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Dungeon Masters Guide II
Several times, I’ve been told that the DMG II is a great resource for DMs of any game, and that while a lot of the content in it is geared towards DnD and fantasy games, most of it is very universal.
I just recently picked up a copy of it, and not only am I surprised at the quality and quantity of information contained within, I’m having a great time reading it.
This book is highly recommended to anyone who wants to improve their ability to run a game.
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2 Responses to “Dungeon Masters Guide II”
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I have to disagree.
While the DMG2 had some decent crunchy bits, I didn’t find it to be a “must-have”. I was also put off by the editing/organization.
Chapter 2 was completely out of place and made no sense to the “flow” of the presentation. Perhaps that is picking nits, but WotC has had a trend with bad layout, flow and editing that infects this product to a degree as well.
The book would have been better with Chapter 3 (Building a Campaign) immediately after Chapter 1 (Running a Game) and Chapter 2 (Traps, Difficult Terrain, Aerial Combat?) placed somewhere further back in the book since 1 and 3 naturally go together whereas chapter 2 was a mish-mash of game mechanics that had little to do with the chapters before and after. Any editor worth his or her salt should have recognized this.
This may be a decent book for novice DMs, but for anyone with some gaming experience, it doesn’t offer much new. While I liked the previously mentioned chapters 1 and 3, it’s advice we’ve seen a million times in other books and on the net.
The example setting (Saltmarsh) is not bad, amd could be a nice starting point for a new campaign, but again, there is a ton of material availble out there for starting campaigns that give more bang for the buck. Many campaign world boxed sets can be had for the $25 - $35 range.
All told, I would recommend picking up a cheap copy on Ebay if you have to have it. New DMs will get more out of it, but long-time players/DMs might find it to be a re-tread of concepts, rules and mechanics they’ve seen before.
The DMG2 was just one of those things that took me by surprise when I first opened up the PDF.
I’ve gotta say, I posted this at the end of chapter one, and found the rest to be a disappointment.