Planescape and the Traveling Circus

Call me an old fuddy duddy all you like, but the majority of my D&D characters (when I get a chance to play rather than DM) are humans. I know that's not the norm these days. The big 5E West Marches game I'm in, with dozens of players and over 100 PCs (players are allowed multiple PCs in different parties) has all sorts of oddball races in it. 

Full disclosure: in that game, I have 5 PCs. A Half-Orc, an Elf, a Genasi, and two Humans. When in Rome...

I'm pretty sure that the emphasis on adding new races to the game started with 2nd Edition AD&D. Sure, there were sections talking about allowing monsters as PCs all the way back in OD&D, but no hard codified rules. I think it was 2E, with all the various settings like Planescape and Spelljammer, Ravenloft and Dark Sun, Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk and Birthright, plus plenty of splat-books with demi-human subclasses and new races (yes, in that era BECMI also had the Creature Crucible series that did this as well, and the GAZ series) that heralded the desire by many players to play an oddball race, rather than stick to the Tolkien cannon. 

Oh, and the Drizzt novels. Lots of friends wanted to play a "good Drow" back in the 90s/early 00s. Many people apparently still do.

Now, there's nothing wrong, in my opinion, about a specific setting having a different selection of standard PC races. Doing that sets the tone for that campaign world. But 5E is just sort of ridiculously overblown. It's not because it has so many options, it's because it seems like many DMs just allow all of them by default, rather than crafting a world with the selection that fits. And so we get a traveling circus as the adventuring party. Dragonborn, goliaths, tabaxi, genasi, drow, warforged, and more! Plus there are usually a few humans, dwarves, elves, halflings...

Now, I am running a Star Wars game, and there are tons more alien races that could be selected...but most of the PCs in my campaign are still human! We have one sentient droid (and the player ran an Umbaran in the fancy ball session where battledroids would not be welcome), a Caamasi (player usually can't join us anymore...Hi Tallifer!), and a Fosh (My younger son is now into eagles, instead of bulldogs, so he changed his Bulldogman Jedi into a Fosh birdman Jedi. Give him a break. He's 9, and possibly on the spectrum [I may be as well]. At least now there's a proper species he can pick to represent what he wants.). One player had a Duros pilot, but now plays a human scout. Oh, and one player made a Togruta Kid, but then she hasn't been able to play. There are seven humans, counting the aforementioned scout, although two of those players haven't joined a game session in quite a while so may be out. 

Getting back to D&D, I don't want my standard D&D tavern to look like the Mos Eisley Cantina. I don't want the city to look like the streets of Coruscant. I want them to look more like Lankhmar or Shadizar. Sure, there may be a few places off the beaten path that look more like a Star Wars background, but the standard of the campaigns I prefer is to be more humanocentric, with a few demi-humans for spice.

Anyway, back to Planescape. If I remember right, Spelljammer came out first, so that's probably what really kicked off the desire to make the adventuring party a circus full of weirdos, but I think Planescape really popularized it. At least that's my conception and memory of the 90s gaming mood. 

And there is a new Planescape for 5E coming soon. WotC put out a video promoting it, but I found it kind of laughable. 

I have already mentioned elsewhere (in the comments of noism's blog) that my take-away of the video was that WotC was really hyping the idea of Sigil being a place where angels and devils live side by side...but doing humdrum jobs. The angel, the servant of the gods of Law and Good, an eternal being whose essence is Alignment made physical reality, is a baker? Really? Why? Does it need to pay rent? 

If WotC wants the new Planescape to be a wild, concept bending, mind-expanding experience like the original 2E version apparently was (I never got into it), then they're gonna have to do better than that. 

The circus is already the default for 5E adventuring parties. We've already got Eladrin, Tieflings, Hobgoblins, and Tortles as a normal part of standard vanilla Forgotten Realms/Greyhawk (5E version). Getting to play an oddball species won't have the same effect anymore. It's just the norm.

And having a setting where the Outer Planes are just some weird capitalist style workplace realm but with medieval fantasy bolted on is just...lame. 

I've always struggled with the Outer Planes. Sure, the Great Wheel is a fine concept. But ever since I was a kid, I've had ideas to make Outer Planes like Avalon from Arthurian legends, or based on lyrics from Led Zeppelin songs, Land of the Lost, or otherworldly scenes from B grade horror and sci-fi movies inspiring what I think outer planes should be like, along with all the mythology that inspired the Great Wheel. It's hard to make my desires about what the Outer Planes should be into a reality in my games, but I have tried on occasion.

To quote Baylan Skoll in Asohka, the Outer Planes should be lands "of dreams and nightmares." But not the nightmare of having to get up at 6am every day because it's "time to make the doughnuts." 

We deserve better.

Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Thieves review

Yesterday morning, the boys and I took in an early showing of the new D&D movie. We went to a morning show because after lunch, we met up with the group for my TS&R Jade game. The game went well. We had a new player, Philip who has been playing in my Star Wars campaign tried D&D for the first time. Nate & Denis, plus my boys, and Denis' daughter Renee (who played Goldie the Fairy Princess in my West Marches game) also showed up. Philip and Renee needed new characters, and Flynn (my older boy) forgot his character sheet, so we needed to roll up 3 new PCs for the game. But despite that, they still managed to make their first foray into The Pits of Lao, the micro-megadungeon near the home town (300 keyed areas over 3 levels, but no plans to expand it further, so micro-mega). They found one of the "special" special rooms, where they had chances to compete in various challenges to raise their ability scores...at the risk of dropping them if they lost. Some winners, some losers. Lots of fun. They also managed to talk or sneak their way past every other encounter, and steal a bit of treasure on the way, so all in all a good session! 

But you're probably here to read about the movie, not my game. And of course, since internet searches for "curse words in movie x" often end up here, there were some swearing in the movie, but not too much. Several instances of thematically appropriate or comically timed "shit" but no f-bombs. That's about it. 

