Happy 2024: 3.0 DMG advice part 1

 

The DMG from the edition that changed the game irrevocably and ushered more "crunch"

It may be strange for me to be wishing readers a Happy 2024 in March, but the Nexus blog had been more focused on my mmorpg gaming late last year when I was trying to enjoy my Everquest and wow subscriptions.

I even had a post from January about my mmo gaming goals in 2024, goals which so far gave gone unmet due to the fact my internet connection has been quite poor since I moved in Northern California to my new place mind 2023. As a result, I have been recently trying to boost my signal, something not easily accomplished in rural areas, to be sure. So I abandoned most of my mmorpg gaming and have been primarily focused on running my weekly 5e game.

Last weekend I traveled to Santa Rosa where I frequented some used bookstores and came away with some really cool finds, among them was a pretty clean copy of the 3.0 D&D DMG and the 3.0 PHB at a very reasonable price. 

This led me to want to continue and pick up a project I started during the pandemic years, three years ago when I was examining all the printed DMGs dating back to the TSR era (As D&D has been my primary gaming hobby since the 80s; yes I am old) I thought it would be instructive, both to myself and others who may stumble upon this blog, to examine in great detail, chapter by chapter if need be, some of the information and sage advice available to DMs and wanna be game masters from the pages of all these wonderful and entertaining tomes. 

I had started with the more accessible 3.5 guide, but since I recently acquired the 3.0 guide in the aforementioned book store, I thought it would be fine to start with this one instead while concurrently comparing the info found in both. Do they repeat? Are there new nuggets of information presented in one that they didn't include in the other? Well let us find out.

From the first chapter, the authors advice DMs not to worry about teaching the players all the rules ahead of time. They suggest that all they truly need to know are the basics that apply to understanding their characters (i.e  how spells work, what AC means, how to use skills etc.) and they can pick up this information as they go along. This seems like sound advice when you consider how much more of a "crunchy" system D&D 3.0 and 3.5 are, compared to other systems like 5e and/or Pathfinder 1st edition.

There is a brief discussion of determining the style of play in your games and campaigns, such as what they call "kick in the door" style of play, advice on whether you should take a serious versus humorous tone (personally I prefer the former rather than the latter, but not to the exclusion of occasional mirth and in jokes at the table), table rules, how to integrate new players into an existing game or campaign, and other considerations for running a game including whether or not to use a DM screen, the role of computers in Dming, and the pros and cons of employing miniatures and counters.

An interesting aspect of this chapter is the inclusion of a section dealing with mapping. Mapping is a convention that seemed to be more integral to the earlier editions of the game and which has been somewhat lost in the modern era of virtual table top apps like Owl Bear and others. I remember reading the basic D&D BECMI manuals of the early 80s and even AD&D first edition, where it was recommended or encouraged that a player take on the role of "mapper." Again, this convention seems to have mostly gone the way of the dodo in modern times, probably due to the inclusion of detailed DM and maps for the players that are so detailed, most gamers make use of them without tweaking much, or without having a party explore an area on their own. The 3.0 DMG seems to encourage the older style, even though I am not sure if there were a lot of premade dungeons in this edition, versus the myriad of complex dungeon "hex crawls" of years past. I simply did not play the system enough when it came out in the early 2000s to give a more informed opinion.

As mentioned, this DMG seems to espouse the earlier convention in favor of the DM describing a layout of the place in as much detail as he/she/they want, including room dimensions and confusing maze like dungeons.

 

Before wrapping up this first part I will add that I will limit the scope of this analysis of D&D game guides to official TSR and WOTC products, even though I fully realize that there are many wonderful and helpful third party guides for novice, burgeoning game masters, but I do not own many, so I won't include them, with the possible exception of Sly Flourish's "Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master" since that specific reference is talked about a lot with high regard in the RPG community, and I actually own that tome. 

