The scan isnt the best, but what do you expect from a 40+ year old document that was printed on newsprint? You will not find a book full of random tables with the sort of old school content this contains.

Even if you never play D&D, buy this and enjoy rolling up random stuff. fantastic!!! at this price you can lose.

I rate this 7 out of 5 stars

I bought this decades ago when it first came out. I never used it as intended, but more as Dungeon Master's inspiration, at which it was a phenomenal success. I'm very glad to have a PDF copy now.

If you want to hear the good about this supplement, skip the next five paragaphs, as I need to get something off my chest.

Just because something comes from the dawn of the hobby, doesn't automatically make it awesome. However, while a more modern supplement might be more subtle about it unless they're deliberately trying to be shocking, a newer supplement is just as likely to have to have the biggest problem of this one: Crazy sexism.

Pages 5-6 of this supplement, with the simple heading "WOMEN," is possibly the most sexist thing I've read in a gaming supplement lately, particularly one as mainstream as this one was back in the day.

Here's a small example: "...[T]he player may obtain a relationship [with a given woman] by paying the Gift Cost. This relationship will last the number of weeks under the Duration column; to extend the relationship requires another Gift..."

Yup, keeping a woman happy is a matter of a bribing her on a regular basis!

Someone is going to want to mansplain this under the heading of "realism," and I'll just say if get a chance, look at pages 5-6 for yourself and decide.

There is a lot of awesome here. Like any supplement of this era, it's terribly disorganized and mixed with a lot of "meh," but there are some real gems here.

My favorites, in no particular order:

• Rules for putting up advertising in the City State of the Invincible Overlord

• A city encounter chart that includes results like "expectorated upon"

• An adorable single-page treasure table

• Rules for using beggars as an information network

• An overly harsh but interesting attribute check system

• A surprisingly effective "Buffoon" sub-class of fighter

• Construction costs for castles and elven treehouses

• A crazy-mad and highly creative table for generating magical statues

• A "so bad it's good" alignment system

• An excellent and HUGE set of sandbox generation tables

The sandbox tables alone are worth the price of entry. I'd say they compete well with the d30 Sandbox Companion tables, and let you have a few or as many details as you like, including a table of trees based on climate and altitude.

I'd say you get two pages of awful material, 33 pages of decent material, and 17 pages of top drawer material I plan to use in future campaigns. Totally worth the price, even with that initial burst of crazy, which is why I still give this four out of five stars.

How can something so old be like a breath of fresh air?

This is exactly what my City State campaign needed. In fact it's so good that this, plus the Pegasus magazine content, are probably all I actually need in a Dungeon Masters Guide.

I've never seen rules the likes of which are in the Ready Ref Sheets before. I'd recommend this to any dungeon master that wants to capture the feel of the old school for her campaign.

This product is indispensable in running and developing my OD&D campaign. It includes rules, charts and guidelines from many of Judge's Guilds products all at my fingertips. I recommend it highly to anyone interested in playing the very first edition of the worlds most popular role playing game, especially if you intend to use the "Wilderlands" campaign settings.

Ah... This was my first Dungeon Master's Guide back in the day before there was an official Dungeon Master's Guide. Tons of useful charts, generators and inspiration in this little treasure. If you're playing OD&D or Basic D&D (Holmes or Moldvay) you should be able to drop this material right into your game with no problems. This is about as Old School as you can get but definitely worth the price as it contains most of the generators and information that was gleaned from other Judges Guild products...

The scan is excellent and the product is complete.

A nice supplement to any OD&D game. Encounter charts in many different environments. The complete list and stats of all the monsters from the various OD&D sources of the 70's is worth the price by itself.