Noise from Gen Con - Only One More Next Playtest Packet

The word is that there will be one more packet in September, then we're done. Furious discussion here.

Also, this:

That's from ENWorld's Morrus' Twitter feed, and that would be a giant game of Attack Squadron, the upcoming Trek game that uses the X-Wing miniatures rules. I think that's pretty cool.

Magic Systems

Because it had the WIld Mage, that's why

Confession: D&D's magic system is not my favorite. It works, and I'm comfortable with it, but there are other games that do a lot more with magic than any edition of D&D. Barking Alien had a post or two on this that sparked a fair amount of discussion and I wanted to expand on some of my comments there.

Magic is one of the distinguishing features of a fantasy game and to me there are two main elements of interest: mechanics and feel. Rather than go into a bunch of theory I'l talk about some specific games.

I'll use D&D as the baseline for my comparison - because it was the baseline for me. Mechanically magic is limited but 100% reliable: spells always go off, magic items always work. There are saving throws, but even then there is often some negative effect applied. At first this was fine but in comparison to to other approaches it doesn't feel especially "magical". It can feel more like science or superpowers at times

Example: a wand of fireballs typically has 50 charges. A 50 charge limitation is not much of a limitation in Champions, and that wand will always work and will always inflict some kind of damage unless you use it on a foe that's highly resistant to fire, specifically.

Now this saves a lot of player aggravation but magic in books and movies is often portrayed as risky business, not an infinitely-repeatable formula. It is also often shown as being draining or tiring to the magic-user - not so in D&D. Magical items are typically rare and wondrous, perhaps a relic of a past age - a wand of fireballs is something a medium level wizard can crank out every month if he wants.

Also in some sources wizardy types are portrayed as having more than just a spell list - they can sense magic, see things others can't see, and know arcane lore that others have no need to know. In the later versions of D&D you can give them some knowledge:arcane type skills but the closes they come to the rest of it is Read Magic and Detect Magic, which mechanically are the same as every other spell. They can't automatically see "magic" or tell that an item is magical just by touching it.

All that said I'm perfectly fine with D&D as-is, because at this point D&D is just expected to work a certain way and the tolerance for change is pretty narrow. Still, sometimes I'm in the mood for a different flavor of magic.

The first system I recall that felt really different to me was GURPS Magic. Now I had been exposed to Fantasy Hero and WFRP 1E before I ever played GURPS but those didn't register the way it did. Here was a system where magic was not going to wipe out an army but had far more utility type effects built in. Spells were learned as a special type of skill which meant even a starting wizard could have many of them and there was a chance they wouldn't work! Casting limits were determined by your skill and by your ability to handle the energy physically - go too far and it started causing fatigue! Go even farther and it could cause serious damage! Mechanically it fit with the rest of the game, and it felt like a completely different approach than D&D - wizards had broader abilities but  less powerful spells at an individual level and it felt much more personal. It also played more like art than science to me. Beyond the general "main" GURPS magic system there was room for different approaches such as Unlimited Mana. Magic items were also less powerful and less common than in most D&D campaigns.

Warhammer FRP, second edition, coming years later, had another great system. In Warhammer magic is inherently dangerous, tapping in to the power of chaos which has temptations similar to that of the Dark Side, and far more corrupting to those who succumb. It is tolerated as a necessary tool to fight the real threats coming from Chaos directly but it is not sure and not safe.In this system skill and experience help but there is always a chance that the winds of magic (flowing from the chaos wastes at the north and south poles of the world) will blow the wrong way at the wrong time and bad things will happen. Smaller effects are fairly safe but screwing up something big can result in anything from a physical mutation to daemonic possession. It's a "grim world of perilous adventure" and the magic system feels like it springs directly from that world.

Sure, there's a chance your wizard may go insane but there's enough mind-bending stuff in the world that everyone else has a pretty good chance of losing it too if they go poking into ruins and tomes of forbidden lore. They might also end up maimed, mutated, or dead as well so the risks are a part of the lifestyle. It's a pretty fair cross between D&D and Call of Cthulu. Notably, magic items are closer to D&D style - most are potent and many are permanent, though you're not going to be cranking out magic swords or fireball wands in this game.

Beyond the mechanics there is a lot of atmosphere tied to magic as well - much of it is secret, there is always more to learn, and there is a price for learning it too quickly. Plus if word gets out that a PC is delving too deeply into the secrets of chaos it's a pretty good bet there will be witchunters on his trail, something unlikely to happen to magic types in most other fantasy games.

Finally the other game I wanted to mention came out in between those first two - Shadowrun. Playing a magic type in Shadowrun feels more complete than any other game I have played.  Sure, they know spells, and they are often quite potent, but they are so much more. Summoning elementals or spirits is built right in to the mechanics and explained very well in the "fluff". Basic spellcasting works about like a skill and is not a sure thing all of the time. Casters have to resist fatigue similar to GURPS and can push themselves into taking physical damage if they go to far. They can create temporary magical effects tied to an item. They can use items as a focus to increase their casting power. There are permanent items but the powerful ones are fairly rare and typically only good to the magically aware.

Spirits are a big part of the game and are far more than meatshields. Summoning a spirit lets you use them for that of course, but they can also be asked to perform various services, used for combat effects (like armor),  or even be used to power spells! The whole spirit/elemental subsystem is very well done and makes it feel like an integral part of how magic works.