So, how did we like it? Overall, it was entertaining. Compared to the bar set by the D&D movies of 20 years ago, it was amazing! But that's a pretty low bar. Compared to other classic or more modern fantasy films, it was decent, but not amazing. 

The casting and acting was pretty good. Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez are charming and funny as the leads. Hugh Grant is having a blast hamming it up as the con-man turned nobleman. The other supporting actors all turned in good performances. 

The special effects were fine. Nothing amazing. The magical effects and monsters looked pretty good, but they weren't the best CGI I've ever seen. Sometimes it was just very apparent that it was an animated thing. While I think some early CGI movies (the original Jurassic Park, the Lord of the Rings trilogy) have effects that still look pretty good all these years later, I don't know if these effects will still look so good down the road. But for now, they're good enough. Better than a lot of the stuff in Quantumania (a film I enjoyed, but it's pretty much 2 hours of CGI soup to look at). 

The story was very appropriate to D&D, and all the fun little references and Easter eggs were fun to try and spot. There wasn't anything in the film that isn't established in D&D already as far as magic or monsters go, which is a plus for fans of the game. 

But while I've seen some people online praising this move, there's one thing I found it annoying and caused the first half of the movie to drag and be a bit boring. Every time a main character gets introduced, there's a big exposition scene. Now, that is kind of like what happens in some peoples' games when a new character joins the party. And so that does kind of fit in a D&D movie that's trying to play out like it could be a game of D&D without the 4th wall breaks of a movie like The Gamers: Dorkness Rising. But as a guy who has studied how to make a movie, it was a bit grating. My boys found it pretty boring at first, too, and they have not studied screenwriting. I've been thinking of all the ways they could have shown us the backstories without having to tell them to us. And in some instances, the whole "backstory" flashback was just to set up a joke later in the movie which was extra annoying.

The second half of the movie was much better. It focused on the characters having to overcome their personal issues while trying to overcome the external challenges of the film, which is what makes for good cinema. And the ending was suitably emotionally engaging (if predictable). There were a lot of jokes in the movie. Some hit, some missed. I'd say for me more hit than missed. The potatoes usually hit. ;)

We liked it, but none of us came out of the theater loving it. It was fun. It was alright. I'd watch it again when it comes up on streaming (if it's on one of the services we subscribe to). And if they made a sequel, I'd go see it. But I wouldn't go spend money to see it again in the theater.

Virtual Tabletops

On my way to work this morning, I dropped the boys off down town where they could catch a bus to their school. And we were talking about our weekend plans, which include playing d6 WEG Star Wars on Sunday. Somehow, we got on the topic of WotC's planned new virtual tabletop. 

I told the boys that while the video that WotC released announcing One D&D and the new VTT looked really cool, it was probably just a money trap full of restricted content and premium dungeon terrain and in-app purchases for fairly standard monsters or character designs. It would also probably be a huge time sink for DMs who wanted to make homebrew dungeons, at least if they wanted their homebrew dungeons to look as cool as the ones WotC will be selling to them, that is. 

Both boys seem curious to check it out. The ability to zoom in and out of character view vs overhead view in a system running off of

They both play(ed) Minecraft, Roblox, and recently Garry's Mod, and the creative/edit it yourself nature of those game platforms are as appealing to them as the actual game play. It gives them aspirations of maybe designing their own games someday. So for them, the idea of spending hours working on a cool dungeon design doesn't sound so bad to them as it does to me. 

Neither of the boys seem too keen on paying for a lot of premium content, though. For Christmas a couple years ago we got them "Robux" (Roblox's meta-game currency), and they quickly realized how easy it was to waste good money on things that seemed cool one day (skins, game-passes, etc.) only to get quickly bored with it the next. 

So the idea of either paying a subscription or lots of in-app purchases in order to create cool dungeons in One D&D's virtual platform doesn't excite them. They could create the dungeons in one of the above mentioned games for free if they wanted to. Or they could copy their old man and do it the old fashioned way, with pencil and graph paper and imagination! 

This is just an anecdotal piece of evidence. I can't claim that my boys are typical of WotC's planned future audience. But if they are even somewhat typical, I don't see WotC's plans for a revenue churning behemoth coming to fruition. There are too many good enough virtual tabletops already, and I have a feeling that the novelty of using Unreal Engine 5 won't last long. Most people play video games instead of tabletop games because they want to game NOW, not spend hours creating the game space to game later. People who play table top RPGs will quickly realize that the video game nature of WotC's VTT makes it pale in comparison to their imaginations. 

Or at least, that's what I think. I could well be wrong. But this family, at least, probably won't do more than check it out for the novelty effect, then continue doing what we're doing now as far as gaming goes!

Chicken Littles

Much angst in the RPG online spaces these days. Much spleen being spilled about the new OGL 1.1 document leaks. Many predictions of the end of all but WotC product for D&D. 

Bullshit. 

While I'm not a lawyer, it has been clearly established that game mechanics cannot be copyrighted. Write your own presentation of a set of rules, and there's not much that a big giant corporation trying to squeeze every penny out of the player base can do. Sure, a few smaller companies and individual people may refrain from publishing for "OneD&D" after the release (assuming the text of the new OGL doesn't change between now and release), but if they really want to get their material out, they can find ways to do it. 

Besides, all these games already exist. They will continue to exist after the OGL 1.1 comes out. Some may become harder to find, but they'll still be out there. And you can still play them.

It may be scarier for small publishers to put out their stuff. And while little guys like me have no chance of battling WotC in court, I can see a class action suit from places like Drivethru and the smaller publishers, plus people like you and me, having a chance to defend the legality of OGL 1.0 and 1.0(a) products in court. If that never happens, or it fails, that will suck for a lot of small publishers. But we can still make our works and put them out for free, or try to make a bit of money under the radar.

Gygax's words from way back in the 70s (at the end of the Greyhawk supplement? I forget where he said it) still ring true. Once the game has been released, YOU do not need a game company. The game company needs you! Why should you let them do any more of your imagining for you?

