[Import Anglais]X-Treme Dungeon Mastery [Format Kindle]

Questions for you RPG players:
1. How long does it take you to roll up a new character in your current RPG? In Advanced XDM it takes sixty seconds.
2. How long is a character sheet in your game? Does it resemble a tax return? An XDM sheet has 4 stats.

Questions for you DMs out there:
1. How long does it take for you to write down the stats for say, ten monster encounters? In XDM it takes 5-10 minutes.

Look at the index of any other RPG "Core Rulebook" and your going to see it break down like this: rule mechanics 90%, storytelling/ scenario design 10%. Here, the opposite is true. Most of the book is about how to manage players and design scenarios. The game "rules" are about 10 total pages in length. I particularly like the entire magic system and all spells....it takes one page of text. Furthermore, the system is completely adaptable to any genre of RPGs

The system works like this: You have 4 stats which cover your physical ability, mental ability, luck, and health. You tell the XDM what you want to do, he uses his/her best judgement and tells you what you need to roll on a 20 sided die, taking your stats and level into consideration. If you roll the number or higher you succeed and roll a second time if neccessary for damage. If you don't roll the number you fail.

Magic, Hickman points out, should work the same way. The wizard describes the effect he wants to create and the XDM assigns a difficulty number. No looking up casting times, note-taking about componants, memorizing , re-memorizing, proficieny slots. No more snivelling in the background and hiding behind fighters...a 1st level wizard is just as powerful as a beginning fighter.

Experience and advancement are handled brilliantly too. You get experience and your character can change careers and advance in levels but that doesn't change your stats. It just allows you to say to the XDM, "I'm a third level fighter. Shouldn't I be able to hit that orc easier than that 1st level guy?" No more complicated record keeping every time the character gains a level.

I know, I know, some of you are freaking. "That's too simple!" and "My group won't go for that!" Hickman quite brilliantly points out that the reason one rolls dice in an RPG is to find out only two things:
1. Did the charcter succeed or fail?
2. How well/badly did the character succeed or fail?

In order to do this, you roll dice and....and this is key....EVERY ROLL COMES DOWN TO ONLY TWENTY NUMBERS. That's it. Even a percentile based game can be broken down into a d20. If you want to make your RPG "more realistic" you'll have to add lots of rules, charts and stats. You may gain in terms of realism but the combat will take longer to adjudicate. But even the most realistic system still boils down if character succeeds or fails and there are only twenty possibilities.

The best part about XDM: since there are no "rules" there can be no "rules lawyers" and there are no charts of any kind to look up. This keeps combat fast and exciting.

I recently converted my 15 year old Warhammer fantasy RPG campaign to XDM. After a brief period of skepticism my players embraced XDM, noting that combat was far swifter, equally deadly, just as gory, and even more fun. Even the younger guys (in their 20s) who play the new 3rd Edition Warhammer say XDM is as good or better.

The only downside that XDM relies heavily on the prudence and quick thinking of the XDM. And the players need to be mature enough accept the XDM's decision making.

Another reviewer called this book "the best RPG book you never knew you needed". I've played and DMed since 1981 and thought I knew everything about RPGs. I was wrong.

Buy this book today. Your players will thank you.

Wanting to improve the story aspect of my game, I picked up The Writer's Complete Fantasy Reference a few months ago. While it was a great source for creating an interesting fantasy setting, it had nothing about creating an interesting fantasy story. XDM X-treme Dungeon Mastery filled that gap nicely.

The book was funny throughout, in that unique blend of humor only roleplaying gamers can appreciate: one part cerebral inside jokes, one part puerile enjoyment of shiny destructive things.

There was also some great advice packed between the humor about making your storytelling more interesting. The authors view dungeon mastering first and foremost as a performance. Like most ingenious innovations, that perspective is blindingly obvious in hindsight, and leads to some great insights. They don't disappoint in the follow up, either. XDM was literally game changing for me, and I highly recommend it for any DM who has felt too much like a referee lately.

Myself, I thought this was too jokey. Some of the puzzles in one section were okay, and the art was well done. Various pieces of advice on how to run a game were well done.

But I've seen most of this before. The GM guides for Pathfinder and D&D (any version) will be more generally useful than the material in here, which almost purely deals with how to tell a story.

There is an extended section on magic tricks, which seemed like overkill.

A player wouldn't get anything out of this. There are pretty much no mechanics in here. The actual XDM system itself is only a few pages long. Most of the advice, I knew.

I didn't care for it overall, but there is some good advice scattered in with the jokes.