The biggest differentiation for me though is astral space. Being magically active automatically ties you to the astral plane. You can feel magic and if you "asense" you can see into the astral plane and see what a magical person/place/object is and gain some information about them. You can see a spell or a spirit coming. If seeing isn't enough you can fully shift over to the astral plane, basically moving to another layer of reality to deal with threats that way. It's a cool concept and it works well within the game and it feels "right" for what mages are about in this universe. Mages are aware of and vulnerable/exposed to things that mundanes never have to deal with, and it makes the whole system something special.

There are other little touches as well - centering, initiation, lodges, totems, "background count", and all of the little things that mages can dig into.

And that's only one type of character in the game!

Getting back to D&D, I have mostly played clerics in my limited playing time, and for them I think the D&D system works just fine - calling on your personal relationship with a deity to power magical effects, well, it should be pretty reliable. For wizard types though I lean more towards introducing some risks and that's probably why I favor the Wild Mage. They were big in second edition and there was some crazy stuff they could pull off (and some horrible accidents too). I think there was a prestige class for them in 3E but I never saw one in play and that seems like a reduction anyway - let me play it from 1st level! They came back in 4E as a type of sorcerer and while not as over the top as the 2E versions they still have that random element that I enjoy so much. I hope they will make a return in some expansion for Next to help keep things lively. It's not always about mechanics, sometimes it's just about feel.

The Star Wars Model of Campaign Design

So I did something like this once before and I've been thinking about it again, but this time with a different model. I'll try to use a similar format too. Note that this is based more on the universe than it is the movies themselves.

So, principles of a Star Wars-modeled campaign:

1) The Universe is Known: Some games feature a lot of exploration. This one does not. This actually fits a lot of fantasy campaigns pretty well, from the Forgotten Realms to Warhammer's Old World. The big picture geography is well documented, but one can easily find pockets of "unknown" here and there and some areas are "far too remote" for decent people to care about anyway.

2) Monolithic Stability: Someone is In Charge - of almost everything! Sometimes it's the good guys, sometimes it's the bad, but most of the time most things are controlled mostly by one entity. One of the driving forces of the campaign is to change this.

I'm sure this is all completely fine, nothing underhanded here at all, nope

3) The Pendulum:

• A creeping threat to the existing order is discovered. This is where the game begins.
• This order begins to fray as the threat grows and factions begin to disagree on how to deal with it. Heroes adventure and important figures on both sides are identified.
• Open conflict breaks out and this conflict may go on for years. Heroes and villains do a lot of leveling up during this conflict.
• The old order collapses and a a new one rises. PC's may directly cause this.
• The purge - allies and power players of the old order are hunted down as the new order consolidates power. Heroes pay back old foes or go out in a blaze of glory.
• The interim - Things appear to stabilize. Surviving high level PC's retire or go into exile. 
• The next generation - descendants or allies of the old order begin to gather power and make plans to overturn the new order, beginning the cycle all over again. Roll up your new characters.

4) Generations, Lineage, and Legacy: There's a lot of attention paid to redemption and revenge. Characters may have intertwined family histories or religious affiliations. Enemies may be related as well. There is a little more demanded of the players here when it comes to linking up their characters than in a typical D&D game but hopefully that's what they are looking for. There is plenty of room for diversity in character types, they just need to have some connections. This game will spend a fair amount of time on relationships, so your role players should love it. For your action junkies - well there is a war on...

Once again level based games give a nice built-in progress clock for what needs to be happening in the universe. This is another "finite" campaign in many ways, as there is a planned end point for the game (we won! - or-  we lost!), but it has a huge connection to the next one (or the previous one) that makes them almost a continuous campaign.

There's plenty of room for players to control their own destiny within these larger events, even taking control of some of them as high level characters are going to be leaders in a wartime situation without having to ask for it. 

Also, it doesn't really matter which side they are on! If they go Old Order heck, give them a chance to stop the change - perhaps only to have their NPC leader turn out to be the biggest threat of all! If they don't manage to make the change (hi Mr. Windu!), well, the survivors get to set the seeds for the next generation to carry on the fight. If they go New Order, well, let's hope they win so they can all retire to desk jobs by the time they become the Old Order again.

Among published settings for D&D, well, Eberron is the direct aftermath of a war, possibly headed for another one, and Greyhawk has had a few too.

I haven't deliberately run a game like this yet but I think it has a lot of potential. I'm laying a little ground work for something like this in my 4E Red Hand of Doom campaign as there is a 4E campaign that follows up on the events of this adventure a generation or more later. I didn't plot it out ahead of time but there is the potential there for the future. 

Monster Modularity

Not appearing in this post

Moving back and forth among different versions of D&D as I have been doing lately got me to thinking about which parts of the various editions have been more or less fun and more or less work to run. One of the big factors is how monsters (and NPC's) are presented for use.

You know, I cannot find a picture of a Basic D&D Goblin - so here's the closest thing I could find

Basic (and the various clones): "Here's your monster" - you get a statblock and not much other detail. Is that AC 5 from chainmail? Is it from studded leather and a shield with a Dex bonus? What weapons do they use? Well, that's all pretty much up to the DM, though sometimes published adventures note this kind of information. The only notes on different variations or advancement are usually things like "the leader fights as a bugbear" or something similar. This does keep monster info short and sweet but it does ask a novice DM to add some details on the fly and monsters can get kind of routine after fighting them a few times. I suspect one of the reasons there are so many humanoid monster types in D&D is because that's where variety came form in the earlier editions - we didn't need 6 types of actual goblin because we moved on to xvarts and orcs and hobgoblins and norkers and gnolls and flinds and bugbears and the rest as we leveled up.

