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Dungeon Master's Guide Rules Supplement #DMGR1
Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide/Dungeon Master's Guide/Rules Supplement/ by Paul Jaquays
Whether you're a novice DM getting ready to referee your first AD&D game or an old pro who's running an established campaign, there's something for you in the Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide. We've included dozens of helpful tips to help you better organize your games, design adventures, and make your NPCs come to life. In addition, we've included a number of settings for unusual dungeons. In short, there's something for everybody in this exciting addition to the AD&D game system.
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First published April 1, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 9, 2022
Surprisingly, this book tries to teach you how to be a good...human?
In the late '80s, early '90s, TSR - the company that made Dungeons & Dragons products - decided to relaunch their bread-winning game system with a 2nd edition. D&D rules had always been considered difficult to understand or readily grasped, so the idea was to spread the rules out over a few books, as opposed to just a couple, as they'd done in the past, with each book specifically addressing a certain aspect of the game.
Sounds like a smart idea, right? Well, the "few books" turned into a multitude of books and those rules were scattered to the wind, essentially turning a two-headed monster into an amoebic myriapod. Basically, with it being spread out over even more books, information became more difficult to find. Also, there ended up being more of it than TSR probably intended to add when they originally came up with the idea.
Some people like all the extra books. I never owned many of them back in my playing days, because I was middle class kid from the sticks - perfectly well off, but without the kind of spending money needed to keep up with TSR's rapid publishing rate during this period, nor a place near me in which to buy the stuff even if I had the cash.
But personally, I loved the idea of more books and each of them focusing on a specific topic.
I was acting as my group's dungeon master (referee and game generator) at this point in my gaming career and I expected each of these books to have a wealth of information that would turn the games I was creating for my players into something special indeed. Ideally, these books should have endless lists of information that should turn your adventures into the stuff of your wildest dreams!
With the Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide that wasn't the case. This booklet spends way too much of its time explaining how to "play nice" with others and basically how to be a normal, functioning human in society. It's as if they felt the need to tell the players of their game not to be jerks to one another.
When you look at the cover of this one you see "Catacomb" in larger, bolder type than the rest of the title and it makes you think you're about to read some in depth stuff on dungeons, crypts, caves, etc. There might even be a little about spelunking, if you're a good boy! But no. All you get is a lesson on how to be that good boy.
If you're going to judge a book by its title, at least read the whole title. The Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide is about the WHOLE picture. The word "campaign" in D&D lingo refers to an on-going adventure created by the dungeon master for his players to inhabit, a sort of continual series in which those players' characters are the stars.
The book suggests the dungeon master start small with his/her world creation, beginning with just a dungeon or village. However, it then proceeds to go directly into explanation on how-to create a world on the grandest of scales. Snip! Snap! Snip! Snap! Come on, TSR! You don't know what kind of toll that takes on a DM!
Mind you, after all the above I've previously mentioned, we're already two thirds of the way through this book, and now, in a big section, it starts discussing mapping. Okay fine, that's something tangible, but we still haven't got to the catacombs yet and that's starting to irk me!
Ah, at last, here are some suggestions for cave and castle creation...oh, it's just a suggestion to go get a book on caves or one on castles from the library....dang. Snark aside, there is a section on catacombs, but much of that is taken up by example maps. Where are the scenario ideas or the lists of items found in dungeons? In the end, this one turned out to be a bit of a disappointment for me.
In the late '80s, early '90s, TSR - the company that made Dungeons & Dragons products - decided to relaunch their bread-winning game system with a 2nd edition. D&D rules had always been considered difficult to understand or readily grasped, so the idea was to spread the rules out over a few books, as opposed to just a couple, as they'd done in the past, with each book specifically addressing a certain aspect of the game.
Sounds like a smart idea, right? Well, the "few books" turned into a multitude of books and those rules were scattered to the wind, essentially turning a two-headed monster into an amoebic myriapod. Basically, with it being spread out over even more books, information became more difficult to find. Also, there ended up being more of it than TSR probably intended to add when they originally came up with the idea.
Some people like all the extra books. I never owned many of them back in my playing days, because I was middle class kid from the sticks - perfectly well off, but without the kind of spending money needed to keep up with TSR's rapid publishing rate during this period, nor a place near me in which to buy the stuff even if I had the cash.
But personally, I loved the idea of more books and each of them focusing on a specific topic.
