Motivational Monday

40K Friday - The 2013 Dark Angels Codex

A few years back this book would not have meant a whole lot to me because I didn't particularly care about this particular bunch of space marines. That changed around a year ago when I started looking at the possibilities of an all-terminator army. The Dark Angels first company traditionally fights in terminator armor only, and in their 2008 codex it was possible to field an army entirely composed of these troops. It's cool, and different, and fun to play, and in the fall of last year I finally acquired such an army. More on their first battle here.

The Apprentices still have no interest in fighting these guys again

Also in the fall of 2012 I picked up the new 6th edition starter set for 40K and though I was expecting to build out my chaos force, I instead was sidetracked by the possibility of a Ravenwing army. After all I already had the codex, I had extra bikes(that I had been planning to use for chaos bikers - oh well) so it made some sense. So I picked up some more starter set bikers and some more speeders and pretty soon I had quite a pile of them, but with word of the codex being updated I decided to wait and see before actually building them.

Well the codex is here and it is a vast improvement over the previous one. Don;t get me wrong, I liked the old one too, but this one has everything that one did plus a whole lot more.

First, the negatives:

• It still takes a special character as an HQ choice to unlock Deathwing or Ravenwing as a Troops choice. This can be Belial the Deathwing captain, Sammael the Ravenwing master, or Azrael the frigging chapter master.  I used to have a huge aversion to special characters and the group I played with had an agreement to never use them back in the 2nd & 3rd edition days, and we made fun of people who did. That has changed, and these days I am on board with treating the special characters as part of the army, but it would be better in my opinion to not require them for things like this. In the Space Marine codex if you select a standard captain and then mount him on a bike, it unlocks bike squads as a troops choice - something like that would have been nice here. Specials are nice and all, but sometimes the point costs and the flavor aren't quite right for what a player is thinking. It's not a huge issue as it was this way in the prior book - it's just something I was hoping would change.
• The flyers are being almost universally derided as inferior to existing choices for other armies. I haven't tried them yet myself but I'll take the internet's opinion on this. Some of the weapon combinations do seem a little pointless.
• Lots of typos - for going to a full color hardback and increasing the price significantly, I expect better editing than what we have seen here. Fortunately the FAQ is already out and corrects the known problems with missing or incorrect entries. 

Aside from these the book has:

• Tons of background and nice looking art including coverage of the history, organization, the whole "Fallen" thing, and the successor chapters
• The traditional unit by unit review of everything in the list including background, rationale, and special rules
• There is a separate armory section in this one, and it's pretty extensive
• Not surprisingly there is a whole section with pics of very nicely painted mini's

All of this does give a very strong impression of what the Dark Angels are about. The atmosphere is that of a wandering order of monastic penitent knights doing their duty while keeping a terrible secret. Compared to something like the Ork codex it's all very grim and serious. Heck, even compared to the Space Wolves it puts the grimdark in to a whole new level. I can't see these guys sitting around their mobile asteroid fortress drinking and telling tall tales - they sing hymns and chant litanies. It's darned close to a whole chapter of chaplains. If you want a "serious" marine army, this is the one for you. I am also a little concerned that the knightly thing bleeds over into Black Templars territory too much but I suppose that will be handled whenever they finally get a codex update.

After all that we get to the army list section, also known as the good stuff. I'll discuss by unit type.

HQ's:

