Dice and Dramatics is an excellent, one-stops source for doing exactly what it says it will do in the description. I tend to write reviews that will help you decide whether it is worth the money or not -- that's what I think the review system in RPG NOW is for.

Therefore, for 7.00 dollars, this is a good product if you are fairly new to the RPG game world and you want to really get into the meat of acting out your adventures at the game table. Otherwise, it is merely an OK product for play, but it does have a nice layout and graphic design.

(Revised) Dice and Dramatics: a D20 Guide to Better Role-Playing by Ben Mowbray and published by Ultramyth. It is a seventy four-page product (seventy after covers and OGL) with a simple and easy enough to read layout. The art is not the best but it is on theme and interesting. Two versions are provided, the full version and a printer friendly version (which, oddly, keeps the art in).

It is a book of advice for role-playing, it uses the OGL?s races, classes and alignment to frame the advice but the majority of it is still useful for any game (though Chapter 4: New Spells and Equipment is obviously geared to D20 but it is only 13 pages of the whole).

The book starts with an introduction laying out the aim of the book, in a nutshell, to improve roleplaying. Chapter 1 follows and looks at the various OGL classes, giving suggestion of how each might act and giving suggestions on how to personalize them to a player. Various reminders of the important things in a character background a player might want to consider as roleplaying hooks. Hints for things that can be done to improve roleplay and a few random table to spur ideas. Nothing terribly new or innovative here, but good useful material all the same.

Chapter 2 is advice on role-playing in game, how to use knowledge of the game to improve roleplaying and how to avoid using meta-game knowledge to the detriment of the game. Additionally, tricks to encourage roleplaying and suggestions of things that might be interesting to roleplay (casting spells, using skills).

Chapter 3 deals with the classic OGL races and gives suggestions on roleplaying ideas and hooks for the standard PC races as well as for several monster races and the effects of templates.

Chapter 4 is new equipment and magic, including a considerable amount of clothing with which to personalize the look of a character. The magic is most useful low level (often cosmetic) effects, some very amusing things.

Chapter 5 is helpful advice for the DM without whose assistance roleplaying will often be difficult. Useful reminders, know your players, know the characters. Advice on setting the scene, using props and music to reinforce a mood and other good ideas. Solid, helpful information and discussion.

If you primarily enjoy the roleplaying aspect of RPGs, you will find some useful tools and ideas here to enhance your experience.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

If this book had a tag line, I?d suggest ?Putting the Role back in Role Playing?. Very simply this book is about role playing better. From the introduction to the final page before the Open Game License, this book offers advice and options to help role play and define a character. It has advice for the novice and the master, the player and the dungeon master. The advice is good, solid, and thorough

Dice and Dramatics is the first book by Ultramyth Design. The author, Ben Mowbray, shows a clear understanding of character design and how to get the most out of details. The pdf is 60 pages in length including the cover and OGL. The file comes as a zip file that is a bit over seven megs in size. After the file is unzipped the pdf is a little over eleven megs.

The pdf is laid out well. It is very easy to read from the computer screen and it is in typical dual columns. The border is a nice color fade that makes the pages look a bit aged. The art is light and does a nice job of breaking up the text. There are also a few tables and other means that make reading easy. The pdf is well book marked making it easy to find things quickly.

Dice and Dramatics starts with a nice introduction. It also has a neat section called ?Who should read this book.? This section not only tells who should be reading this book but why they should. The book is for both PCs and DM but for different reasons. I like this little section because it shows the author was thinking how the audience can use his book. After that is a small summary of each chapter, and then a list of gaming terms with their definitions. It?s another small section, but again shows the author is thinking about his audience. Not all gamers will know what all the terms are, so including them just makes sure all the readers are on the same page. The last thing in the intro section is a little note from the author to the reader. It tells a little what the book started out as and how it evolved.

The first chapter is about getting to know your character. It includes ideas for detailing the characters appearance and personality. It also has a brilliant idea of basing weight off the physical scores. So, a stronger character weighs more then a weak one for instance. It?s a simple detail that is nicely done. The chapter describes the personality of all the classes from the PHB. The closer the character is to being typical of the class the more useful these will be. One area that I?ve seen even veterans miss is including skills and feats into ones background and personality. The character had to learn these things somewhere and it?s good to think about that with the character. The chapter will be very useful for a novice but also there are a few things that veteran role players will think is a good idea in here. It is very thorough.

The second chapter details role playing in game. It starts with some simple things that really need to be stated. The first is the importance to know the rules. The second is a good list of gaming etiquette. It?s good to see a product that has some focus on how to game and how to get the most out of a session by listing some things that involve common courtesy. The chapter goes on to suggest portraits, altering ones? voice, thinking about motivation, and other options to enhance role playing. It also tackles the touchy issues of using diplomacy rolls and role playing in a simple way.

The third chapters deals with non human races and how to role play them. It includes all the races of the player?s handbook and some subraces. The book doesn?t define the sub races in game mechanics but does give advice for role playing them. The section gives good descriptions and has a nice tidpits of advice on how to role play the races. The chapter also covers some savage races like centaurs, minotaurs and kobolds. These races I feel the advice given will be more useful as people have a less defiant idea how to role play them. Finally, the chapter deals with templates as well. How does one portray a half celestial or half fiend? This section offers good advice on how to do just that.

