I remember as a kid I played ad&d with my friends, and their dad was the DM. We were allowed to read the phb, and even the monster manual as much as we liked. But it was absolutely forbidden for us to read the dmg! I recently got a copy of the ad&d dmg, and I can see why. All these secrets help add to the immersion of the game, and players just knowing them would have made them less exciting. Great book. As for my four desert island books, that's tough. I'd probably start with the Rules Cyclopedia, because it's an entire game system, and I'm a big fan of it. Then I'd want the Advanced Fighting Fantasy Deluxe book, which contains its own system, and the world of Titan an excellent and highly imaginative setting that doesn't get nearly the love it deserves. Third I'd want either the Dark Sun or Planescape boxed sets. And finally OSRIC would probably be good, chock full of tables, and basically everything from ad&d, it feels like cheating a bit, but it's very usable.
Thank you so much for watching, and for this great comment! I had a similar experience as you - our DM would share the monster books with us all the time, but we were specifically told not to read the DMG! Your Desert Island list is great! As you know, I mentioned in my video on the History of D&D Editions that many folks consider the Rules Cyclopedia their Desert Island RPG, and I can see why. It's a great choice. I sadly am not super familiar with Advanced Fighting Fantasy; I've heard of it, but never played it before. And OSRIC is a great resource for folks wanting to run a 1E style game without spending a ton of money to acquire out-of-print books. I have a copy and used it to run an old school game through Module S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. Cheers!
That edition of the DMG taught me SO much stuff. Mostly it gave so many tables, tools, and advice on how to flesh out the game and keep the game moving. AND if you didn't have anything prepared you could just take 10 minutes, roll up a game session on the spot, add a bit of story to what you just concocted, and you and your players were rolling. As a kid it was invaluable, because I didn't know jack smack about anything. I had learned with the Moldvay boxed set and also some weird hard cover generic RPG book I pretty much had permanently checked out from the public library (it called halflings "hobbits" so it was older, I don't remember the name though). Anyone else have a bunch of penciled in powers for artifacts that were written and erased a bunch of times? Just remembered that. Funny!
Ha! That last part cracked me up. I was always too afraid to write in my books, but I would keep separate lists that I'd tuck into the pages! The earliest three book boxed set for Original D&D refers to halflings are "Hobbits" and some of the earliest supplements do, as well (my copy of "Greyhawk" calls them Halflings in some sections ,and "Hobbits" in another - I suspect they just missed some of the references. Same issue with "Ents" vs "Treants" and the use of "Balrog"]. Thanks for watching! I love hearing how other people used this book as well!
I started playing in college with a bunch of guys who'd been playing for years, so my experience was different. I wasn't forbidden anything outright, since they were all familiar with everything themselves, and we were all adults. But what's now called "meta-gaming" was strictly forbidden. So early on, I was reading the DMG (1e) and I loved it. Still do. It's one of the best, and i always recommend it. I think of it as less about rules and more about tools. So many great options and possibilities -- and tables galore. One thing about the aging tables was that some players always wanted to use it because of the adjustments to ability scores due to age, always looking for that little extra edge. And once when I was still a noob, I didn't want to cast a haste spell (iirc) because it aged my (elf) pc a year, and my friend said to me, "No one in D&D ever dies of old age."
Thank you for yet a great video! I had forgotten how much information that book holds. Now I've got to buy it because my old copy was sold many years ago when I was unemployed and needed money. 😅
Oh, yikes! I'm sorry you had to sell it! I hope you're able to find a good quality copy at a decent price. They did a reprint a few years ago that's the original book but with a new updated "homage" cover that might be less expensive than the original. Good luck, and thanks for watching and commenting!
Another great video. 🙂 One thing I think worth mentioning about the monster list in the back of the 1E DMG is that it provides each monster's THAC0 for the first time so that DM's don't have to consult the Monster Attack Matrix if they don't want to.
Thank you very much! I'm so glad you enjoyed it! Very good point about that monster recap in the back! So many folks think THAC0 debuted in 2E but it predated it by quite a long while, as you noted. Thanks!
Rolemaster Gamemaster Law has 100 pages of system ignorant gm advice. It is the best GM guide I have read so far. Robins Laws of good Game Mastering is also a classic by now.
Thank you so much for these recommendations! I'm familiar with the Robin Laws book but no one has ever recommended Rolemaster's Gamemaster Law. I will need to check that out! Thanks again!
I love my 1e DMG. It's loaded with useful info and I greatly enjoyed reading Gary's "high gygaxian". I always felt like the book was written just for me. I refer to it often, even though my edition of choice these days is Pathfinder 1e
We're on the same wavelength! I don't play 1E currently, but even during my 3.5/Pathfinder1E days, I would look through this book often. It's a very fun read, despite its lack of organization and odd contents (a lot of this stuff, as I mentioned in the video, I think should have been part of the Player's Handbook). Thanks for watching and commenting!
Most of our DM's rarely referenced the DMG. They did use it for treasure for random encounters and gems and jewelry but not so much for rules. I remember when we were allowed to look at the section about characters and seeing the Age table. I spent about an hour rolling for the age of all my characters. I didn't get a DMG for several years after I started playing. So finding magic items was a WOW factor since I didn't know what a lot of them did. I would hear from a long time player "Man, that's a great item. You can do X, Y and Z with it."
I also don't recall our DM even having this book at the table most of the time, even though he forbade us to read it! The magic items are fun and especially the artifacts include an implied world-building element that I always found fascinating.
One of my favorite examples of High Gygaxian is where he writes about MUs learning new spells from NPC MUs after challenging them to magical duels, and at one point he refers to the challenging PC as a "worthy", which took me quite a while to parse.
The DMG (1st release) was the only book I felt I needed for a LONG time. The odd placement of information was confusing to me as well, so I taped alphabetical dividers at the start of sections I knew I'd need to reference. A-Z, and each letter had absolutely nothing to do with the information it earmarked, but it still made referencing quicker once I remembered that "M" had attack speed tables, "Q" had treasure, "U" had monster stats, etc. Decades later, its still my FAV piece of material from any & every further edition.
Thank you for watching and commenting! I really appreciate your support. And... I've got you covered! I didn't really delve into Alignment Languages (I can definitely to that another time) but I have two videos on Alignment and Planes on my channel: Part 1) ua-cam.com/video/b6QE5_Yydl0/v-deo.html Part 2) ua-cam.com/video/2JqOqNv4KTE/v-deo.html I hope you enjoy!
Yeah, I've had that comment a lot from people trying to "correct" me. I hope you enjoyed the actual video, though! This is where the multiple uses of the word "edition" can be tricky, but when talking about D&D I use "Edition" to mean "System" and "Printing" to refer to the, well, "printing" number. My DMG is, I believe, an 8th Printing based on having the revised Easley cover, but also the year I received it, which was prior to the 9th Printing.
I wish I had one of the AD&D DM Guides. I remember looking at them in the shop but never having the money. Of course, now I have the Hyperboria DM guide which is likely just as good, better laid out, but perhaps less nostalgic. I like the Gygaxian style. It reminds me of Cicero, or Russian authors. I have quite a few DM guides. The Pathfinder one is probably the best. I use them mostly for tables of things, like encounters or city generation, but I always end up creating my own version because there's going to be something I want to tweak. I get a lot of mileage out of tables of random encounters (not just monsters, but events), random dungeon/city generation and random names. It's amazing how often that table of age, height and weight gets used.
Thank you so much for watching and commenting! As you saw in the video, I also like the Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide! So much great and useful material in there! I didn't realize there was a separate GM guide for Hyperborea - I'll need to check that out! And I modify/tweak the random lists all the time, but they are great inspiration and idea starters!
Of the AD&D 2e splatbooks, I always felt that the best ones were the green covered historical settings ones and the blue covered ones that are meant for DMs to give them new reference material. Heck, the Arms & Equipment Guide got the most use in our game, I think. Just a fun and useful resource.
I loved those Green Historical Guides! I have the Charlemagne's Paladins, A Mighty Fortress, and Crusades in physical form, plus the Roman and Viking ones in PDF. Great resources! I liked the blue Sages & Specialists book as well. And one of my good friends on Twitter really likes that Campaign Sourcebook I mention at the end. The author of that book, William Connors, also chats with me on Twitter frequently.
Thank you for a great video! I absolutely loved Gamma World in my early teens and even had some fairly rare miniatures. Science fiction was at an all time high and the biggest sci-fi RPG was Traveller. But GW was so bizarre and quirky with mutations and a mix between technology and magic, it just compelled me. But D&D still ruled the roost in my small circle of nerdy friends. When I first saw Thundarr the Barbarian, I was blown away! It's a cartoon of Gamma World! Thank you so much for stating the obvious but something most people today aren't aware of. Great video, new subscriber!
I love this book, warts and all. I think I even have both covers. Yes! That's what I love about this book, the nuance and the level of detail. It wasn't so much of a rulebook as it was a deep dive into things people may not even think of to add depth to the game. The intro to Thundaar the Barbarian scared the crap out of me as a kid, because something like that could actually happen. The moon getting shattered and causing global catastrophe that is.