• Azrael: slightly better statline, slightly less expensive points cost, and makes both Ravenwing and Deathwing troops. I think he's going to be very popular as he enables the Doublewing army and gives you another HQ slot for a Librarian or Chaplain if you want one.
• Ezekiel - statline unchanged, cheaper, only level 3 psyker
• Asmodai - returning from the 3rd edition codex, same statline as an interrogaor-chaplian with less flexibility but has unique gear. Seems kinda pricey to me.
• Belial - Ah yes, another heavy-hitter. Nearly a 50% increase in cost but he has a better statline, his sword is nastier and he has a few more special rules. He's still one of only two ways to make termies troops so I expect he will be very popular too. I know he leads my Deathwing ...
• Sammael - the Ravenwing boss. WS up by 1, sword is nastier, more special rules, and his cost dropped by 5 points! Also, he can still take the landspeeder option and now it's AV14 front and sides AND has a 4+ save - yes, I will be trying that out just to see the eye-bugging that will go along with it.
• Company Master, the generic leader type - good statline and has lots of wargear options but for some reason cannot take a bike! He is also quite limited in his terminator armor options which seems odd too. I don't think this will be a very popular option
• Chaplains and Interrogator Chaplains - for 20 points difference I think Interrogator is quite a bit nastier - better statline, access to relics, and access to termie armor. I'd have to be pretty pressed for points to trade down.
• Librarian - Level 1 with an option to go to 2, access to 4 disciplines, option for termie armor - he seems pretty fairly priced.
• Techmarine - doesn't take a slot but only 1 wound, he can take up to 5 servitors as a sort of mini-squad. He does have access to the special wargear which could be interesting with things like the Power Field (4+ save to all models within 3") Can;t take a jump pack but can take a bike so that's an interesting option too.
• Command Squads and Deathwing Command Squads and Ravenwing Command Squads  - another set of units that does not take a slot, but could be a serious points investment. It's 5 marines (3 for the bikerwing) and has options for standards/medics/champions as upgrades, and is fairly flexible with the gear. These are the 2-attack/leadership 9 veteran marines so it could be a fairly potent force. I have to figure out how to modify my old Belial-upgrade-command-squad from the old codex into this configuration, and whether I want to work one in with my in-progress Ravenwing army.

Troops - you have two choices:

• Scouts - your scouts are now just like other marine scouts - skill 3, Troops choice - but they are significantly cheaper. Still very flexible and a missile launcher scout can now take flak missiles. Not sure that's a great idea, but it is an option.
• Tactical Squads - if you outfit them the same way, they cost the same amount as before - but you have the option not to do that. There is more flexibility here. I can see 5 man squads with just a heavy weapon being an interesting option, especially for smaller battles as objective holders. 

Flexibility is nice but I think we're going to see only a squad or two of tacs or scouts as the coolness of taking bikers or terminators as troops completely overwhelms these two choices.

Elites

• Deathwing Terminators - Basically the same as before with the option to take plasma cannons as the heavy choice and to up the squad to 10 marines. Point costs are pretty similar, they may vary by a few points depending on your configuration but it should be close. They have some more special rules than before. They can also take a Land Raider as a dedicated transport. At a ridiculous point level this could lead to the 9-land raider army (6 transports, 3 heavy support) which would be a lot of fun to see on the table. 
• Deathwing Knights - NEW!-  for when Thunderhammer/Stormshield terminators just aren't strong enough the Deathwing now goes to 11. WS5, Effective Strength of 6, (AP 4 but goes on initiative), and the option once per game to go to Strength 10. Oh and Toughness of 5 too when they are in base to base together. I nominate this unit as "most likely to be Vindicatored", but it still might be worth it.
• Dreadnoughts - They got cheaper - a venerable costs as much as a standard dread did in the last codex and can be upgraded to a Deathwing Vehicle which makes them even harder to kill. I think these will be more popular than dreads in standard marine armies, at least until the generic codex comes out  
• Company Veterans Squad - Kind of an afterthought but they do have an interesting set of options. These might be a better bet in a smaller point game or as a Razorback squad. You can get a  special and a heavy into a 5-man squad with them though which makes them more interesting than I originally thought. You can also tool them up for melee as they do have 2 attacks. 

Fast Attack

• Ravenwing Attack Squadron - up to 6 bikes, an attack bike, and a landspeeder, which for around 250-300 points can be divided up into 4 separate units, taken as troops with certain leaders, making 3 of them scoring. T5, 3+ save, multiwound units. That's pretty useful. Also, even adding a veteran  sergeant back in they are 30 points cheaper. I use them in my Deathwing army for the melta and the teleport homers so this is good news for me.
• Ravenwing Support squadron - Speeders are cheaper, Typhoon launchers are more expensive, but together they net out at the same price. I don;t know how many of these we will see as I suspect many players will take them in the attack squadron first as they are independent units there. Still, if you really like speeders you could theoretically throw 22 of them down on the board now - Sammael + 3 x 5 Fast Attack support squadrons + 6 in attack squadrons as Troop choices. Fun!
• Ravenwing Black Knights - NEW! - I don't know, they're still T5, 3+, 1 wound models and they are 50% more expensive than regular Ravenwing. Why bother? Twin-linked plasma guns, that's why! Highly mobile re-rollable AP 2 Strength 7 weapons should be very nasty. They also have hammers but I think getting these guys into melee is a mistake - those plasma shots are what you're paying for. They will be am early addition to my Ravenwing army and we will see how they do.
• Ravenwing Darkshroud - NEW! - Mobile cover save boost and a small assault boost - not sure it's worth it but I am open to being convinced.
• Assault Squad - 30 or so points cheaper but likely to be overshadowed by all this other nifty stuff. I'm guessing that the hardcore Dark Angel players who already have them painted up will keep theirs, but I don't think we will see many new units joining the force.
• Nephilim/Dark Talon Fighters - NEW! - We needed some anti-air but a lot of people seem underwhelmed with these. I'm asking myself if they're more useful than another Ravenwing squad or more terminators and I'm not sure they are. Probably a later addition for me.