Basic Switches: Well you can adjust the weapons and armor but that really only applies to humanoid type creatures. Magic items work similarly. Some of them can use spells and that can provide some variety. That's really about it. One troll is pretty much like another.

AD&D: "Advanced here's your monster" - There's more detail in some places and there is typically more of a breakdown of weapons used for humanoid type monsters but special types are still pretty much limited to "chief fights as a bugbear with bodyguards who fight as hobgoblins" type notes. The DMG has some notes on shamans and witch doctors for the humanoid races (which allowed for MU and Cleric levels on them) but this is not included in the MM and they never seemed to show up a whole lot in published adventures. Other creatures, even ones like giants, have almost no information on weapons and armor, leaders, or class levels. (This is probably one reason the weapons vs. armor type modifiers saw so little use - when armor type is not a standard part of a monster description it's not really worth the extra hassle.)

PC races like elves and dwarves do have more detail in their entries, from weapons and armor breakdowns to class levels for leaders and other types. I know I never really needed them because my players didn't typically fight these types but it gave a good model for what kinds of options could be added.

1E Switches: weapons & armor, magic items, the occasional alignment switch, spell changes, and the occasional hit dice bump is about it. So basically gear, spells, and maybe level. Again, one troll is pretty much like another other than throwing the odd magic item on one here and there or bumping up his hit dice - "This is a really big troll so he has 9HD instead of 6+6."

A lot of 2E's art was cool - this is one of my least favorites. Compared to tramp's illo above this is a step back

AD&D 2E: "More info, same stats" - With 2E we see some significant improvements, at least form the perspective of someone actually trying to run a game. Creatures who wear armor have their "armored up" AC listed, followed by their natural AC in parentheses. There is a specific "combat" subsection below the statblock that describes the weapons, armor, and tactics of each creature. Special types are now listed as "leader with 2 HD, AC5 and fights with a battle axe". Some of these notes were already present for humanoid types but others like giants benefit greatly from all of these updates as a DM has more to work with both when prepping and when adjudicating on the fly.

2E Switches: Pretty much the same as 1E, and gear and spells really only apply to certain types of monsters. Even though the Non-Weapon Proficiency system was added to the game, it wasn't added to the monsters - they would have needed stats. Again, one troll is much like another, other than taking entirely different types of troll. There were a few more options like that.


Now all 3 versions above are pretty similar mechanics-wise and the same kinds of things tend to come up:

• Players go to loot the bodies - what kind of gear do they have? DM gets to decide on the fly
• Goblins in the caves of chaos work a certain way. Goblins in a different area may be completely different. Wandering encounter goblins may be different from both of those.
• Special types and leaders are not super easy to run on the fly as they often refer to other monster entries and require spell selection and gear selection
• Players get into some kind of contest of strength - how strong is a goblin? a hobgoblin? an orc? We did know the strength of an ogre and the various giant types, but what about a dragon?

These can all be overcome but there were definite "open items" that a lot of DM's would like to solve.

As far as looting I know I mostly used the "wing it" approach if I had not decided ahead of time. Monsters of the same type in different areas may have completely valid reasons for being different, but it's nice if you can reward the players for learning about the world and then trying to apply those lessons as the travel. If your goblin tribes all operate in completely different ways then you can't really reward the players for paying attention as there's no carryover. I know by the time I was running 2E I put a lot of monsters on index cards and kept a file handy for play. This let my room notes consist of things like "10 regular goblins, a leader and a shaman" when it came to the creatures, and all of their details were on cards. This gave me a little more variation among a monster type, say within a goblin lair, but it did tend to standardize each of those sub-types across multiple encounters, giving the player some idea of what to expect if they attacked a goblin lair.

The stat question didn't come up a lot but when it did it was a pain. At one point we got into a situation where a character on a horse was trying to drag down an orc chieftain (a 3HD monster in AD&D) and we got way too bogged down in the whole which is stronger question. Creative players will get you into situations like that and having a number to point to trims the argument time down quite a bit.

The larger picture with the monsters in these versions is that there aren't a lot of switches a DM can flip to modify them. On one level you can do anything you want to them but there aren't really many mechanics around it. Without some kind of mechanical hook a lot of DM's may not think of a fun way to modify them, and a lot of players may hesitate to try tactics based on mechanical assumptions because they have no way to figure ahead of time whether it has any chance of success (like lassoing the orc chief above). Mechanics don't just define a creature, they also define the way a creature can act and be acted upon by the players within the normal game system and it makes a difference. 

Forward progress at last

So now we get to 3rd edition "D&D meets the Hero system" - suddenly monsters are built in the same way as characters. It's a tremendous change in the mechanics and at first I could see no downside to it. Look at the elements you can adjust as a DM: ability scores, type, size, hit dice, skills, feats, class levels, templates (I loved templates) plus the familiar gear and spell options from before. Now there was no reason to just have a band of ogres - now one of them could be an advanced ogre zombie with 3 levels of barbarian, and another could have levels in sorcerer or cleric! It was all designed to work together, the numbers all matched, and (say what you will about challenge ratings) there was a serious attempt at making it easy to rank these things on a common scale.