I was a huge fan of Thundarr and Gamma World as a kid! The world of Thundarr was so different than anything else you saw on TV at the time (at least, what I saw). Randomly in my 9th Grade Art Class I ended up in a class with a teacher who had done background animation on that show and I thought it made him the coolest person I knew! Thanks for watching and commenting!
A quick word about the use of 'Boot Hill'; over the last 6 months I have watched a movie from the 50's set in the old american/spanish areas of the US, involving archeologists and spooks and spirits from the 16th century (post cowboy west?), and an episode of SHARPE set in 1812 in Spain (pre cowboy) but involving the similar sort of plot however the treasures causing the spooks and scares have been brought back to europe. Both achievable with Ad&d + BH....
Thanks for another fantastic video. I definitely agree that the first time playing everything was new and super exciting. I don’t think that the DMG made this happen, I think it was just because it was the first role-playing game we had ever experienced, and we didn’t know what to expect. In retrospect, Dungeon, Masters guide was a complete mess, and finding anything in there was almost impossible.
Thank you for watching and commenting! It is totally a complete mess, layout-wise! No argument here! But I guess (viewed through the lens of nostalgia, I fully admit), I find that somewhat charming and also as a result, because of the lack of organization, I always find stuff in there that I didn't remember or have never even read before!
Another great video. I was told that Gary rushed this and the PHB to production, because he wanted to disassociate himself from Dave Arneson, for money reasons, and the other reason was due to the very high demand at that time. I don't know if any of that is true, but as sloppy as the DMG and the PHB were put together, it's still an incredible achievement, especially since it was done before the internet existed.
As always, thank you so much for your support! There was definitely a background related to Gary creating a "new" game in order to be able to take all the royalties for himself (it's the same reason he wrote B2: Keep on the Borderlands and added it to the Holmes Boxed Set in place of Mike Carr's "In Search of the Unknown" because Mike got all the royalties from those sales for himself). The organization of both the PHB and DMG, as you mentioned, isn't great. The write-up of how Gary describes the character classes in the PHB is not consistent class and class, and the lack of headers or sections makes it very difficult to find the necessary information. Thanks again!
@@daddyrolleda1 I think someone should rewrite the PHB & DMG, making them look better, along with fixing mistakes and such. Maybe someone already has 🙂
@@Lightmane Well, there is OSRIC which is a retroclone, but it doesn't include anything from the DMG Appendices, and it does make a few minor changes to the rules. But it sounds like what you're asking for is a treatment of 1E similar to how Old School Essentials replicated B/X D&D pretty much exactly. That would be a great task!
I'll be honest, other than Appendix N, I had this book for years before spending any time with any of the other appendices. When I discovered them, I was blown away by the amount of stuff in there that's useful across any edition! Thanks for watching and commenting! I always really appreciate your support.
I also thought you might appreciate that I mentioned the Campaign Sourcebook & Catacomb Guide! You are, of course, the friend from Twitter I mentioned when talking about that.
Thanks for the video! The 1E AD&D DMG is one of the "fullest" RPGs as well as one of the oldest. I've been through it multiple times cover to cover and find new ways to think about the material within it with each time I open it. I look at sections of it in great detail on my own channel for those who would like a closer look with some commentary. The 3.5 DMG II is a solid second choice for top RPG book. Tons of good stuff in it including the Saltmarsh "sample" town. Very well written and even if you wish to ignore the newer suggestions on how to run a game, still a great deal of information.
Thank you very much for watching and commenting! I really appreciate it! It's definitely a book I refer back to often, and as you mentioned, I always find something new that I'd missed before. Tons of actual useful stuff for running a game, but I also like it for understanding some of Gary's philosophy about *why* things work the way they do. Thanks again!
I always found the way the prose was written in many older TTRPGs much more rewarding to read. Not only did books like the one in the video expand the limitations of my imagination, they gave me a strong passion for words that are virtually lost to modern day to day language. It also gave me a plethora, a myriad, or perhaps a plenitude, of possible crossword answers :).
Verily! I learned a ton of words, and just concepts and history, from reading Gygax's stuff. I always tell the story of how in 10th Grade, I got extra credit in my English Class because I was the only one who knew what a Druid was (historically) and it was from having read the description in the PHB, in which Gygax provided historical context. Nowadays in the 5E PHB, it's just a packet of skills and abilities with no real-world earth-based context for what Druids were and what inspired the class. Thank you so much for watching and commenting!
For a desert island secenario I’d bring: 1e AD&D DM guide, because it’s basically just Gary’s notebook and it has many rules for many scenarios. Strange World: A self contained sci fi survival hex crawler that is rules light and has some great lore. It’s simple and fun! And easy to pack! Far Trek: A fan made Star Trek 3d6 system I quite enjoy. It’s got some interesting cinematic death mechanics and its system overall is pretty good. It’s also very adaptable. Tales of Equestria: A great game to introduce kids to rpgs with and I like the challenge table system and the sharing hero points mechanic from it as it encourages the good group dynamics. Also has a bunch of printed tables to replace polyhedral dice in the back. The challenge table does need tweaking though and the one time I tried to run it was a dismal failure: everyone made characters so comfortable in the setting none had any reason to adventure and so they… didn’t.
the DM's guide was like an esoteric tome of forbidden knowledge. The Gygaxian writing, lack of organisation and sheer volume of stuff made it into something different. It wasnt something you read. Like the notebooks of some ancient wizard, It was something you studied and pored over for hidden and arcane secrets.
This is exactly how I feel about it. The organization (or lack thereof...) means every time I look at it, I see something I didn't see before (or, at least, didn't remember). Thanks for watching and commenting!
Yes, for sure! That's a very early and very rare printing known as the "Second Alpha" printing from 1979. According to the Acaeum: "...this print had sixteen pages of the Monster Manual (Fourth Print) mistakenly bound within. Johnson relates in his interview that copies of this print went out to retailers via outer shipping. Once the error was detected, the books were recalled, the covers were removed, the correct pages were inserted, and the books were rebound with the old covers (see Second Print Beta below). However, at least a few copies were purchased by customers before the recall and remain in circulation. The pages for the DMG were apparently printed 16 to a sheet (8 on the front and 8 on the back), known as a signature, then cut to be bound in the book. In this case, the printer printed one side of the sheet with the DMG pages and the other with the Monster Manual pages. When they were cut and bound, alternating pairs of facing pages were thus either DMG or MM pages. The MM pages were also placed in their technically correct position in the book -- the page numbers were the correct MM page numbers, replacing the page of the same number in the DMG. The specific pages that contained Monster Manual data were: 98/99 (facing pages), 102/103 (facing pages), 106/107 (facing pages), and 110/111 (facing pages), for a total of 8 MM pages." So, you had a version that escaped the recall!
I loved that cartoon so much back in the day! I even own the entire series on DVD now. Thank you for watching and commenting, and cheers to a fellow Thundarr fan!
Oh, totally agree! I sometimes poke some light-hearted fun at the way Gary wrote and the words he used, but I learned so many words and unique turns-of-phrase that have become so handy in every day conversation. I also was forced to look things up that I didn't know about. For example, after seeing in the Player's Handbook that the Druid class was based on a real historical group of people, I looked them up to learn more about them. Years later in my Sophomore English Class, the teacher somehow ended up bringing Druids up in conversation and then asked if anybody knew what a Druid was. I raised my hand and spouted all the historical info I could remember. The teacher was so impressed he gave me extra credit and mentioned in all his years teaching, nobody had been able to answer that question. I wouldn't have learned that if it hadn't been for Gary's Player's Handbook!
I found your channel recently and I've really enjoyed your videos! You did a long one on the Greyhawk setting, and mentioned the two Gygax books featuring Gord. Somehow that series kept going under a different publisher - there were like five more Gord books, each one longer and weirder than the last. It's a very strange coda to the Greyhawk setting. The other thing I wanted to mention was inspired by your video about the RPG settings that had been committed to print like Blackmoor and similar. There was a setting published by TSR in 1985 called "Lankmar: City of Adventure" that was based on the Fritz Leiber books about Fafrd and the Gray Mouser books. It was as well-produced as the World of Greyhawk boxed set, there was a big double-sided map and the whole bit you'd expect from a boxed set from that period. I'd love to see you do a video on that set and hear what you think about it.
Thank you so much for watching, and also for this very detailed comment! I love getting this kind of feedback and also hearing people share their D&D stories! I totally remember Lankhmar: City of Adventure and I can add that to the queue. The Nehwon mythology section was one of my favorites in Deities & Demigods!
I would love to get a DCS III cover version! I'll never get rid of this one, but it would be nice to have an original to match with my original cover PHB, MM, and D&DG. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Those monster tables, at one point I made a big ol' project of trying to match the calculated XP values in those tables and found it to be chock full of errors. Most commonly they read off the wrong line in the XP table, but other errors existed. Mostly I was interested in seeing what Gary considered a special ability vs. an exceptional ability, and there was some interesting things that came from that which I wouldn't have expected. I'll have to see if I can find that spreadsheet... I do recall the unique devils and demons, I could not recreate the XP values listed in any reasonable way, so they had some way of thinking about those unique figures that is never discussed anywhere.