Nani?

 So, not only did news of "One D&D" drop this week, we also got the announcement of the launch of 5E material translated into Japanese this week. 

It's a pretty decent commercial. And if you don't speak Japanese, don't worry, the video has English subtitles that are a good translation of what's spoken. 

But it is a bit funny that they're launching this right now.

The Age of the Rolling Update

No doubt you've heard WotC's announcement earlier in the week of the playtest for "One D&D" which according to their slick YouTube video will be updating, consolidating, and tweaking 5E in order to keep selling you the same stuff you've already purchased provide you with the most up-to-date version of the rules on a regular basis. And it will most definitely NOT be a new edition. Oh no, wouldn't want that. That splits the fanbase.

Well, despite the desire on WotC's part, it looks to me like it will be at least as substantial a change in 5E as adding books from 1984+ to 1E (UA, OA, Dungeoneers/Wilderness Survival Guides), which many consider 1.5E, or the "skills & powers" stuff for 2E, which again many consider to be 2.5E. 

Of course, this is play test material, and the finished 5E was fairly different from the D&D Next play test material in certain ways. 

But there will be changes. And from what it sounds like, the new VTT (if they actually manage to make it work this time) will likely put players on either a subscription model or an in-app purchases model to make money each time something gets added or updated. Not to mention all the money the could make from the sale of virtual tabletop monster models or other assets for DMs without the time to model their own.

So WotC seems to have finally found a way to market D&D in the same way they've always done Magic: The Gathering. Keep releasing updates/expansions and every couple of years update/modify the base rules just enough to keep people purchasing them again. 

If that keeps the company profitable, and keeps D&D in particular and RPGs in general in the public consciousness, that's fine with me. I've been meeting more and more people these days who game, and talk about it openly, than I ever have in my life. I've actually got more players interested in my upcoming TS&R Jade campaign than I need. 

I probably will be finished with 5E/One D&D though. If the online play-by-post 5E games I'm in update to the new rules, I will drop out. If they keep with 5E I'll stick around at least one of them. It's a lot of fun, fairly old school in approach (tons of randomly generated content and a focus on exploration with no set story), and definitely not on any sort of rails. The other two are running published 5E modules, and I joined both games from curiosity. They're very boring to be honest. PbP games require good pacing, and the modules may work really well around a table (real or virtual), but they drag out a lot of boring crap in PbP. But since they're railroads, we've got to play out the encounters given in the module because they're given in the module. 

If you are still enjoying 5E, and looking forward to this "revision but not new edition" I wish you the best with it. 5E is a solid game, and does what it sets out to do pretty darn well. I've had fun playing it, if not so much fun when I tried to run it. I'll be sticking to my old school style games for D&D.

Core Mechanics

Back in 2000, when 3E was shiny and new, there was much discussion of its use of a "core mechanic" of roll a d20+modifiers versus a DC. There's been discussion of it ever since. Maybe there was discussion of it before, but I don't remember it.

Playing a lot of 5E these days, and it's obvious that to the design folks at WotC, they think die rolling is the most important part of a D&D session. Hence the focus on rolling a d20 as a "core mechanic." And yes, I am continuing to use the scare quotes for a reason. It's because WotC completely failed to understand the true core mechanic of not only D&D but of any RPG.

A few weeks ago, discussing things with some 5E people (players, not the design team), I got the distinct impression that many of them were younger and less experienced in RPGs in general than I am. Not that I'm that old. I'll be turning 45 in a few months, and I'm from the third wave of D&D players who started with the Mentzer box sets. I offered the idea that dice are there to be rolled when everything else breaks down, and gave a link to Erick Wujcik's post on The Forge about diceless roleplay. It was one of the key pieces of writing about RPGs that helped me transition out of 3.5/d20 into the OSR (much more so than any of the GNS garbage). I hope I opened a few eyes, but their reaction was hard to gauge. The topic shifted away quickly. Maybe the revelation made them lose some Sanity points! (I keed! I keed!)

Recently, reading Jon Peterson's Playing at the World - more accurately, back to reading it, I'd gotten halfway in and then found myself too busy to continue until this week - he has a section where he talks about the real core mechanic of role playing games.

And that core mechanic is dialogue.

It's one of those things I've intuitively understood from the beginning. And it's where the real fun of role playing is. Sure, there can be die rolls that are high stakes and provide a cathartic reaction when they succeed or fail. Even lower stakes die rolls can have players excited. But the real meat and potatoes is the rhythm of "description, response/question, answer/action, reaction" that comes from dialogue at the table. All of the die rolling is meaningless without it.

So let your game design freak flag fly. Add in subsystems and minigames and weird % Thief skills and weapon vs armor tables (OK, maybe that's a step too far) that don't all rely on a standard mode of resolution. Design games that don't rely only on probabilities with increments of 5%, or a pool of d6's, or whatever.

The dice mechanics are there for when the core mechanic breaks down or isn't enough, as support systems.

Never mind then.

Alright, Mearls has officially got me hooked.

As you've probably already read, the core 4 classes/races, up to level 20, plus basic core resolution rules and some basic monsters, will all be released by WotC for free as a .PDF download. 

Yep, I'll be saving my money and just checking out the download. 

If I like it, and some local groups pick up on 5E, I may pick up the PHB for the extra classes/spells/whatever other options.  But that's something to decide once the game is out and I've had a chance or two to play it.

As it is now, though, WotC has finally moved me from a potential to a definite customer...although possibly only for their free stuff.  We'll see.

And I'll likely still only run Classic D&D when I DM, but with FLAILSNAILS, who knows?

Intriguing, but I'm not completely sold yet

So, word is out on "D&D Next." 

PHB will be sold at Gen Con, and available for wide release in mid-August, retail price $50.  A Starter Box Set will be $20.  In November, the DMG will be released, also at $50.  Probably the Monster Manual will be released sometime in early 2015, also for $50.

