Chatty’s review: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery, Part 2

This is a review of Tracy and Curtis Hickman’s X-Treme Dungeon Mastery, done through the voice of 2 alter Egos of mine, Phil and Tony, see part 1 to learn more about it.

For part 2, let’s switch who gets to say what first.

The Theory of XDM

Tony:

All right, the section starts with a chapter about player types.  While an already heavily threaded territory, the book presents 3 archetypes: The Warrior (I Kill Stuff), the Socialite (I talk to stuff) and the Thinker (I wanna win to get to the new stuff).  It then explain how scenes should be designed to fit those types.

Having had Phil harping on an on and on about his mancrush on Robin Laws, I’m well acquainted with the theory. I agree that one of the surest way to fun is to get to know what players want.  XDM’s approach has the advantage of being dead simple and would be a great model to ease in DMs who’ve never realized that what players want in a game actually matters.  I just find that it might be too simple though. I’ll let Dr Nitpick go at it.

Moving on.

The next two chapters are, I think, the meatiest part of the whole book.  Both talk about Story and explain in detail why a good adventure is always based on a good story.

The first chapter starts as a dissertation of something called the Campbellian Monomyth, which seems to me to be English Litt Jargon for ‘Kid gets quest, Kid whines a bit, Kid beats obstacles and becomes a Man, Man becomes a Hero, Hero gets the Prize, Hero returns home and finds it destroyed/changed/boring/paved into a parking lot, Hero moves on to Tome 2″ or as I like to call it “The Trilogy formula”.

I’m a Microbiology major who reads fantasy novels by the truckload, I don’t know the theory!

Then the book goes into the importance of surprise (i.e. lying), from a storytelling point of view, to maintain the illusion of mystery and keep players on their toes.  Then it segues (not really, the change of subject is actually pretty brutal) into a random story generator.

Yeah.. what’s that about?

The next chapter describe 3 adventure structures (Linear, Open Matrix and Closed Matrix) and goes on to say how the Closed Matrix is the model of choice and gives an example of it.  In fact, having played and then DMed the first 4 Dragonlance adventures, I recognize the structure (PCs are free to go where they please until they hit a boundary that pushes them back into the adventure matrix… like an advancing army).

Yeah, that’s cool, I guess.

The next chapter is about Riddles, including a good number of them for DMs to use… Yawn… I don’t  like  those and so do my player. Pass!

After that you get to the prepping the game. They mention the importance of a map, including drawing cross section of buildings (what am I, Picasso?)  and how they must be internally consistent. Then follows some pretty cool tricks to writing your adventure notes (if you are the type to write the description of rooms and such).

All in all, I’d say that this section present a certain adventure design philosophy. That philosophy is, to my eyes, as valid as any, but I can’t help to think “Dude, we’re talking about DMing for a group of friends, not writing for the industry”

I’m just saying.  You’re turn Nerd!

Phil

I see that you went to town and, as usual, took the wrong train, no wonder Ron Edwards calls your kind brain damaged.

This section of the book actually ended being my favorite, even though it didn’t actually follow up on the awesome bulleted lists at the end of the previous chapters .  Not only did I get to see first hand the thinking that was behind some of the most entertaining A D&D modules I played/ran, but there’s useful stuff in there!

I’ll grant my special needs colleague that the player types aren’t up to par with those published in the later Dungeon Master Guides but the Story Cycle dissertation brings an interesting perspective to story design.  Having never studied anything other than science, I didn’t know that the familiar pattern of Epic Fantasy tales were based on this.

Then the discussion about the importance of playing with facts, places and time gave me insights about the fact that the mystery of exploration and the emotional response to cognitive dissonance or genuine surprise are all important tools for the DM.

In fact, I found that the subject of playing with the truth to be sufficiently developed to satisfy my expectations.  Sadly, the same can’t be said for much of the rest of the book.

The Random Story Generator is a good idea but it’s implementation is a bit too complicated… I wonder if there’s an automated version on their website.

The chapter about adventure design introduced me to the Open Matrix structure.  While I had seen it in the first Dragonlance adventure, seeing it stripped to it’s bare component made me slap my forehead.  It’s really an elegant way of doing a contained sandbox.  Sadly, as with much of this book, the model gets barely 1 1/2 page of treatment, most of it describing the ‘Pushed by an army’ example .

The section on riddle was of limited interest to me.  As a DM as well as a player, puzzles annoy me to no end.  But I’m honest enough to say that people who like them (or have players who are problem solvers) will like that 12 riddles are not so common knowledge that players can solve them without sneaking off the table and google  it while the DM is distracted by another player.

