Well the new year is upon us and so far very little has changed from the previous year. It’s just more of the corruption, lies, ineptitude, shelfishness and just plain old incompetence.
My bedtime routine during the last few nights has consisted of listening to the 12 Days of Christmas Edition Wars from The Tome Show podcast. “In this special mini-series Brandes Stoddard and Sam Dillon take a deep dive into the Dungeon Master’s Guides from each edition of our favorite game.”
It’s been a fascinating look at the previous editions and this morning I finally got round to digging out the Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 for D&D 3.5, and the Dungeon Master’s Guide for D&D 4.
There were a couple of things that the hosts mentioned that I thought sounded still valid for use with the current 5th edition. And I wanted to make sure I had them as notes to refer to later on when session prepping or running a session.
The first thing I added to my notes was the sidebar on page 30 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 for 3.5. This contains “Sample Move Descriptions” and “Sample Quips and Battle Cries”. I thought these would be something I can add instantly to my combat encounters (once our sessions start back up).
I also made note of the Prioritizing section on pages 32 – 34. This is all about what you can do preparing for a session based on how much time you have available to prepare. Although I’m a fan of the Lazy DM. It’s always handy having another opinion. Plus I thought at some point it might be an interesting exercise to contrast and compare the two.
Page 34 also has handy ideas on aids you can create outside of the session to help improvise at the table. Which cross references to a handy table on page 98 to create random tavern names. I already have plenty of tables to use for names. But I might look at the other suggestions in a post.
I thought the Random Politics table on page 86 looked very useful for its intended use of creating a quick political profile for a medieval-style kingdom. I can use this every time my adventurers discover/arrive at an island.
The 50 Rumors and Hooks on pages 88 – 90 to use within Towns and Cities looks handy for bringing them to life in my campaign.
Another long but handy list/table to have starts on page 99 – 101 is the 100 Instant NPC Agendas. This will hopefully bring my NPC’s to life and make them more memorable.
The Dungeon Master’s Guide for 4e had one page I wanted to add, and that was purely from what The Tome Show said about it. That was page 42. It talks about actions the rules don’t cover. When I saw this page I thought “this looks kinda familiar”. Indeed it did it looked similar to a page from the Lazy DM Workbook. And like one or two comments by me above I think it will be a the subject of another post comparing the two.
I should note that a fair bit of the advice on sessions, planning adventures and campaigns that isn’t system specific still is of use today.