Heavy Support

• Devastator Squads - cheaper all the way around: the squad is less,  the vet sgt is now optional, and the weapons are cheaper. Very nice for a more traditional marine force, not as big for Deathwing/Ravenwing forces.
• Predator - Pretty much the same, lascannon options are slightly cheaper
• Whirlwind - 20 points cheaper which may make it viable in a smaller point game as they are comparable to Razorbacks now.
• Vindicator - unchanged
• Land Raiders - We now have the full set of 3, otherwise unchanged. They do have the Deathwing vehicle option which makes them a little tougher but it is not cheap.
• Land Speeder Vengeance - NEW! - Let's see, Armor 10, 2 Hull Points ... hmmm. It does have a nasty gun as being able to drop S7 AP2 large blast is going to hurt a lot of armies - like Deathwing! It's almost as if the Ravenwing was built to fight the Deathwing! It's more expensive than a Vindicator, and while it is more mobile it is also a lot more fragile. At this point I think it is mainly for the all-out Ravenwing themed army and I don;t know that I'm there yet.

Beyond this their special rules are a mixed bag: Inner Circle gives fearless and Preferred Enemy CSM - makes sense. Grim Resolve makes them Stubborn and replaces Combat Tactics, ensuring they will never run from a fight, even when it makes sense to do so. Warlord Traits are fine and flavorful. There's one that gives the Warlord and his unit Furious Charge which could be nasty but other than that I see nothing especially powerful.

Overall I think it's a really good Codex and is a good model for how these things should be for an established army at this point - nothing revolutionary in background or mechanics, just more options and more flavor. I don't know that it approaches Grey Knights in power but I think it's in the Space Wolf/Blood Angel power range. I also think it's going to be very popular as the first codex with real all-bike or all-terminator options. Considering I have two armies that use this book it has a ton of impact on me and I am very happy with it.

I was thinking that Apprentice Who might start his 40K days with this army but he seems more interested in "big monsters" so we may be leaning towards Chaos Marines or Chaos Daemons for him. Luckily one of those is already out and one is due out in a month or two so we will be taking a look at those in the near future.

A Renewed Interest in the Realms and a look at the Haunted Halls

The big maps

Lately I have picked up a serious thing for the Forgotten Realms. I don't know what started it but I have been going back through my older material, stuff I haven't read in years, and reading or skimming quite a bit of it. I think it has something to do with the maps. There are a lot of nice big maps for the Realms and I've decided to decorate the gameroom walls with some of them.

My fever has mainly been concerned with the heart of the 1st & 2nd Edition material.

A lot of stuff on the Sword Coast, Cormyr, the wilderness in between, and the Moonsea.

Even then I can't ignore Waterdeep and Neverwinter, two other core areas

Some of it may have been spurred by some party nervousness over recent events in the Impiltur campaign that had them asking "if we all die what's the plan to restart" - well, I clearly needed to put some thought into it if they were concerned enough to ask. The answer right now is "there are many options". We could do the city/dungeon campaign in Waterdeep, the ruined city & surrounding area campaign in Neverwinter, we could return to Phlan and the Moonsea, we could go early 4E and use the Gray Vale as our starting point, and I am also looking at Eveningstar where some of the original Realms campaigning began. There are tons of choices, all of which I like.

I've also realized and accepted that probably all of my 4E campaigning is going to take place in the Realms and I am OK with that. I didn't run much in it before 4th edition, though I played in it a ton, so maybe it was time. I like having the players feel that connection to other Realms players, and there is quite a bit of supporting material out there on the web too.