If you enjoy podcasts or audio discussions of geek culture topics, consider tuning in to www.kpfz.org an listening to my weekly show "The Nexus of Geek." Fridays at 4 PM PST. It is a diversion of mine which I do with my gaming friend and fellow geek Bo on the local community PBS style radio station, many topics that interest me from Superhero and genre film to fantasy fiction and of course gaming are presented. We welcome new listeners and fellow game geeks. 

Speaking of podcasts and/or non print material, I rather agree with this youtuber's take in defense of third edition.  Enjoy!

was 'Horde of the Dragon Queen' really that bad?

Now that 5e is approaching almost a decade of in existence, I thought it would be fun to go back and take a look at the first module that was produced for the system back in 2014, "Hoard of the Dragon Queen" part of the Tyranny of Dragons series, which I think was intended to have been three books, but which for some reason ended up being just the two.

Last year when I was trying to complete my collection of published 5e adventures, I really wanted to get my hands on this and its continuation "The Rise of Tiamat" purely for the nostalgia factor.

I remember vividly playing with my 4th edition group in Texas, in the waning days of that system, and seeing this volume on the shelves of my local game store. I didn't pick it up then because we were still having fun playing the older system, but I knew eventually I wanted to check out these printed 5e modules.

This module didn't get (and to this day) does not get good reviews from DMs and gamers in general, so I am going to do a chapter by chapter read and see if it's as bad as advertised, or if the criticism is warranted.

I should probably start out by noting that I never play tested or ran this module with a group. I am a fairly n00b DM. In fact, that is my brand! Currently I am running an ongoing campaign with a group that has been going on for about 9 months now, which is the longest campaign I have run to date, but it is a mashup of the starter set adventures (Lost Mines, Dragons of Stormwreck Isle and Dragon of Icepire Peak) with Storm King's Thunder for good measure, but all with a spin I've put on the whole thing because I don't like running modules straight from the book. Many others do not like that style either. To each his/her own.

Strengths: What I feel are the strengths of this one

The setting of the story is the Forgotten Realms, really the first time Faerun and its familiar surroundings make their presence in the 5e system, a smart move by WOTC. Go with something people are familiar with and also it is a setting that easily ties into the Starter set adventures and the Sword Coast, which was of course no accident.

The artwork is really good and I like the paper, the pages have this matte print which seems to provide a better ease of readability than glossy pages. Maybe it is just me, but I prefer this to the glossy in other books. 

Weaknesses: Yes, it is not a perfect product or story. Then again is anything really perfect? Just from re-reading chapter one "Greenest in Flames" I can say that the NPCs are not really that memorable, they are serviceable for what they are, but few of them stand out as written. 

There is also an attempt to tie in the characters' backstories to the Tyranny of Dragons campaign by using hooks found in the book's Appendix A. Except this template's hooks aren't all that memorable or original. I think that the players could come up with better hooks, or at the very least modify some of the better ones found in the appendix to make them feel less shoehorned. 

I don't like the map of Greenest they provide in chapter one on page 10. Actually, it's a very poor map, it looks generic with very little detail. I do feel that the map in the starter set is better, detailing the town of Phandalin and an overhead map for the entire sword coast. The map should have been more detailed and easier to use, representing the key spots in the action. 

Another irritating thing about this chapter is that the formatting of the NPCs is not consistent. The convention in most of these 5e modules is that they used bold text to reference creature in the Monster Manual, so the DM can go look up their stats, but in this chapter some NPCs' names are in bold with no stat block or reference in the monster appendix (which is an odd mix of both monsters and NPCs), while others are just named without the bold formatting. It;s a bit confusing. 

One of the key events in this chapter is the adult blue dragon attacking. Except that this is all window dressing, it's all for show as the characters don't fight the dragon and hardly interact with it. The reason given for this is that the characters are first level and so the dragon just makes an appearance to attack or threaten NPCs, with the DM advised that its breath weapon could kill a 1st level character. Indeed, the Monster Manual gives an adult blue dragon a CR of 16 with multiple attacks and legendary actions.

