Dungeon Master’s Guide 2
Regardless of how people felt about the launch of Dungeons & Dragons: Fourth Edition, one book was almost universally praised: The Dungeon Master’s Guide. More so than any other entry-level book in recent memory, the new DMG explained how to actually run a campaign, and I found no one who didn’t appreciate its advice on understanding players, designing adventures, and putting it all together into an ongoing story.
Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 builds on that success and extends it to mid-level gaming in the new system. Like its predecessor, DMG 2 is half theory, half mechanics, offering advice on group role-playing, encounter design, and skill challenges as well as new mechanics in the form of monster themes, alternate role-playing rewards, functional and class templates, and organizations. The back third of the book combines the two with practical advice on running paragon-level campaigns, complete with campaign seeds, a write-up on the planar city of Sigil, and a short adventure. The end result is a book that will provide plenty of idea fodder for new and old game masters alike, and could even prove useful to those who never intend to lay their hands on Fourth Edition.
Role-playing in 4E has been hotly debated over the last year, with some slamming the new edition as little more than a strategic miniatures game, while fans retorted that they didn’t need rules to tell them how to role-play. The DMG 2 strives to show how collaborative storytelling can be incorporated in to the game, beginning with a conventional structure (game master as author, players as self-motivated characters) and moving on to group storytelling (as players make suggestions about the world,). It goes into other storytelling techniques as well, such as vignettes, flashbacks, and other tools. I personally prefer more mechanical options for narrative control (e.g. Fate Points from Spirit of the Century or Plot Points from Serenity) but I think the DMG2 does an excellent job of showing how you can introduce new narrative options without changing the underlying mechanics.
Skill Challenges were the single best thing to come out of Fourth Edition for my gaming group. While their initial implementation was mechanically flawed and DMG1 didn’t do a great job of explaining them, the last year has seen both issues resolved. The DMG2 restates the philosophical and mechanical underpinnings of skill challenges, provides a step-by-step example of how to run one, and then introduces nine new challenges. Included are “Closing the Portal” (in which our heroes must attempt to close a planar opening while fending off its monstrous defenders), “Hunting the Mastermind” (in which they must seek out a villain in a city) and “Moving through Suderdam” (which is essentially a skill challenge scaled up to adventure-length). The updated skill challenges worked so well in my 4E campaign that we ported them over to Star Wars, and I foresee that we’ll be using them in future games for a long time to come.
As a game master, my second favorite part of Fourth Edition is its monsters. After spending hours prepping high-level monsters and NPCs for my 3E campaign, it was a pleasure to be able to open the Monster Manual, locate a suitably vile critter, and find everything I needed to run it on the selfsame page. That said, sometimes you need upgrades to make the monster that much more menacing or memorable. DMG 2 does this in two ways. The first is through monster templates. Its “functional templates” allow you to create monsters with a narrative hook, such as “Champion of Bane”, which gives the monster command based powers suiting the God of Battle. There’s also “Grizzled Veteran”, a nefarious template that yields the base creature Bluff as a trained skill, added luck-making saving throws, and sneak attack damage. DMG 2 also has class templates for the base classes introduced in the Player’s Handbook (Barbarian, Bard, Druid, etc) as well as the Swordmage from the Forgotten Realms Player’s Guide (but not, oddly enough, the Artificer from this year’s Eberron Player’s Guide). I used the original DMG templates in my 4E game, and while I haven’t tried the new ones, I suspect they’ll work just as well.
That said, I suspect the new monster themes maybe even better for an ongoing campaign. Monster themes are low-grade templates that can be used to add a suite of unique, related powers to monsters. For example, Demogorgon cultists can gain Lashing Tentacle attacks (providing them with a fire aura), Dual Brain (allowing it to make saves against dazed, stunned, and charmed effects) and Carnage (bonuses to melee attacks if within range of allies). The powers come in a mix of at-will and encounter combat powers, as well several utility powers. They look to be a good way of giving monsters the flavor of a specific patron without actually having to apply a full template. Other such themes include feywild, goblin allies, Lolth’s chosen, and Orcus blood cultists.
