XDM XTreme Dungeon Mastery edition by Tracy Hickman Curtis Hickman Howard Tayler Humor Entertainment eBooks
Download As PDF : XDM XTreme Dungeon Mastery edition by Tracy Hickman Curtis Hickman Howard Tayler Humor Entertainment eBooks 
The cure for the common game! Throw off your chains! Too long have your role playing games been held in the bonds of substandard gamemasters, bound in needlessly complicated rules sets, and enslaved by players who will avoid doing anything unless it counts toward leveling up! It is time to take a stand!
Learn from the masters the ancient secrets of how to
Officially become an XDM and impress dates. (Do-it-yourself secret initiation rites included.)
Master the secrets of designing adventures that tell stories.
Create magic illusions that can even make your players disappear!
Use actual fire in your game properly.
Hijack the game as a player, and how to deal with a player revolution as an XDM.
Plus loads more!
If I could go back in time and rewrite Dragonlance, it would be this book...only with more dragons in it. --Tracy Hickman
I can say without any shame or bias, that this is one of the best books ever written and should be in every hotel room next to the bible. --Curtis Hickman
Possessed by the spirits of Da Vinci, Van Gogh, and Jack Fred, I illustrated a book that you should buy two of...one to read and one to hang on your wall.--Howard Tayler
XDM XTreme Dungeon Mastery edition by Tracy Hickman Curtis Hickman Howard Tayler Humor Entertainment eBooks
The only real issue I have with this book (aside from typos) is the xdm stuff. I feel like the author is trying to over sell himself (which I don't get bc if I'm reading the book then I've probably bought it which implies I'm assuming him to be some kind of authority on the topic). Imagine you are trying to start working out for the first time in a long time. You find this huge muscle bound Arnold looking guy to help teach you. During your workouts he is CONSTANTLY telling you how awesome and buff he is and how much you want to be like him. However at the same time he is in fact giving you valuable secrets on how to work out that you find are helping you build muscle and reach your goals. That's what this book is. If you can stand Arnold referring needlessly to how awesome he is (or in this case how badly you should want to be an xdm) this book is packed with all kinds of things that anyone from a novice to someone more advanced can use. Things like pacing, using your voice, how to handle traps, how to handle puzzles are all in here. Some of them are in forms I haven't seen before. So again, if you can stomach the xdm stuff this book provides you with what you want out of it. The art work is fun too.Product details
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XDM XTreme Dungeon Mastery edition by Tracy Hickman Curtis Hickman Howard Tayler Humor Entertainment eBooks Reviews
The humor falls flat in places, but succeeds very well in more. I do like that they actually printed it in very readable type size, something few gaming books do. I agree that the games (even rule "lite" ones like castles and crusades) can be trimmed down. I remember rpg games in the (like John Carter of Mars - not the board one) where you did only use the seven or so attributes and nothing else was needed. I miss them.
This is a must read for any and all players of table top RPG's, and no I'm not just saying that to raise my XDM Level.*
The book provides great humor while also dissecting games like Dungeon and Dragons to get to the meat of what's really important to a good game. It outright encourages the doing away with rules which only obfuscate and confuse players and game masters alike, calls for smooth, fun, fast flowing game play that'll be remembered, and gives lots of sound advice and tricks for how to achieve such a game. (such as mercilessly getting rid of problem players**)
*Not JUST to
**non violently, preferably.
I bought this for the GMing advice and loved it. About a third of it contains a rules-light RPG system but I ignored that part as my group enjoys the systems we use just fine. Still, the advice part is gold. It's written by RPG luminary Tracy Hickman and is full of passion and humor (albeit often corny but always worth a chuckle). Some of the advice is over the top or, in my mind, impractical (e.g. building your own theatrical special effects), but it's "extreme" so what do you expect? There's plenty to chew on so if you're looking to become a better GM it's totally worth the ten bucks.
The spirit of the book is captured with this quote from Chapter 8
"There is nothing like a game, nothing in the world! When you're playing an XDM-run game, that is. We're talking a no-holds-barred, pedal-to-the-metal, full-throttle adventure that grabs the player characters by their bent-armor chest plate and drags them into the heart of excitement." I really felt the book lived up to the spirit of this statement. Well done.