 There is actually a lot of action in this introductory chapter, but the pacing seems off, a little clunky in some parts. The best bit is the raiders trying to set fire to the town's mill and the PCs asked to save it.

In the end though, it all devolves into melee combat with some mildly interesting NPCs and creatures. 

Next: Chapter 2 "Raiders Camp" Another bad map. 

My list of the 8 best D&D 5e campaign settings ranked

 I wanted to make a video for my channel about this, but alas the best plans...etc. So in lieu of that I am making this post discussing all the settings that have been published by WotC since 5e debuted in 2014 and there have been quite a few, almost as many as source books (all of which I own) with three more coming our way in a few days with the re-introduction of the Spelljammer setting from the second edition days.

So remember this list is fairly subjective and totally my impression of the setting books so if you have a different ranking, that is totally fine and you are entitled to your opinion. Also for this list, I skipped Acquisitions Incorporated since it's such a niche setting and hardly anyone ever plays this from what I can tell, but I am putting Spelljammer at No. 8

OK, so now that we know the ground rules, here we go! Coming in at no. 7: Strixhaven.

Strixhaven A Curriculum of Chaos, Wizards of the Coast

As many of you probably know, this is one of three setting books based on Magic the Gathering, and in my opinion, the least interesting of the trio. I know some will disagree, but there is one thing this book and the others prove: That capitalism is alive and well in 2022 as these many setting books based on a relatively new setting to D&D (compared to Grayhawk or even Spelljammer for example) is proof that Wizards isn't shy about capitalizing on the ongoing popularity of its most successful property to date.

Coming in at No. 6: Ravenloft!

While it is certainly true that Ravenloft is one of the classic settings for D&D dating back to the game's second edition, the brainchild of the supremely talented and vastly underrated (imo) couple Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, who also penned the Dragonlance modules and novels based on that setting, here's the thing, while I love gothic horror and vampires, this setting is fairly limited to a specific genre, dealing with body horror and spooks and the like, a genre which isn't my absolute favorite in the vast multiverse of D&D.

Now don't get me wrong, Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft has a lot to offer DMs and players, especially if horror is their cup of tea. 

New character options are very flavorful and interesting including the hexblood who are descendants of hags, the reborn which are essentially reborn creatures with some very cool skills and features due to the fact that they, much like Frankenstein's famous monster, are reanimated corpses or entities that have returned from the great beyond and of course the Damphirs which are neither vampires nor human but something of a cross of both. 

Coming in at No. 5 is the Sword Coast, the Forgotten Realms, which is the default setting for 5th edition, which is another reason it doesn't rank a lot higher on my list. There are many issues with the Forgotten Realms, another classic D&D realm but one which has been bled to death in 5e on purpose!

It almost feels as though this book, as thorough as it is with its descriptions of Fearun and the Forgotten Realms could and should have been twice as long, given how much history there is to all the locations dating back to second edition and early editions of the game. 

Want to see the entire list? Well I was going to type this all out but I am feeling lazy so how about we skip to the video version and save me all the possible Carpal Tunnel? 

 

Dragons of Stormwreck Isle: Should you pick it up?

The new 5e starter set which includes the adventure "Dragons of Stormwreck Isle" dropped yesterday as a Target exclusive and if you are keen on watching reviews or unboxing videos of the product, there's a good number of them on the interwebs.

I have gone back and forth in my head whether or not to pick this up from WotC and to put in an order from Target because I do enjoy new adventure models, which is essentially what this is, overall if you are a new DM or player and thinking of getting this set, I would recommend against it, as you can pick up the 2019 Essentials Kit, which is a better value in my opinion.

I think I would only recommend this set to those among us who enjoy collecting RPG and specifically D&D stuff. I actually personally own the 3.5 starter box, the 4th edition red box and three of the 5e box sets WotC put out so far, the original 2014 set, the 2019 Essentials Kit and the branded "Stranger Things" box set. That last one was a gift though, not something I would have bought myself.  I have a link here to my Youtube Channel's video I recorded 8 years ago when the first 5e starter set came out if you are curious on my thoughts on that from back in the day.

