The rules of the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game have traditionally been split into two categories—rules for players and rules for Dungeon Masters. Further, these rules have consequently been presented in two different books, the Player’s Handbook and the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Getting a complete picture of how the game works has required reading both books, as well as the smattering of rules in the Monster Manual. That division of information has been practical, given the large scope of the game, and it is an arrangement that many of us are used to—particularly those of us who have been playing the game from its earliest versions. The downside of this division is that readers sometimes need to flip through two or three books to find a particular rule and sometimes can’t find the rule at all.
The Rules Compendium puts all of the rules of the game in one place. This is the rulebook for the core game, whether you’re playing Gareth the cleric or DMing an epic campaign. This is the go-to book for how to make a character, decipher a monster stat block, play through a skill challenge, launch into a battle, and engage in any of the other fundamental activities of the game.
The new Rules Compendium is a comprehensive game reference, but it goes a step further; it tells you how to play the game. If you have the Rules Compendium, you have the information you need to use things like the powers in your player book and the monsters in your DM book. You still need to go to those other books for particular game elements, such as powers, monsters, and magic items, but you need only this book to understand how those elements fit into the game as a whole.
Because of the book’s focus on the game’s core, some rules didn’t make the cut. Rules for artifacts, for instance, aren’t included. In contrast, every power keyword that has appeared in our books is defined. The book also includes things that aren’t rules but provide context for understanding the game, which is a combination of game play and storytelling. For example, alignments are defined, since alignment is a core story conceit of the Dungeons & Dragons world.