The fourth chapter details new equipment and spells. It might seem rather odd that a book about role playing has a chapter like this, but the things described here are to further detail the character. Here one will find more mundane items to detail the equipment a character would have as well as magical items of a more practical nature. For instance there are ten different types of mundane hats. Each is briefly described insuring that if a character needs a hat, the right one can be found. Some of the magical items are a belt of dryness that keeps the wearer perfectly dry and the wig of style which can alter its color and design. Perhaps they are not the most powerful of items but the utility of them is what is important. The spells are the same way like Aura of Cleanliness and Buoyancy both which are simple and useful.

The last section is for the DM and how to role play as one. It covers the topics of using props and knowing your players. It has advice for role playing cohorts as well as commoners. It covers role playing the big bad guys as well. It has plenty of suggestions for creating and keeping atmosphere. The tips here I found to be useful and correct from my own experiences.

Dice and Dramatics is a rare product that takes an area of role playing that is inadequately covered and does a great job of covering it. I was constantly surprised by the level of detail and the thought put into this book. The author has a good idea of his audience. This book is written with fantasy D&D in mind, but the advice can be applied to any role playing game. Obviously, the section on role playing elves will be of little use in a Star Wars game, but the more abstract ideas can be applied to any character of any genre. This will be of more use to the novice then the experienced gamer. The chapter on races will be more useful if the campaign keeps the races as they are presented in the Player?s Handbook. However, even the veteran gamer who has changed most of the races will find good advice that is easily used on how to role play better and enjoy the game.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

After coming back to fantasy RPGs after being away for 25 years(!), it was time to read up a bit on how to run a game. This was a good discussion that I wish I'd had when I ran my first game, so many years ago! This was a worthwhile read, and I think my game-mastering is definately better for having spent time thinking about the issues discussed in the PDF.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: Good discussion of how to achieve a more cinematic game in a d20 world.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Needed another round of proof-reading; there were too many minor typos toward the end of the document.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Mildly interesting, but nothing particularly earthshaking here. Most good players have already thought of most of this stuff, and the rest is a little "foofy" for my taste. Not a bad read. Bought it to make myself feel less like a munchkin after reading (and loving) Goodman Games' Warrior's Strategy Guide.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: Good ideas to rehabilitate habitual hack/slashers, new gamers.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Wastes pages of some pretty inconsequential stuff.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

This is a useful product for a GM to hand to relative newbies or to players a GM wants to encourage to roleplay more, even at a basic level. It has some pointers for a relatively new GM, and is worth picking up on this basis.

However, there is little here for the veteran roleplayer to improve his or her roleplaying - for instance, much of the advice on roleplaying the different races revolves around physical descriptions and cultural cliches. Though some of the pointers for acting out racial stereotypes can be a jumping point for twists to the theme, or useful for portraying stock NPCs for GMs.

Note to pedants: The editing leaves a lot to be desired.

It's a breath of fresh air to see a product focusing on roleplaying rather than feats, prestige classes, and monsters so bravo to Ben Mowbray! I'd like to see a similar product for more experienced roleplayers with some better editing.

Great thought material, both for PCs and NPCs! If every character went through this book, answering at least notable percentage of the wide variety of questions, players would find more fully-rounded characters for them to play. The tips on /how/ to play are character are also wonderfully useful.

This is a supplement for going well beyond the simple numbers-n-crunch aspect of gaming and into actually taking on a role. Consider it Method Acting 101, with a gaming emphasis. There is nothing scary in the pdf, just sensible.

Overall, I think this work will make for richer worlds and more intricate characters, both those created by the GM and by the players themselves. Kudos!

Thought the author had some very important things to say about ROLEplaying - and I was right. I passed this out to one of my gaming groups that has been flagging recently and it seemed to spark renewed interest in our games.

Would have liked me ideas to limit metagame thinking.

The core of the book is quite well presented. The information is a good reminder for experienced roleplayers, and a good introduction for new gamers. I noticed quite a few typos, and I wish publishers would take just a bit more effort to have their products edited by an outside copy editor.

My only real problem with the book is in the crunchy bits. Many of the magic items were seriously underpriced. A perfume that provides 50 doses of Eagle's Splendor was priced at less than 3000 gp. That's 15,000 gp worth of potions in one bottle! If the thinking was that Eagle's Splendor is less useful than Bull's Strength or Bear's Endurance, tell that to a cleric about to turn undead or a bard trying to convince the king to give the party an extra 5,000 gp.

Other magic items and spells also had these problems.

Still, it's a book worth getting for some ideas on how to be a stronger roleplayer.

At first I was unsure if I should buy it, because it is the first product of them and I don't like D20. But then I saw a very positive Review on Enworld.org ( http://www.enworld.org/reviews/index.php?sub=yes&where=active&reviewer=Crothian&product=DaD1 ) and I finally spent the 7 Bucks.

Now I had the Chance to read through a bit and I am very impressed, not only is the style very good for a PDF(nice Pictures and good Layout) but also the Content seems great. There are Chapters for Players (including Non-Player Races like Kobolds!) and GM's alike. Even as I am not found of D20 I really like the Equipment and Spell section because there are quite interesting things there that you can easily adapt to any System.

The only thing that I find missing was a Printer Friendly Version, not because they don't use white background. This looks great for On-Screen Reading but Printing it will not be cheap :( I hope they will send buyers a printer-friendly Version ... it should not be hard to modify it for them.

I hope I could help a bit with the review (potential buyers and Ultramyth Design alike) and sorry about my bad English :P

Have FUN! Flanf