And the name will simply be "Dungeons & Dragons" which is good.  Next was a convenient placeholder, but would have been a terrible edition name. 

The local gamers I play with are for the most part happy with OSR stuff, but there are some other local gamers who are about to start a 4E game, and I wouldn't be surprised if they switch to the new edition when it becomes available.

So I might - if the reviews are generally good, similar sounding to the Pathfinder Beginner Box, shuck out the $20 for the new box set.  Or maybe go crazy and get the PHB.  I doubt I'd be doing any running of the system, but it might be nice to have a copy handy if I do get to play.

Then again, we've got a baby due in August, so who knows?  I'll probably be too busy to pick it up.

Development?

Following along with yesterday's post about Clerical healing from OD&D through Classic D&D and to 3E (skipping AD&D because I play it less and didn't feel like opening up more tabs in my pdf reader), I was thinking about Talysman's post I inspired and things I'm doing for Chanbara.

Side note - I did a little more work on Chanbara today, since I finished my academic work sooner than I expected.  Had a whole hour to work on it.  I removed the Kensei as a baked in class, since any Samurai, Ronin, Sohei, Kagemusha or Shinsen could just take the combat maneuvers to focus on one weapon and call themselves a kensei.  I also did some work on the Adventures and Rewards chapter, describing different types of adventure design and guidelines for awarding XP.

So, back to the random navel-gazing post where I speculate wildly and likely piss off some people.

Why did the Cleric develop the way it did over time?  Why have the Fighter and Thief/Rogue developed as they have?  Magic-Users/Wizards have been fairly stable across editions, while the other four base classes have shown greater or lesser change from OD&D up through Pathfinder (4E takes every class in a totally new direction, and I'm not up on the Next playtest stuff to be sure what they're doing with it)?

I took a look at the Cleric yesterday.  Mostly, they've gotten more and more healing powers as the years have gone by.  They've also had increases in spell levels, with only 5 levels of spells in OD&D, up to 10 levels worth of spells in 3E/PF.  Pathfinder also gives Clerics quite a few perk powers, such as the channel energy thing discussed yesterday, and two Domain powers usable 3+stat modifier times per day each.

Thieves were fairly stable across TSR editions.  There were slight changes to the skill progressions (noticeably a lowering of percentages in BECMI to stretch them out to 36 levels, and a slight raise early on in AD&D thanks to Dex and racial mods to the basic scores but high levels were slower than BX).  2E gave Thieves the ability to allocate their skill percentages as they liked, giving flexibility but otherwise leaving the class more or less alone.  Then in 3E, suddenly Rogues became the super-customizable skill class, and also with a lot more combat power thanks to the way Sneak Attack worked compared to Backstab in older editions. 

Fighters have had the least changes over editions, being able combatants from the beginning.  Mostly what they've gained were all the feats in 3E and later editions to tailor their combat style.  That was more or less an extension of Weapon Specialization in UA, and various combat oriented NWP and kit abilities in 2E.  Oh, and there was the Weapon Mastery optional system in the BECMI Masters Set/RC.  They've become flashier in their combat ability over the years, but the class has remained more or less the same.

Like I said above, Magic-Users have been the most consistent.  Weak physically, few spells at low levels, the most powerful characters at high levels.  Spell lists have grown over the years.  Low level spells have increased, but at high levels, BECMI Magic-Users have more spells than their similarly leveled 3E/PF counterparts.  Oh, and while the M-U has remained more or less unchanged, spells have suffered from years of developers deciding such and such creative exploit was overpowering and having the spell restrictions become more and more detailed and limiting.  Spells have changed, but the class is very similar.

Why the changes?  I think it went something like this:

OD&D is really fun to play.  Players want more.  Gygax and co. crank out supplements, making changes and adding to the power curve slightly (new classes, new spells, variable hit dice and weapon damages, new magic items, new monsters, etc.).  Players like this and buy stuff.

D&D/AD&D become big business.  Now, marketing people get in the equation.  They look at the game and try to see what sells.  Lots of modules, lots of supplements, the 2E glut.

WotC buys TSR.  Looking at D&D, they try to figure out what makes it so popular.  Surveys tell them that players find combat exciting.  Marketing realizes that selling books aimed at players should make them more money than the glut of supplements aimed at DMs.  Changes are made to the game.  Now, combat is the focus of all classes, and supplements are written for players as a way to make their characters more effective in combat.

Then we have a split, with the development of 4E and Pathfinder.  4E takes the combat focus to the logical extreme.  The game is really just a series of tactical battles strung together with some roleplay in between.  No, I realize it doesn't always play out that way (Dean's game that I played in was an exception), but that's the way it was presented and marketed.  On the other hand, Pathfinder takes the 3E base and instead of adding endless supplements, gives every class a shitload of options in the core book, so that players can customize their combat-ready classes however they see fit.

Did WotC make the right calls?  Well, 3E/3.5E did really well.  They're so popular that when they brought out 4E, many players stuck with it and now play Pathfinder.  However, the OSR also rose up and showed everyone that sometimes simpler is better.  I don't think WotC was wrong with the direction they took the game, there was obviously demand for it.  However, I do think some of the premises they based it on were wrong.

Those marketing surveys.  I remember taking one out of a Dragon or Dungeon magazine when I was working for Waldenbooks, filling it out, and sending it in.  This was in the late 90's, just after WotC had used their Magic: the Gathering earnings to buy out the bankrupt TSR, but before the Hasbro buyout of WotC, I think.  They were doing the survey to see what people wanted in 3E.  Apparently, lots of players responded that combat is the most fun part of the game.

I think this is a misunderstanding.  Combat is one of the most exciting parts of the game.  It's traditionally been fairly risky.  That risk makes it exciting.  One or two bad die rolls could end your PC's career and send you to your dice bag for 3d6 (or 4d6 depending on how you roll).  Players sit up and notice when things like initiative rolls or saving throws happen.  No doubt, combat is exciting.  But is it really the most fun part of the game? 