I was acting as my group's dungeon master (referee and game generator) at this point in my gaming career and I expected each of these books to have a wealth of information that would turn the games I was creating for my players into something special indeed. Ideally, these books should have endless lists of information that should turn your adventures into the stuff of your wildest dreams!
With the Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide that wasn't the case. This booklet spends way too much of its time explaining how to "play nice" with others and basically how to be a normal, functioning human in society. It's as if they felt the need to tell the players of their game not to be jerks to one another.
When you look at the cover of this one you see "Catacomb" in larger, bolder type than the rest of the title and it makes you think you're about to read some in depth stuff on dungeons, crypts, caves, etc. There might even be a little about spelunking, if you're a good boy! But no. All you get is a lesson on how to be that good boy.
If you're going to judge a book by its title, at least read the whole title. The Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide is about the WHOLE picture. The word "campaign" in D&D lingo refers to an on-going adventure created by the dungeon master for his players to inhabit, a sort of continual series in which those players' characters are the stars.
The book suggests the dungeon master start small with his/her world creation, beginning with just a dungeon or village. However, it then proceeds to go directly into explanation on how-to create a world on the grandest of scales. Snip! Snap! Snip! Snap! Come on, TSR! You don't know what kind of toll that takes on a DM!
Mind you, after all the above I've previously mentioned, we're already two thirds of the way through this book, and now, in a big section, it starts discussing mapping. Okay fine, that's something tangible, but we still haven't got to the catacombs yet and that's starting to irk me!
Ah, at last, here are some suggestions for cave and castle creation...oh, it's just a suggestion to go get a book on caves or one on castles from the library....dang. Snark aside, there is a section on catacombs, but much of that is taken up by example maps. Where are the scenario ideas or the lists of items found in dungeons? In the end, this one turned out to be a bit of a disappointment for me.
October 25, 2016
The completeness of this book after all of this time deserves all of the nostalgic love for it that many share. It just has so many of the considerations of building a world at a macro level that I think it can be used for all manner of purposes outside of gaming. Getting geography and climate right, how to explain underground ruins and dungeons, and hitting the right frequency of wonderful beasts and fauna are some of the topics that this book covers effortlessly.
Shame that some of the material that is in the earlier part of the book in the vein of "treating humans properly" had to be codified to make sure that people understood what roleplaying games should be in that early era.
Shame that some of the material that is in the earlier part of the book in the vein of "treating humans properly" had to be codified to make sure that people understood what roleplaying games should be in that early era.
October 11, 2007
Basic info. They could have done better on this one.
January 14, 2008
This was one of my favorite splat books for second edition. the information in it is just as relevant today as it was when it was published.
February 26, 2009
I actually read most of this years ago, but I'm on this kick to make sure that all books on my supposed "have read" shelf have actually been read from cover to cover. (Various others like these will be popping up as well.)
Amazingly, I think this book is actually more useful just for the topic of world creation in the sense of fictional world-building, qv fantasy authors, than it is for role-players. Either way, a great supplement all around.
Amazingly, I think this book is actually more useful just for the topic of world creation in the sense of fictional world-building, qv fantasy authors, than it is for role-players. Either way, a great supplement all around.
March 5, 2008
This was the first RPG book in my collection that had DMing advice beyond the basics. Still a good read even though 2nd edition has long passed by the wayside.
June 9, 2022
Anyone with even a little bit of experience at running a game is going to find a lot of the advice in here too obvious to even bother mentioning. But of course not everybody has experience at running a game, so what we have here is a guide of frankly pretty incredible thoroughness. There are tips from everything to making a fictional religion, to what to do with the character of a player who can't make it tonight, to types of humour you can insert to lighten up your campaign, to the different kinds of logical and/or illogical construction methods behind dungeons. I'm just skating over the surface with this, really I was astounded at how much ground this book covers.
There were parts of it that I skimmed (I don't particularly care for worldbuilding) but there were other parts that were useful to me even though I've been running a campaign for nearly a year. If you've had a problem while prepping or running D&D, it's pretty likely that Jaquays has some advice for you in this book.
There were parts of it that I skimmed (I don't particularly care for worldbuilding) but there were other parts that were useful to me even though I've been running a campaign for nearly a year. If you've had a problem while prepping or running D&D, it's pretty likely that Jaquays has some advice for you in this book.
January 19, 2009
Un excelente libro para quienes desean profundizar su técnica como Dungeon Master.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews