If you're reading this blog, chances are that you know what book this is, even if you don't own one now.The question is – if you don't own one now, why don't you own one now?
I myself never owned the 1st Ed. DMG until about 2001, when my girlfriend (whom I married, for reasons which will soon become glaringly obvious) dug up her old one and gave it to me (see?). I was playing 3.0 at the time, but as soon as I met Gary Gygax's nigh-overwrought gamemaster's wonderland, it was love at first sight.
Sure, I got by without for the first 13 years of my gaming life, but
having had ample time to examine and explore this tome since I acquired it, I am confident in making this statement:
Dude, you gotta get you one of these.
Look, it was state of the art in 1978, back when Leo Sayer roamed the Earth. But it's also a gem of the Dawn of Role-Playing, a veritable engine of creation which, like it or not, helped to shape the hobby as we know it. After all, it was the first real how-to manual for Dungeon Masters.
So is the book's value purely historical? Is it just a curio, an antique, an anthropological record?
No my friends. It's chock full of charts and tables, yo.
As I have mentioned before, I am increasingly enchanted by the suggestive powers of random charts. The 1st Ed. DMG turns 'em out to make the money, and you can use its resources to generate castles, people's personalities (hell, even their interests), piles of treasure, NPC parties...it goes on.
In case you're wondering what good this all is to the FRPG gamemaster of 2006, let me tell you about Lord Obregon, the increasingly-cranky paladin lord of Castle Foxmoor, whose obsessive interest in legends, coupled with his increasing fanaticism and intolerance, is getting him all itchy to unleash any manner of crusade or pogrom any minute now. Obregon, by the way, holds a small territory and oversees a pair of vassals – a fighter and a rogue, probably former adventuring partners or maybe just chosen underlings, who will doubtless be bent to his whim. Say, which one of them might choose to betray the old man, and hook up with some adventurers and warn them -or enlist them- against the crazy paladin's overzealous schemes?
All the makings of a memorable fantasy villain, spawned of my imagination...spurred on by the DMG's castle generation and charcater Trait tables.
[Okay, I used the extended castle tables from Dragon #145, too, but Obregon himself came out of rolls on the DMG's own tables.]
Perhaps more importantly, it's a great textbook. The 1st Ed. DMG, being the first text of its kind, is an excellent primer for the established GM. It's a look at how to do it with no preconceptions, no history, no experience; it's a kick in the pants to shake out the dust.
No, no, my brutha – you got to get your own.
11 comments:
Hey my brutha! Can I borrow your copy of 'Hey Soul Classics'?
Great post. I lost my 1eDMG during a move, but recently managed to get a decent scan of one, so my table-love-fest can get back on track. There are some other cool sections too, but MAN! I had to get a new copy to have those appendices in the back. I know you know about it from Jeff's blog, but lemme just plug Abulafia to you, too, as a place to share your random tables with the rest of us. end plug.
One of the best books ever made for the hobby. I own two copies because I nearly destroyed the first one over the course of a decade of near constant use. I've used Gary's DMG and its luscious charts for pretty much every fantasy campaign I've ever GMed. not just AD&D, but every incarnation of D&D, some MERP, a little Pendragon, etc. My biggest, bestest dungeon to date was generated almost entirely from the random charts in the back of that puppy. And every year or two I bust the DMG out and just re-read the damn thing from cover to cover. Doing so is like an injection of awesome directly into the brain.
I'm down with Abulafia, my brutha. If I can ever convince myself that I have the time and the brains required, I'll join up and start slingin' them tables too.
Oy!
The DMG now THAT was a core book.
Arkayn, Gutboy Barrelhouse, and poor misunderstood Balto.
One of my first DMing attempts was finishing up that monastery adventure.
the 1st. ed DMG and the D&D rules cyclopedia should be on every gamers shelf.
Thanks for the memories Doc.
see ya on the shuttle to Earth!
Hmmm...
You know, other than to look up the occasional magic item, I don't think I've cracked my copy open in years.
Maybe I should. I don't know if I'd be able to stand the Gygaxian prose or the assumptions of DM vs. player antagonism, though...
Yeah, it ain't all root beer & jerky, szilard, but it's easy to look through the book, go "yeah, whatever" where appropriaie, and mine the diamonds.
EVIL DM: Sure will!
If you're a random table addict, check out http://www.rpginspiration.com. The Inspiration Pad program is great.
I've transferred the random tables from my copies of DMG, Book Of Eldritch Might, Dungeon Bash and cobbled together my own from various sources into electronic format and at the press of a button I now have my NPC, dungeon, rune, etc. pop up on my laptop ready to drop in even when I'm not connected.
Maybe I'll dig the thing out and give it an extended review in my blog one of these days... a look back after 25 years of gaming experience: see what is useful, what is still fresh, what has gone stale, and what is just bizarre.
I haven't got one of those.
I have the orange-spine version, which has seen a lot of use and cheerful abuse over the years, though!
I never liked AD&D. It was always D&D or RuneQuest back in the day.
To borrow from the Great Chuck Heston, "From my cold, dead hands ...."
The 1st ed. DMG was the second hardback TSR product I bought back in the early eighties, and I've hung on to it all these years.
It's been over five years since I last played, but I hang on to it hoping that when my kids shove me in a retirement home, I'll find a couple of old gamers who'll struggle through the arthritis to roll a d20 every so often.
BTW, "I Waste The Buddha With My Crossbow" has to be one of the best blog names, eh-var
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