It can be, don't get me wrong.  But it's not always the case for me, and I would guess for most other players.  Hanging around a tavern looking for rumors about the next big score, pockets to pick, barmaids or bar-lads to bed, or surly locals to sock in the jaw can be pretty fun too.  So can engaging in a battle of wits with the Archduke in the King's Audience Hall.  So can exploring a ruined city without a single creature to battle, but with all sorts of mysteries and treasures of the ancients to discover. 

Combat is not universally "the most fun" part of D&D.  Yet 3E to an extent, Pathfinder a bit moreso, and 4E to a large extent were created with the idea that combat is where the fun is at, and every class needs to be good at combat so that everyone can have fun.  Not a new insight here, but it bears repeating from time to time.  So, the classes have evolved to be more hearty and more useful in combat situations when originally they were not expected to be worried about combat.  Healing increased, because if combat is the focus, PCs need to heal up to engage in another fight.  But, for example, Pathfinder and 4E both find alternate ways for the Cleric to be the healer but still allow them to do "fun" stuff in combat, because apparently healing your companions is not as fun as knocking around goblins with a mace.

Now, I did say I'd likely piss some people off.  And if you've read this far (this is getting long, I must be channeling JB), just let me say this before you fire off an angry comment.

There's nothing wrong with running a combat heavy campaign.  It can be a lot of fun.  Combat is exciting, and often fun.  If you enjoy a combat heavy game in any edition, that's fine with me.  But just remember that it can also become tedious.  And there are other things to do in the game besides just fight things, and they can be fun, too. 

It's when I'm doing those other things that I remind myself that I don't mind if Magic-Users only get one spell per day at level 1, Thieves have pitifully low chances to use their skills, Clerics aren't healing machines, and even Fighters need to be careful after taking one or two hits because they're at risk of death.  The non-combat parts of the game are just as fun, for me, and no PC needs a ton of special abilities in order to take part in most of the non-combat stuff.

A Rest Mechanic

During the flurry of postings to our Busan D&D Facebook page, and some KakaoTalk between Jeremy and myself, there was a brief discussion of whether or not old school D&D should use a "rest mechanic" similar to 4E (and apparently, I stopped checking the updates, D&D Next).

For those unfamiliar, in 4E they break 'rests' down into Short Rests and Long Rests.  In a Short Rest (5 minutes or so), characters can spend their Healing Surges (limited per day) to recover hit points.  All "encounter powers" also refresh.  In a Long Rest (8 hours), all damage is recovered, all healing surges are refreshed, and all encounter and daily powers are refreshed.

I mentioned to Jeremy that there already is a rest mechanic in Classic D&D/AD&D.  It's called going back to town.  He thought I was being snide at first, I think.  But it's that simple.  If you want to get hit points back, and spells back, when you're playing in a dungeon setting, retreating from the dungeon and returning later is the way to do that.  Sure, you can camp in the dungeon/wilderness (in Ur, we often do that).  That gets some hit points back, and all spells.  But if time is not of the essence (and unless you're running a tournament module or a Dragonlance style adventure path it may not be), then town is the smart way to do it.

Back when I ran some sessions of D&D at our old Board Game Group, that bugged the crap out of Alex.  Josh had a Fighter and a Magic-User with Sleep.  Alex had a Fighter and a Thief.  They went into the dungeon, ran into kobolds, say, and the M-U cast sleep, the Fighters took care of any unaffected, and then the Thief would look for traps, treasure.  With that one monster encounter finished, Josh would then say he wanted to go back to town to rest.  And unless they ran into undead where sleep didn't work, every time he would want to do this.  As a DM, it didn't bother me.  I was able to plausibly bring in reinforcements or think about how the kobolds or goblins would react to the loss of that patrol.  The players got to take on each combat at full strength, but at the cost of having an enemy prepared for them later on.  Alex hated it.  He was interested in covering territory and getting a sense of progress.  Josh was interested in surviving to second level. 

For me, that's the essence of the strategic/tactical play needed in RPGs.  4E style rest mechanics seem like a way for players to have their cake and eat it too.  There's no need to make the tough decision to go back to town and risk having enemies prepared for you versus pressing on and facing the unknown at less than full strength (or darn near it).  And that, Jeremy, if you're reading, is why I will not be using a modern "rest mechanic" in my games. 

Disney, hmm?

Just cogitating on some things in the news besides Obama's victory (qualified yea!) [That's about as political as I'm gonna get here, don't worry.]

Disney bought up Marvel a while back, but pretty much have left Marvel to do their own thing. 

Disney repurchased Pixar, but pretty much leave them to do their own thing.

Disney has just purchased ILM, including Star Wars.  After thinking about this, I say good!  At worst, anything they turn out won't be any worse than something Lucas might have done were he inclined to do so.  And thinking about the general quality of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies (first and fourth were good, middle two were decent enough) and the John Carter movie (movie was fine, Disney just stuffed it up on marketing and accounting), they'll likely do a good job with any future Star Wars movies.

And getting things away from the Skywalker story would be a good thing, IMO.  We don't need movies about Leia and Han's kids or old Jedi Master Luke, there are novels that already cover those if you care to read them.  Give us some awesome new stories in awesome new parts of the Star Wars Galaxy, please!

Arnold Schwarzenegger is returning as Conan!  King Conan of Aquilonia!  Awesome!  Looking forward to this, even if they don't use one of Howard's original tales (although the Scarlet Citadel or Hour of the Dragon would both make good movies, IMO).  I'm cool with letting original Conan be Original Conan, the comics Conan and the movie Conan being alternate universe things, like how the comic book, old Fox cartoon, and movie X-Men are similar but not the same.

And now Disney is thinking of picking up Hasbro, and WotC.  Well, at least I guess we know who will be making any future Star Wars CCGs and RPGs if this goes through.  Again, if Disney takes a fairly lax hand with WotC the way they have with Marvel and Pixar, this could be good.  If the Mouse House tries to micromanage the gaming business, well, at least we've got the OSR.