AHA! Not only did I compare Appendix E to the XP table, but also the values in the Monster Manual (and then I did MM2 and FF), and even put in there the values from the 2nd edition MM, although I didn't get around to computing 2nd ed values from the table for comparison. I did a separate file for BECMI as well. Some times the error was, as noted previously, the Appendix E compiler using the wrong line from the XP table, either in part (such as for hippopotamus where they use the correct base XP value but the wrong XP per HP value, a surprisingly common error) or entirely (such as for Griffons, they used the 8HD row despite it being a 7HD creature). Sometimes they counted flying as a special (e.g. for the Pteranodon), sometimes not (e.g. no bonus for Griffons). In fact, in almost all cases flying was not counted as a special ability for XP purposes, and yet there are just enough cases where it is that you have to wonder what's going on with it. Some things I might have expected to be a special they counted as exceptional and vice versa (e.g. the triceratops gets an EAXPA for trample, where all the other dinosaurs only have it as an SAXPB, or the Giant Gar getting only an SAXPB bonus for swallowing whole where it clearly should be an EAXPA). Sometimes they gave an extra SAXPB or EAXPA or three or five or eight for reasons I could not determine (I know it suggests a high value ability on a low HD monster should get a multiplier on the XP value of the ability, but that's not always obviously what is going on). Sometimes I think they just missed that a monster had a particular ability and so didn't include the XP for the ability (like the chimera having 6 attacks per round but not getting the 4+ attacks per round SAXPB bonus). Or maybe they didn't think a particular ability warranted bonus XP (e.g. a camel's spitting ability, despite being a ranged attack that causes blindness, didn't seem to warrant any bonus at all). An assortment of resistances or immunities (as possessed by undead, demons, devils, and others) was not always easy to figure out how to calculate bonuses for, if there even was any consistent methodology used at all by the Appendix E compiler in the first place. And then some critters had XP values I couldn't even begin to guess how the Appenix E compiler came up with them, like for all the golems. My values were off by a few hundred XP, so not by any sort of unbalanced amount, but it is annoying that I couldn't get the exact match on ANY of the golem types. The XP values listed in any source, be it Appendix E, MM, MM2, FF, a module, wherever the value is listed, there's a shockingly high chance it is wrong. All the calculations are rife with errors, inconsistencies, and mysteries. It's incredibly frustrating. So the only real solution is to always calculate your own values, and as the notes to the XP table say, only include bonuses for those abilities that could realistically have been used during the encounter, whether or not they were used. So encountering a flying monster in an enclosed space where it couldn't have flown if it wanted to means not including any bonus XP for the ability to fly. I didn't actually complete the exercise, there are plenty of empty cells in my spreadsheet, but I did plenty enough to realize just how awful the situation is in the printed material... I have 2404 entries in my list (which is still not a complete list, but obviously does cover quite a lot!) and 1109 entries where I tried to calculate an XP value, so 46%. Plenty enough to get a good picture of what is going on.
Thanks. I was notorious among my friends for taking very good care of my books. My parents didn't have a ton of money, so when they bought me something like this, I wanted to take good care of it to show respect to them (not that having a well-read and worn book is disrespectful, but hopefully you take my meaning). And yes, it is merely a contraction, but unlike fortnight, which was more common at the time, I'd never heard the word "Sennight" and to this day, I've never heard anyone use it in conversation or in writing. It's really unnecessary given that we have another very common word that means the same thing: "week." To me, that was just Gary being Gary and using an uncommon word "just because."
Funny, so many references to 4thEd being so bad. Here is my thought about this. I cut my D&D teeth on AD&D then did not play for years. Then played 5th Ed (for years now) and when a DM (who DM'd 5th Ed. for a group for us) offered to run a 4th Ed campaign we said we'd try it out. We love it. Yes, the powers take getting used to, BUT the adventure is what we are after. We have JUST as much fun playing 4th as 5th because we are playing. I think that if people set aside the Edition used to play and focus on the game, the DM and the interaction of the players/characters, they'll remember WHY they play. It is just FUN!
I very much agree. I'm posting a video later today in which I chat about 4E very briefly and how I enjoyed it the couple of times I played it. We were in the middle of a long campaign and chose to stick with 3E rather than change, since changing would've been a lot of work (since 4E is so different from 3E). I also mention how I think the game would've performed much better had they not called it "Dungeons & Dragons" but instead marketed it as a bit closer to a tactical wargame. I think the game is good for what it set out to do, but it's different enough from "standard" D&D that it did put a lot of people off who were expecting something else based on the name. Thanks, as always, for watching and commenting!
13:28 I think it's really interesting, all the fantasy stories that influenced D&D. Some of them I recognize, (Conan and "Ring Trilogy"), but most of them seem pretty obscure. Someone should do a retrospective on all the books listed in Appendix N and talk about what they inspired in D&D.
Thank you for watching and commenting! I'm glad you enjoyed the video! Yes, many of those books are "classic" science-fiction and fantasy, but you don't hear much about them any longer. Here are a couple places for you if you want more info: www.martinralya.com/category/books/reading-appendix-n/ (This person decided to read all of Appendix N and then blog about it; I linked you to the hashtag, so the posts are in backwards chronological order, newest first, but you can just scroll back to find the first post) Video-wise, I like this guy's stuff: ua-cam.com/play/PLjPmHJU66OEK4tZfURXtCuABxoLsNAyUM.html He does get a few things factually incorrect (for example, he claims TSR did not have the rights to publish the Cthulhu Mythos in Deities & Demigods, which is not true - the issue is much more complicated than that), but I like his approach and how he just talks about the books without a lot of bells & whistles or without having an agenda. Hope that helps. Enjoy!
I get that comment a lot and I should have clarified. When I use the word "edition" I mean *game edition* not *printing.* This is a "First Edition" copy because it's made for what is now referred to as "1st Edition D&D." But yes, it's a much later printing - this one is an 8th Printing, the first to feature the revised cover art by Jeff Easley. Sadly by the time I got the Dungeon Masters Guide, this was the only printing my mom could find at the store. I didn't get the DMG for the longest time because I was "only" a player and my DM forbid me to get it.
I've been looking forward to this video for weeks! I watched the video twice, but I feel like still don't understand why this book is one of your "big four." It's interesting how I've always viewed Gygaxian prose as a bug, you view it as a feature. You've definitely picqued my interest in the appendices! I've been slowly working my way through the books in Appendix N over the last year, but I'll spend some time with the rest of what is there. Thanks for posting this!
Thank you so much! I feel like I let you down a bit! I was really trying to look at it from the standpoint of, "If I'm stuck on an island, what would I want with me to run games?" The 1E DMG is *fun* to read (to me; not just the language, but the contents) and because I've been around playing long enough, I enjoy reading it from a standpoint of, "Oh, he's talking about this because this question came up..." Also, due to the poor organization, it means that every time I read it, I find something I didn't remember (or never knew) was there! But, I can get your point, I think. There are far better written DMGs with tables and advice that are just as good. That's partly why I tried to preface my recommendation by saying there was some nostalgia at play! Very cool that you're reading through Appendix N! That's a fun labor of love! I've read quite a few, but should do a better job at catching up on the ones I haven't read yet! I can't thank you enough for your support - I really appreciate it!
Even though I prefer Original Dungeons & Dragons (sans Greyhawk etc.), the DMG is the best RPG book of all time. You can read it every decade of your life and find new angles to approach Gary's writing. There is no other RPG book as evocative as this one.
I 100% agree with this! That's exactly why I'd want this book with me if I were stuck on a desert island. I'd always be able to find something new that I hadn't noticed before! And what I found would most likely be something I could implement into a game I were running! Thank you for watching and commenting!
Another book that is excellent for teaching you how to run a game is the "Gamemaster Handbook" for West End Games' "Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game." It's advice is, for the most part, milieu (I thought you appreciate that Gygaxian word) and system neutral.
That's fantastic - love that you used "milieu"! And thanks for the recommendation - I'm familiar with WEG's D6 Star Wars but never had a chance to play it nor check out the books. Appreciate you watching and commenting!
@@daddyrolleda1 Mate, you don't know what you missed! It's the best RPG system I've ever played, and I've played many of them (every edition of D&D/AD&D, Rolemaster/MERP/Spacemaster, Gurps, Traveller, Twilight 2000,TMNT, Vampire, Gangbusters, Top Secret, Shadowrun, Paranoia, Star Trek (FASA), Hunter Planet, Toon, and more I can't remember; heck, I even played Albedo!). If you ever get a chance to pick up a copy, do it, you won't regret it. Stay away from the d20 version, though. While I like 3rd edition, it's not a good fit for Star Wars, the system is too slow. I've not played the Fantasy Flight version; I was going to try it but I thought why bother, I've already got the best version of Star Wars. From one old DM to another, thanks for the videos, they've been great.