Early on I was all over this. Going from having only a few tweak switches to having around 10 was a blast. Some of this was tricky to do in play so that was rarely done, but I used my same index card file system for running the game - do the math once, save it, print it to a card and you have that monster statblock forever. Plus now the players had many more ways to interact with a creature from the expanded combat actions (Bull Rush! Disarm! Sunder!) to skills to stat contests and I saw quite a bit of it, especially early on.

The downside came later - sure I had the feats and spells noted ahead of time on my monster cards but in the heat of battle I had to actually use them. What does that feat do again? What's the DC for this disarm attempt? What does this spell do? When would he cast this? Why did I give him this? It could get pretty bad. My monster cards became somewhat less standardized as I allowed room for notes on specific maneuvers and tactics for monster X. I printed out spell cards so I could keep them next to the monster cards in play, which helped as long as I could keep them all organized. Improvising actually became tougher as there was so much more to keep track of when one adjusted the monster away from the book stats. At a certain level of complexity, the system becomes an obstacle to improvisation, and on some level each monster was now as complex to run as a typical player character so running ten or more of them tends to slow down the game. I did love having the options though.

I know by the end of my time as a 3E DM I was enjoying it a lot less. Prep time was up as I needed to figure out how each monster worked in advance. Published adventures were even worse in this regard as at least if I built a monster I was familiar with what I intended it to do. With a published adventure I had no inside knowledge. There was a fair amount of rock/scissors/paper in them as one creature might be appallingly vulnerable to a particular kind of attack but if his buddy stood next to him or cast a particular spell on him then it was completely mitigated. It's tough to figure this stuff out in the middle of a battle so I felt like I needed to do my homework to give the players a good fight. The geography, personalities, and plot weren't an issue - it was mainly the fight mechanics. While there were a ton of options, it took a lot of preparation to get the most out of them. This started to turn it from fun into work, and that's a bad place to be. I don't totally blame the game here, as a certain amount of it is tied to the Way I Want The Game to Be, but the mechanics were definitely a factor.

3E Switches: ability scores, type, size, hit dice, skills, feats, class levels, templates, gear, and spell options. No two trolls need ever be alike! Feats, class levels, and templates were especially fun to apply.

Then we come to 4E: "Monsters on a card" - Monsters in 4E are built to overcome the problems I described above as apparently it wasn't just me that was having them. The single biggest change is that monsters are no longer built just like a player character, rejecting that concept from 3E and going back to the idea that monsters are their own thing much as Basic/1E/2E did. This approach gives a pretty good balance of usable options vs. complexity.

4E switches: level, role, size, type, powers, templates, themes (ability scores, skills, gear). Not only could you modify a troll, odds were there was a rockthrower troll, a berserker troll, a frostbrother troll - you had more options to begin with!

The introduction of a standard leveling process made bumping monsters up and -down- in power quite a bit easier. This expanded the range in which a monster could be used by quite a bit. Feats and spells are gone, built into powers as needed. Ability scores are present but don't matter as much except when players get creative. Gear is there mostly as a loot list as powers define the numbers and effects, the gear is mainly color.

Role is an overlooked innovation. Sure, it's easy to tell that the goblin with a bow should stay back and shoot, but what about something with levels of cleric? Depending on spell choice he could be a bruiser in melee or he could be intended to stand back and throw holds, heals, and flame strikes. If I see a monster labelled as "artillery" then I know right there what he's supposed to do. Same with 'leader", "brute" and the rest. Even if I have done no prep work at all, I can read the role and know where they need to go on the battlemat

The other big innovation was that everything needed to run the monster is in the statblock - no need to look up feats or spells or even weapons - it's all right there. That's a huge win when it comes time to prep and run a game. Some of it is presentation but a lot of it is also concept - monster powers don't need a full spell-type writeup - they just need the mechanical effects described and some descriptors applied and that's enough for something that has a lifespan of less than one minute of game time in most cases. It's going to be difficult to go to any system that is combat-heavy and does not have this kind of utility built in to the opposition system.

Next: The playtest version of D&D looks a lot like an AD&D monster with the lessons of 4E built in. Basic stats are included but "traits" are listed as discrete entries for things that look a lot like 4E powers and "actions" are listed for attacks and special moves which I think looks promising so far. There does seem to be an effort to keep the standard of not needing to reference outside material to run a monster in combat and that's an item I will be watching closely.

Switches: let's wait and see.

So what's the point of all this? Well, more options is usually better, but maybe not to an infinite degree. I still feel like the early editions were easy enough to manage but could have used some more options once the system evolved to support them. Right now I'd say we're seeing that with Next. We've maxed out on complexity with 3E and curved back around towards simplicity. What would I like to see?

• Monster "level" is an easy way to fine tune a group of beasties. let's keep that.
• Ability scores are fine as a "lesser" switch. The PC's won't notice them most of the time unless you really exaggerate it for effect, like a goblin with 18 strength. I like having them in the description to cover oddball actions even if I leave them unchanged
• Templates - these are great and need to be in every edition of D&D
• Feats/Spells/Powers - I'd rather these were just rolled into the monster description itself, part of their attack or trait or powers or whatever. One thing, not a bunch of different things. Don't make me look them up
• Skills - I'm torn on these as they do allow for more individuality between monsters, but they are also a level of overhead I may not need. I can live without them
• I'd like to see role included as an element of monster descriptions but I know a lot of people hate it as a 4E thing so I don't expect it to appear in Next. It does sort of depend on a standardized method of monster building and I'm not sure we will see that in next anyway.

In case you can't tell I'm fine with not building them the same way as PC's. The lifespan of a PC can be years, the lifespan of most monsters is a fraction of an evening - it makes a lot of sense to have different approaches for the two. 