Plus, a Bargle movie, or something in the Star Frontiers or Gamma World universes would be cool.  You know Disney will be in charge of future D&D movies, maybe we'll get one that doesn't suck!

Modules: Judge me by my size, do you?

Dylan over at Digital Orc is running a poll about preferred size of print adventure modules.  Pop over there and make your voice heard!  What do you prefer, letter (8.5x11), booklet (5.5x8.5), or some other size?

Personally, I like letter/A4 size, although I've experimented with booklet/A5 size for my Presidents of the Apocalypse rules (still not much happening with them, maybe I should try to run a few tests of the current rules ideas on G+...).

In other news, Joseph Bloch reports that it looks like WotC is gonna reprint 2E AD&D next.   I'm not so excited about this, as I've got my old black cover 2E books from the 90's sitting on the shelf over there, and they're still in really great condition.  They will also be reprinting some modules though, starting with the A (Slave Lords series) and S (funhouse killer dungeons like Tomb of Horrors and Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth) modules.  I wouldn't be surprised if more follow.  These I may be interested in, as I've only got PDFs of AD&D modules.  Plus, as Joe points out, the RC or a BX reprint may be in the works! 

D&D Next Spells - some problems

I'm not quite halfway through the Spells document of the updated play test, but already I'm seeing some potential problems, WotC.

The very first spell on the list, Aid.  A third level Cleric spell that gives three targets d8 damage reduction on the next hit they take within the next minute.  Seriously?  Third level?  The orignal Aid spell in AD&D Unearthed Arcana (unchanged for 2E) gave the benefits of Bless, as well as d8 temporary hit points.  Not damage reduction on a single hit, temporary hit points.  And it's only second level.*  Granted, it only affected one target, not three.  But still, this version sucks.  Even if the Cleric's player rolls well and gets an 8, by the wording of the spell if something dings you for only 1 point of damage, the other 7 points are then wasted.

Meanwhile, Crusader's Strike on page 5 is a first level spell that gives +2d6 damage to a weapon on its next attack, and even if you miss still does 1d6 damage.  Obviously this is a 4E power converted into a normal spell.

It looks to me like Mearls and Co. are continuing their nerf of the Cleric at least with regards to any spells with pedigree.  Anything that they developed for 4th and are carrying over is allowed to be overpowered.

It's just a first impression.  I really need to go through the document completely.  It would help if they'd organized the spells in the old fashioned way, divided by class and level.  Makes for easier comparison.

A little voice in the back of my head is wondering if they organized them this way on purpose to make it difficult to compare...

*Update - Just checked the 3.5 SRD.  In that edition, it was still second level, and gave the benefits of the AD&D version (Bless + 1d8 temp. hit points to one target) PLUS +1 hit point per level of the Cleric up to level 10.  3E made it better.  5E is making it demonstrably worse (maybe it was 4E, I'm not gonna waste time checking that one).

Thoughts on character creation in D&D Next

My commute reading today is the D&D Next play test update stuff.  So far, I've made it through the races and classes documents, and skimmed the backgrounds and specialties documents.

First up, the change in name from "Themes" to "Specialties" gets a big thumbs up from me.  The word theme reeks of artifice.  Books, music, paintings, movies, etc. have themes.  Political campaigns have themes.  People do NOT have themes.  My character does not have a theme, although the adventures in which that PC participates may have one.  Ditching that term takes the game one step farther away from the dissociated wargame that was 4E.  Bravo.

Next, rolling for ability scores.  Yea!  Of course it's 4d6-L arrange to taste, but at least point buy is not mentioned and the "default array" is mentioned that it's just there for speed and convenience.  Roll them dice!

Hit points have returned to AD&D/3E levels.  Max HP at level 1 is still the default (as in 3E), but then I've been using that since my Mentzer Red Box, so I have no quibbles with that.  The option to take a set amount of HP at each higher level is there, or you can roll.  I still haven't looked at the monster document to see how the monster HP fare, though. 

Races - wow, a whole heaping ton of fluff about the races, that basically says the generic stereotypes of the races anyway.  Dwarves dig tunnels, drink beer, like to fight, are grumpy and stubborn.  Did you need to spend a page and a half telling me all that?  Sub-races are a default mechanic.  Not a good thing.  It's just one more choice needed at character creation and looks to only serve min-maxers (for example, High Elf gets you +1 Int for your Wizard, while Forest Elf gets you +1 Dex for your Rogue or Ranger).  I don't expect that you'd see many Hill Dwarf Clerics when Mountain Dwarf gets you a +1 Wis.

Classes - some interesting things here.  First of all, Level 10 spells.  Really?  REALLY???  With level 0 spells (Orisons/Cantrips) the game will now have 11 levels worth of spells.

Clerics - an interesting magic mechanic.  Memorize your X spells per day, but then you can choose any of them to cast up to X times per day.  Sort of like the 3E Sorcerer, but you need to limit your spells known.  You always have your Domain spells and Turn Undead prepared without taking up slots.  I don't like that Turning takes up a spell slot to use, but oh well.

Fighters - the expertise die mechanic.  You get a d6 each round (more and bigger dice as you level) that you can use each round for extra damage, damage reduction, or to pull off a special maneuver.  Interesting.  Not sure if it will prove overpowering or not.  It may be a nice simple way to give Fighters that edge they've always supposed to have had over Rangers, Paladins, and the like.

Rogues - I didn't notice too much different about them.  Sneak Attack starts at +2d6 dice, though.  Is that new, or was it in the first play test doc?  Don't remember and I'm too lazy to go look it up.  The Rogue scheme basically gives you an extra Background plus what amounts to a feat tree, so Rogues will have six trained skills total (Fighters only get 3, I think, while Clerics and Wizards get 4).

Wizards - Pretty much as before.  Cantrips are at will powers (including Magic Missile), while other spells are standard Vancian magic. 