So I still don't know exactly what bit me but I'm going to ride it for a while and see where it leads. This kind of mania usually works out well for me by the time it has run its course. This week I have been reading the Haunted Halls of Eveningstar.

This was a 2E product and for those unfamiliar with it think "Village of Hommlet" for the Forgotten Realms. It describes a nice little village in northern Cormyr, including a map of the village, maps of a temple and inn, and several NPC's. There is also the requisite local dungeon, the Haunted Halls.

The village is well done with lots of local flavor, some politics, law, and economics - this is stuff you don't see much in modern RPG adventures. I liked this part and would call it comparable to Hommlet though it does not detail every house and villager in the village.

The biggest section of the book describes the Haunted Halls, the main exploration destination for adventuring. Several other danger zones are mentioned with a paragraph or so of ideas but only the Halls are described in detail. Recommended level is 1-5.

The dungeon itself has a lot of flavor and some very vivid imagery, but is mostly traps, green slime, and solitary low level monsters (one stirge? one skeleton?) interspersed with the occasional overpowered creature like a 7HD mimic and a 6HD Mummy - it's a really weird mix of monsters and I think most low-level adventuring parties at the time would be annoyed at the lack of monsters to fight and then possibly killed by the tougher stuff.

An additional concern is that only one level is detailed here - there are supposed to be an additional upper and several lower levels (it's built into the side of a cliff) and there are brief descriptions of what might be there but it's pretty much a "figure the rest out yourself" approach. The size of the single dungeon is comparable to the Moathouse from T1 as far as number of rooms and while there is a lot of interesting stuff in the place it feels rather empty in comparison. If the Moathouse is a secret forward base for an evil power, the Halls are pretty much an abandoned ruin. You can learn some things about what has gone on here but I don't see any epic tales coming out of it as written.

Given the potential I see here, its status as the origin point for the original Knights of Myth Drannor in Ed Greenwood's campaign, and the way I felt after reading it, I have to say this was a disappointment. I think the village is fine, but the dungeon is really just a starter kit with no payoff.

So how would I fix it?

Well the other areas mentioned should be developed:

• The Caverns of the Claws is supposed to be a "notorious troll-hold" - that sounds like fun for a party at the higher end of the level range
• The Crypt of Shadows is exactly what it sounds like - lots of undead
• Ironguard is some wizard's lair from an old issue of Dungeon. Look that up, instant adventure site!
• The Warriors' Crypt is supposed to be a battle grave full of undead warriors possibly held by a demon
• Beyond these you could also drop in some other things in the region. Given the number of ruined wizard towers in the area DCC #3 the Mysterious Tower would fit right in.

Flesh those out and we have a decent little sandbox area for a new party to explore for quite a while. Of course we need to detail out the rest of the main dungeon to make it interesting for more than one expedition. There's probably more information out there in other FR products that could yield ideas but I haven't researched that far yet. I do have some ideas though:

• If we wanted to make the lower levels as extensive as they probably should be to support the amount of adventuring they are supposed to have seen, then I would consider using the maps from Undermountain - they're ready to go, just needing a population to make them interesting. the players will never know the difference.
• Temple of Elemental Evil - use the included Halls level, add a staircase down leading to the ruined chapel level and the subsequent levels for the rest, or replace the ruined keep on top of the cliff with the Temple and mix in some alternate history for the region
• Replace the described (sparsely described) keep with the haunted keep from Moldvay Basic. There was an expansion of it over on Dragonsfoot that would work quite well.
• Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth - pretty much as-is
• Have the side passage that leads to the Owlbear lead to the entrance to S3 - fun fun fun!

I think it's certainly salvageable as a beginning area with some extra effort by the DM. It would also place the campaign firmly in Cormyr which is one of the more well-described areas of the Realms - if that's a plus in your eyes. You could sprinkle in some politics if the party gets interested, add some interference from the Zhentarim, or you could just leave it as a pure sandbox, expanding into the Stonelands area to the north. If I ever kick off another Realms campaign (maybe Next?) this will be one of the areas under consideration, regardless of edition or style.

ToEE 4E Session 10 - Nulb and the Temple, Finally!