I do recall when the WEG version came out. I was an older teen, but a few years prior, while mowing my grandma's lawn one summer, I basically created a Star Wars RPG in my head because I couldn't believe nobody had done so yet. So, when the WEG version came out, I was a little perturbed because I (being a precocious teen) really though I had a chance at acquiring the license to publish my vapor-ware RPG idea. So, I avoided it! To my loss, I know. I've heard so many good things about it. Decades later, I was working at an ad agency here in Los Angeles. Our New York office handled the Hasbro Account. Then Hasbro acquired WotC. Given WotC's location on the West Coast, they decided to staff the account out of the L.A. office, so I made a request to lead the time given my experience with both D&D and MtG. The client sent me the 3 Core 3E books, but also the Star Wars D20 book. I never ran or played SWD20 but I did pull ideas from it to use in my 3E campaign!
@@daddyrolleda1 Like I said, I do like 3rd/3.5 and the d20 system, I just didn't think it fit Star Wars. The d6 version is simple and fast paced, so it easily emulates the movies. In fact, just after I wrote my previous comment, I watched another of you videos in which you mentioned something similar in regard to the proliferation of the d20 system and how, at first, you thought it was great, but you then realised that, sometimes, the system for a game genre does matter; this is one of those instances. I don't know if you know much about the way the WEG Star Wars was structured, but all the adventures were written with episodes and scenes in them -- they even started with a one page script the players read out to kick off the adventure. Personally, I never liked that, I understood they were trying to mimic a movie to get the players in that mindset, but I thought it was a little on the nose and I don't think a GM should be telling players how to play their character. It wasn't a big deal, I just didn't use it. Instead I gave them the background using the open crawl idea from the movies. Of course, back then computers weren't what they are now, so I couldn't set it up on the screen, I just read it out but prefaced it with the opening title music and then said, the crawl begins: A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." The game also has this unique feature borrowed from movies: the cut-away. This is were you describe a scene to the players of what the bad guys are doing at that point in time. Obviously it's just for dramatic and cinematic effect so you don't want to give anything away, but if handle correctly it's very cool... and you can make the players very nervous! I love the technique so much that I use it in D&D (I'm running a BECMI at the moment) and whatever game I'm running. By the way, thanks for chatting with me, it's great to talk with an ye olde DM like myself. It sounds to me that, like me, you're more a DM than a player. I like playing, but I much prefer DMing... I just have to know everything that's going on! I've really been enjoying you channel. I love history and the history of D&D is facinating. I knew some of it, but there's a lot I didn't know and now I do! Plus when I watched one of the videos about the game you're running for you daughter and her friends, I learned a few new tricks I can use in my game -- sometimes you can teach an old dog new tricks. Thanks Marty.
Without any question, the 1e DMG is the most entertaining RPG book of all time. Completely oddball and fun to read... but yeah, not the best as a tome to reference rules during play. heh
Thank you for watching and commenting! And I do agree. It's hard to explain, I think, to folks who didn't grow up with it, but I love reading it despite its flaws of organization, layout, and language.
Excellent! So many folks seem to have gotten rid of their gaming stuff back in the day. I'm very lucky to still have all my books, modules, boxed sets, and even all the stuff I created like maps and characters. Thanks for watching and commenting. Cheers!
I like that cover, too. Sadly, by the time my mom gave me this book as a gift, this was the only cover available, as TSR had moved to the orange-spine Easley covers. I have the original PHB and MM covers and one day would like to get a Sutherland III cover with the Efreet for my DMG. Thanks for watching and commenting.
no, thank you i really enjoy being able to see the books again, as i no longer own them (i think i have my self-annotated DM guide still) and i sold around ten of the Deities and Demigods 1st prints........i would scour garage sales for that stuff anyway....GREAT SHOW@@daddyrolleda1
Losing years of life from my unknown length, but definitely not infinite, lifespan for some spell? Yeah, i'll never use a single spell then. Give me your sword.
It was indeed! Great memory! (He may have used it elsewhere, but that's where I definitely remember it). "Your party set forth from Gorna a *sennight* ago, and for the past two days have been climbing higher into the crags of the Barrier Peaks."
The AD&D DMG and 3.5 DMG II are two of my favourite TTRPG books! I am curious as to what the 4e DMG offers that is not already covered by the 3.5 DMG II? Or is just an alternative option?
Thank you for watching and commenting! I really appreciate it! I'd say, from my perspective, that the 3.5 DMG II inspired parts of the 4E DMG, but there are differences. 3.5 DMG II covers: Running a Game, Adventures (pacing, traps, locations), The Campaign (beginning and ending, societies, establishments, crime & punishment, cities, major events), presents the entire city of Saltmarsh with locations and NPCs and plot/adventure hooks, Non-Player Characters, Characters, and new Magic Items. The 4E DMG covers: How to Be a DM, Running the Game (similar content to 3.5 DMG II), Combat Encounters, Building Encounters ("building" as in creating, not as in structures), Non-Combat Encounters, Adventures (using published adventures, fixing problems, settings, characters), Rewards (XP, Treasure, etc.), Campaigns (published campaigns, beginning, running, ending, etc.; much is similar to 3.5 DMG II), The World, the DM Toolbox (customizing monsters, creating monsters, creating NPCs, creating house rules, random dungeons, random encounters), and then present the town of Fallcrest. There is some overlap, and both do include some stuff that is mechanically-specific to the edition they're published for (either 3.5 or 4E) but if you have the means, they're both good to have in your arsenal!
I think some of the resurrection didn't work if the pc had work if they had reached their maximum life span And their was the potion of longevity I'm not by my 1ed books at the moment to check
i’m always dm never played as a player and when i finally do get someone to dm they give up and everyone points the finger at me and hand the dm back to me
I think the more modern take on high Gygaxian boils down more to “guy that barely graduated high school, trying to sound really smart, because ego.” As opposed to “the way he liked to write, and the books he read.” Especially since said prose didn’t really surface in this manner until the 1E hardbacks. OD&D, Chainmail, the modules that predated the 1E DMG, etc, are all much clearer and more readable. Frankly, I feel like I’ve always read the 1E DMG in a different light, after realizing a lot of the harsh guidelines exist because people like Rob Kuntz would outplay Gary when he DM’d. Substantial portions of that text are “don’t make these mistakes because I did and I don’t like how I lost control of my games.” There’s good in between that. But that underlying tone is odd and overly defensive. Especially with the modern view of RPGs as basically just being make believe with some guidelines. His whole “this is incredibly serious business” tone is….just silly really.
Thank you for watching and commenting! I can see a lot of your points and there's probably something to that. I think another thing with Gary constantly going on and on about the seriousness of the game was because he was going out of his way to try to make a case for how it was a "completely different game" than D&D so as not to have to pay royalties to Arneson. I do recall reading early issues of Dragon magazine and it does seem the older games were much more focused on "DM vs player." I think a lot of that has to do with the nature of the games from which TTRPGs originated, which were PvP war games. Thanks again!
Haha, yeah, as a modern gamer exploring and reading everything I can about the evolution of ttrpgs, all of Gygax's writing just makes me roll my eyes. I respect the pioneering work, but man does so much of it just come off as full of itself. I'm extremely happy for the style of OSR content as it exists today instead.
It's *for* First Edition (which was the context for which I was using the term), but yes, it's a later printing. I've shown this copy a few times on my channel and mentioned that it's not the original cover by Dave Sutherland III but rather the later 1983 Easley cover. I just worry about repeating myself too much for folks who have already heard me mention that. In this particular case, I meant 1st Edition as opposed to, say, 2nd Edition or 5th Edition or whatever.
I remember as a kid I played ad&d with my friends, and their dad was the DM. We were allowed to read the phb, and even the monster manual as much as we liked. But it was absolutely forbidden for us to read the dmg! I recently got a copy of the ad&d dmg, and I can see why. All these secrets help add to the immersion of the game, and players just knowing them would have made them less exciting. Great book.
As for my four desert island books, that's tough. I'd probably start with the Rules Cyclopedia, because it's an entire game system, and I'm a big fan of it. Then I'd want the Advanced Fighting Fantasy Deluxe book, which contains its own system, and the world of Titan an excellent and highly imaginative setting that doesn't get nearly the love it deserves. Third I'd want either the Dark Sun or Planescape boxed sets. And finally OSRIC would probably be good, chock full of tables, and basically everything from ad&d, it feels like cheating a bit, but it's very usable.
Thank you so much for watching, and for this great comment! I had a similar experience as you - our DM would share the monster books with us all the time, but we were specifically told not to read the DMG!
Your Desert Island list is great! As you know, I mentioned in my video on the History of D&D Editions that many folks consider the Rules Cyclopedia their Desert Island RPG, and I can see why. It's a great choice. I sadly am not super familiar with Advanced Fighting Fantasy; I've heard of it, but never played it before. And OSRIC is a great resource for folks wanting to run a 1E style game without spending a ton of money to acquire out-of-print books. I have a copy and used it to run an old school game through Module S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.
Cheers!
That edition of the DMG taught me SO much stuff. Mostly it gave so many tables, tools, and advice on how to flesh out the game and keep the game moving. AND if you didn't have anything prepared you could just take 10 minutes, roll up a game session on the spot, add a bit of story to what you just concocted, and you and your players were rolling. As a kid it was invaluable, because I didn't know jack smack about anything. I had learned with the Moldvay boxed set and also some weird hard cover generic RPG book I pretty much had permanently checked out from the public library (it called halflings "hobbits" so it was older, I don't remember the name though).
