Dungeon Masters Guide - Part 5
Originally published August, 1979
Version being read and reviewed:
Dungeon Masters Guide 1st Edition Premium Reprint (July, 2012)
This is it. I am finishing this book, no matter how long this post ends up being.
NPCs - lots of tables for randomly determining everything about NPCs, mostly about their personalities. We then get into a discussion of the roleplaying of special DM roles - Henchmen, hirelings, monsters, and some others. Gygax leans toward making all NPCs, even good-aligned ones, greedy and even a little annoying. There's also a series of detailed examples of how various groups of monsters would behave during attacks, retreat, and follow-up attacks by PCs. Compatibility of humanoid troops rounds out the section - interesting and something I might consider using when I run adventures like Temple of Elemental Evil (where there's a fair variety of humanoid critters milling about).
Construction and siege rules appear next. This all strikes me as being a slightly unnecessary level of detail, at least in terms of anything beyond how long it takes to finish construction. The various types of constructions are nifty, especially if PCs want to build themselves strongholds, though I have never had a player in 27 years of playing D&D ever want to settle down and build a castle and/or run a domain.
The next section is titled "Conducting the Game" is all about the various kernels of DMing advice that have graced every DMG to various extents. A few observations - I must say I prefer the Passive Perception style rules of later editions to secretly making listen rolls and such behind the screen for players. I am a firm believer in letting the players control as much of the flow and narrative of the game as possible, though, while I provide the setting and challenges. Gary's first piece of advice for handling problem players - kick them out. Something I agree with. Better no game than bad game as far as I'm concerned. The infamous and amusing "blue lightning bolt from the heavens" method of punishing problem players also makes an appearance. I find that sort of thing to be ridiculously heavy-handed and suitable only for a comedy campaign. Something I have never been a fan of is bringing a character from another DM's campaign into one of my existing campaigns. It just doesn't jive with the way I DM (each campaign is a contained story with each character being integrated in to the story and world).
Interestingly, we have some basic conversion guides for Boot Hill (TSR's old west RPG) and Gamma World (TSR's somewhat gonzo post-apocalyptic sci-fi RPG). These sections are significantly out-dated now, of course, since Boot Hill is long out of print and Gamma World has seen a number of editions of its own, with the most recent being a version based on the D&D 4th Edition rules. Mixing genres is something I am quite fond of, however. Two of my D&D 5E Play-by-Post campaigns here on EN World are genre-benders - one is a sci-fi meets fantasy space opera based on the classic "Lost in Space" premise, the other is a post-apocalyptic take on the classic Blackmoor setting, transplanting it to Earth 1,000 years after a magical invasion and apocalypse.
Creating spells and items is a lengthy and expensive process suitable only to high level spellcasters. Seems like everything is expensive...that explains where the seemingly absurd amounts of money in adventures goes, I guess...at least for the spellcasting PCs. Even so, I've also never had players interested in inventing new spells or crafting magic items.
Potion Miscibility! I love this table. An effective and amusing deterrent to chugging a bunch of different "buff" potions.
Energy Drain! Oh how I loathe all variations of this mechanic. Losing a level is nothing more than an absurd amount of paperwork, possibly (probably) right in the middle of combat. The only mechanic that comes close to the level of irritation I have with level drain is ability score damage, which creates almost as much in-combat recalculating of the character sheet.
And now we finally get to the plethora of random treasure and magic item tables. I find it interesting that despite the admonitions against selling magic items earlier in the book and the level of difficulty recommended the DM set up in finding a buyer that there are, in fact, GP values listed in the magic item tables. This also seems to run counter to the anecdotes of old school DMs and players who are strongly against the "magic item shop" style of play. At any rate, the prices are quite a bit cheaper than their later edition counterparts.
As mentioned before, I'm going to skim through the magic item descriptions as there are a lot of them, most of them relatively boring. A few highlights...
The various control potions (potion of dragon control, potion of undead control, etc) are something that was phased out of later editions, with good reason I think. They are basically, "Get out of this encounter free" cards. I do, however, miss the various Protection scrolls (well, I should say I missed them in 3.5 and 4E as they are back in 5E).
The retributive strike on the Staff of the Magi and Staff of Power always fascinated me - sort of a last ditch, do or die thing when all else fails. One of my unfulfilled DMing goals is to have an epic story moment where there's the possibility of a retributive strike, either by the PCs or the villain.
Lots of cursed items intermingled among the useful miscellaneous items. I'm not really a fan of cursed items - they strike me as another "gotcha" mechanic that breaks immersion for me.
The Deck of Many Things - I love it dearly, but mostly for its wacky effects on a campaign. I've only ever managed to use it once in a way that didn't completely derail the campaign.
