Mark Reece's Blog - Posts Tagged "d-d"

Monster Manual by Mike Mearls

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I read this alongside the player's handbook to get a sense of how to play D&D. The monster manual is a good guide, and I liked the illustrations, which gave a fuller sense of what the monsters were like. There is enough content to populate many campaigns.

I didn't get much of a sense about how the D&D world is thematically coherent. This is a place in which fantastical creatures exist alongside dinosaurs, intelligent but evil races, and also animals such as bears and wolves. It often seems like a lot of creatures thrown together with little thought to the wider world building, but perhaps that could reflect the extensive nature of the D&D world.



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Xanathar's Guide to Everything by Wizards of the Coast

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


An addendum to the dungeons and dragons basic rules and classes, Xanathar's guide to everything is of a similar quality to the other D&D books I've read. The lore and writing is rarely more than adequate, but the book is still curiously enjoyable. This perhaps reflect the versatility of the game, the basic ruleset of which is minimalistic.

The new subclasses and spells add to the possibilities for character creation, and the artwork is impressive, adding evocative backdrops.



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Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything by Wizards of the Coast

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is a decent D&D expansion, containing more class options, a new class (the artificer), and a number of sections on other subjects, such as traps. All of these were good, and there is some evocative art throughout the book. The downside is the prose, which was hard to follow in places. Several times, I repeatedly re-read a passage without understanding how a rule was intended to operate. Nevertheless, the book is certainly useful for any campaign.



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Dungeon Master's Guide by Mike Mearls

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The Dungeon Master's Guide serves as both a game book, setting out various mechanics, spells, and items for D&D, and also a manual for running the game, and is successful in both areas. As a game book, I found it better written than other D&D guides, with clearer, more concise prose. As a guide for running the game, the Dungeon Master's guide offered similar advice to that one would find in many general writing guides, and also some sections on how to practically play the game, including (for example), the extent to which dice roles should be used, and how to manage the role playing aspects of the game.

This was a welcome addition to the series of books aimed to introduce players to the game.



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Out of the Abyss by Steve Kenson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This D&D adventure book is set in the Underdark, with the first section setting up a scenario in which the players are slaves of the drow (dark elves), struggling to survive. The second section details the characters' adventures after they have escaped, when they are facing ever more dangerous foes and are becoming heroic figures.

The story is well written, featuring numerous characters who break out of the generic nature of their species, and a variety of interestingly described societies, riven by conflicts with real world parallels, albeit with fantasy twists.

The book also contains numerous random encounters and other ephemera that help to turn the adventure into a well rounded story. I look forward to playing this campaign.



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Volo's Guide to Monsters by Adam Lee

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was a useful add-on to the monster manual, creating sub-types for many of the D&D races. The book also contains stat blocks for a variety of generic NPCs, such as different kinds of wizards, which are great for random encounters.

Like the monster manual, there are too many races whose only real feature is that they are mindless killers, but there is also some interesting lore.



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Candlekeep Mysteries by Wizards of the Coast

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I enjoyed this book, and have played through three of the stories with my D&D group. The adventures are generally well written, containing most of the relevant information a DM would need to run the game. Like most shorter stories, a wider context and setup are generally needed to introduce the adventures, but after that work is done, the stories could be played either as stand-alone adventures, or incorporated into longer campaigns. Like many D&D books, the pictures were also very good.

There were a few weaknesses, which I've also noticed with many D&D books. Firstly, there were often too many characters for the amount of plot. I cut out some of the characters when playing the stories, as some of them had very marginal relevance and would be hard for players to remember. Secondly, too many of the places to explore contained nothing of interest. This is an oddity that DMs would want to counteract, as it is bad for any story to have irrelevant elements.

I also thought that two of the stories for higher level characters had weaker plots, although that is no doubt an inherent problem for any collection.

Overall, this was a useful and fun collection of short campaign stories.



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Keys From the Golden Vault by Wizards of the Coast

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Another good quality anthology of mini-adventures. I found this similar to other Wizards of the Coast books, in that it provided a good framework to weave into other stories, although there were often too many empty rooms, and too many characters from the amount of plot in the stories.

Overall, a useful resource for DMs.



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Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes by Wizards of the Coast

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I liked this D&D book, which gave additional information about some of the major conflicts in that world, in addition to a collection of monsters associated with them.

The sections of devils, demons, elves, and dwarfs were compellingly written, with interesting motivations given for the different parties involved. However, I did think that most of the original writing was reserved for those sections, with some of the other material feeling repetitive.

The monster stats blocks provided some welcome variants for encounters with races such as the drow.



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