Customer Reviews

Dungeon Master's Screen (Dungeons & Dragons)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As a long time D&D player and DM (22 years), I awaited the release of the third edition rules with some trepidation. My fears were allayed after receiving the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide and the DMG screen. This edition of the DMG screen is 4 panels wide (a big improvement over previous 2 or 3 panel screens) with all of it's information on the DM side. The player facing side is nicely done art and does a good job "setting the mood". The information included on the DM side is: Balance, Bluff, Breaking/Bursting, Climb, Concentration, Device, Escape, Listen, Open, and Search DCs. There are examples for Opposed Checks and Door DCs. There are tables for Substance/Object Hardness and Hit Points. Tables for Combat Actions, Attack Modifiers, Partial Actions, Cover, Concealment, Miscellaneous Actions, Creature Size, and Turning round out this highly useful item. There is a small booklet included with the screen that includes a sample miniature grid, a combat planner, and some quick town generation rules. The booklet also includes examples of converting circular/cone effects to a square grid, Disease and Poison info and complete weapon information. The cost of the DMG screen is so low compared with it's usefulness that this item is a must have.

Well, a DM Screen is always a handy thing: especially for your players not to see what you just rolled, either for atmosphere or to cheat a little with the results. The problem is, most Screens always seem to have the same flaws:they're too small, and they're cheaply built.

Not this time! This DM Screen is plastified, and four panels long, wich makes it more durable and allows to all of us DMs some SPACE to put our books and maps. [sigh]

The DM Screen also comes in with a sheet of 1 inch graph paper, and a 7 page book containing some useful and some "not-so-useful" rule information: weapons table, grenadelike weapons, generating town and a Combat Planner.

The front artwork is okay, but not fantastic. It catches the feeling of Dungeons and Dragons, but nothing more.

The inside is nice: all important rules are there, especially the numerous actions possible in combat, their "action type" (free, move-equivalent, etc.), plus some handy notes (DC to break items, bash doors, hardness/hit points of numerous materials, light sources...) and an entire pannel is solely there for examples of DC for various skills: Balance, Bluff, Climb, Concentration, and many more.

Overall, it's a good product, but in my humble opinion, it is slightly overpriced: I got mine for 12,95$CAN, wich is seems a bit too costy, considering it doesn't come with any handy sidebook (such as Critters, in Shadowrun, wich justified its 15-20$ cost).

Ah, the DM's screen... many people see them as a waste of time, because all of the information is printed in the rulebooks. Why bother with more of same-old, when you can just look it up?

Most of the more experienced DMs out there, however, know that a good DM screen is invaluable. Not only can you hide your maps and adventure notes from the player, you can also run the game more smoothly. Instead of spending time flipping frantically through pages, you can instead tell a story! It's that kind of detail that separates a good, efficient DM from a great one.

So, the question is, is this screen up to the task? Actually, yes. It's quite large, being 4 full panels wide, and allowing you plenty of space. With a little manipulation, you can probably even set up a computer to one side without distracting the players.

And the tables themselves? Extensive, but not over-worked. The most-used portions of this screen will likely be Combat, Attack Mods, etc.

A few of the more esoteric entries include resolution of skills (Breaking, Climbing, Escaping, Listening, Searching, etc.). Although these are highly situational, it's easy to see how these events could come up unexpectedly, as players make their own decisions and try devious routes of play. I think the table choices here are intuitive, and excellent.

The booklet that comes with a DM screen is usually a mini-adventure. This time around, it's a nice layout featuring combat sheets, encounter generation, and graph paper for map grids. Very dry, but probably much more valuable in the long run than a one-shot scenario.

The artwork on the screen is actually important as well... it's something your players will be staring at for hours on end, so I would say the art is very good, but not detailed enough to inspire endless player inspection. (One piece of advice I can give, however - if you have pictures of monsters, locations, etc., just prop them against the outside of your screen while the encounter continues. This does wonders. ;)

If all you're after is something to hide your notes, lore, die rolls, and devious machinations from your players, you don't need this. (Personally, I prefer the artwork on the 1980 DM's screen, whose tables are of course woefully inadequate.) But if you wand a tool that will put all of the most-needed information at your fingertips, helping you run the game with ease, while you focus on things that are more engaging (like roleplaying and storytelling), you need this!

Before I bought this, I thought to myself that I needed to photocopy about 4 pages from the Players Handbook to use for reference during a game. Just before I did this, I bought the screen, and was pleasantly surprized to see the tables from those 4 pages on the inside of the screen. Additionally it has tables that seem like helpful additions to the ones I had mentally picked for myself.

The cover art on the player's side of the screen is incredible as well.

Finally, the 8 page booklet that comes with the screen is a nice change from previous editions. Instead of an average cliche ridden adventure, this book has additional DM resources that will be helpful during a game. Things like poison and dissease tables, and a combat chart to be copied and used to keep details straight.