First, let me identify who might be interested in this book Game Masters, game players, game designers (both for games like D&D or Final Fantasy), module designers, authors, screen writers, and generally anyone and everyone who has an inkling of interest in story.
I bought this a year after originally hearing about it that's how long it took me to get off my but and finally look up who, exactly, Tracy Hickman was. Once I knew, I ordered immediately.
Tracy is one of the brilliant minds behind the hey-day of Dungeons and Dragons, back when men were real men, women were real women, and d20 dice were real d20 dice. His work redefined what gaming modules were, so much that even after TSR closed and WotC came out with two new versions of the game, they're still bringing back stuff he created (see Return to Castle Ravenloft). Much of the wisdom of the golden age of gaming that should not have been forgotten is now lost… except that this book preserves it. If not for it, this awesomeness would be gone from the world.
The book itself is a strange mix of humor and advice (and it isn't always clear where the two meet) at its worst, though, the humor reinforces the outlook of the advice, and at its best immensely amuses. Yes, even the couple of pages towards the beginning that give the "ancient" "history" of the XDM "community" add to the overall message. That message is essentially that the best GM is a highly benevolent dictator/entertainer. There are entire sections (albeit short ones) on how to keep players in line, but those are mostly anti-rules-lawyer-y and have the express goal of making the game run smoothly and efficiently.
The advice has two main thrusts for improving you as a GM, and your gaming experience in general. The first is to be story focused, and the second is to be prepared. An XDM never “wings it.” I’ve heard of people disliking this story focus because they think that to have a story, the players have to be railroaded (Tracy actually argues against railroading players). That’s not the case, but neither does Tracy advocate giving players total freedom. At the very least he urges using a real, living world and ethical consequences as means of preventing your players from randomly burning the countryside. If a player seduces the virgin princess the night before her important political marriage, not only will the king and all his armies be after that player, but the two kingdoms will go to war, and so the player can no longer flee to that other kingdom because there are violent, unhappy armies between them and there.
Tracy gives a lot of practical advice, too he covers the monomyth (which saves you from needing to read Campbell), he offers a selection of riddles and logic puzzles, he has charts for telling lies to your players, he outlines linear, open, and closed matrixes, and more.
As others have noted, the book also has a large section on theatrics for bringing various aspects of the game to life. Some of them are fairly hardcore (wiring a surround sound system, wiring dozens of different lights to a central control panel, creating laser light shows, etc) they’re fun to dream about, but I can’t imagine most gamers have the room necessary, let alone the resources, for stuff like this. I notice a lot of other reviews mention this, too. But to be fair, what part of “X-treme Dungeon Mastery” sounds like it is for casual gamers? However, there are a lot of simpler yet still good ideas for enhancing the gaming experience that most anyone can benefit from.
And finally, there is an entire gaming system in here as well. It fits because the Hickman’s drilled down to the core of almost every game system a die roll is to determine success and failure, or how good or bad a success/failure is. That’s what the XD20 system is based on, and it tosses out most other complexities as being unnecessary (although they admit that this places a lot of power in the hands of the GM). That’s really the heart of the book do away with unnecessary, over complicated rules and have fun.
The only real issue I have with this book (aside from typos) is the xdm stuff. I feel like the author is trying to over sell himself (which I don't get bc if I'm reading the book then I've probably bought it which implies I'm assuming him to be some kind of authority on the topic). Imagine you are trying to start working out for the first time in a long time. You find this huge muscle bound Arnold looking guy to help teach you. During your workouts he is CONSTANTLY telling you how awesome and buff he is and how much you want to be like him. However at the same time he is in fact giving you valuable secrets on how to work out that you find are helping you build muscle and reach your goals. That's what this book is. If you can stand Arnold referring needlessly to how awesome he is (or in this case how badly you should want to be an xdm) this book is packed with all kinds of things that anyone from a novice to someone more advanced can use. Things like pacing, using your voice, how to handle traps, how to handle puzzles are all in here. Some of them are in forms I haven't seen before. So again, if you can stomach the xdm stuff this book provides you with what you want out of it. The art work is fun too.
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