Anyone else have a bunch of penciled in powers for artifacts that were written and erased a bunch of times? Just remembered that. Funny!
Ha! That last part cracked me up. I was always too afraid to write in my books, but I would keep separate lists that I'd tuck into the pages!
The earliest three book boxed set for Original D&D refers to halflings are "Hobbits" and some of the earliest supplements do, as well (my copy of "Greyhawk" calls them Halflings in some sections ,and "Hobbits" in another - I suspect they just missed some of the references. Same issue with "Ents" vs "Treants" and the use of "Balrog"].
Thanks for watching! I love hearing how other people used this book as well!
I started playing in college with a bunch of guys who'd been playing for years, so my experience was different. I wasn't forbidden anything outright, since they were all familiar with everything themselves, and we were all adults. But what's now called "meta-gaming" was strictly forbidden. So early on, I was reading the DMG (1e) and I loved it. Still do. It's one of the best, and i always recommend it. I think of it as less about rules and more about tools. So many great options and possibilities -- and tables galore. One thing about the aging tables was that some players always wanted to use it because of the adjustments to ability scores due to age, always looking for that little extra edge. And once when I was still a noob, I didn't want to cast a haste spell (iirc) because it aged my (elf) pc a year, and my friend said to me, "No one in D&D ever dies of old age."
Great video! AD&D 1e DMG is one of my favorite guides of all time. I refer to mine quite often. Lots of great information in there.
Thank you so much! So glad you enjoyed the video. I definitely like pulling this book off the shelf and just flipping to a different section to read.
Thank you for yet a great video!
I had forgotten how much information that book holds. Now I've got to buy it because my old copy was sold many years ago when I was unemployed and needed money. 😅
Oh, yikes! I'm sorry you had to sell it! I hope you're able to find a good quality copy at a decent price. They did a reprint a few years ago that's the original book but with a new updated "homage" cover that might be less expensive than the original. Good luck, and thanks for watching and commenting!
Another great video. 🙂 One thing I think worth mentioning about the monster list in the back of the 1E DMG is that it provides each monster's THAC0 for the first time so that DM's don't have to consult the Monster Attack Matrix if they don't want to.
Thank you very much! I'm so glad you enjoyed it!
Very good point about that monster recap in the back! So many folks think THAC0 debuted in 2E but it predated it by quite a long while, as you noted. Thanks!
Rolemaster Gamemaster Law has 100 pages of system ignorant gm advice.
It is the best GM guide I have read so far. Robins Laws of good Game Mastering is also a classic by now.
Thank you so much for these recommendations! I'm familiar with the Robin Laws book but no one has ever recommended Rolemaster's Gamemaster Law. I will need to check that out! Thanks again!
I love my 1e DMG. It's loaded with useful info and I greatly enjoyed reading Gary's "high gygaxian". I always felt like the book was written just for me. I refer to it often, even though my edition of choice these days is Pathfinder 1e
We're on the same wavelength! I don't play 1E currently, but even during my 3.5/Pathfinder1E days, I would look through this book often. It's a very fun read, despite its lack of organization and odd contents (a lot of this stuff, as I mentioned in the video, I think should have been part of the Player's Handbook).
Thanks for watching and commenting!
Most of our DM's rarely referenced the DMG. They did use it for treasure for random encounters and gems and jewelry but not so much for rules.
I remember when we were allowed to look at the section about characters and seeing the Age table. I spent about an hour rolling for the age of all my characters.
I didn't get a DMG for several years after I started playing. So finding magic items was a WOW factor since I didn't know what a lot of them did. I would hear from a long time player "Man, that's a great item. You can do X, Y and Z with it."
I also don't recall our DM even having this book at the table most of the time, even though he forbade us to read it!
The magic items are fun and especially the artifacts include an implied world-building element that I always found fascinating.
One of my favorite examples of High Gygaxian is where he writes about MUs learning new spells from NPC MUs after challenging them to magical duels, and at one point he refers to the challenging PC as a "worthy", which took me quite a while to parse.
Nice one! I actually don't remember that off the top of my head. Great find!
The DMG (1st release) was the only book I felt I needed for a LONG time. The odd placement of information was confusing to me as well, so I taped alphabetical dividers at the start of sections I knew I'd need to reference. A-Z, and each letter had absolutely nothing to do with the information it earmarked, but it still made referencing quicker once I remembered that "M" had attack speed tables, "Q" had treasure, "U" had monster stats, etc. Decades later, its still my FAV piece of material from any & every further edition.
Excellent! I think you should do a break down and history of alignment and especially alignment languages.
Thank you for watching and commenting! I really appreciate your support. And... I've got you covered! I didn't really delve into Alignment Languages (I can definitely to that another time) but I have two videos on Alignment and Planes on my channel:
Part 1) ua-cam.com/video/b6QE5_Yydl0/v-deo.html
Part 2) ua-cam.com/video/2JqOqNv4KTE/v-deo.html
I hope you enjoy!
My first reaction to seeing the thumbnail and reading the video's title was, "That's NOT the 1st edition DMG cover" lol I'm old.
Yeah, I've had that comment a lot from people trying to "correct" me. I hope you enjoyed the actual video, though!
This is where the multiple uses of the word "edition" can be tricky, but when talking about D&D I use "Edition" to mean "System" and "Printing" to refer to the, well, "printing" number. My DMG is, I believe, an 8th Printing based on having the revised Easley cover, but also the year I received it, which was prior to the 9th Printing.
I wish I had one of the AD&D DM Guides. I remember looking at them in the shop but never having the money. Of course, now I have the Hyperboria DM guide which is likely just as good, better laid out, but perhaps less nostalgic. I like the Gygaxian style. It reminds me of Cicero, or Russian authors.
I have quite a few DM guides. The Pathfinder one is probably the best. I use them mostly for tables of things, like encounters or city generation, but I always end up creating my own version because there's going to be something I want to tweak. I get a lot of mileage out of tables of random encounters (not just monsters, but events), random dungeon/city generation and random names. It's amazing how often that table of age, height and weight gets used.
Thank you so much for watching and commenting!
As you saw in the video, I also like the Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide! So much great and useful material in there!
I didn't realize there was a separate GM guide for Hyperborea - I'll need to check that out!
And I modify/tweak the random lists all the time, but they are great inspiration and idea starters!
One of my favorite 2e rarities is the World Builder's Guide.
Of the AD&D 2e splatbooks, I always felt that the best ones were the green covered historical settings ones and the blue covered ones that are meant for DMs to give them new reference material. Heck, the Arms & Equipment Guide got the most use in our game, I think. Just a fun and useful resource.
I loved those Green Historical Guides! I have the Charlemagne's Paladins, A Mighty Fortress, and Crusades in physical form, plus the Roman and Viking ones in PDF. Great resources!
I liked the blue Sages & Specialists book as well. And one of my good friends on Twitter really likes that Campaign Sourcebook I mention at the end. The author of that book, William Connors, also chats with me on Twitter frequently.
I have a video of me rolling up a 1e Gamma World Character!
I need to go back and watch that one!
Thank you for a great video! I absolutely loved Gamma World in my early teens and even had some fairly rare miniatures. Science fiction was at an all time high and the biggest sci-fi RPG was Traveller. But GW was so bizarre and quirky with mutations and a mix between technology and magic, it just compelled me. But D&D still ruled the roost in my small circle of nerdy friends.
When I first saw Thundarr the Barbarian, I was blown away! It's a cartoon of Gamma World! Thank you so much for stating the obvious but something most people today aren't aware of.
Great video, new subscriber!
I love this book, warts and all. I think I even have both covers. Yes! That's what I love about this book, the nuance and the level of detail. It wasn't so much of a rulebook as it was a deep dive into things people may not even think of to add depth to the game. The intro to Thundaar the Barbarian scared the crap out of me as a kid, because something like that could actually happen. The moon getting shattered and causing global catastrophe that is.
I was a huge fan of Thundarr and Gamma World as a kid! The world of Thundarr was so different than anything else you saw on TV at the time (at least, what I saw). Randomly in my 9th Grade Art Class I ended up in a class with a teacher who had done background animation on that show and I thought it made him the coolest person I knew!
Thanks for watching and commenting!
A quick word about the use of 'Boot Hill'; over the last 6 months I have watched a movie from the 50's set in the old american/spanish areas of the US, involving archeologists and spooks and spirits from the 16th century (post cowboy west?), and an episode of SHARPE set in 1812 in Spain (pre cowboy) but involving the similar sort of plot however the treasures causing the spooks and scares have been brought back to europe. Both achievable with Ad&d + BH....
Both of those ideas sound like so much fun! Thank you for sharing, and also for watching and commenting!
Thanks for another fantastic video. I definitely agree that the first time playing everything was new and super exciting. I don’t think that the DMG made this happen, I think it was just because it was the first role-playing game we had ever experienced, and we didn’t know what to expect. In retrospect, Dungeon, Masters guide was a complete mess, and finding anything in there was almost impossible.
Thank you for watching and commenting!
It is totally a complete mess, layout-wise! No argument here! But I guess (viewed through the lens of nostalgia, I fully admit), I find that somewhat charming and also as a result, because of the lack of organization, I always find stuff in there that I didn't remember or have never even read before!
