Review copy courtesy of Wizards of the Coast.
Pros
The art on the outside of the screen is really gorgeous. If every piece of art was like this, I’d have no complaints.
Having rules within a screen like this is extremely useful during play. Many people build their own screens for this reason.
The Geomorph cards are useful for quickly making dungeons. Each one would fit nicely as a dungeon on its own.
Could Go Either Way
The interior of the screen is basically the same as the ones previously released, including the art on it for conditions, which are also found in the Player’s Handbook.
The cards provided come in perforated pages you need to break. This isn’t the same kind of cards some of the previous card packs provided. The addition is nice, but you may want a better material.
The normal price could be a bit steep, especially since many people made their own custom screens by now.
The dry erase grid page is nice for completion. Personally though, I prefer printing tiles and making maps out of them. Or using 3D printed tiles. Most experienced Dungeon Masters I know already have their own too.
Cons
The box to keep the extras inside seems really flimsy. I wish they’d be some better way to keep them together provided. They did this before too...and seems kind of a waste of a page.
Introduction
And so we have another screen product for this edition of D&D. I liked the previous Wilderness screen quite a lot. But this one is a bit different, focusing on dungeon creation. Many of the things I liked from the old set are here, such cards being included. However, the cards themselves are different. They cover things like status cards, which were in the previous. But it also has “geomorph cards” to allow quick planning and generation of dungeons. These are meant to help make the game easier to run, and provide references. In general, it’s good, but it’s not as much of an improvement as the last 2 sets. What do I mean by that? Well, let’s dive in!
The Screen Itself
The art again is very impressive. I don’t think a single one of the Dungeon Master Screens made so far has had bad art on the outside. The inside has many rules listed. This is very similar to the Wilderness screen I previously covered here. In their place are rules for travel, foraging, tracking, prices for services including lodging, tables for damage by level range and DCs, object DCs and hitpoints, skills and associated abilities, exhaustion, suffocating, jumping, light by light source, obscuring rules, cover, dungeon generation tables, monster motivation, encounter suggestion, and visibility distances based on terrain.
This is a good collection, but there’s a bit of a problem. Some things in the Wilderness screen are dropped. The prices for travel, the weather tables, extreme weather, spell concentration, and visibility depending on time of day are all dropped. These are useful tables, spell concentration being particularly useful in every case. The dungeon generation tables are really only useful for a particular kind of Dungeon Master too. The type that generated dungeons on the fly, or who has players that had gone off plan and went somewhere unexpected. This can make them not as useful as many Dungeon Masters I’ve seen, including myself, have maps ready ahead of time. So even if I were to use these tables, I’d usually use them outside of the session and be able to consult the book that the table is from.
Additional Resources
The same style of laminated cards come back for a return here. They again detail conditions, and combat rules. But now they also have cards for tracking initiative and geomorph cards. The geormorph cards each have a small portion of dungeon on them. Really, they could be a mini-dungeon on their own. They have tunnels on different sides, and you can quickly combine them to make a dungeon on the fly. This is pretty useful and cool on the fly. The one issue though is that like the rules for generating dungeons in the screen, I know many Dungeon Masters who would use this before a session, rather than during. Sometimes players will be players and force our hands of course.
There are cards to track initiative count. There are also condition cards, like what were provided before. I also like that there’s a card for the basic combat rules. Such a card is easy to pass around the table, especially for new players. The unfortunate thing is that these are the tear away perforated sheet cards from before. They do have a bit of a glossy feel, but they aren’t the best feeling cards. They included a dry erase grid map, that is meant to be used as a battle map. This I like. And again, you can use tokens to build up the map. The only issue here is most experienced players already have grid maps of their choice, or tiles. Whether that be 3D printed tiles, or 2D printed tiles. On the down side, they still have a fold up container for the cards, and it still feels flimsy like before. I just never liked this, and I prefer just putting the cards into a plastic bag or something.
We’ve got these two screens and sets now. Another thing to keep in mind is that this set and the Wilderness screen don’t strictly combine perfectly. There will be duplicate cards. Which is a con if you get them both, but if you only plan to get one, that’d be a plus. I wish they all were combined in one set though. As there’s useful things from both sets that would be absolutely complete if combined.
The Art and Book Build Quality
To start off, the art on the outside of the screen is truly amazing. I wish all of the books used this style. If they did, I’d never have a complaint. A fairly realistic style that also looks like a painting. The sort of thing I could imagine on the walls of my noble’s walls.
As mentioned before, the fold up card holder thing is a bit disappointing and feels flimsy. I don’t think it’d last for very long in use. The pages themselves feel treated with something glossy on the outside, almost giving them a laminated feel. I’m glad they put the effort in there. The outside and inside of the screen feels like other Dungeon Master screens we’ve previously had. They aren’t glossy in the same way, and feel more like the hard cover of a book. That said, the card is sturdy and it stands well. One of the bends was strange in my screen though compared to the other two, which were very neat. The paper popped out a bit, but it seems to work well in use. Unfortunately, these packs are sealed in plastic so you’ll be at the mercy of luck. You can’t look for a better copy like you can with the books.
Price
For the suggested retail price of this product, you can check here. It’s $24.99 at normal price, which can seem a bit steep, especially if you didn’t need a screen.
What I felt was Missing
The pages are pretty useful. Something like dice being included would really make it a must buy. Or stock tiles. But I imagine that’d be too expensive to produce. I also kind of wish there was a set containing all of the cards from all the sets. I would also say compared to some tile sets I’ve seen, or even the board games like the Ravenloft Board Game, there’s not much in the way of tokens. The 4e starter set did include creature tokens, but they’re not here.
As I write this, perhaps my dream set is a well/low priced screen, basic adventure(s), tokens, cards, dice, and screen?
Free Stuff
Nothing to see here.
Summary
There we go. The outside art is astoundingly beautiful. The inner screens include good and useful rules, and generally quite well combined. I wish there were a few other sections somehow fit in, but they’re quite complete. Just be prepared to possibly keep an additional cheat sheet somewhere. The cards are also a nice to have, covering many useful things like basic combat rules, initiative, and geomorph cards to quickly generate dungeons. There are cards I miss from the previous Wilderness screen though. And the price can be a bit up there based on the MSRP. In general though, as a screen and if you find it at a good price, it’s a pretty good set. I just wish there was a bit more to make it an easy recommend. Though with how stingy I can be, maybe I ask too much.
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