Overall, this does everything a good screen should do. (Aside from the obvious of keeping players from seeing your adventure notes.)

I bought this screen and found it useful for a couple of things: It does act as a literal screen, offering the DM some privacy. That's important so the players can be surprised. It does have some decent art on the outside. The fantasy art kind of helps the players be in the "D&D mood" nicely. But I'll tell you something, Easley could made those pictures 100 times better. He is a phenominal artist; those pictures are not up to his potential. One amusing thing is all the characters on the DMs screen are from the core books. Tordek, Ember, etc. So if you grew to like those characters as I did, they are there in action.

The charts inside are decent. I wound up making my own charts on my computer, and paper-clipping them on the inside of the screen. Basically I played about five games with my players, noted what information I was constantly searching for, and made my own info sheets. What was the barbarians new hit and damage with a two-handed weapon when he rages again? You get the idea. That setup has worked really well.

If you want a DM's screen this one is good, but I suggest tailoring it for your specific needs. Another plus is WotC didn't go crazy on the price of this item, unlike some of the class books which go for [price] each! This product could have gotten 4 or 5 stars if it were physically sturdier, laminated, had Easley's best art, and if were made to hold whatever info you want, by using clips, or whatever.

This screen is very usefull to every DM, both with information and hiding those notes. The charts provide very good info and nice DC guide lines. The Combat Planner is also great, but there is one problem. I have 8 players, and there are only 6 slots, but it was easy to create a form /w 8 slots. One thing that has dissapointed me about the whole new edtion though is the more childish display of the game. The pictures are not as good as 2nd ED Screen(I loved that necro summoning skeletons) and the manner of writing is a bit cutesy. But DM Screen is a great resourse to every DM, allowing play to flow smoothly.

This screen is a life saver for me, as a DM. I use a rather large book to keep my DM notes, and this screen covers all. It is especially useful when my players have knocked down a door, and I can easily look up the DC. There are MANY DC's listed in the back, it almost looks like a few pages from the Dungeon Master Guide! From the back view (DM view) of the screen though, I could see right through it with a lamp being on our table. On the other side, the players couldn't see because of the beautiful illustration printed on the front. This can be an annoyance to some when looking for DC's. This screen is very durable, yessss, and it covers a large area. When we upgraded to a bigger table, I was able to hide my large DM notebook, the opened DM guide, and a closed Monster Manual behind it without letting the players know what I was looking at! The Monster Manual wasn't opened because I am not constantly looking in it. I only wish there were monster templates, and a section where you could put 1 or 2 of them up on the screen so you can keep the monsters at your fingertips. I always have to keep my pencil in place at the skeleton section of my Diablerie book. The same idea with spells might be nice, too.

The bottom reviewer is not reviewing correctly. This place is where you review the product, not criticize it because you can make your own. This product is very good, and getting it is a good idea.

The new 3rd edition Dungeon Master Screen is, as in previous editions, always a handy accessory. However, while still a worthwhile purchase, this new edition is definitely not without its flaws.

Beginning with the physical nature of the screen itself, the new screen is an accommodating four-panel format which provides much more room for the DM than would have been had with older three-panel screens. Likewise, the 3rd edition screen is made of a firm, laminated material which is resistant to nicks and tears and should hold up for many years of gaming. On the downside, however, the material of the screen isn't as thick or stiff as would be desired and, as a result, tends not to stand entirely erect and sags annoyingly under its own weight.

Turning to the content of the screen, this I found quite disappointing. Despite the availability of four full pages of space (the entire outer-face is covered with one large scene of artwork), there seems to be an unfortunate lack of truly useful information in the charts and tables found on the interior. At least half of these tables could be replaced with more useful and fundamental ones. Hence, it seems that much of the screen's potential usefulness is going to waste.

Lastly, the screen comes packaged with an eight-page booklet of quick-reference information, such as a combat planner and generic town statistics. Of particular note, this booklet contains the weapons chart, an item that most definitely should have been included (at least in part if not in whole) on the screen itself.

In all, while I would recommend purchasing this product (having a Dungeon Master Screen is always an advantage, of course), I felt it fell short of its potential and could be much improved.

The GM's Screen is a cgaming stable... to quote Paranoia© "The Computer lurks behind a wall of fear and ignorance, now you have your own wall of fear and ignorance to lurk behind..."

Since you HAVE to have one... why not make it this one. It has everything you need (and since we are short on charts in 3rd edition these days) it has difficulty ratings, movement rates and all sorts of necessary info that keeps tou from flipping books... till you print your own, this is the best one your ever see.

If 3rd edition hadn't went and streamlined the bulky,cumbersome rules of Second Edition into a tight, cohesive whole, this screen would have been 'useful'. As it stands, this thing is overpriced for what it does. And what it does is sell us something that could have just as easily been included with the DM guide itself. 4- 5 cent photocopies of the relevant material + 1 2nd edition DM screen =3rd edition DM screen.