The other big change is technology. For my Mutants and Masterminds games I don't even print out my opposition stats any more - I build them in HeroLab and then use its tactical console to run my combats. I have full access to their stats and can mark damage or conditions on them and track initiative all in the PC. It was my personal pilot program and it has worked very well. With basic thru 2E I don't really feel the need for PC assistance but with 3E/Pathfinder I think it removes a lot of those headaches I mentioned of looking up feats and spells and skill DC's by putting them a click away.

A dragon was challenging to run effectively in 3E as it had a lot of abilities and spells to track. See the blue text above with the spells and feats? Forget what "Shatter Defenses" does or worse yet, have a player arguing with you about what it does? -click-

Oh look, it's right there, the complete text, and it even lists the source so someone else can look it up if they have time. This is a huge win for actually running a game as complex as 3E/Pathfinder with all of the options in full effect. I've only used this one (Pathfinder Combat Manager) a little so far but I was blown away when I first saw it. With 4E I don't see the need as strongly as all of the details are right there in the statblock but if you run these other editions I would strongly recommend it

I suppose one final point might be this: A lot of us have been playing this game a long time. Every edition has some things you can do to customize your monsters, so do it! Don't be afraid to adjust the standards and surprise your players. Maybe this time the Steading is not a barbecue joint for oversized rednecks but maybe it's the home of a new spiritual movement among hill giant kind and they all have some monk or cleric abilities? Maybe they've joined a serpent cult and have some poison-related powers? The game is supposed to be about adventure and part of that is facing danger and exploring the unknown. If the players know everything already (even when playing 1st level characters) then take some steps to change that. Hopefully it will add some energy to the game and put them back enough to wake them back up. If you're starting a new game, well there's no better way to let them know this campaign is different from the last than by obviously and extensively changing up the opposition. 

I've done this constantly in my 4E Red Hand of Doom conversion. Since it was written for 3.5 the monster levels and types and numbers don't really match up that well for 4E so I change them. Very few of the creatures my party have faced are "stock". Almost all of them have their level adjusted, some have their gear tweaked, and many have some power adjustments. Quite a few of these changes are to keep the flavor similar to what it was for 3.5 but others are just things I like or things that seem to be a better fit. It's pretty liberating and it ensures I am familiar with what each beastie can do. Once I'm happy with it I print out the stats and keep them at hand for the game. With or without a computer, and regardless of edition, it's an option in every DM's toolkit, one I've come to like quite a bit.

 

Motivational Monday

40K Friday - New Marine Stuff

It's been a quiet week here 40K-wise. This week's hubbub seems to be all about the new Space Marine models and units coming along for the next release.

Some new type of armor between a terminator and a dreadnought. Always happy to see Imperial Fists but I'm not sure I care much for these otherwise.

...and another rhino-based gun vehicle. This one is supposed to be the marine AA unit and it's perfectly fine.

More info here , and here of course.

This Week's Random Gaming Thoughts

• The latest Next packet renamed the "Wizard" class - now it's "Mage" and I am amazed at the amount of commentary on such an insignificant switch. It's fun though - you can tell the age/experience level of many of the comment-makers though as they post things like "that's definitely a move towards World of Warcraft fans" or other assumptions that it's always been "wizard" and this is some kind of radical change. Heck, some of us still abbreviate them as M-U's without even thinking about it.

• Lots of people on the boards calling for non-spellcasting rangers. I still don't get this. There's a lot of retro in Next and rangers have cast spells since OD&D. Where does this come from? Maybe I've been watching too much Bill Cavalier but there's already a class of non-spellcasting rangers: IT'S CALLED THE FIGHTER!

• 13th Age is to 4E as Castles and Crusades is to 3E

•  Really getting tired of RPG books referred to as "product". Aren't these supposed to be labors of love? Isn't this a creative niche hobby thing? Isn't most of this "product" created by companies with fewer than ten employees? If so why do we have use corporate lingo to describe it? Sure, the WOTC guys can call it that, but Tinydice Press doesn't need to use it in their "press releases" or on podcast interviews - talk about it like you give a sh*t, not like you're a corporate salesman who had nothing to do with the creation of the "product". Yes, I work in corporate marketing and some of that stuff has a place but a lot of it is just buzzwords and trying to sound trendy. You don't need it in RPG's! The same thing goes for "brand" too - I'll save that for another time

• I really like the Cortex Plus system as it appeared in the Marvel Heroic game. It's a cool change of pace game from D&D and a lot of other traditional type RPG's. That said I really don't care for the licenses they keep picking up. Even as a fan of Firefly, I don't really need a game dedicated to it, and if I do I have Traveller. I know we have the Cortex Hacker's Guide but MWP please consider developing some non-licensed settings for your really cool system - I think there's an audience for it.

D&D Next - Characters

Some further notes on characters after our weekend playtest:

Attributes: It's roll, spend points, or use the standard array for the standard d20 attribute list. The bonuses use the same d20 scale we've been using since 2000.

Alignment: Still an option though de-emphasized. No apparent magical effects or class restrictions  based on it which makes it fully an RP choice rather than a mechanical one.