I also recently watched a pretty good series detailing and ranking the starter set all the way back to the pre first edition Moldvay and Mentzer days to the current 5th edition and realized that the 2nd edition set may be the best one, but sadly I never picked that one up and would have to shell out some coin to get my hands on it.

Sadly, this set is a bit a letdown in my opinion, especially after the April preview video which Wizards put out hyping this thing up as some sort of gateway to digital content for n00bs. It's a head scratcher then that this set appears to only come with a sheet of paper which lists all the digital D&D related sites and links, without even including codes to discounted or free digital content which the Essentials Kit did have. 

Here is a short breakdown of the upcoming and recent releases from Wizards and my reaction to them based on my level of excitement about acquiring the product. 

• Monsters of the Multiverse: released May 17, 2022. Still not sold on this book, I already own "Volo's Guide to Monsters" and "Mordenkeinen's Tome of Foes" and they are essentially the same monsters with some new streamlined mechanics and tweaks such as the removal of racial bonuses. Also the lore is removed, no thank you, I will stick with the old books.
• Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel: released July 19, 2022. Also not sure about this one, on the one hand, the concept of real world myths which are different than the usual D&D fare of high fantasy and influenced by Dark Ages, Celtic, Norse and other familiar western mythologies is intriguing, and as much as I want to support the POC authors which contributed to this anthology of one-shots, I guess this doesn't pique my interest enough to want to run them or incorporate them into bigger and existing campaigns. Currently I am DMing and playing games in the Forgotten Realms, the default setting for 5e, so it makes more sense for me to incorporate one-shots from, say, "Candlekeep Mysteries," an anthology book that already sits on my shelf. 
•  Spelljammer Adventures In Space: August 16, 2022. I know a lot of people are hyped about this release, but other than the recognizable Mincs and Boo, I have no connection to this setting, as I did not play a lot of D&D in 1989 when 2e was popular (though I wished I had) I think if I wanted to play a space fantasy RPG I would have chosen to go with Paizo's "Starfinder" or something similar to it eons ago, but it's a personal preference. Not all that hyped about this release tbh. You can preorder the entire set on Amazon and other retailers for about $42 which is actually pretty cheap, considering adventure books run about $50 but I think I will pass for now.
• Starter Set: Dragons of Stormwreck Isle.  released Aug. 1, 2022. I think I pretty much covered this one.
• Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen: release date, late 2022. This one was quite possibly the one I was mostly excited about, until I read that they had messed with the Kender and were open to making other changes to the Dragonlance lore. No!!! If they change too much, I am sticking to my 2e Dragonlance modules and books, especially the excellent 1e "Dragonlance Adventures" which is still one of my favorite old school campaign setting books.

The problem with Storm King's Thunder and 5e modules overall

"Lear the Giant King" from Dungeon Magazine No. 78 (2000)

I have been incorporating elements of premade 5e modules into my D&D homebrew which I have been running twice a month at the local library. 

With 5e being eight years old now, there is a lot of material that WotC has put out during the years, including a plethora of what we used to refer to as "prefabs," or pre-written campaign modules for DMs to run if they are short on time or to draw inspiration from. After collecting all the source books for DM (except for a few of the campaign settings that I am not that keen on, I am looking at you "Acquisitions Incorporated") I have invested in "Storm King's Thunder", although it is not the latest adventure book I purchased, that would be "Candlekeep Mysteries." which as some of you know, is just a series of one-shots you can drop into your ongoing campaigns.

But even though this book has been out for quite a while (first print 2016 if I am not mistaken) I chose it to represent some of the problems a DM will experience trying to run the adventure as written, and as an example of what Wizards gets right in their pre-written adventure books and why they are sometimes problematic. I won't get too deep into what is wrong with the book, since it has been out a number of years, there is plenty out in the interwebs if you want to read a review or if you are on the fence about picking it up or whether or not to run it.