General Impression - Better than the first iteration.  If they continue with what they've got here, I'd buy a copy of the PHB to have for reference if someone wanted to run this game.  Like Pathfinder, I would happily play, but doubt I'd ever run the system.

Now, the really bad news.  Whoever is writing the copy for these playtest documents needs to be taken out back and shot.  And I'm not complaining about the abundance of useless fluff (if they had new takes on the races, I wouldn't consider that fluff useless, but as it stands they're not telling me anything new about them so it's just a waste of space).  The style of 4E, with its overly complex faux legalese is annoying and makes it hard to comprehend in a few places. 

Ex. one of the Fighter combat maneuvers is a "dead eye" ranged attack thing.  What it does is let you roll an Expertise die when shooting at a target with cover, but the bonus cannot exceed the penalty to hit from cover.  The way it's worded makes it sound like you're better at shooting people with more cover.  Also, since other maneuvers let a Fighter simply exchange the die for an automatic effect like knocking prone or pushing the target 10' away, why not just expend the die to ignore the cover penalty, rather than making it a chance to ignore the whole penalty, but with a high chance to "roll over" and "waste" that extra accuracy? 

Mike Mearls and WotC (OK, I realize you're not reading this, but I'll address this to you anyway), seriously, stop writing the rules in overly detailed but dense ways just for "that one guy."  Nobody likes to play with "that one guy" anyway, and the rest of us are intelligent and mature enough NOT to abuse the rules just because they're written in plain English instead of near gibberish faux legalese.

On my next commute, I'll look at the Backgrounds and Specialties, plus equipment and spells.

Next, please...

Yes, please read the title of this post as either eagerly enthusiastic or sarcastically uninterested depending on your feelings about the upcoming new edition of the game.

I still feel this is the worst title ever.  I'm not super thrilled about what I've seen in the first release playtest packet.  But it looks interesting enough that I'm going to run a session of it on G+ this Saturday night (Korea time, Saturday morning in North America).  The rules seem simple and fairly intuitive for someone like me who has played plenty of 3E and other d20 System games.  I'm likely to forget some of the 4E style tactical special maneuvers of the monsters, but oh well.

I'm going to make only a few small changes when we play.  As Jeremy/Oxide pointed out, they list heavy crossbows as being modified by Strength, not Dexterity.  Huh?  The mechanical advantage of the crossbow is all about making the user's strength not part of the equation, unlike with a longbow (making bows Str or Dex, like the finesse weapons, might not be a bad idea). 

Secondly, a few numbers don't add up.  The Dwarven Cleric of Moradin has chainmail (AC 15), a heavy shield (AC +2), and a -1 Dex.  Yet he's listed as having an 18 AC.  Even if you interpret the rule that says heavy armors aren't modified by Dex and it removes the penalty (I've seen crazy justifications that it "prevents" you from moving into the wrong spot like some sort of Mr. Bean short), it should only be AC 17.  I'll likely drop it down to 16, though, just because I don't think heavy armor should make you better at dodging a blow than you are when you're unarmored.

Finally, I'll offer XP for treasure.  There sure isn't a lot of treasure, though.  Then again, PCs don't need all that much to level up.  I'm thinking though, I'll give 1XP per 1sp worth of treasure recovered.  That way they've got a chance to see level 2.

And to wrap up this blog post, continuing with the idea of XP.  Experience points reward what the designers (or dungeon masters) think the players should be doing.  3E and 4E primarily offer XP for combat.  So far, the Next playtest document also only awards XP for combat (yes, Mearls has mentioned XP for treasure, interaction, story awards, and what not).  The subtle implication to players then, is that you should kill everything that moves if you want to level up.  Yet there's also this power creep in PCs because of the fear of combat.  Everyone wants to get into a fight, no one wants to die.  It's really bizarre.  Not a new observation, but one that percolated up into my brain again as I was pondering XP for the 5E Caves of Chaos.

Anyway, mission for today: name the various humanoid tribes, their leaders, and the important NPCs at the Keep.  Then write up my own rumors list to give out to the players.

The Metagame is the Game?

Just a random thought that's been percolating in my brain recently.  It's no where near developed fully, but I figure I might as well throw the first draft out there.

One reason that different versions of D&D "feel" different is the metagame that goes on behind the actual play.  Different versions seem to encourage different metagame focuses that run parallel to the actual game play.  Here's my initial ideas about what some of the editions encourage for "metagame play"

OD&D/Classic D&D/1E AD&D: Using player ingenuity to make the most of what the random rolls give you at character creation, and what random shit the DM gives you in play.  It's a little beyond simple resource management on a strategic/tactical split.  It's really about coming up with that odd idea that makes an encounter easy (or at least easier).

2E D&D: Making your character so interesting and fleshed out that the DM grants you plot immunity.  This is not knocking the game.  2E focused on the grand plots, and clever ideas and all that are nice, but making the DM think twice about letting you fail that save vs. petrification counts more when the plot is on the line.

3E/Pathfinder:  Optimizing your character build.  When I say optimizing here, it's not necessarily about DPS (to borrow the MMO term), it's about finding the right mix of ability scores, classes, feats and skills to craft the "perfect" character for whatever it is you want to do in the game.

4E:  Optimizing your adventuring party.  4E really plays up the "tactical war game" aspect of D&D.  Making sure you've got not only a competent character, but that your character fits into the overall makeup of the party seems crucial to successful 4E play.  Fail to "play your role" and those big long encounters can become bigger and longer.

Now, like I say, this is just my initial ideas here.  I'm not trying to knock any play style, just thinking in print about what makes the play of each edition different.  If you've got comments, criticisms, or can think of anything I'm being just plain stupid about, feel free to let me know.

Well said

William Dowie, the Great Khan at Ramblings of a Great Khan, summed up my feelings on 4th Edition D&D quite succinctly in his current post on the 5E/Next play test:

I don't have a problem with the game evolving over time, it's evolving it into a tactical miniatures game, that, as DM, I am expected to lose every week that I really have a problem with.