Races: Standard classic D&D races. nothing exotic like Dragonborn or Tieflings or the like. They have brought back a lot of the subraces now, so you will be choosing mountain dwarf or hill dwarf, high elf or wood elf, and even the halfling subraces are back. There's a definite AD&D feel there. In general each racial choice gives a +1 to two different stats and the usual vision enhancements/resistance to something/bonus language. For the subraces, the over-race gives one stat bonus, like elves +1 dex, and the subrace gives the other - high elves are +1 int, for example. There are some other things in the mix, like halflings are "lucky" and get to reroll some 1's. Oh and humans get no racial abilities but get a +1 to all stats. That's getting some flak on message boards as "too powerful" but I'm not so sure after seeing it in play.

Backgrounds: In earlier packets these were skill packages. now there are no skills in the game so they grant "lore" abilities (a big bonus on Int tests in one area) from a list of around 10 lores. They also have equipment packages and some kind of minor non-combat perk. A lot of people are upset about the loss of skills and I get that but going with attribute checks for skill type checks and saves does return them to prominence. I like the background concept as it does make it more obvious that a mage might have been a soldier before, or a thief might be a noble and so mixes up the default/stereotype things we see so much.

Feats: Nobody starts with feats. Starting around 4th level most classes get the option for an ability score increase, and they will have 3-4 more levels between there and lvl 20 to do the same thing. Instead of taking this increase they can take a feat instead and each feat is pretty strong with multiple abilities and no level requirements or other pre-req's. Some of them also cover minor multiclassing in a way similar to 4E's multiclass feats. There are fewer of them and each character will have fewer of them, but they are a lot more interesting.

Classes: Fighter/Cleric/Mage/Rogue plus Barbarian/Druid/Paladin/Ranger/Monk. There are "paths/traditions/oaths" now which are sort of like a build in 4E or a subclass in older editions - for example, illusionist is a school choice under the tradition of wizardry. Barbarians can go berserker or totem warrior, clerics can choose from several domains (sun, life, etc), Fighters have gladiator/knight/warrior. I'll use Druids as an example as theirs seemed to show the differences pretty well.

In Next this might be a druid and his ranger friend

Druids get the usual weapons and armor restrictions, natural lore, and the un-aging type features they've always had. They also have spellcasting and wild shape and this is where things get interesting. At 3rd level each druid has to pick a "circle" and this choice determines which druidy things will be emphasized in future levels.

Basic druid spellcasting is pretty strong - they get thunderwave as a 1st level spell which is pretty nice - and the "Circle of the Land" is a choice to focus on spell power. It grants an extra cantrip, extra prepared spells at each level, and extra spell per day at each level. The land circle druid chooses one of 7 types of terrain and their bonus spell choices are tied to that, a themed list of spells so the mountain druid gets things like stoneskin while the coastal druid gets things like water breathing. I think it's a pretty flavorful set of choices. Land also grants the traditional ignore natural entanglements, immunity to poisons/charm/disease at various levels. The big sacrifice here is that you're not going to be turning into a T-Rex and chomping on a dragon with this circle choice, though you could hit it with an insect plague or an earthquake spell.

The only notable druid spell choice that's missing is summon nature's ally, which was a big part of some past druid types. I'm guessing this is a deliberate playtest choice as there are no summon monster spells in the wizard list either. I'm also guessing the summoning stuff will be handled down the road and might even end up as the big feature of another druid circle.

Druids also have wild shape and this is somewhat different, between the spellcasting-dire-bear combat monster of 3E and the notably weaker "why bother" version of 4E. The core wild shape ability starts at 2nd level with a wolf/hound option and then continues fairly quickly with steed/fish/rodent and bird options all available by 9th level. Note that these are utility forms, not combat monster forms. Fish lets you swim, bird lets you fly, hound is a sense boost, rodent lets you hide, but none of them are big boosts in a fight and I was a little disappointed when I first read through this section. However, for fighting forms you have the "Circle of the Moon".  Bear & cat forms come into play and then enhancers such as "giant", "ancient", and finally "behemoth". All wild shapes are basically stat boosts with some other enhancement like swim/fly/senses and with the battle shapes there's also a damage enhancement. There are limits on using gear and most importantly on spellcasting but if you want to play a melee druid it is certainly possible here.

So the circles do add significant flavor and I could see two druids in the same party not stepping on each other too badly, as long as they each choose a different circle. The same thing applies to the other classes as well though I am sure some accomplish it better than others.

Comparing this to 4E character creation, well, it's no comparison - there are more races, more classes, more options within each class, plus skills, backgrounds, and themes. This is a playtest though and I would expect more and more options once the game is published. Next is a more old-school in feel and does not need a computer to generate them but I'm sure one will be coming along in the near future anyway.

Comparing it to Labyrinth Lord (basic and advanced) well it's a lot like the advanced player's guide version of LL with a few extra house rules. Attributes, races, equipment and alignments are very similar. I've played around with different ability check options when we've played that game so that's not unfamiliar. The spell lists are similar though saves are fairly different. Next classes allow for more differentiation between two characters of the same class, so two fighters may work very differently, and that's a good thing but there are some ideas here that could easily be ported to LL and used without much complication.

NEXT Weekend

Lots of new games are coming out, then a rare and unexpected sync-up of kid schedules granted us some actual playing time this weekend. So what did we play? Numenera? Shadowrun? 13th Age? Any of the stuff I've been reading and posting about for the last two weeks?

Nope.

We played Next.

This was sort of a surprise as there has been flat-out rejection any time I have brought it up since the Great Next Debacle last year. Time does heal, and Blaster especially has been itching to play more D&D. There was also the new playtest packet that came out on Friday with many revisions and quite a bit of buzz online. So we spent Saturday afternoon reading through it and some of Saturday night and Sunday playing it.