Instead, I will discuss what attracted me to it and what my plans are with the adventure now that I own it in hopes that others will benefit from such information. Now, first off: Upon careful examination of the story, it was fun to discover that the game designers drew inspiration from many old D&D books, adventures and sources and that it is influenced by the old Shakespeare play "King Lear."

Maybe that is why the adventure starts off with a Dramatis Personae with the main members of the adventure's cast of characters listed in alphabetical order for easy reference. There are a lot of NPCs in this book and the index lists all of them, over 60! Of course, it will be up to the DM and players whether they interact or use them all.  

 The adventure centers on King Hekaton, the most powerful of the giants, and his daughters and what happens in the aftermath of the shattering of the ordning, a caste system imposed upon Giant society by their gods. The adventure can be ran with the initial chapter in the book which takes PCs from levels 1 to 4 or with other published adventures that accomplish the same thing. Personally, one thing that I find Wizards got right is setting up a lot of their pre-written stories in the Forgotten Realms, so that DMs can theoretically flow players from one to the other seamlessly. At least that was the goal, but of course, this doesn't always work out in practice.

The book does have a nifty handy flowchart which details this and notes that chapter 2 is intended for characters that are level 5 where the PCs can then explore three areas with multiple encounters. This happens again two chapters later where PCs are given the choice between five different areas to explore and again after Chapter 10 where there is a choice of two ways to conclude the adventure.

Michael Selinker's adaptation of the Shakespeare play which was published in the magazine came during that nebulous time in D&D history when the game was transitioning from AD&D 2nd edition into the radical revamp WotC made which eventually led to 3rd edition, but the adaptation still follows 2e rules as evidenced by creatures and NPC stat blocks which still make mention of older game mechanics like THACO. Just like Lear, the protagonist of SKT, King Hekaton has gone missing and part of the adventure hook is for the PCs to go searching for him. Unfortunately, even though the book is rife with tensions and political intrigue concerning the king's court and the turmoil which engulfs it after the king goes missing, and following the events of chapter 2, the largest chunck of the book, Chapter 3 "The Savage Frontier" is dedicated to locations in the Sword Coast that the PCs can explore.

Many critics have pointed out, and I concur, this is where SKT starts to break down as the pages and pages of locations detailed in the book, while interesting, could have been presented as a separate supplement or as part of the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. 

So here's the bottom line: I don't regret investing in SKT, I remember walking into the hobby shop and going through all the printed adventures looking for a good one to engage my players who are currently embroiled in a combination of a homebrew with elements of the original starter set adventure with portions of the "Essentials Kit" module just to keep things interesting. I remember being excited over the prospect of having a big epic adventure involving the giants as part of our ongoing 5e campaign, but the best way to run this, upon careful study, is to take bits and parts of it and use them separately. This is how a lot of DMs approach 5e prefabs and SKT is no exception.

Chapter 3 does have a useful section and tables for random wilderness encounters, as well as suggested encounters for the many locations of the North such as Amphail, the Grandfather Tree, Beorunna's Well, Icewind Dale and Waterdeep. I have not done a deep study of how interconnected these encounters are in relation to the overall main narrative, but I have seen reviews which suggest that they are not.

In conclusion, it takes a bit of work to incorporate pre-written adventures into existing or homebrews for 5e, but with a little bit of work, a DM can draw inspiration from their story hooks or even lift whole sections without having to run them as written, grabbing encounter and interesting story elements and tweaking them for their own purposes. It is clear to me now that this was the intended consequence of making the Forgotten Realms the default setting for 5e, although of course, there are many other settings including some that are unique to this system including the "Magic the Gathering" inspired setting like Ravnica and Strixhaven. 

Storm King's Thunder by Wizards of the Coast (2016)