Dungeon Survival Guide?

[Rechan]

Has anyone got the book? What are the reviews? Is it good bad yay nay?

 

[mcmillan]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4th-edition-discussion/322789-into-unknown.html

 

[Obryn]

My Amazon review...

Amazon.com: William M. Wilson's review of Into the Unknown: The Dungeon Survival Han...

-O

 

[Rechan]

Thanks, fellows.

And now I try to keep the 4e flame alive.

 

[DragoonLance]

I would say its decent. It is mostly fluff about adventuring in the underdark from both the GM and players perspective. How to create plot hooks, adventures, dungeons, traps and villains. For DMs there is a great random dungeon builder in the back, plus advice for running "old school" dungeon crawl adventure for newer DMs. Probably not the most useful book for an experienced DM but good enough for everyone else.

The crunch content includes three new races (well, one and two updated monsters) Goblins, Kobolds and Deep Gnomes. So now you can build an all small-sized party if that matters to you. Most of the rest of the crunch is dungeon specific and has been considered mostly crap by Char-Ops so not much for the optimizers but some fun thematic powers and new themes.

Overall it's a bittersweet final note to 4e for me, as I really feel if books like this and some of the others released in the last year (Feywild) had been part of the initial 4e rollout perhaps things might have turned out differently.

 

[Rechan]

Any traps or monsters in teh DM side?

 

[DragoonLance]

Nothing dealing with game mechanics. Lots of advice on use of traps, creatures etc but nothing new to use. I suspect everything of that sort went into the Undermountain book, which I don't have. Dungeon 201 has an article on traps (again related to Undermountain,) which brings back some of the more old school "gotcha" traps without then need for a new PC every few minutes. Again I really wish they had figured out the whole "exploration encounter" thing sooner rather than later.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

I would say its decent. It is mostly fluff about adventuring in the underdark from both the GM and players perspective. How to create plot hooks, adventures, dungeons, traps and villains. For DMs there is a great random dungeon builder in the back, plus advice for running "old school" dungeon crawl adventure for newer DMs. Probably not the most useful book for an experienced DM but good enough for everyone else. (snip)

Thanks for posting this. It definitely sounds like something I would use.

Overall it's a bittersweet final note to 4e for me, as I really feel if books like this and some of the others released in the last year (Feywild) had been part of the initial 4e rollout perhaps things might have turned out differently.

So true.

WotC finally got things right at the end. I think it was both a combination of finally understanding a system that wasn't properly playtested (and I say that even though 4E is my favourite version of D&D) and the change in leadership (the latter may be the more important point). Now if only I could get an offline Compendium, and offline Character Builder and an offline Monster Builder I would be set for the next few years....

 

[OnlineDM]

I enjoyed the book. In some ways, the second half is a bit like a Dungeon Master's Guide 3.

I participated in a recording of the Tome Show last week where we reviewed the book; the episode hasn't been posted yet, but once it's up I think it will be a good resource for people deciding whether or not to get the book.