Another great video. I was told that Gary rushed this and the PHB to production, because he wanted to disassociate himself from Dave Arneson, for money reasons, and the other reason was due to the very high demand at that time. I don't know if any of that is true, but as sloppy as the DMG and the PHB were put together, it's still an incredible achievement, especially since it was done before the internet existed.
As always, thank you so much for your support! There was definitely a background related to Gary creating a "new" game in order to be able to take all the royalties for himself (it's the same reason he wrote B2: Keep on the Borderlands and added it to the Holmes Boxed Set in place of Mike Carr's "In Search of the Unknown" because Mike got all the royalties from those sales for himself).
The organization of both the PHB and DMG, as you mentioned, isn't great. The write-up of how Gary describes the character classes in the PHB is not consistent class and class, and the lack of headers or sections makes it very difficult to find the necessary information.
Thanks again!
@@daddyrolleda1 I think someone should rewrite the PHB & DMG, making them look better, along with fixing mistakes and such. Maybe someone already has 🙂
@@Lightmane Well, there is OSRIC which is a retroclone, but it doesn't include anything from the DMG Appendices, and it does make a few minor changes to the rules. But it sounds like what you're asking for is a treatment of 1E similar to how Old School Essentials replicated B/X D&D pretty much exactly. That would be a great task!
@@daddyrolleda1 I'll get right on that 😜🙂
Another great video and a wonderful walk down memory lane. Yes those appendices are so very fascinating.
I'll be honest, other than Appendix N, I had this book for years before spending any time with any of the other appendices. When I discovered them, I was blown away by the amount of stuff in there that's useful across any edition!
Thanks for watching and commenting! I always really appreciate your support.
I also thought you might appreciate that I mentioned the Campaign Sourcebook & Catacomb Guide! You are, of course, the friend from Twitter I mentioned when talking about that.
@@daddyrolleda1 I definitely appreciated that. It is such a good book with so much information in it.
Thanks for the video! The 1E AD&D DMG is one of the "fullest" RPGs as well as one of the oldest. I've been through it multiple times cover to cover and find new ways to think about the material within it with each time I open it. I look at sections of it in great detail on my own channel for those who would like a closer look with some commentary. The 3.5 DMG II is a solid second choice for top RPG book. Tons of good stuff in it including the Saltmarsh "sample" town. Very well written and even if you wish to ignore the newer suggestions on how to run a game, still a great deal of information.
Thank you very much for watching and commenting! I really appreciate it!
It's definitely a book I refer back to often, and as you mentioned, I always find something new that I'd missed before. Tons of actual useful stuff for running a game, but I also like it for understanding some of Gary's philosophy about *why* things work the way they do.
Thanks again!
I would always recommend a DM find this book, no matter what edition. It gives information anyone running a campaign can (and should) use.
Yes, completely agree! It's one of the reasons why this is one of my "desert island" books!
Thank you for watching and commenting!
I always found the way the prose was written in many older TTRPGs much more rewarding to read. Not only did books like the one in the video expand the limitations of my imagination, they gave me a strong passion for words that are virtually lost to modern day to day language. It also gave me a plethora, a myriad, or perhaps a plenitude, of possible crossword answers :).
Verily!
I learned a ton of words, and just concepts and history, from reading Gygax's stuff. I always tell the story of how in 10th Grade, I got extra credit in my English Class because I was the only one who knew what a Druid was (historically) and it was from having read the description in the PHB, in which Gygax provided historical context. Nowadays in the 5E PHB, it's just a packet of skills and abilities with no real-world earth-based context for what Druids were and what inspired the class.
Thank you so much for watching and commenting!
@@daddyrolleda1 Thank you for making content worth watching and commenting on :)
For a desert island secenario I’d bring:
1e AD&D DM guide, because it’s basically just Gary’s notebook and it has many rules for many scenarios.
Strange World: A self contained sci fi survival hex crawler that is rules light and has some great lore. It’s simple and fun! And easy to pack!
Far Trek: A fan made Star Trek 3d6 system I quite enjoy. It’s got some interesting cinematic death mechanics and its system overall is pretty good. It’s also very adaptable.
Tales of Equestria: A great game to introduce kids to rpgs with and I like the challenge table system and the sharing hero points mechanic from it as it encourages the good group dynamics. Also has a bunch of printed tables to replace polyhedral dice in the back. The challenge table does need tweaking though and the one time I tried to run it was a dismal failure: everyone made characters so comfortable in the setting none had any reason to adventure and so they… didn’t.
the DM's guide was like an esoteric tome of forbidden knowledge. The Gygaxian writing, lack of organisation and sheer volume of stuff made it into something different. It wasnt something you read. Like the notebooks of some ancient wizard, It was something you studied and pored over for hidden and arcane secrets.
This is exactly how I feel about it. The organization (or lack thereof...) means every time I look at it, I see something I didn't see before (or, at least, didn't remember).
Thanks for watching and commenting!
What a perfect analogy
I remember preordering the DMG. When I recieved it, 8 pages were substituted with pages from the monster manual.
Yes, for sure! That's a very early and very rare printing known as the "Second Alpha" printing from 1979. According to the Acaeum:
"...this print had sixteen pages of the Monster Manual (Fourth Print) mistakenly bound within. Johnson relates in his interview that copies of this print went out to retailers via outer shipping. Once the error was detected, the books were recalled, the covers were removed, the correct pages were inserted, and the books were rebound with the old covers (see Second Print Beta below). However, at least a few copies were purchased by customers before the recall and remain in circulation. The pages for the DMG were apparently printed 16 to a sheet (8 on the front and 8 on the back), known as a signature, then cut to be bound in the book. In this case, the printer printed one side of the sheet with the DMG pages and the other with the Monster Manual pages. When they were cut and bound, alternating pairs of facing pages were thus either DMG or MM pages. The MM pages were also placed in their technically correct position in the book -- the page numbers were the correct MM page numbers, replacing the page of the same number in the DMG. The specific pages that contained Monster Manual data were: 98/99 (facing pages), 102/103 (facing pages), 106/107 (facing pages), and 110/111 (facing pages), for a total of 8 MM pages."
So, you had a version that escaped the recall!
Giving a thumbs up for the Thundarr call out.
I loved that cartoon so much back in the day! I even own the entire series on DVD now.
Thank you for watching and commenting, and cheers to a fellow Thundarr fan!
I remember me and my buddies trying to read the DM Guide in grade school… seriously D&D did more for my reading ability than school, way way more
Oh, totally agree! I sometimes poke some light-hearted fun at the way Gary wrote and the words he used, but I learned so many words and unique turns-of-phrase that have become so handy in every day conversation. I also was forced to look things up that I didn't know about. For example, after seeing in the Player's Handbook that the Druid class was based on a real historical group of people, I looked them up to learn more about them. Years later in my Sophomore English Class, the teacher somehow ended up bringing Druids up in conversation and then asked if anybody knew what a Druid was. I raised my hand and spouted all the historical info I could remember. The teacher was so impressed he gave me extra credit and mentioned in all his years teaching, nobody had been able to answer that question. I wouldn't have learned that if it hadn't been for Gary's Player's Handbook!
I found your channel recently and I've really enjoyed your videos!
You did a long one on the Greyhawk setting, and mentioned the two Gygax books featuring Gord. Somehow that series kept going under a different publisher - there were like five more Gord books, each one longer and weirder than the last. It's a very strange coda to the Greyhawk setting.
The other thing I wanted to mention was inspired by your video about the RPG settings that had been committed to print like Blackmoor and similar. There was a setting published by TSR in 1985 called "Lankmar: City of Adventure" that was based on the Fritz Leiber books about Fafrd and the Gray Mouser books. It was as well-produced as the World of Greyhawk boxed set, there was a big double-sided map and the whole bit you'd expect from a boxed set from that period. I'd love to see you do a video on that set and hear what you think about it.
Thank you so much for watching, and also for this very detailed comment! I love getting this kind of feedback and also hearing people share their D&D stories!
I totally remember Lankhmar: City of Adventure and I can add that to the queue. The Nehwon mythology section was one of my favorites in Deities & Demigods!
Even with nostalgia, there's quite a lot in that book. It's my preferred D&D edition. Naturally, I have a copy of each cover option.
I would love to get a DCS III cover version! I'll never get rid of this one, but it would be nice to have an original to match with my original cover PHB, MM, and D&DG.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@Coyote1911 Most of the art TSR used was by beginning artists. Some were better than others. Cost them considerably less.
Those monster tables, at one point I made a big ol' project of trying to match the calculated XP values in those tables and found it to be chock full of errors. Most commonly they read off the wrong line in the XP table, but other errors existed. Mostly I was interested in seeing what Gary considered a special ability vs. an exceptional ability, and there was some interesting things that came from that which I wouldn't have expected. I'll have to see if I can find that spreadsheet... I do recall the unique devils and demons, I could not recreate the XP values listed in any reasonable way, so they had some way of thinking about those unique figures that is never discussed anywhere.
Oh wow! That had to have been a ton of work! I hope you can still find it, especially after all the work you did!
