AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide Review

Join me as I review the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide by Gary Gygax live! Share your thoughts on this sourcebook released by TSR Inc. in August 1979. You can purchase the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide here: https://www.dmsguild.com//product/17004/dungeon-master-s-guide-1e?affiliate_id=50797 

About the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Gungeon Masters Guide

The 1st Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide is Back! Dungeon Masters everywhere, rejoice! Too long have you had to suffer along with crucial charts and tables spread through many works. Too long have you had to use makeshift references trying to solve the problem. You now have a complete compilation of the most valuable material for your refereeing, the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Herein you will find:

• Combat Matrices
• Encounter Tables
• Monster Attacks Alphabetically Listed
• Treasure and Magic Tables and Descriptions
• Gem Values by Type
• Random Wilderness Terrain Generation
• Random Dungeon Generation
• Suggestions on Game Mastering
• And a Whole Lot More! 

This excellent tome is a must for every Dungeon Master!

Show Notes

Intro

Welcome to another DragonLance Saga review episode. It is Kirinor, Holmswelth the 17th. My name is Adam and today I am going to give you my review of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide by Gary Gygax. I would like to take a moment and thank the DLSaga members and Patreon patrons, and invite you to consider becoming a member or patron. You can even pick up Dragonlance media or get $10 by signing up to StartPlaying.Games using my affiliate links. And don’t forget to pick up your free copy of Dragons of Ash and Twilight on dlsaga.com. This is my perspective only, and if you have any thoughts or disagree with mine, I invite you to share them in YouTube chat.

Review

• Dungeon Masters Guide (1979), by Gary Gygax, was the second book of rules for the AD&D game. It was published in August 1979.
• The iconic cover to the Dungeon Masters Guide shows adventurers fighting an efreet; it’s only when you look at the back cover that you realize the battle is being fought on the elemental plane of fire, in the City of Brass.
  • Players wanting more information on this legendary locale would need to wait a few decades for the release of ALQ4: Secrets of the Lamp (1993) — unless they were able to play in Rob Kuntz’s tournament adventure in the last ’80s.
• This cover was later replaced with a Jeff Easley illustration of a dangerous-looking dungeon master.
• The interior artwork in Dungeon Masters Guide is by David C. Sutherland III, Dave Trampier, Darlene Pekul, Will McLean, David S. La Force, and Erol Otus.
  • It includes a few pieces that would surprise modern players, including some partial nudes and some cartoons — both of which were common in the early D&D releases.
• In 1979, the AD&D rules were finally completed and players now could play pure AD&D games if they wanted. Many new players surely did, but the line between OD&D, BD&D, and AD&D remained fuzzy throughout the early ’80s, and older players were just as likely to stay with their hybrid homebrews.
• TSR records 14 official printings of the original Dungeon Masters Guide
  • The sixth printing (1979) — published just four months later, in December — brought the first large-scale change to the book. It incorporated extensive errata from Dragon #35 (March 1980) and even added two appendices: O — Encumbrance of Standard Items and P — Creating a Party on the Spur of the Moment. This and all later printings were labeled as a “Revised Edition”.
  • The eighth printing (1983) was the one that replaced the cover, as part of a general upgrade to TSR’s new trade dress; the new books all featured Jeff Easley covers and an orange spine.
• more recent Dungeon Master’s Guides have become books about how to run D&D, while the original Dungeon Masters Guide was instead the system’s core rulebook.
  • the first edition Dungeon Masters Guide contained all of the rules for the AD&D game except for those related to character creation
  • a real mish-mash that feels more like a random assortment of articles than a coherent rule book.
  • the book is full of tiny tidbits of information, often hidden in the most unusual places.
• Characters are better. This is the result of changes to the ability score generation method
  • In OD&D, players rolled 3d6, in order, for their characteristics. In AD&D the least generous system has players rolling 4d6 for their characteristics and throwing out the worst number,
• Combat is expanded (to over 20 pages!). A segmented combat system helps spells to better interweave with melee.
  • Theoretically this is modified by weapon speed and even by a comparison of weapon vs armor type, but the complexity of the AD&D combat system was sufficient that many GMs left out many of its subsystems. 
• Everything is detailed with unusual one-off rules. Every time you turn a couple of pages in the Dungeon Masters Guide, you’ll find a rule that most 1e GMs probably don’t use and don’t even know about.
  • Adjustments for pursuit and evasion based on party size? Special AC rules for unhelmeted characters? Organizational suggestions for monsters? Insanity lists? Intoxication effects and recovery? Government forms? Infravision that causes the eyes to glow bright red? It’s all here.
• Some of the appendices were apparently heavily influenced by Bob Bledsaw of Judges Guild, who’d already produced notable GM aids like Ready Ref Sheets (1977, 1978) and who then sent Gygax hundreds of pages of material from his own campaign.
  • A few of the appendices are worth additional comment:
    • Appendix A is a random dungeon generation table which allows for solo AD&D play in an infinite dungeon.
    • Appendix C contains encounter tables for monsters and includes AD&D’s most infamous subtable: the Random Harlot table.
    • Appendix E lists all the AD&D monsters’ stats, including their experience point values, which had been missing from the Monster Manual.
    • Appendix N, the “inspirational and educational reading” list, is the most famous of the appendices.
• Dave Arneson was the coauthor of the original D&D game, but when Gygax put together AD&D (1977-1979), Arneson’s name disappeared. This caused Arneson to file a lawsuit in 1979, which was settled in March 1981.
  • The exact terms of the agreement are confidential, but later lawsuits suggest that Arneson afterward earned royalties from the AD&D books.

Outro

And that’s it for my review of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide by Gary Gygax. What is your favorite appendix? Were there rules you just ignored? Feel free to email me at info@dlsaga.com or leave a comment below. 

Thank you Creator Patrons Aaron Hardy & D. Robert Handy, Producer Patron David Galindo, Developer Patrons Chris Androu & Sam Ruiz, and all of the YouTube Members! I would also like to take a moment and remind you to subscribe to this YouTube channel, ring the bell to get notified about upcoming videos and click the like button. This all goes to help other Dragonlance fans learn about this channel and its content.  

This channel is all about celebrating the wonderful world of the Dragonlance Saga, and I hope you will join me in the celebration. Thank you for watching, this has been Adam with DragonLance Saga and until next time Slàinte mhath (slan-ge-var).