 Spot on.  If the 4E designers really want a tactical minis game, why is it supposed to be set up so that one side almost always wins? 

Anyway, I don't know why I'm still 4E bashing.  Maybe it's because I have yet to playtest 5E so I don't have more bashing (or praising, or indifference) to heap on it.

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On a side note, I notice Blogger is now putting ".kr" suffixes on other blogger web addresses.  God I hate people's attempts to localize my web content.  Just because I live in Korea doesn't mean I want a Korean version of every web page.  Neither do the Koreans.  Anyway, that may be why Blogger has been kinda slow for me lately.

The post you haven't been waiting for

So, it's finally time for me to talk a bit about the 5E/Next playtest documents.  I've got them.  I've read through them.  I've found a few interesting things, a few things I don't like, but in general, nothing really horrible enough to make me NOT play the game and nothing cool enough to make me WANT to play the game.  Of course, this is just an early playtest, and things will change. 

I still think it's important for myself and other old schoolers to take part.  If nothing else, we can show that we're not just haters to WotC, and maybe get some more perks like the AD&D reprints thrown our way in the future.  And maybe some of the old school vibe will remain in the new edition, which will make it that much easier to recruit the kids who start on 5E into our OSR games.  My biggest problem (OK, time is the biggest, but if I weren't working full time/in grad school/teaching private lessons/raising a trilingual son/etc. it would be the biggest problem) with me getting an OSR game going here is that most of the player base in Busan want to play 3E/Pathfinder or, to a lesser extent, 4E.  Or some other game than D&D.  If 5E comes with more of an OS philosophy behind adventure creation, GMing advice, and all that, I think it would be much easier for me to get people to try Labyrinth Lord.  And this is in no way intended to be a slight to Justin, who's running an awesome game via G+ Hangouts, but there's just something better about a face-to-face game.

Anyway, enough blather about my gaming woes.  What did I think of the first public unveiling of D&D Next? 

The basic "universal" mechanic is that of the d20 system (3E).  There are a lot of places where the text has just been cut-and-paste from their 4E documents.  Hopefully they'll clear some of this up.  For a game that patently DOESN'T rely on a grid/battlemat, to say that moving in any sort of non-standard fashion "costs an additional 5 feet of movement" makes my brain do funny things.  I noticed a few of the 4E powers have become either "feats" or spells.  Laser Clerics, Fighters who do damage when they miss, Wizards who shoot mini-fireballs all day long like the one in Gauntlet -  all still there from 4th.

Advantage/Disadvantage is interesting.  Having run into "disadvantage" in the short-lived 4E game I played last year with one of the Paizo adventures, it can be a real pain in the butt.  Advantage is basically just the standard "luck" bonus that's been around for several editions. 

Hit points?  Mook monsters are alright.  Any sort of "boss" monster or "tough" monster, though, looks WAY too high.  We'll see how it goes in play, though, as damage dealing capacity looks fairly high (although the playtest Fighter does have one of the highest damage weapons in the game - switch out that great axe for a longsword and we may have a different story).  Now, this may have an unintended benefit.  Those who like 2 hour tactical combats can really enjoy finding the correct puzzle to whittle down each big beastie.  Those who like combat-as-war will want to find ways to circumvent having to grind those big monsters down.  But still, an ogre or troll shouldn't have 100+ hit points.  How many will dragons and giants have? 

And healing?  Don't like it as written.  I've always been of the "high hit points mean you're just that hard to kill" school (too many Schwarzenegger movies as a kid, perhaps?), rather than "it's all luck and reflexes and getting tired out" school. 

Backgrounds and Themes - Backgrounds seem OK.  Basically 2E kits that give you a few set 3E skills and maybe a feat or two.  Themes are basically just the 4E roles (from the five they've listed) given a makeover.  I don't hate either, and could see maybe using Backgrounds but not Themes if I were to run a game of 5E beyond the playtest phase (which I'm admittedly not likely to do at this stage of the rules).

General tone of the rules - I like it.  Give a solid set of mathematics to run the game, but give plenty of advice and use a tone that makes those numbers not so set in stone.

Making all sorts of checks keyed to ability scores is good (and Old School).  Making the saving throws tied to ability scores means that lots of people are still gonna want to run "super-charged" characters where an 8 (-1) represents "a significant flaw" and DMs will be hounded if they don't allow point buy or some ridiculous rolling scheme to insure high ability scores across the board. 

Finally, monsters.  Lots of them seem to have some sort of "tactical" special ability for no other reason than to have a "tactical" special ability (in other words, 4E leftovers).  And several of them are what Justin Alexander terms dissociated mechanics. 

We've got a couple people interested in giving it a try.  I've been nominated to DM.  After I finish my grad school stuff, I'll be happy to do so.  Then we'll see how it plays when the rubber hits the road (or the shit hits the fan, depending on how old school I take it).  I'll go ahead and just run it the way it is, to get the most accurate depiction of how it plays.  If I had my druthers, though, I'd scrap the healing mechanic (or at least heavily modify and tone it down), scrap the monster tactical abilities (the whole point of the move to ability score based actions was to be able to do improvisational stuff like in Flying Swordsmen, right?), and keep Backgrounds but drop Themes for the characters.  Probably a few other changes here and there.

So nothing to hate in 5E for me, but nothing to love either.  Some interesting ideas, some things I don't think are good for the game. 

Score so far: C+

WTF WotC?

OK, I've been trying to download the 5E Playtest documents. 

Keep getting errors and redirects and messages telling me I'm sending scripts over unsecure lines.

And this is AFTER making sure I still had a Wizards.com account, signing the little agreement, having to wait another hour to get the email with the download link...   If they really want people to playtest their stuff, why do they make so many hoops to jump through to do it?

Anyway, I'll try it again after work.  If it doesn't work, screw it.