AHA! Not only did I compare Appendix E to the XP table, but also the values in the Monster Manual (and then I did MM2 and FF), and even put in there the values from the 2nd edition MM, although I didn't get around to computing 2nd ed values from the table for comparison. I did a separate file for BECMI as well.
Some times the error was, as noted previously, the Appendix E compiler using the wrong line from the XP table, either in part (such as for hippopotamus where they use the correct base XP value but the wrong XP per HP value, a surprisingly common error) or entirely (such as for Griffons, they used the 8HD row despite it being a 7HD creature).
Sometimes they counted flying as a special (e.g. for the Pteranodon), sometimes not (e.g. no bonus for Griffons). In fact, in almost all cases flying was not counted as a special ability for XP purposes, and yet there are just enough cases where it is that you have to wonder what's going on with it.
Some things I might have expected to be a special they counted as exceptional and vice versa (e.g. the triceratops gets an EAXPA for trample, where all the other dinosaurs only have it as an SAXPB, or the Giant Gar getting only an SAXPB bonus for swallowing whole where it clearly should be an EAXPA).
Sometimes they gave an extra SAXPB or EAXPA or three or five or eight for reasons I could not determine (I know it suggests a high value ability on a low HD monster should get a multiplier on the XP value of the ability, but that's not always obviously what is going on).
Sometimes I think they just missed that a monster had a particular ability and so didn't include the XP for the ability (like the chimera having 6 attacks per round but not getting the 4+ attacks per round SAXPB bonus). Or maybe they didn't think a particular ability warranted bonus XP (e.g. a camel's spitting ability, despite being a ranged attack that causes blindness, didn't seem to warrant any bonus at all).
An assortment of resistances or immunities (as possessed by undead, demons, devils, and others) was not always easy to figure out how to calculate bonuses for, if there even was any consistent methodology used at all by the Appendix E compiler in the first place.
And then some critters had XP values I couldn't even begin to guess how the Appenix E compiler came up with them, like for all the golems. My values were off by a few hundred XP, so not by any sort of unbalanced amount, but it is annoying that I couldn't get the exact match on ANY of the golem types.
The XP values listed in any source, be it Appendix E, MM, MM2, FF, a module, wherever the value is listed, there's a shockingly high chance it is wrong. All the calculations are rife with errors, inconsistencies, and mysteries. It's incredibly frustrating. So the only real solution is to always calculate your own values, and as the notes to the XP table say, only include bonuses for those abilities that could realistically have been used during the encounter, whether or not they were used. So encountering a flying monster in an enclosed space where it couldn't have flown if it wanted to means not including any bonus XP for the ability to fly.
I didn't actually complete the exercise, there are plenty of empty cells in my spreadsheet, but I did plenty enough to realize just how awful the situation is in the printed material... I have 2404 entries in my list (which is still not a complete list, but obviously does cover quite a lot!) and 1109 entries where I tried to calculate an XP value, so 46%. Plenty enough to get a good picture of what is going on.
What a ton of work, but I bet you enjoyed the project or else you wouldn't have done it!
I still have my copy also, though in a less fabulous condition. Sennight is merely a contraction of Seven Nights
Thanks. I was notorious among my friends for taking very good care of my books. My parents didn't have a ton of money, so when they bought me something like this, I wanted to take good care of it to show respect to them (not that having a well-read and worn book is disrespectful, but hopefully you take my meaning).
And yes, it is merely a contraction, but unlike fortnight, which was more common at the time, I'd never heard the word "Sennight" and to this day, I've never heard anyone use it in conversation or in writing. It's really unnecessary given that we have another very common word that means the same thing: "week." To me, that was just Gary being Gary and using an uncommon word "just because."
Funny, so many references to 4thEd being so bad. Here is my thought about this. I cut my D&D teeth on AD&D then did not play for years. Then played 5th Ed (for years now) and when a DM (who DM'd 5th Ed. for a group for us) offered to run a 4th Ed campaign we said we'd try it out. We love it. Yes, the powers take getting used to, BUT the adventure is what we are after. We have JUST as much fun playing 4th as 5th because we are playing.
I think that if people set aside the Edition used to play and focus on the game, the DM and the interaction of the players/characters, they'll remember WHY they play. It is just FUN!
I very much agree. I'm posting a video later today in which I chat about 4E very briefly and how I enjoyed it the couple of times I played it. We were in the middle of a long campaign and chose to stick with 3E rather than change, since changing would've been a lot of work (since 4E is so different from 3E).
I also mention how I think the game would've performed much better had they not called it "Dungeons & Dragons" but instead marketed it as a bit closer to a tactical wargame. I think the game is good for what it set out to do, but it's different enough from "standard" D&D that it did put a lot of people off who were expecting something else based on the name.
Thanks, as always, for watching and commenting!
High Gygaxian, archaic terms, flowery language, and optional grammar
"Optional grammar"!
So true! He was also a big fan of "parentheses WITHIN parentheses" just to explain himself.
@@daddyrolleda1 Very painful.
13:28 I think it's really interesting, all the fantasy stories that influenced D&D. Some of them I recognize, (Conan and "Ring Trilogy"), but most of them seem pretty obscure. Someone should do a retrospective on all the books listed in Appendix N and talk about what they inspired in D&D.
There are several of these in video and written form.
Goodman Games has an entire blog series online about the stuff in Appendix N. It's very good.
@@beezyonbass3906 Ok, Thanks.
Thank you for watching and commenting! I'm glad you enjoyed the video!
Yes, many of those books are "classic" science-fiction and fantasy, but you don't hear much about them any longer.
Here are a couple places for you if you want more info:
www.martinralya.com/category/books/reading-appendix-n/
(This person decided to read all of Appendix N and then blog about it; I linked you to the hashtag, so the posts are in backwards chronological order, newest first, but you can just scroll back to find the first post)
Video-wise, I like this guy's stuff: ua-cam.com/play/PLjPmHJU66OEK4tZfURXtCuABxoLsNAyUM.html
He does get a few things factually incorrect (for example, he claims TSR did not have the rights to publish the Cthulhu Mythos in Deities & Demigods, which is not true - the issue is much more complicated than that), but I like his approach and how he just talks about the books without a lot of bells & whistles or without having an agenda.
Hope that helps. Enjoy!
I always used the purported magical properties of gems for gems that I wanted to be enchanted.
We're actually closer to nuclear war now than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Most excellent, my dude!
That looks like the second edition cover. My first edition cover had a big red demon on the cover.
I get that comment a lot and I should have clarified. When I use the word "edition" I mean *game edition* not *printing.* This is a "First Edition" copy because it's made for what is now referred to as "1st Edition D&D." But yes, it's a much later printing - this one is an 8th Printing, the first to feature the revised cover art by Jeff Easley. Sadly by the time I got the Dungeon Masters Guide, this was the only printing my mom could find at the store. I didn't get the DMG for the longest time because I was "only" a player and my DM forbid me to get it.
I've been looking forward to this video for weeks! I watched the video twice, but I feel like still don't understand why this book is one of your "big four." It's interesting how I've always viewed Gygaxian prose as a bug, you view it as a feature. You've definitely picqued my interest in the appendices! I've been slowly working my way through the books in Appendix N over the last year, but I'll spend some time with the rest of what is there. Thanks for posting this!
Thank you so much! I feel like I let you down a bit!
I was really trying to look at it from the standpoint of, "If I'm stuck on an island, what would I want with me to run games?" The 1E DMG is *fun* to read (to me; not just the language, but the contents) and because I've been around playing long enough, I enjoy reading it from a standpoint of, "Oh, he's talking about this because this question came up..."
Also, due to the poor organization, it means that every time I read it, I find something I didn't remember (or never knew) was there!
But, I can get your point, I think. There are far better written DMGs with tables and advice that are just as good. That's partly why I tried to preface my recommendation by saying there was some nostalgia at play!
Very cool that you're reading through Appendix N! That's a fun labor of love! I've read quite a few, but should do a better job at catching up on the ones I haven't read yet!
I can't thank you enough for your support - I really appreciate it!
Even though I prefer Original Dungeons & Dragons (sans Greyhawk etc.), the DMG is the best RPG book of all time. You can read it every decade of your life and find new angles to approach Gary's writing. There is no other RPG book as evocative as this one.
I 100% agree with this! That's exactly why I'd want this book with me if I were stuck on a desert island. I'd always be able to find something new that I hadn't noticed before! And what I found would most likely be something I could implement into a game I were running!
Thank you for watching and commenting!
@@daddyrolleda1 It's a well researched series and a trip down memory lane too for me, so thanks.
I didnt buy a DM book untill around 2020 because as a kid we took this warning so seriously lol
Totally! It was a big thing back in the day that players weren't supposed to have the DMG!
Thanks for watching and commenting!
Another book that is excellent for teaching you how to run a game is the "Gamemaster Handbook" for West End Games' "Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game." It's advice is, for the most part, milieu (I thought you appreciate that Gygaxian word) and system neutral.
That's fantastic - love that you used "milieu"!
And thanks for the recommendation - I'm familiar with WEG's D6 Star Wars but never had a chance to play it nor check out the books.
Appreciate you watching and commenting!
