An interesting bit of trivia accompanies this next book: insofar as I can tell,
DMGR3 Arms and Equipment Guide is the first sourcebook of its kind in D&D's history.
That was a bit of a surprise to me, since equipment books are part and parcel of so many tabletop RPGs now. But some checking seems to bear out that this was where it began as far as D&D was concerned. While AD&D 1st Edition's
Unearthed Arcana had its infamous "pole arm section," and
The Complete Fighter's Handbook likewise introduced a bunch of new weapons and armor, this was the first time we'd get a book wholly dedicated to the subject.
Subsequently, we'd get equipment books with regularity.
Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue would follow DMGR3, describing everything that
wasn't weapons and armor. Third Edition would recycle the title with its own
Arms and Equipment Guide, and 4E would have not only the
Adventurer's Vault, but would follow it up with the
Adventurer's Vault 2 and
Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium.
On a tangential note, a conceptual overlap between "equipment books" and "magic item books" would be introduced after AD&D 2nd Edition. While DMGR3 and
Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue stuck to mundane items, leaving the magical ones to things like the two-volume
The Magic Encyclopedia set (which was essentially a big index of magic items in the game) and the
Encyclopedia Magica series, 3E and 4E would be more liberal with mixing magical items alongside the mundane ones, though books like the
Magic Item Compendium would, as it says on the tin, deal with enchanted goods only.
Having said all of that, this first foray into the area of equipment-specific sourcebooks is
very unlike what came later. I know I already played the "wow did I misremember this!" card, but I honestly thought this was more in line with its descendants in describing a truckload of new equipment for AD&D 2E characters.
Nope.
Rather, this book is chock-full of flavor text and illustrations describing the equipment that's already in the AD&D 2E
Player's Handbook. Very little in the way of new mechanics are here, mostly in the way of minor expansions for things like helmets and the odd optional rule (the tables for barding, i.e. armor for mounts, are the exception). It's staggering how much this runs counter to contemporary expectations.
Each suit of armor (which, rather than alphabetically, are listed in order of how much they improve your Armor Class), for instance, is given a full page of descriptive text
and a full-page illustration. So we not only get details of how leather armor can come from animals other than cows, for instance, but also get a picture of an adventurer stitching their leather armor up by the campfire.
That's not to say that what's here isn't useful; the pictures and expanded descriptions are helpful in fleshing out little details about some of the most ubiquitous parts of the game world. But make no mistake: that's this sourcebook's only major goal, and I find myself questioning if this was the best format for such an undertaking. As handy as this can be, did we really need a stand-alone supplement to let us know how long a long sword is, compared to how short a short sword? It's like seeing the world's most exquisite doormat; at some point you have to wonder if the utility of the thing warranted the level of effort that went into making it.
Overall, it's not hard to see why this format was abandoned in future supplements, and equipment guidebooks became about
new equipment. It's a change that I heartily prefer.
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