Explan DMG First Ed. to me!

[Grazzt]

It is sad that so many people these days feel the need to have rules for everything, and think it is appropriate to refer to 'common sense' as 'DM fiat'. Oh well, to each their own...

Its all about spoon-feeding now, or didn't ya know?

 

[Grazzt]

The smell of the print.

Theres nothing more 1st ed the original AD&D books than the smell.

Agreed. (Ever had to explain to a girlfriend or wife as to why you sniff your old 1e books when you crack them open? )

 

[Raven Crowking]

It's comments like this that make me wonder if you have actually read the D&D3 DMG. The whole book is chock *full* of direct DM advice and explanations to "train" DMs.

I find the AD&D1 DMG full of *information* (which is why *I* love the book); the D&D3 DMG is full of explanation (which is why I love the book).

Quasqueton

I thought that I should maybe expand on this.

3.X discusses how to apply the rules, more than anything. It discusses how to balance encounters using the CR system. It describes how many encounters to use to create a scenario. It provides the means to create communities using a stat block system, and that part has spawned some very interesting discussion on EnWorld.

Reading the 1st Edition DMG, though, inspires one to better storytelling. Maybe it is the bits of lore thrown out here and there, making one feel that a campaign world should also be chock full of little hidden bits. Maybe it was the idea of the dungeon dressing tables.... When I read the 1st Edition DMG, I felt that I was being given an incredible plethora of ideas to both fill and run a campaign world. Crack almost any page, and Gygax's prose suggested things that got me excited about devising stories, settings, and worlds.

When I am looking for DM advice, what I want is that feeling. I want a grab-bag of ideas from which I can create. I want ideas about how to create worlds, dungeons, and towns that feel real, or if not real, what I wish real could be. I can worry about balance myself. I have often said that a good DM doesn't need to worry about game balance, because campaign balance can make anything work. Worlds may be run on crunch, but they are built out of fluff.

When I see beginning DMs struggle, they are most often not struggling because they need more rules, or because they need advice on how to apply those rules. They struggle because they don't have a grasp on the feel of what they are trying to do. The 1st Ed DMG was all about aquiring a world's "feel" and making it seem believable. That was, IMHO, the best part of DM training, and what is missing from 3.X.

(There are some very excellent third-party products for this kind of stuff, but it isn't part of the "core rules" anymore.)


RC

 

[DragonLancer]

Agreed. (Ever had to explain to a girlfriend or wife as to why you sniff your old 1e books when you crack them open? )

Thankfully not so far. Only a matter of time.