The Section also mentions how to turn a dungeon into a puzzle, taking the excellent “fake straight passages” example from the Pharaoh module. Finally, there’s a very short, but insightful discussions about traps.

Finally, the prepping section basically boils down to ‘Find an internally consistent way for everything in the story’   Once again, while most of what is discussed is interesting, it’s not integrated as a whole.  There’s a bit about world building, a bit about maps, a bit about not taking easy shortcuts, another bit about Time and Space of an adventure and a series of short writing tips.

I expected something more focused, more organized.  But by the time I had reached that point, my hopes weren’t really that high.

Being the XDM

Tony:

Man, I don’t know how come your mom didn’t drown you at birth.  Well thank god for the good grace of our host, I get to say a few words about the next section.

Being the XDM is the section of the book that talks about what happens at the table. Like the previous section, this section is all business, no funny stuff (well some, but that’s not the focus).

I don’t have much to say here except to mention 2 parts that stood out for me.  At the beginning of the section, it is suggested to find ways to avoid dumping too much info on players in order to prevent having the action grind to a halt.  That’s capital. The book proposes to sprinkle such Info Dumps into props or by having the players play a Cutscene (to which you provide bits of info).  Those are good starting points.

The other good bit is when they describe how a (X)DM is like an actor and should adopt acting skills (Clear Speech, and Reacting to events and players).

(High Screeching sound… like a record being scratched)

Chatty DM:

Sigh… sometime a joke stops being funny way before we expect it to.  I now feel that I’m unfairly beating up on a Flawed book.  So much so that I’m putting a stop to this before I get accused of being a prick. (I may be but I can live with that).

Writing this stopped being fun about one hour ago when I realized that there really was precious little I liked about the book apart the sections I discussed today.

For sake of completeness, the rest of the book discussed illusions you could use in your games to make people appear, disappear or create Ghostly apparitions.  There was a whole section on mastering a few magician tricks like Juggling a big Glass Ball and card tricks. I really have no use for that… even in Tony mode.

Then  there was a chapter where various instructions for playing with fire at the table and creating flash bombs (I kid you not) were actually censored so you can’t actually know what the trick is.  Humorous (or not) footnotes about the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security doing some editing are peppered through the book.

Then you get a description of the Killer Breakfast, which seemed to be more a story about the actual event than clear instruction on running one.  Again, no use for the average DM… even XDM ones.

Another chapter that is completely unrelated to everything else is the one about being an Xtreme player (and how to blow up ‘boring’ games). It relates a well known story about Tracy playing an instigator barbarian in an overly cautious party.  That’s the story that had Monte Cook and Tracy fighting about in the Letters to Dragon (or Dungeon) magazine.

The core message basically is that an adventure game should be about adventure not about risk analysis.  I’m glad I got to read Traci’s side of the story, and there some useful tips to help wake up a gaming group. I’m just not much of a fan of unbridled instigation.

Finally, the book ends with a XD20 roleplaying game, a minimalist 20 pages RPG.  Again, something I also had no interest for.

So out of 158 pages, I found no more than 40 that met with my expectations.

Bottom line, the first half of the book has many gems of wisdom that scream to be expanded upon but usually aren’t.   There’s some very important stuff in there.   Given the second half’s content, I strongly believe that this book has limited appeal to anyone other than fans of the XDM phenomenon and new DMs looking to get better at their craft.

Maybe, just maybe, I just don’t get.  But I somehow doubt it.

Tracy, I know you’ll eventually read this.  Know that I could not in clear conscience review it otherwise and I apologize if the initial humorous approach turned sour.

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Chatty's review: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery, Part 1

There’s a Method to my Madness

Shortly before Gen Con and after completing the very long series of blog posts about Robin Laws’ Rules of Good Game Mastering, I contacted Tracy Hickman and asked if he could send me a review copy of his newest book, X-treme Dungeon Mastery.  He was gracious enough to do so and so I set out to read it, planning to do a similar series of reviews.

However, I ended up being bothered by many aspects of the book.  The thing is, while I found that the book failed to meet many of my expectations as a GM, I had an uneasy feeling that maybe I just didn’t get what the book was supposed to be about.

In fact, when I left my expectation by the curb, I found that I could enjoy the book, there are some very insightful and funny parts.

Thus, after much hesitation, I came to the conclusion that given the book’s apparent schizophrenic nature, I needed to dig deep in my own insanity, fracture my writing persona into 2 different entities and tackle the review with both!

(Trust me on this, given the book in question, it makes perfect sense!)

So meet Musings of the Chatty DM’s newest reviewers: Phil and Tony!  Tell us about yourselves guys.

