Last night I finally caught up with a YouTube video or two from my subscriptions and one of them was a video by the Nerdarchy guys about hidden gems in the DMG.

The basic summation of this video is that they went through Appendix A – Random Dungeons of the DMG. Which is basically a collection of tables you roll dice for to generate a dungeon.

Naturally as pointed out in the video the appendix is basically split into two parts. The first is about generating the dungeon structure wise, rooms, passages, etc. The second part is about stocking the dungeon. What’s in the rooms and passages.

You can use these tables anytime you want really (as pointed out in the video, well more suggested). In the video the example they give is the tricks table being used to “punish” a party for getting a puzzle wrong. But look at those dungeon dressing tables, particularly those that allow you to enhance descriptions of a room that describe what the senses are detecting like smells and noises. That’s two or three tables I’ll be using a lot more.

But the other Appendices are pretty useful also.

I particularly like the following appendix, Appendix B – Monster Lists. What I love about this appendix is the categorising of monsters by environment. Within each environments table the monsters are sorted by challenge rating. But I’m more interested in what monsters my party are likely to come across as they wander through that hilly forest on their way to the lost mine. Being able to look at this table and chose a monster that is in it’s correct environment is really handy. Although picking a monster that would not naturally be in say a mountainous environment might be a plot point, something for the party to investigate. Why was this monster here?

Appendix C – Maps falls into that Jim Murphy advice territory about collecting maps and having them on hand ready for use in your DM folder. But the advice at the start of this appendix is some of the most sage going “…unless you have something specific in mind, you’re better off conserving your time and energy by repurposing an existing map.” And reenforces that suggestion from Murphy. There are nine maps here for people to use.

I like videos like this. They remind you of the great stuff that is contained within the DMG and other books.