Man, I like this book. If you're a DM and running a D&D game, you should have this book. Period. When considering a rating, I knew it was going to get at least a 9, which means "I wish I'd done it," which is true. As a student of history (literally), this book is right up my alley. I wish I'd done it, and I wish I'd had it when I started DMing. A rating of 10 means absolutely perfect, which might be pushing it for this book, but I wanted to stress how good it was -- I've never given a 10 before. Truthfully, it's probably more like 9 and a half. So I rounded up.

This book, in a nutshell, is a guide for creating a medieval-style roleplaying game campaign -- not the world, or the monsters, or the magic system, but the society and the culture. This is particularly interesting because it's all the stuff that so many game designers assume everyone knows (but they don't -- and lots of game designers don't either, myself included). Feudalism, the position of peasants in society, arable land compared to population growth, taxes, laws, cities, guilds, citizenship, religion, economics, and so much more. Don't know how to go about creating a realistic fantasy city? Don't know how many nobles there should be in your kingdom? Players want to build their own castle? This book handles all those situations in great detail and does a lot more as well.

But the best part is, this isn't just an encyclopedia entry about the Middle Ages. It's presented from the point of view of a DM creating a campaign. Even better, it's really a D&D campaign, not just a historical one. You're not reading about medieval France, you're reading about kingdoms where there are magic weapons, what the role of the druid in society is, and how society looks at raise dead spells. This book allows you to create a campaign (or just a village, or a city, or whatever you need) that feels "authentic" without being "depressingly realistic" -- and thus uninteresting. The writers understand the fine line between what's cool about the authenticity of the Middle Ages and what's too drab or boring for a role playing game to a degree that I've never seen in an RPG product except perhaps Nyambe.

I could go on, but it seems almost silly to. This book really is as good as it sounds. It's got everything you need to create your own cool campaign. Architectural styles in various types of cities? Check. Magical taxes? Check. Banking systems? Check. Ways of dealing with plague? Check.

There are even some plot hooks, some sample medieval-style documents, demographics worksheets, rules for bargaining, some nice detailed examples, and even a quiz at the end. (Seriously.)

Just get the book, already. If you can't find it in stores, you can get it through the Expeditious Retreat Press website. It's also available as a PDF (which I do not have, but I assume it has the same content as the print book).

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