Speaking of cursed items - the Girdle of Femininity/Masculinity - this thing is such a can of worms. Gender shouldn't be a curse, first and foremost. However, it did provide a limited sort of outlet for folks like me (transgender) to have a bit of wish fulfillment in a time when acceptance was fleeting. Ultimately, the progress society and gaming has made in the recognition and acceptance of the gender spectrum has rendered this item irrelevant in modern D&D...thank goodness.
I don't recall ever seeing the Instruments of the Bards before; they're mechanically like staffs (collections of spells) but only usable by bards (they deal damage to non-bards). I kind of like 'em, or at least the idea, since the bard in this game is something rather elite and unusual.
I once used a Mirror of Opposition in a 2nd Edition campaign to create one of the campaign's primary antagonists (long story short, on one of the first adventures of a Dragonlance campaign, the entire party was duplicated and most of the doubles were defeated, but the duplicate of the party thief got away; later the PCs went after a dragon hoard only to discover that the duplicate had beaten them there - then the Mists of Ravenloft swallowed the PCs, the dragon, and the duplicate and cursed the duplicate and the source PC to experience eachother's wounds and pain).
Artifacts - As with OD&D, most of the details and powers of artifacts are left up to the DM to determine. Nothing surprising here otherwise as a lot of the classics had previously made their debut in OD&D.
Appendix A: Random Dungeons - Nifty little batch of tables to whip up an adventure in a pinch, or even indulge in some solo play if one is so inclined. It strikes me that the old dungeon geomorph products or modern dungeon tiles would come in handy for this sort of thing.
Appendix B: Random Wilderness - Much less here to play with; the DM is left to improvise quite a bit more than with dungeons.
Appendix C: Random Monster Encounters - Interesting little note at the beginning of this section: almost all of the critters on the tables are from the Monster Manual with the notable exception of two daemons from D3: Vault of the Drow. I find it amusing that on the 10th level of a dungeon, you can have a random encounter with an archdevil or demon prince. And the infamous random harlot table is something we find hidden among the random encounters for cities and towns.
Appendix D: Random Planar Critters - This one is interesting in that its intended to conjure up a brand new outsider on the spot if the DM wants to liven things up with something that isn't in the Monster Manual.
Appendix E: Big Sideways Table of Critters - Yeah...moving on.
Appendix F: Gambling - A variety of simple rules for dice and card games of various sorts. Most of which are either based on real world games or simple games made up to use components likely to be in a gamer's collection - dice, checkerboards, and the like.
Appendix G: Traps - Just a random table of traps.
Appendix H: Tricks - A variety of dungeon, let's call them obstacles, that DM's can toss in to confound players, most of them of the "gotcha" variety.
Appendix I: Dungeon Dressing - Tables full of minor decor to make dungeons more immersive.
Appendix J: Herbs, Spices, and Medicinals - A great big list of plant-based odds and ends and what they might be useful for.
Appendix K: Describing Magical Substances - A handy guide for adding flavor (sometimes literally) to magic items.
Appendix L: Conjured Animals - Tables for the creature summoning spells - you couldn't choose your critter when summoning, you got whatever the dice pulled out of the ether, so to speak.
Appendix M: Summoned Monsters - Same deal as L, but with mostly extraplanar critters.
Appendix N: Inspirational and Educational Reading - The most famous of the DMG appendices, in the introduction Gygax notes with fondness the imagined and made-up tales his father used to tell. After the list of fantasy authors and their works, Gygax notes a few that had a direct influence on AD&D - de Camp & Pratt, REH (presumably Robert E. Howard, Conan author), Leiber, Vance, HPL (Lovecraft, I presume), and Merritt. Though Tolkien is present on the main list, his absence from this "direct influence" list is striking.
Appendix O: Encumbrance of Standard Items - A table of items and weights; why this isn't in the PHB equipment tables is beyond me.
Appendix P: Random Parties - Basically, putting together quick PCs for impromptu games.
And we end with a Glossary and an Afterword. The afterword seems oddly contradictory in that it proposes that the rules should not take precedence over the spirit of the game, yet admonishes the DM to keep a tight grip on the game, lest the players take control.
We also have, wonder of wonders, a combined Index for both the PHB and DMG.
Despite being haphazardly organized and sometimes condescending in tone, the 1st Edition DMG is rightfully a classic among gaming tomes. I am thankful, however, that this not the edition I started with. I don't know that I would have continued had I tried to muddle through the AD&D books as a young teenager.
Next up: S2: White Plume Mountain
P.S. - Phew, I finally finished the darn thing.