It’s a nice touch; as a 4E DM I occasionally struggled to find thematically appropriate monsters for an encounter. This was doubly so before Monster Manual 2 came out, but even now it can be a challenge to find a level appropriate mix of monsters. The only other thing I would like to have seen here are elemental-specific monster themes, which would have been great for my planar encounters.
All editions of Dungeons & Dragons have been criticized for their “kill monsters and take their stuff” mentality. DMG 2 counters the loot side of that equation with alternative rewards. Divine and legendary boons replace traditional magic items, and the idea is that players receive them at certain critical junctions in play – for example, a legendary boon might be a hero’s sword suddenly gaining the flaming trait when used to slay a red dragon. Alternatively, a cleric might be blessed with a new utility power as a divine boon, which in turn kicks of a major new story arc.
Boons fade away over time, though in the case of legendary boons players can instead search for successive, even more powerful boons. Grandmaster training is an alternative form of boon, and its meant to reflect a specialized ability granted by a particular master. Mechanically, they’re similar to the other kinds of boons, but thematically they play to the strengths of skillful or combat-oriented characters.
Taken together, I think these rewards should work well for players who are as keen for story-based rewards as they are for conventional treasure-based ones. The DMG 2 goes so far as to contemplate a campaign without any sort of magical rewards. Coupled with a skill-challenge heavy campaign, this would turn the entire D&D paradigm on its head. Whether you’d want to do that is an entirely different question, but I for one would love to give it a try.
A good chunk of DMG 2 is dedicated to running paragon-level campaigns, which probably fits nicely with the progression of most 4E games since the new edition’s launch. The book assumes that most paragon-level campaigns are going to start leaving the material world behind as the heroes venture into the elemental, astral and demonic realms in search of – or perhaps in response to – ever greater threats.
Supporting that is a write-up on Sigil, the venerable City of Doors itself. Introduced in the Planescape setting from Second Edition, the 4E incarnation offers write-ups on the city’s various wards and a multi-page list of notable NPCs, each with its own summary. This version of Sigil exists in the aftermath of the Faction War from the close of 2E, and as such, those signature aspects of the setting have been stripped out. It’s a strange choice, given that the chapter immediately before this one goes to the trouble of introducing rules for creating organizations that players can join. If you’ve taken the time to explain the merits of organizations and how to run them, why wouldn’t you reset the clock on Planescape and reintroduce factions to Sigil?
The advice on paragon campaigns itself is adequate, but it focuses mostly on the story aspects of setting up and running such a game. It’s good to have, especially for new GMs, but after running a 4E paragon game of my own, I would have liked to have some advice on the nuts and bolts side of things. How do you keep the game moving when so many characters have conditional powers that are triggered at the drop of a hat? How do paragon powers differ from heroic ones, and what are the implications for adventure design? How does the introduction of paragon classes change the game? How do you maintain the suspension of disbelief surrounding minions when sword-fodder kobolds are replaced with fire elementals who still only have one hit point? These are the kinds of questions that I had as a 4E GM, and the DMG 2 didn’t answer them
Rounding out the paragon chapter is a mini-adventure set in Sigil. Opinions vary on the merits of including adventures in rulebooks, but I found this one to be superfluous. It makes sense in a system like Star Wars, which hasn’t seen any published adventures. But in D&D, which has stand-alone modules, Dungeon Magazine, and sample adventures in the campaign books, it just doesn’t make sense to me. I’d rather have seen that space given to a new crop of factions for Sigil, some much-needed paragon level game advice, or a few more skill challenges.
A potential criticism of the book is how much of the content was first published in other sources, be it the Dragon and Dungeon digital magazines or other D&D products. I didn’t do a comprehensive survey of how much content comes from those sources, but I’d eyeball it at about a quarter. As someone who doesn’t subscribe to D&D Insider, this wasn’t an issue for me, but diehard fans may have an unwelcome sense of déjà vu.
While I wish it had done more in some areas, I think DMG 2 is a worthwhile purchase for Dungeon Masters, all the more so if they aren’t D&D Insider subscribers. Heck, even as a GM who only runs 4E occasionally, I still find plenty in here that I can (and will) use in both my 4E and non-4E games.
November 24th, 2009 at 00:58
I struggled a little bit at first with the republished material, but it is nice to have it compiled. Nice job talking about this book, which I think is useful for players of D&D as well as other rules systems.