Books Review: The Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Core Rule Books: Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual

The Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Core Rule Books: Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, Monster Manual
by various authors/editors (all 793.93 Dun)

The very first version of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) came out in primitive form in 1974. I first started playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) with a small group of friends in 1981, using what is now known as 1st Edition rules — the first “core rulebooks” were released between 1977 and 1979. My group’s “campaign” world grew in size and complexity, and my group of players played together until around 2003, with new players joining and old players dropping out…until we all eventually drifted away from the game due to time constraints related to families and jobs. But even when we were still actively playing, we had decided not to embrace the 2nd (1989) and 3rd (2000) Editions of the core rule books.

 

Now, over 20 years later, the opportunity to lead a new group, comprised mainly of players who are new to the game, has lately had me refreshing my knowledge of the current rules and mechanics of how the game is played. Dungeons & Dragons is currently using 5th Edition rulebooks, and much has changed since the 1st Edition version of the game I played back in the 1980s and 1990s. Many of the changes are aimed at streamlining gameplay and giving players more variety in the choices of characters they can create.

 

The three core rule books remain the same though — the Player’s Handbook gives new (and veteran) players the basics of what they need to know about creating original characters and how to play the game; the Dungeon Master’s Guide is designed for the person who is going to run the game, giving them far more information than the basic Players need, including more rule explanations, tables and charts, and suggestions on how to design a game campaign or an entire world. And the Monster Manual is an encyclopedia of all the creatures (mostly magical or imaginary) that the Players may encounter in their various adventures, with detailed backgrounds and statistics for how they behave and how helpful or dangerous they may be. Together, these three hardback volumes, in the hands of a dedicated DM (Dungeon Master) and a group of regular game players, are more than enough for an interested group to start their own game of D&D. But, there have been dozens of additional books put out by Wizards of the Coast since the 2014 release of the 5th Edition rules, offering new rules, new magic items, and new world-building backgrounds.

 

If you’re interested in starting to play Dungeons & Dragons, you’ll find the three core rule books to be essential reading. And check with the libraries — various branches offer opportunity for new and intermediate players to learn how to play the game, or to join a beginners group for some fun and imagination-challenging adventures.

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to watch the movie Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, released in 2023.)

 

( official Dungeons & Dragons web site )

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

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Book Review: Fantasy Mapmaker by Jared Blando

Fantasy Mapmaker: How to Draw RPG Cities for Gamers and Fans
by Jared Blando (743.87 Bla)

Throughout the 20 years that my Dungeons & Dragons gaming group regular got together to chart out our adventures in the land of K’Thyra, I used a lot of grid paper (box hexagon grids and standard 1/4″ scientific grid paper), to map out the world my players were moving through. Those players visited innumerable encampments, towns, and cities over the years. But never in those 20 years did I ever try to create anything as…artistic…as the fantasy maps that Jared Blando creates in this this marvelous fantasy art guide.

Blando takes us on an incredibly detailed journey through how to create fantasy maps of towns and cities in made-up gaming worlds. Using pen and ink, colored pencils, watercolors and more, he shows you how to create exquisite guides to communities of every size in faux medieval times. Everything from castles/forts to vineyards to harbors bristling with the masts of ships – to temples and churches and cliffside lighthouses. All in tiny, colorful detail. He explains the logic of how medieval towns were laid out (based on waterways and terrain).

If you are a Role Playing Game enthusiast, and are the DM (Dungeon Master) for your campaign, AND you have even the slightest artistic skills, this book will show you how to provide your players with highly-realistic geographical guidelines on their adventures.

[Check out the online history of Scott’s K’Thyra gaming group (1983-2003) — they used D&D rules versions 1 and 2 during their active sessions, but there was a lot of material pulled from the pop culture realm (TV shows and comic books), and a lot of science fiction concepts that came to life in their adventures.]

[ official Jared Blando web site ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

The Moon Maze Game

The Moon Maze Game
by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes

The Moon Maze Game is the fourth in a sporadic series of novels co-written by Niven and Barnes which revolve around Live Action Role Playing gamers and the Dream Park corporation. The first three books in the series (Dream Park [1981], The Barsoom Project [1989], and The California Voodoo Game [1992]) were all set on earth and involved complex multi-layered plots incorporating quirky characters, believable technological advances and thriller elements. For the fourth book, set decades from now, the action has moved to the moon, where humanity has had an industrial and recreational colony for some time. When the first off-world LARPing game is announced to take place on the moon, the creme-de-la-creme of Gamemasters, Loremasters and regular gamers compete to secure positions in "the game". Among the players is the scion to an African nation's leader, and when terrorists attempt to kidnap him within the framework of the "game", what had been a challenging but ultimately only ego-brusing competition becomes a life-and-death struggle. Trapped within a fictional storyline of Victorian-era space explorers on the moon, the gamers find themselves trying to stay one step ahead of political revolutionaries and mercenaries, with ideological fervor and vengence on their side. This was a solid action-adventure thriller with a good scifi flavor and setting. Those who enjoyed the earlier three books will appreciate the next-generation ties to characters and events set earlier in the timeline. While I enjoyed it and do recommend it, the ending felt a bit rushed, and the "bad guys" were somewhat two-dimensional. Readers should really give Dream Park and The California Voodoo Game a read first! [If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try the other three books in the series. Also the Guardians of the Flame series by Joel Rosenberg, in which fantasy Role Playing Gamers find themselves transported to a real world that plays by the game's rules.] -- recommended by Scott C. - Bennett Martin Public Library

[ Wikipedia entry for Dream Park ] | [ Wikipedia page for Larry Niven ] | [ Wikipedia page for Steven Barnes ]

Have you read this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide web site. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month.