Phil: Greetings.  I’ve been a GM for 26 years now and my lifelong goal has always been to achieve GMing Nirvana by acquiring the best practice and methods of the hobby.  My free time is very precious and GMing is very serious business. Thus, my expectations when reading a Gming guide are high and my patience is very low.  I need instant relevance that I can use at my table tonight, anything else is a waste of my time!

Tony: Yo! While I’ve been GMing for about as long as Mr Asshat above, I know that RPGs are really about fun and laughter in a pleasant social environment.  GMs need to learn what fun means in the context of their groups and they needs to make sure that there’s plenty of it going around in their game.  Everything else is pedantic nitpicking and pretentious noise.

This is going to be good! And so we start…

XDM: The Book

Before I unleash my 2 alter egos, here’s the breakdown of what the book is.

XDM or X-treme Dungeon Mastery is a 158 page Hardcover by Dragonlance/Ravenloft author Tracy Hickman and his son, world renowned magician Curtis Hickman.  The black & white book, printed on rough paper very reminiscent of the 1st edition A D&D books, is illustrated by webcomic artist and publisher Howard Tayler.

The layout of the book is a classical 2 columns of sans serif font with illustrations (mostly cartoon) on almost every page.  It reminds me strongly of Gygax’s Dungeon Master Guide… except with much less flowery prose. Hickman father and son are good writers and they chose to go with a simple, straight to the point style that makes reading the book breezy.

The Book has 18 chapters divided in the following grand themes:

• The History of XDM and getting started
• The Theory of XDM
• Being the XDM
• Ultimate XDM
• Killer Breakfast
• XDM: Player Section
• XD20 Role Playing System

The review will cover these sections, although not necessarily at the same level of detail.

The History of the XDM

Phil’s Take

All right, I had the book of a legendary Game designer in my hands.  A guy that wrote the modules I learned to play  D&D with when I was 10!   I couldn’t wait to start reading it.  Except, what did I get?  Disclaimers about dangerous play and a completely bogus history about X-treme DMing coming down from “La société de l’Utlime Maitres” (which is incorrect French) and that explains how it originated in 24 BC, being handed down through the ages like some sort of secret knowledge.

And this goes on for 7 pages… that’s already 5% of the book gone without giving me anything tangible.

But it gets worse!  After  a short GMing quiz (that I mostly aced, soit-dit-en passant), we get a another 4 pages of secret signs, initiation rituals and level of XDMs, complete with ridiculous titles.

What’s this?  A boy’s club?  Are girls even allowed?

My plummeting hopes were however saved with the section’s last page, a pair of text boxes containing 2 lists of things that a XDM should and should not do.  THAT is stuff I could use!  I hoped that the rest of the book would visit each statement (Like ‘Never Cheat the players”) and expand on each with examples!

Tony’s Take

All right windbag!  We’re on a word count budget here!

A thing that becomes apparent after reading the book is that it doesn’t take itself seriously.  Even reading the boasts on the back cover hint that there’s something fishy about the whole thing. It seems likely that it should be played for laughs. Role playing games have often taken themselves too seriously and this section is a refreshing ‘clin d’oeil‘ to the whole thing.

While I’ve not been a fan of the Hickmans’ Convention antics, I suspect that the whole XDM phenomenon is a social one, built around Hickman Senior’s personality cult and his preferred style of playing RPGs.  I know that they have a loyal (and growing) following and I think that the book is actually as much a ‘Membership’ Manual as it is a book about GMing.

So in that light, it gives the whole fake story of the ‘Ultimes Maitres’ a concrete meaning.  It builds a common background “world” for all those XDMs that meet at Cons and interact with Tracy in his events.  It is a secret club, and accepting that the whole thing is silly is part of being an XDM.

In fact, the “secret XDM Ceremonial Dance” is so ludicrous (A cheerleading routine where one cries XDM and mimes the letters over one’s chest)  that a DM with the guts to perform it in front of players will have shattered one of the highest barriers to great GMing: Self-consciousness.

This is not Robin Laws or the Dungeon Master Guide.  Loosen up, unbutton that top button and take that stick out your butt, XDM is both a work of comedy and a Self-improvement guide

Phil: Philistine!

Tony: Dweeb!

Up Next?

That was cooler to write than expected.  Part 2 will focus on the Theory and the Skills of being a XDM.  Finally Part 3 will cover the Ultimate XDM, Killer Breakfast and Player Section of the Book.

I hope you liked the crazy approach.  Know that while it is all tongue in cheek, both point of views represent what I feel about the content depending on what I’m looking for in it.  Let me know how it works for you.

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