I had also run my 4E game Friday night after a long gap so it was a D&D-intensive weekend. Once again, comparisons were inevitable as both versions saw action so close together. This year we have also played some Basic/Labyrinth Lord so that was on my mind too.

The Rules: The new packet is a fairly complete set of rules but the organization is a little messy for use in play. I have not tried to run any of the recent packets but the organization has stayed similar throughout the whole process and it might be time for a change.  Someone commented online that they are certainly capturing a retro feel in one way: there are rules tucked in to little corners all over the place like in AD&D.

After going through the rules we ended up with the following:

• Wood Elf Ranger (Blaster) - Of course, this is kind of his thing. Bow, dual blades.
• Human Cleric (Blaster) - Sun clerics get fireball as a 3rd level domain spell. He's a sun cleric.
• Human Druid (Lady Blacksteel) - Druids get  thunderwave at first level. Sold!
• Wood Elf Monk (Who) - One monk "order" looks a lot like a fire/air/earth/water bender. Sold!
• Human Rogue (Red) - Sneak and stab, this is one of his things as well
• Human Mage (Red) - He took an illusionist because he likes to trick my poor monsters

I was unsure of what setting to use then decided not to worry about it - it's a playtest right? It's generic-D&D-land! Once we got going though this got a little more complicated. Then I had to decide what adventure. The packet has conversion rules for the Slavers adventure reprint that just came out, and the S-series reprint from a few months ago. There's no way I was going to drop them in any of the S modules with new rules for all of us. I seriously considered the slavers but the boys insisted that we start at 1st level, so that was out. I cycled through a few options and then in the interest of getting things moving I went with the old standby - the Caves of Chaos.  

I won't go into a roll-by-roll description but they basically cleared out the kobold lair. It was a fun series of fights and gave us a chance to play with the combat, healing, and magic systems along with some of the "skill" rules. There were some walking wounded all through the run, but no one died. They could probably use another fighter type but the monk actually has the highest AC (monks get 10 + dex bonus + wisdom bonus) and does pretty decent damage with his double bare hand attacks so when paired with the two-weapon ranger they plow through kobolds just fine.

Red was determined to find some way to use his illusions (heh) and I was forced to walk that line between "gently redirecting" and "don't be stupid" as there aren't a lot of things you can do with low level illusions that are going to fool a monster in its own lair. The best thing they came up with was an illusion that the planks used to cross the pit trap in the entrance were in place when they were not, but they never got a chance to use that one as the fighting all happened on the other side of the pit. It was still a good idea. Beyond that I had to ask "do you need a lot of trickery to defeat 2hp kobolds?"

The unexpected backfire came when the boys declared their intent to clear out the caves. This caught me off guard because I assumed we had moved on from this and were going to go with my "world's fastest playtest" idea where we would do one encounter/lair then level up and do another one. I mean the Isle of Dread is in the playtest pack and I've been wanting to run that one for them for a long time - we could at least jump to 3rd level, right? Nope. We need to finally (their words) clear out these caves. Side question, as yet unasked and unanswered: what about our Stonehell game? Conversion is going to be tricky given the limited set of monsters in the test pack but I think I can manage it. So now I'm thinking that Next is going to be dropped into Dragonport and the old progress in the caves there and the old characters there will be translated for next time. Improvise, adapt, overcome - right? 

Some mechanical notes from the rules and the play session:

• Anyone can make two-weapon attacks (no stat bonus on the off-hand attack is the limitation) and rangers have dropped the whole two-weapon vs. bow thing that has consumed them for some time now. Now they are stealthier, faster, tracking wilderness fighters.
• There are no specific skills in the game anymore, everything is tied to stat checks of d20 + stat bonus with occasional bonuses form a class feature. Many classes have an "expertise" die they can roll and add to certain checks, like a d6 on all wisdom checks. There is usually a choice between two types, and the die type increases (slowly) with level. This is pretty flexible but I know a lot of people are howling about the loss of skills.
• Spellcasters now know a few "cantrips" which re nothing like the cantrips we came to know back in the old days. Cantrips in next are basically at-wills as in 4E. Shocking Grasp is a cantrip now, and does a d8 damage at 1st level and has a 5' range! Some of them are more utility spells but every class has at least one combat option that looks pretty good. Mages won't be tossing daggers any more - they have Ray of Frost!
• Monks don't suck, at least at first level. He gets to use his dex bonus for offense and defense and his karate chop starts at 1d6. With the more open two-weapon rules he can throw two punches a round. Monks have "Ki Points" to power their special abilities and the first one he gets is to use a point to make another attack so he can throw 3 attacks in one round twice during a fight - that can really clear out the low hit point stuff. They get more interesting down the road, including some elemental powers, so we will see how it goes. 

The World's Fastest 4E Campaign

I played some D&D this weekend - more on that tomorrow - and while doing so I seriously started thinking about how to run a normal leveling up type campaign at an even faster pace. The goal would be to experience the full range of levels in the game in roughly a year. I'm thinking specifically of 4th Edition D&D but I'd be open to trying it in other level based games as well.

I can think of two ways to start: with a pre-built set of adventures or with a core concept such as "Against the Giants" or "Against the Dragons".  The idea would be to play a complete "encounter" or short adventure entirely within one session once a week or more likely once every other week. After each session the party levels up and the next session is set at one level higher.

