and my friends into different game systems. Anybody remember "Fantasy Hero"? or "Danger International"? Probably not. We were some of the few that actually played that system on a regular basis. It was fun.
But nothing topped "Call of Cthulhu". Going back to AD&D after that was painful...so we rarely did.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Full list
You know...I find this hilarious. Everyone who barely has a life away from their computer is bashing the people who play Table Top RPG's for having no life.
Meanwhile, let's ignore the fact that a table top rpg requires you to socialize face to face with other people normally.
A significant portion of these "other people" are gamer, geek females. A subculture of geeks that 90% of you would cream yourself to just meet...and I hang out with 3 of them, all single, on a weekly basis. The last 10 girlfriends I've had over numerous years, including the most recent, my current wife, have all been gamers.
News flash, bashing rpg's for being too geeky went out of style in the late 1980's..when something more geeky came along, the PC.
When I was 14 or so, I had a friend once with too much time on his hands... He made this RPG once that we all played, but I'd never seen anything like it before. It was actually quite fun too (pehraps more because of the people not the rules)...
Anyway, instead of traditional formulas/modifiers and dice rolls, he made tables. He had tables for almost any event you could think of in the game. Some for attacking, some for defending, for lock-picking, even for love-making (sad indeed).
On one side of the table was a die roll--usually d20, but sometimes d100. The top was some other factor (like your skill or attribute related to the action in question or another modified die roll, perhaps). And inside the table when cross-referenced was the result of that action.
This guy had pages and pages of tables he had drawn up on graph paper. It was mind-blowing! He had written down sometimes very detailed results in these tables, many of which essentially role-played for you. Like one of the attack results might have been, "The attack does x 10 damage. If killed, the target is decapitated, launching its head into the nearest wall or ground" or [for picking locks] "Your pick breaks and cuts your finger (Failure)". He had written up by hand hundreds and hundreds of these results within an indexed binder (before computers were affordable).
It was mind-numbing how much time he had apparently spent on it. I mean, I had made some basic RPGs in my day, but nothing like that...
The problem I have with d20 is not that it creates standardized rules. In theory a standardized set of core rules could lead to more creative individual game suppliments and worlds. But that's only if the game system itself is open-ended and flexible enough to allow for wide variety without necessitating endless reams of additional world-specific rules.
One of the worst things about D&D and the d20 system is its emphasis on classes. Sure, characters can multiclass, but that only adds to the confusion. I find it much more interesting when characters are not identifiable as being of a certain class. Classes are essentially templates, and even when you modify them by creating many options within the class, you're still creating an artificial and needlessly confusing system.
I heartily concur with you that story and roleplaying are at the heart of truly satisfying roleplaying. Rules facilitate great games, but too many rules bury the game in the overhead of excessive die rolls and rules consultations.
I'm part of group of friends who have known each other since high school, when we spent a lot of time gaming. We are now all approaching our 40s, and for many years we have only been able to get together infrequently at best for gaming sessions. But when we do get together, usually I GM a game. Recently we have experimented with games in which the players don't even have standard character sheets.
They know their relative strengths and weaknesses, and have a list of what things they're good at and to what relative degree. The game mechanics are invisible to the players. I let them know when they have to make a good roll, and what it is for, but other than that, the certainty of numbers is removed from the equation altogether.
When your character is hit and bleeding, feeling woozy and impaired in his ability to fight; but you as a player don't know how many hit points the character has left (or even how many he had when healthy), it puts the uncertainty back into the game and forces a player to think like a character.
This approach doesn't work all the time, and I don't recommend it as the be all, end all of pencil and paper gaming, but to me it's a reminder that roleplaying games are about letting your imagination take charge.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
What I'm interested in now is settings. Harn used to be like that before they started hawking their own system, but in the old days it was a world environment that you popped your gaming system on top of. That way, if you want to play D20, AD&D, Palladium or hell, even Tunnels and Trolls, go right ahead. Rules, to my mind, just get in the way, so keeping them simple and to a minimum, so they don't interfere with the actual roleplaying.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
geek != nerd.
geek = obsessed with "in-character" socializing (chat/IM, DND, acting, funky clothing, Star Wars, etc)
nerd = obsessed with science, technology, numbers, Star Trek, etc.
Geeks tend to be conformist in their social circles and non-conformist with general society. (aka, the Artist). Nerds tend to be the opposite, conformist with society, and non-conformist in social circles (vi! no, idiot, its emacs!,etc)
You can be either, or neither, some funky combination of the two and I guess thats why people confuse the two. Perhaps I can tell easily because I'm a hard core nerd, completely uninterested in geeky things like DND. My brother is a hard core geek, uninterested in nerdy things like programming.
The best litmus test I can see is if you are into Star Trek, you are probably a nerd at heart and will be happier doing nerdy things. If you are more of a Star Wars fan, you are probably a geek at heart, and will be happier doing geeky things.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
dork = pointing out minute distinctions between 'geek' and 'nerd'
Wait. Coffee stains have a positive modifier on charisma!?!
Where the heck is my mug!
What kind of system you use should depend on how much system-detail you want in your game, and what kind of feel you would like the game to have. There possibly isn't any system which is perfect for what you want to do, but you could just nick the mechanic from somewhere and ignore the rest, since you seem to want to use the setting from the sourcebook you have.
Have you ever looked at the Unknown Armies system? It has nice, simple mechanics and some good ideas which I think can be used in any setting.
It's based on a percentile roll. Under special circumstances, you can flip your dice to get a different result (for example, change 93 to 39). Doubles are extraordinary failures or successes (since they can't be flipped). There's a botch and an amazing success. Damage is calculated from the attack roll (something I really like). There is a list of skills, but you can make up your own skills as well. There is a psychological well-being gauge which is more complex than Cthulhu's sanity system, and which may or may not be appropriate for you depending on what your setting is like.
The advantages: it's dead simple. There is no adding of millions on numbers together, and no flipping through the book to find Obscure Rule no. 349, clause A: "Fighting with your off-hand uphill in the rain while under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs". The system is designed for character-based games - special abilities that characters have are based directly on important parts of their personality. This means that a character's history and personality are actually important to the game, and not just a veneer of flavour painted over combat stats.
Disadvantages: because it's so simple and freeform, it can be broken and abused by power gamers and rules lawyers. People who like having well-defined boundaries and rules for what can happen will probably not like the vagueness. The DM cannot rely on an encyclopaedic reference of cases to fall back on in the case of a dispute, and will have to wing it. The players have to trust the DM's judgement in situations where no rule exists and a decision has to be made (that bit, mind you, is true of any similar freeform gaming system). The combat system is very simple (although I'm sure you can add various weapon bonuses and things to make it more complex), which may not please people who like complex combat systems.
I think the system is great for once-off adventures with pre-generated characters. I've never played in a campaign (although I know of several successful campaigns), so I don't know if the vagueness becomes a problem over time. I imagine it depends on the GM and the players.
Most of the UA sourcebooks deal with the UA setting; I don't think the section with the rules themselves is very long. If you want to check them out I suggest *cough* borrowing the book from a friend *cough*.
Hey, another Harn fan from the olden days!
I went out and bought Harn and Cities of Harn for these very reasons: most of the work comes in writing a background story. Harn provides an excellent starting point for your own environment.
I'll echo many of the other comments here: the greatest part of D&D (and RPGs in general) is the encouragement for you to make up your own rules and your own settings, to pick and choose what you like, make up whatever you need, and throw out what you don't like.
This thread brings back a lot of great memories of fun times I had playing these games for hours on end with my friends.