This "Game Master's" series of books is one that I've had my eye on for a while. I see them every time I go into my local bookstore, or search for D&D content online, and I've always wondered if they were any good. A couple months ago, when I was visiting family in Phoenix, we found a Half-Price Books location (my favorite bookstore in the Pacific Northwest which offers heavily discounted books that are either used or publisher's overstock), and they had a bunch of the titles in this series for literally half the price. So I picked up the two I was most interested in reading.

I will admit that I'm not really one for random tables when I play D&D. As a Game Master, most of the fun for me is in the game design and building the world that the players will inhabit. So the idea of having the players traipse around and walk into a bar and then going, "Uh... let me roll on a random table to determine the name of the bar, who the bartender is, etc." isn't of much interest to me. I'd rather actually put some thought into it, and practice my improv skills if I need to come up with something on the fly because my players have caught me off-guard. Similarly, if my players are traveling from here to there, any encounter that they have is probably something that I've put time into placing there, because it's intended to balance the session between the "pillars of D&D," i.e., combat, exploration, and social interaction. It's rare that I need to go, "So you're traveling from Point A to Point B; let's go ahead and roll on a random table to see what, if anything, you run into along the way."

That said, there is a ton of information in this book and they did a great job of putting together all kinds of information for a prospective Game Master. They have tables for rolling up entire worlds (from building a planet to coming up with towns, economies, etc.), as well as the more familiar session building tables (random encounters, complications, side quests, etc.), and even some random tables related to magic items, dreams, tool-based skills, drinking and carousing, etc. There's no shortage of actual content they've provided for people who use random tables, and it's good content.

Which is why I think this book is still really valuable... it's just not something I'm going to use "as intended." I will absolutely use this as a reference book when I'm designing my own stuff (in advance) during adventure prep. If I'm feeling stuck on how to make a particular town my players are going to visit unique, or need to come up with an interesting skill challenge or social interaction for them, I can totally see myself perusing this book and picking something off one of their many tables with dozens of options laid out, and then customizing it for my campaign.

Additionally, there are a couple of truly random tables for random things that I think would be fun to play with in-session as a minor bit of flair to the rest of the adventure. For example, there's a "Drink Name Generator" with 100 two-part options (i.e., you roll d100 percentile dice twice, once to determine the first part of the name, and again to determine the second part), and it would be funny to have the players know that they can walk into any tavern, at any time, and ask what the specialty drink is, and to always have an answer. At this tavern, it's the "Honey Badger Blaster" while the bar down the street serves a delicious "Shirtless Duchess."

Those are the kinds of things that random tables can be really fun for, even for a Game Master like me that personally prefers more control over the narrative and storytelling.

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Created Jul 07, 2025 at 6:59pm • Submit your own review...