@@daddyrolleda1 Mate, you don't know what you missed! It's the best RPG system I've ever played, and I've played many of them (every edition of D&D/AD&D, Rolemaster/MERP/Spacemaster, Gurps, Traveller, Twilight 2000,TMNT, Vampire, Gangbusters, Top Secret, Shadowrun, Paranoia, Star Trek (FASA), Hunter Planet, Toon, and more I can't remember; heck, I even played Albedo!). If you ever get a chance to pick up a copy, do it, you won't regret it. Stay away from the d20 version, though. While I like 3rd edition, it's not a good fit for Star Wars, the system is too slow. I've not played the Fantasy Flight version; I was going to try it but I thought why bother, I've already got the best version of Star Wars. From one old DM to another, thanks for the videos, they've been great.
I do recall when the WEG version came out. I was an older teen, but a few years prior, while mowing my grandma's lawn one summer, I basically created a Star Wars RPG in my head because I couldn't believe nobody had done so yet. So, when the WEG version came out, I was a little perturbed because I (being a precocious teen) really though I had a chance at acquiring the license to publish my vapor-ware RPG idea. So, I avoided it! To my loss, I know. I've heard so many good things about it.
Decades later, I was working at an ad agency here in Los Angeles. Our New York office handled the Hasbro Account. Then Hasbro acquired WotC. Given WotC's location on the West Coast, they decided to staff the account out of the L.A. office, so I made a request to lead the time given my experience with both D&D and MtG. The client sent me the 3 Core 3E books, but also the Star Wars D20 book. I never ran or played SWD20 but I did pull ideas from it to use in my 3E campaign!
@@daddyrolleda1 Like I said, I do like 3rd/3.5 and the d20 system, I just didn't think it fit Star Wars. The d6 version is simple and fast paced, so it easily emulates the movies. In fact, just after I wrote my previous comment, I watched another of you videos in which you mentioned something similar in regard to the proliferation of the d20 system and how, at first, you thought it was great, but you then realised that, sometimes, the system for a game genre does matter; this is one of those instances. I don't know if you know much about the way the WEG Star Wars was structured, but all the adventures were written with episodes and scenes in them -- they even started with a one page script the players read out to kick off the adventure. Personally, I never liked that, I understood they were trying to mimic a movie to get the players in that mindset, but I thought it was a little on the nose and I don't think a GM should be telling players how to play their character. It wasn't a big deal, I just didn't use it. Instead I gave them the background using the open crawl idea from the movies. Of course, back then computers weren't what they are now, so I couldn't set it up on the screen, I just read it out but prefaced it with the opening title music and then said, the crawl begins: A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." The game also has this unique feature borrowed from movies: the cut-away. This is were you describe a scene to the players of what the bad guys are doing at that point in time. Obviously it's just for dramatic and cinematic effect so you don't want to give anything away, but if handle correctly it's very cool... and you can make the players very nervous! I love the technique so much that I use it in D&D (I'm running a BECMI at the moment) and whatever game I'm running. By the way, thanks for chatting with me, it's great to talk with an ye olde DM like myself. It sounds to me that, like me, you're more a DM than a player. I like playing, but I much prefer DMing... I just have to know everything that's going on! I've really been enjoying you channel. I love history and the history of D&D is facinating. I knew some of it, but there's a lot I didn't know and now I do! Plus when I watched one of the videos about the game you're running for you daughter and her friends, I learned a few new tricks I can use in my game -- sometimes you can teach an old dog new tricks. Thanks Marty.
Without any question, the 1e DMG is the most entertaining RPG book of all time. Completely oddball and fun to read... but yeah, not the best as a tome to reference rules during play. heh
Thank you for watching and commenting! And I do agree. It's hard to explain, I think, to folks who didn't grow up with it, but I love reading it despite its flaws of organization, layout, and language.
@@daddyrolleda1 Indeed, it has a very specific kind of charm to it. :-)
still got mine
Excellent! So many folks seem to have gotten rid of their gaming stuff back in the day. I'm very lucky to still have all my books, modules, boxed sets, and even all the stuff I created like maps and characters.
Thanks for watching and commenting. Cheers!
i prefer the Effrit cover with the City of Brass
I like that cover, too. Sadly, by the time my mom gave me this book as a gift, this was the only cover available, as TSR had moved to the orange-spine Easley covers. I have the original PHB and MM covers and one day would like to get a Sutherland III cover with the Efreet for my DMG.
Thanks for watching and commenting.
no, thank you
i really enjoy being able to see the books again, as i no longer own them (i think i have my self-annotated DM guide still)
and i sold around ten of the Deities and Demigods 1st prints........i would scour garage sales for that stuff
anyway....GREAT SHOW@@daddyrolleda1
Losing years of life from my unknown length, but definitely not infinite, lifespan for some spell? Yeah, i'll never use a single spell then. Give me your sword.
It is definitely a different style of play, to be sure!
Thank you for watching and commenting!
Yes but those powers from the spells are…well powerful.
Hey, if you're about to die in 5 seconds, 5 years off some future you might not look so bad.
There are potions to reverse aging.
Was 'sennight' from S3?
It was indeed! Great memory! (He may have used it elsewhere, but that's where I definitely remember it).
"Your party set forth from Gorna a *sennight* ago, and for the past two days have been climbing higher into the crags of the Barrier Peaks."
The AD&D DMG and 3.5 DMG II are two of my favourite TTRPG books!
I am curious as to what the 4e DMG offers that is not already covered by the 3.5 DMG II? Or is just an alternative option?
Thank you for watching and commenting! I really appreciate it!
I'd say, from my perspective, that the 3.5 DMG II inspired parts of the 4E DMG, but there are differences.
3.5 DMG II covers: Running a Game, Adventures (pacing, traps, locations), The Campaign (beginning and ending, societies, establishments, crime & punishment, cities, major events), presents the entire city of Saltmarsh with locations and NPCs and plot/adventure hooks, Non-Player Characters, Characters, and new Magic Items.
The 4E DMG covers: How to Be a DM, Running the Game (similar content to 3.5 DMG II), Combat Encounters, Building Encounters ("building" as in creating, not as in structures), Non-Combat Encounters, Adventures (using published adventures, fixing problems, settings, characters), Rewards (XP, Treasure, etc.), Campaigns (published campaigns, beginning, running, ending, etc.; much is similar to 3.5 DMG II), The World, the DM Toolbox (customizing monsters, creating monsters, creating NPCs, creating house rules, random dungeons, random encounters), and then present the town of Fallcrest.
There is some overlap, and both do include some stuff that is mechanically-specific to the edition they're published for (either 3.5 or 4E) but if you have the means, they're both good to have in your arsenal!
I think some of the resurrection didn't work if the pc had work if they had reached their maximum life span
And their was the potion of longevity
I'm not by my 1ed books at the moment to check
i’m always dm never played as a player and when i finally do get someone to dm they give up and everyone points the finger at me and hand the dm back to me
I think the more modern take on high Gygaxian boils down more to “guy that barely graduated high school, trying to sound really smart, because ego.” As opposed to “the way he liked to write, and the books he read.”
Especially since said prose didn’t really surface in this manner until the 1E hardbacks. OD&D, Chainmail, the modules that predated the 1E DMG, etc, are all much clearer and more readable.
Frankly, I feel like I’ve always read the 1E DMG in a different light, after realizing a lot of the harsh guidelines exist because people like Rob Kuntz would outplay Gary when he DM’d. Substantial portions of that text are “don’t make these mistakes because I did and I don’t like how I lost control of my games.” There’s good in between that. But that underlying tone is odd and overly defensive.
Especially with the modern view of RPGs as basically just being make believe with some guidelines. His whole “this is incredibly serious business” tone is….just silly really.
Thank you for watching and commenting!
I can see a lot of your points and there's probably something to that. I think another thing with Gary constantly going on and on about the seriousness of the game was because he was going out of his way to try to make a case for how it was a "completely different game" than D&D so as not to have to pay royalties to Arneson.
I do recall reading early issues of Dragon magazine and it does seem the older games were much more focused on "DM vs player." I think a lot of that has to do with the nature of the games from which TTRPGs originated, which were PvP war games.
Thanks again!
Haha, yeah, as a modern gamer exploring and reading everything I can about the evolution of ttrpgs, all of Gygax's writing just makes me roll my eyes. I respect the pioneering work, but man does so much of it just come off as full of itself. I'm extremely happy for the style of OSR content as it exists today instead.
I use a Spell Point System - however that 1pt for a first lvl spell is 1hp of damage to the caster.
Saving Throws in the DMG…sigh.
Players don't need to know that! Right?
Right?
So many odd decisions, but I still like it.
@@daddyrolleda1 it is a classic.
That's not a first edition.
It's the same thing. Only the original's cover was changed.
It's *for* First Edition (which was the context for which I was using the term), but yes, it's a later printing. I've shown this copy a few times on my channel and mentioned that it's not the original cover by Dave Sutherland III but rather the later 1983 Easley cover. I just worry about repeating myself too much for folks who have already heard me mention that. In this particular case, I meant 1st Edition as opposed to, say, 2nd Edition or 5th Edition or whatever.