Pros

• Experience every level of a class in a relatively short period of time
• A complete campaign in a fixed period of time (complete in some senses anyway)
• A chance to run/play a new campaign every year
• Some players are going to love it - episodic play is great

Cons

• Sessions are going to be tight
• Mission type focus comes at the expense of just wandering around, and some NPC interaction
• No real room for bigger adventures spanning multiple sessions
• Some players are going to hate it - episodic play is terrible

Structuring the campaign
Using a set of unrelated prebuilt encounters like Dungeon Delve means there's no overarching theme or plot so to some degree your players are just going to have to buy in and agree that this is what they want to do. Think of it as a set of short stories chronicling the career of a group of heroes - you don't get a story about every adventure they had,  nor do you get text covering all the downtime in between - what you get is a story focusing on the biggest and best adventures they have, and the other stuff comes in the form of the author's notes before or after or in between each story. Alternately, think of a movie series, like the Bond films: we don't get an exhaustive rundown of everything he does and we don't typically get a serialized story. That's the approach I'm thinking of taking.

If you hand craft this thing then you can work in a theme such as a creature type, a nation, or a power from the outer planes that is the focus of the game. The level 1 adventure might focus on the tower of an evil wizard with a quasit familiar, and by level 30 the party is taking on Orcus himself, with a trail of crushed demonic types littering the way between the two.

You could theme the party too, if the players are agreeable - this campaign is about a dwarven quest for vengeance against the lord of the frost giants. Or maybe it's a group of humans trying to get as rich as possible. Or a group of elves and allies out to slay Lolth once and for all. There are certainly some options here but getting players to agree to them could be tricky.

Structuring the sessions
One limitation here is that a lot of the shopping and chit-chat is going to have to happen in between sessions, via email or messageboard or however your group likes to communicate. To get in a full short adventure the focus really needs to be on what's happening right now in the game. I would use "en media res" as my default, with a very flexible timescale,  as it's the most sensible way to account for last week's session being against the pirates of the gulf and this week's session being against giants up in the mountains. Something like this:

"It's been six months since you vanquished the Black Fang pirate band in the Gulf of Storms. Recently a messenger from the Monastery of the Blue Ox that giants are stirring in the mountains and have begun raiding local farms and travelers. They seek your assistance in this, given your reputation as mighty slayers of giant kind." You agreed to dispatch this threat and have traveled to the hold of the giant king, facing down terrible beasts and giant patrols alike. You now stand outside the gates, prepared for action."

Now the "what do you do" type questions start, ideally from the players looking over the area, the guards, and anything else they think is important. Augury type spells might be cast, summoning spells might be used, and then action starts happening. Ideally this introduction would be sent out ahead of time so the players could do any prep they wanted to do, like crafting items. Stuff like this.

Execution
Everybody comes in ready to go, actions happen and a good time is had by all. Everyone has a new story to tell. Next time, hopefully the same group comes along and more fun is had. I might be a little more restrictive on character swapping for this campaign as character continuity is going to be the main thread holding it together, especially with something like the Dungeon Delve approach. For a new player, sure, jump on in, but for an existing player I'd probably press them to pick one character and stick with it for the whole campaign, especially after the party has been stable for a while. Sure, characters die and that has to be accounted for, but other than that and new players stability would be a bonus here.

The other potential obstacle I see here is gear: so much of D&D is built on magic items that I would have to really think about how to handle this. For this one, since it's a structured situation anyway, I would probably be OK with the "wishlist" approach that a lot of 4E game take. This would give the players a fair amount of control over how their characters develop and it eliminates the need for the DM to keep up with it. Within the game, it's easy enough to handle this: Option 1, the Paladin has heard that a legendary holy avenger was taken by this demon lord -now he has another reason to be interested as he can reclaim the sword. Option 2: After finishing off the giants the monastery awards the fighter a mighty blade that it has long held in keeping for a worthy bearer - and the fighter just proved worthy.

For 4E the goal is the run to lvl 30. I'd go with the delve model of 3 encounters, just enough to work through in an evening. I've found skill challenges to go much faster than combat so there might be room for more if a skill challenge was a big part of one or two of them.

For 3.5/Pathfinder I think the same concept would work, you'd just have to monitor how fast things were moving to fine tune it for your group. In 4E fights tend to take a certain amount of time, but I remember 3E as being more swingy - having the right tool could shorten a battle considerably, while having the wrong set drew it out some. You also only have 20 levels to worry about so it could take a lot less time to accomplish.

For BECMI I think it works too, but you have fewer tools for setting up encounters, especially at the higher levels. For levels 1-10 sure, but you get up to level 30 in the master set and I think there will be more swing than in 3E's high levels.

For Older school AD&D I think I would put a lower level cap on it - no more than 20 for sure, and maybe even 18. That would let M-U's get to their highest level spells for a level or two before wrapping up.

Heck it might be worth a shot in a d20 Star Wars game too. It would certainly be easy enough to plot something out that made sense anyway. I think you're going to need even more player buy-in though than D&D.

What it comes down to really is how you want to spend your game time. My current 4E campaign is running around 30 sessions now and the party is at 10th level and it's been one long uninterrupted arc. If we took the "WF4EC" approach we still would have played 30 sessions, but we would be at level 30 and would have less of an epic tale but more and smaller tales. After running multiple campaigns where everyone expects to start at level 1 and work their way up the ladder only to have a TPK or loss of interest reset the game, it would be nice to explore the higher end of the level scale in months instead of years.