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

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XDM-Cover-sampleThere’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.

Comments

  1. Have you read DMG2 yet? Holy Christ, you’re going to flip out. The first chapter is like an expanded, edited version of Laws’s amazing 4e-related LJ posts, and the rest of the book is on its quality level (if less groundbreaking). The sample Skill Challenges and ‘Advanced Encounters’ materials are just great. Better by a huge margin than any official D&D DM material I know of. (I’m including Gygax’s shambling incoherent obsessive-compulsive mess of a 1e DMG in this assessment, of course.)
    .-= Wax Banks´s last blog ..Scattered, spoilery thoughts on Felix Gilman’s excellent novel Thunderer. =-.

  2. Thanks for the review, I’ve been curious about this book. I learned two things: (1) I don’t want this book, and (2) I want more Tony. I’ll still read the next two parts, mostly for more Tony.

  5. Hehe, you really should start writing comics about Phil and Tony. Or ask the Penny Arcade guys to do it … awesome idea 😀

    From what I’ve seen so far this book is probably not for me. All this secret handshake stuff doesn’t fit into my RPG world, but I will probably wait for the rest of your review before I totally reject it. Tracy Hickman has written a few things I enjoyed (mostly together with Margaret Weis), so I give him the benefit of the doubt.

    @Wax Banks: Hmm, hasn’t Robin D. Laws written parts of the DMG2? That might tempt me to give it another look.
    .-= Stargazer´s last blog ..Iron Kingdoms RPG source books now available in PDF =-.

  6. @Wax: I have not yet purchased the DMG2, but I plan to do so soon. I’m sure that it 15 shades of awesome, given some of the people who wrote it (including Robin Laws). The 3.5 DMG II was among the best GMing guides I’ve read so I’m looking forward to see this book.

    I agree with your assessment of Grandad Gary’s book. I just bear a special consideration to the book because I learned English partly by reading it…

    @Kevin: At least give the next post a read before deciding about the book. I’ve only covered 10% of the book. Although the tone of the book has been established, the meat of it is still uncovered.

    So you like Tony eh? Why is it that the expert jerks are always popular… not that I expected Phil to get any love? 🙂

    @Wyatt: I knew that the review format would send some people into WTF territory, but as I prepared the review the concept seemed the best way to do the book justice and treat it fairly for what it is. We’ll see how it will turn out.

    @Paul: Hey, thanks. I’m happy you enjoyed it.

    @Stargazer: We’ll see how the characters develop. It’s liberating to shed part of your personality to focus and exaggerate on one particular aspect. I guess that’s how writers create interesting characters.

    Stay tuned for part 2 🙂

  7. I thoroughly enjoyed about 90% of this book. But then, I’m totally a “Tony”. 😉

    I look forward to seeing both your takes (ahem) on the “magic tricks” section.

  8. @Gospog: The way I set up both characters, I’m pretty sure you could write the review yourself and get it on the spot. 🙂 Good to see you again on the blog. I know you’ve probably been lurking all this time but It’s nice to see old friends pop in once in a while.

    I think I’m going to send Tony meet Shamus Young’s alter ego at The Escapist and have both of them start a D&D game.

    Heck, I could do a Phil & Tony mailbag feature.

  9. Jeez.

    I think since I have a little (OK, a lot) of Phil in me (especially the bit about time-sensitive), so this review is leting me know that while I;d love to hone my craft with a serious book about it, this may not be the one.
    Thanks as always.
    .-= LordVreeg´s last blog ..edited C a ruined villa =-.

  11. @Wax: Har har har. You know I hate you with a passion man. I’ll save a very spectacular character death just for you at our upcoming Boston East Coast gathering of gamer bloggers. 🙂

    Good one man.

  12. I enjoyed the two takes on the book but personally could have used more about the book and what it was about, as I’ve never heard of the book nor was I familiar with the author I found it harder to enjoy the review.

    However the back and forth between the two characters did add to the review, and I would encourage more from them.

  13. Thanks for your feedback. There’s a finer line to walk in a review between saying too little and actually giving out the content of the book.

    In part 2, chances are you will find more ‘meat’ so to speak as I tackle the section that follows the introduction.

    As for knowing Tracy Hickman (and son), his (and Margareth Weis’) Dragonlance Novels were the 1st English books I read back when I was 13.

  14. While I have the utmost respect for the authors, this book disappointed me greatly. I was hoping for equal parts humor and useful information, but found way too much of the former and almost none of the latter. And of course humor is very subjective, but I just did not find this book very funny. I did chuckle at portions of it, but much of the humor in it seemed labored to me.

    The biggest impression that I had was that it seemed there was no direction in the writing of this book. It is all over the map, and seems to jump from the goal of attempting to give useful information to the goal of being silly in mid paragraph, and sometimes mid-sentence. And the chapters on sleight of hand and how to run your own Killer Breakfast convention event seemed to be total filler. How many readers are even going to be interested in this sort of information, especially enough to devote two entire chapters to it?

    I mean no offense or disrespect to anyone involved in creating this book, or any fans of it. I’m sure great effort was put into it. I think perhaps I was just not the target audience.

    Nice review, BTW, I love the split personality technique and I agree that it matches this particular book very well.

  15. @Chatty: I will read the rest, and I reserve the right to change my mind given new information. Oh we all still love good ol’ Phil. It’s the contrast between personalities that makes it funny, not Tony by himslef. I’m curious about where the name came from.

    @Wax: L O L
    I’m not a big fan of “she said” jokes, but your delivery and timing were perfect.

  19. Yo Stargazer German dude! I spoke with the boss and he approved our continued existence even though this series bombed (I blame Admiral Stupid for that).

    I really like the idea of a mailbag feature so I can tell overstressed and overzealous DMs to chill out and focus on what’s real ya know!

    Anyhoo, knowing our resident Dork, he’ll probably chime in on the idea soon enough.

    Peace out man!
    .-= Tony´s last blog ..Chatty’s review: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery, Part 2 =-.

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