DMG, Part 2

Part 2 of the DMG is called Master of Adventure, and it contains the nuts and bolts of adventure design.

The first chapter is called, appropriately enough, Creating Adventures, and it contains all the nuts and bolts of adventure design, including dungeon crawls, wilderness journeys, and event-based adventures, with particular focus on mysteries and intrigue. It includes advice on adding twists and turns to adventures, then gives advice on encounter building (we'll come back to that later) and building random encounter tables. Their sample tables use d12+d8 to generate a 2-20 number. Not sure why not use 2d10, but I guess they figured people should give their dodecahedrons some more mileage.

The chapter after that has details on building NPCs. Rather than being filled with rules, however, this focuses on role-playing elements, such as unique NPC appearances and villain motivations. The chapter does conclude with new options for villainous NPCs using classes out of the PHB: the Death Domain for clerics and the Oathbreaker "archetype" for paladins.

The next chapter is Adventure Design. It starts off with dungeons (of course). It starts off with tables offering suggestions on dungeon locations, dungeon creators, and dungeon history. The funny thing about tables like these, is that I have found rolling on them helps unblock my creativity. It then offers advice on mapping dungeons, then lists some dungeon hazards, such as brown mold and green slime. The next section is wilderness adventures, covering navigation, survival, and interesting things to add to the scenery, as well as advice on covering overland journeys. Next it covers urban adventures, again with plenty of tables to fill random buildings that the characters might go bursting through as their chasing a thief through the crowded cities such as Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter, or Waterdeep. Lastly it covers underwater environments (I avoid them as a rule), sailing, and even flying. Last but not least, they have traps. Mostly focusing on building traps and scaling the damage rating to the party's level. They even had some examples, including the ubiquitous pit trap, the nasty poisoned needle, cinematic rolling sphere, and the classic sphere of annihilation in a leering devil face.

The next chapter, Between Adventures, has the most interest to the players buying the book (aside from the magic items) because it introduces a whole list of new downtime activities to supplement that slim list in the PHB. It includes building magic items, carousing, and, for enterprising players, running a business or building a stronghold. It also includes more information on upkeep costs.

The last chapter is Magic Items, but that rather long chapter will be getting its own post.

I'll return with a deeper look at the encounter design system, and how the adventure we're playing was clearly written before those rules.