Psion
Adventurer
Dungeons is divided into 4 chapters. The first two are advice and how to chapters. Chapter 1 is called Tips & Tricks, and gives advice for both players and DMs regarding surviving and designing interesting, logical dungeons.
The second chapter dwells on different types of dungeon settings, e.g., fortresses, mines, temples, and so on, and provides some typical trappings of each type and ideas for variants.
The advice chapters are in depth. Comparing to the Dungeon Builder's Guidebook, Dungeons was deeper and narrower. By way of comparison, the AD&D 2e Dungeon Builder's Guidebook had a larger variety, but didn't go as deep into explainations and theorizing. Much of these chapters will seem like old hat to many veteran DMs and players.
The third chapter contains material for players -- skills, feats, equipment and prestige classes. Most of this chapter is very good and packed with usable material. The exception is that many of the skills were either too specific, overlapped existing skills, or should have been tucked under knowledge, craft, or profession skills. The prestige classes are generally good additions to any game that does this type of campaigning, and will appeal to players.
The fourth and final chapters is rules material for DMs: monsters, magic items, traps, and sample dungeons. The monsters are good ideas, but some of them are poorly executed. For example, some creature hit dice do not follow the conventions for monster types, and seem to be arbitrarily assigned instead of being based on Con. Some creatures should have had more explicity special ability descriptions.
The book is 120 pages, but the layout isn't as dense as the WotC 96 page books. The interior art is pretty good / interesting, depicting PC types confronting some typical obstacles one finds in a dungeon faring campaign.
Beginning DMs will get more value out of this book than veterans, but even some longtime DMs and game desingers could use some of the tips in the book. Veteran players will still probably find the rule material "crunchy bits" useful, but if you aren't using the first two chapters, its value might be more questionable. Overall, I gave it a 3 out of 5 rating.
The second chapter dwells on different types of dungeon settings, e.g., fortresses, mines, temples, and so on, and provides some typical trappings of each type and ideas for variants.
The advice chapters are in depth. Comparing to the Dungeon Builder's Guidebook, Dungeons was deeper and narrower. By way of comparison, the AD&D 2e Dungeon Builder's Guidebook had a larger variety, but didn't go as deep into explainations and theorizing. Much of these chapters will seem like old hat to many veteran DMs and players.
The third chapter contains material for players -- skills, feats, equipment and prestige classes. Most of this chapter is very good and packed with usable material. The exception is that many of the skills were either too specific, overlapped existing skills, or should have been tucked under knowledge, craft, or profession skills. The prestige classes are generally good additions to any game that does this type of campaigning, and will appeal to players.
The fourth and final chapters is rules material for DMs: monsters, magic items, traps, and sample dungeons. The monsters are good ideas, but some of them are poorly executed. For example, some creature hit dice do not follow the conventions for monster types, and seem to be arbitrarily assigned instead of being based on Con. Some creatures should have had more explicity special ability descriptions.
The book is 120 pages, but the layout isn't as dense as the WotC 96 page books. The interior art is pretty good / interesting, depicting PC types confronting some typical obstacles one finds in a dungeon faring campaign.
Beginning DMs will get more value out of this book than veterans, but even some longtime DMs and game desingers could use some of the tips in the book. Veteran players will still probably find the rule material "crunchy bits" useful, but if you aren't using the first two chapters, its value might be more questionable. Overall, I gave it a 3 out of 5 rating.
