• NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.

Explan DMG First Ed. to me!


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Well, several other folks have already declared many of the reasons it was such a cool book, but let me just add in a few words.

The style was amazing, the vocabulary inspiring and educational.

The random generation of everything was super cool (how about a random lower planar creature? maybe a random monster for temperate forests? or how about a random door?).

The richness of the information was amazing. Alterations to spells underwater, incredible artifacts and magic item sections, tons of examples and advice. Mmm-mmm good.
 

A few people have talked about the richness of the text. It's neither fluff alone, nor dry specifications. Instead each point is covered by a paragraph or two, or a footnote, explaining why some minute game detail worked as it did in real history or the classics of fantasy, and how to adjust the rules to support it.
 


Things to use - the random tables like town, wilderness, ocean & dungeon encounters, random dungeon generator, fortress generator, random terrain & settlements has some use (but go easy on the pop 60,000 cities), NPC parties.
Patrol groups - make the F0s into Warrior-1s and F1 Sergeants into War-2s and you're golden; these are serious butt-kicking platoon-level patrols. The random lower-planar creature table.

The artifacts. The territory development, construction & siege rules. Construction costs are a bit cheap but much better than 3e's prices, multiply 1e costs by 3-6 is about right, same goes for hireling costs (IMC a typical mercenary costs 12gp/month rather than 1e's 2gp).

Adventure/Wilderness travel rules - getting lost et al, maybe some use.

Things not to use - the unarmed combat rules. Psionic combat is iffy, too.
 

Anabstercorian said:
I'd just like to point out that, by the rules of 1e ADND, there was no way to cast a spell while riding a moving horse. 3e PWNS ALL.

Strange. My illusionist did it all the time. :cool:

Comments like this one reflect a basic misunderstanding of the whole spirit of 1e and its DMG.

To quote: "It is the spirit of the game, not the letter of the rules, which is important. Never hold to the letter written, nor allow some barracks room lawyer to force quotations from the rule book upon you, if it goes against the obvious intent of the game. As you hew the line with respect to conformity to major systems and uniformity of play in general, also be certain the game is mastered by you and not by your players. Within the broad parameters given in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Volumes, you are creator and final arbiter."
(DMG, p. 230.)


Excellent advice, IMO. Pity so many players these days fail to take it to heart (despite the 'rule 0').

Emirikol can zap people from horseback because it makes sense for him to do so. That is the 1e rule for casting spells from horseback.
 

It's a totally batty publication that is really about making canonical anything the authors ever used. That stated, I still use it for the gems table.
 

Mmmmh... may I hi-jack this thread to suggest how 4e should be done? Well, make it 3.5, add radom tables and fluff from 1e, and hire back DAT. That should do it... :cool:
 


Into the Woods

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