XDM X-treme Dungeon Mastery – Tracy & Curtis Hickman

Illustrated by Howard Taylor

Editors: Stacy L. Whitman, Sandra Taylor, Josh Peltier

Read: July 2010 (at age 32)

First time read.

What to Expect:

This is a treatise on good game-mastering, written by some people who seem to be good GMs.  It’s a bit over-generalized for what I was looking for, and way too silly for my taste in places.  It’s short, the illustrations really add to the text (often, they’re the best part of the page), and there were large irrelevant sections.  It’s better read as a discussion of gaming by a couple of guys who’ve been there, done that, than as a technical reference.

Reactions after the break.  There aren't any spoilers in a book like this.

Rating: 3

A few thoughts:

·        The beginning (20 pages, or 13%) is very silly, and the running gags (ragging on you to buy the book, XXX level game master, etc.) got old really fast.

·        I don’t see the crossover between card tricks, pyrotechnics, and game mastering.  Maybe I’ve been playing all the wrong kinds of games, but that wasn’t at all what I was expecting or looking for in this book.  They took up 3 of the 18 chapters, or 31 pages (20% of the book), which was much too much. 

·        There was also a section on “Killer Breakfast to Go” which sounds like fun, but it also sounds like something that I’m not likely to ever do (10 pages, 6%).

·        A very bare-bones gaming system, with emphasis on role-playing (as opposed to roll-playing) is included in the book.  Interesting for making a point as to how few rules you actually need to run a fun game; not so useful for the games I’m already running (22 pages, or 14%).

So that adds up to 53% of the book (yes, in fact, I am an engineer...) that I didn’t find much of use.  The rest of it (chapters 3 through 9) was quite interesting as an essay in game design and execution.

·        The suggestions were very general – planning strategies, story arcs, go read about the Campbellian monomyth (which I do really need to do someday!), try to make things more dramatic – rather than specific methods of implementing the ideas.

·        The section on players was interesting, dividing the players into three different categories of gamers, and ensuring that they each have something to do in each scene may help me with my own game design.

·        Did I mention that the illustrations really add?  It’s worth repeating.

Overall, there wasn’t too much that was new and different from the other research I’ve done into the subject of skillful GMing.  I was hoping for some specific game aids, such as suggested critical success and failure events, and while there were a few, they didn’t tend to be things that I would use.  The general discussions about game sessions were cool, and they made the book worth reading, but it wasn’t spectacular.

Other opinions:

Tabletop Armory

FearTheBoot.com

Critical-hits.com: Part 1 and Part 2