This is a let’’s read of the first edition DMG. I wanted to look at something old school. I was tempted to do the 1e Monster Manual, which is interesting in some ways such as the fact that Drow are described as possibly mythical, but there’s a ton of other bestiary Let’s Reads out there. Besides, for those who haven’t played 1e, where the philosophy was to keep a lot of information from the player, this is at times a strange and alien book.
Jul 01, 2012 You can simplify the mechanic within the framework of 1e rules. You could, for example, make the chance to do something heroic an attack roll and give each specific obstacle a target number (you would call it an AC in this case). Busting open King Snurre’s locked treasure chest requires an unarmed attack against AC –4, for example. Joining the recently released PDF edition of the AD&D 1st Edition Player's Handbook, you can now get the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Monster Manual from DnDClassics. From 1977 and 1979, these books were written by Gary Gygax (thanks to Emiliano for the scoop!) Find the Monster Manual here, and the Dungeon Master's Guide here.
I played a little bit of 1e back in the day, though I was a BECMI kid. So I’m not completely unfamiliar with this, but don’t have an enormous amount of exposure.
I’m working off the PDF put out by WOTC (available at Drivethru) which I believe, except for the cover and the copyright info on the title page. Is identical to the printed edition.Shannon Appelcline has a history of the printings of the Dungeon Masters Guide (no apostrophe in 1e) here.
The cover on the edition I’m going by is this:
The original picture is a lot more evocative, showing a lot more of the efreet, and adventurer’s fighting it. I like it, but assume that the scantily clad woman being held by the monster was not the sort of thing WOTC wanted to portray. At least she’s got a dagger. I think she may be trying to stab the monster.
(WOTC really cropped too much out of all the 1e cover reprints, but that’s a subject for another day.)
We then learn, on the title page, this is 'A COMPILED VOLUME OF INFORMATION PRIMARILY USED BY ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS GAME REFEREES, INCLUDING: COMBAT TABLES; MONSTER LISTS AND ENCOUNTERS; TREASURE AND MAGIC TABLES AND DESCRIPTIONS; RANDOM DUNGEON GENERATION; RANDOM WILDERNESS TERRAIN GENERATION; SUGGESTIONS ON GAMEMASTERING; AND MORE.” (TSR's all caps, not mine. )
Foreward
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The book starts with introductory remarks by Mike Carr, not Gary Gygax, discussing whether Dungeon Mastering is an art or a science, more of something with an individual flair, or based on attention to detail.“Esoteric questions aside, one thing is for certain — Dungeon Mastering is, above all, a labor of love,” he says, before explaining how the AD&D DMG will improve your life as a Dungeon Master and, along with your imagination, help you create the best worlds possible.
Contents
I don’t have much to say about the table of contents, since we’ll be getting to everything eventually. But it also has a list of the charts in this book, in alphabetical order rather than chapter order. To give you an idea of the diversity of what we’ll encounter, here are the “C” entries.
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Chance of Contracting Disease ..............................................................................13
Chance of Discovering Natural Cave Area ...........................................................106
Chance of Parasitic Infestation ...............................................................................13
Chances of Becoming Lost .....................................................................................49
City/Town Encounter Matrix ................................................................................191
Combat Sequence ................................................................................................61
Conjured Animals Table ......................................................................................222
Construction Defensive Values .............................................................................110
Construction Times .....................................................................................106, 107
Cost of Constructions ..........................................................................................107
Cost of Holy/Unholy Water Receptacles ...............................................................115
Cost of Siege Engines .........................................................................................108
Cost of Spells Cast by Non-Player Characters ...............................................103, 104
Creatures Struck Only By Magic Weapons .............................................................75