Back in Hommlett the party rests, shops and debates their next course of action. They are 3rd level now and paying a little more attention to their gear. They are:

• Torgor Bearkin, Dwarf Sentinel Druid with his bear companion "Po" (Apprentice Red)

• Isaac, Human Swordmage (also Red)

• Torinn, Dragonborn Sorcerer (Apprentice Blaster)

• Apollo Magewood, Elf Bladesinger (Also Blaster)

They thought they had arrived at the perfect solution in having the crayfish shell made into studded leather armor, a new type from Mordenkainen's Emporium but then they realized that it would take a feat to be proficient with it and decided not to mess with it, so they sold it to the blacksmith for some extra gold. 

Apprentice Red was intent on picking up some healing potions and did so.

No, I didn't show them this sign.

They then debated for a good 15 minutes on how many and what types of rooms they should get to keep their stuff in - they are treating the Inn of the Welcome Wench like a bank and storage facility! This debate then turned into a discussion on whether to go to Nulb first or head directly for the Temple. They opted for Nulb.

It's a pretty small place

After an uneventful journey - other than the creepy expository text I read to them - they found themselves in Nulb, drinking at the Waterside Hostel amid much teenage boy silliness like "wanting a D&D bar fight" and things like that. There are times when I wonder if they might be happier playing with a group of friends their own age and this was one of them, but it was still fun. Since they were in Nulb in the middle of the day and there were all of about 5 people in the bar they decided to press on for the Temple.

After another long creepy description (there is a lot of boxed text in this part of this adventure - a lot of it!) they poked around the fringes of the temple and focused in on the three main areas of interest - the big tower, the wooded area, and the temple proper. They decided to check the woods out first. 

Quickly discovering a ruin inside the trees they debate about crawling down into the hole in the pile of rubble and after a few minutes rats begin swarming out of the thing, attacking them in droves. The party gets chewed up a bit but nothing too serious and they drive off the rats soon enough. They then decide to go ahead and climb down the hole and discover what's left of a basement, a concealed trap door leading to a wine cellar. There is quite a bit of still drinkable wine down here, and this leads to more silliness from the players ("whoa, this place just got a lot less sinister"), but they have played enough D&D to recognize that this is stuff they can sell if they can get it out. They work this out and then decide to do more exploring before they get too into wine excavations.

They look around the north end of the Temple but do not get close enough to any doors (which are at the southern end) to get into the whole warding thing, so they decide to head for the tower. They notice the ravens, the chained door, and then sure enough the bladesinger goes and peeks in the arrowslits on either side of the door. That's when the swarms of ravens attack! However, having learned much about how to fight swarms from the rat fight this one is over before it really gets going - Torinn throws a flame spiral followed up by a breath attack and all of the ravens are dead in one round as the rest of the party joins in.

At this point we paused as the party considers their next move and the DM considers tactics for what's inside the tower ...

DM Notes: This was a milestone of sorts as they are finally at the Temple itself, even if they did only scratch the surface. Now we will really start to dig in to the meat of the whole thing and I expect my 4E encounter building skills to be tested as we get into more of a traditional extended dungeon slog than I have been running - but that's next time.

This session could have been subtitled "How to fight swarms" as they managed to run into two separate groups of them. In the original the rats are 12 giant rats fighting in a confined space and gaining certain advantages. For 4E I decided to use Rat Swarms and they worked out pretty well making multiple attacks each round and inflicting some minor ongoing damage which I envisioned as individual rats hanging on and biting away. It looked a little dicey at first but once they figured out which attacks were having more of an impact they started leading with those and the rest of the fight went by quickly. By the time the ravens came along they knew exactly what to do and combined with a nice damage roll from the sorcerer (which bloodied the things in one shot) they polished them off in one round! I replaced the giant ravens sitting up in the tower (with a magical size-changing illusion hiding their true size) with raven swarms, mainly because I liked it better. I will post my notes for this area soon along with some explanation of what I was thinking.

When I was reading the description of the temple - yes I was reading it aloud, I hate to summarize High Gygaxian - and showed them the cover picture, one of them says "Is it all dark and stormy like that too?" NO! I just read to you that it's NOT all dark and stormy like it was in the days when this place was open for business! Now pay attention! - it was that kind of run, but we did laugh a lot.

DnDClassics.com

Well, if you were unhappy with the great PDF massacre of 2009 they've fixed it:

http://www.dndclassics.com

It's laid out like DriveThruRPG so it's pretty easy to navigate. It looks to me like they're plan is to go with a normal price equal to the original cover price though everything is on sale right now for quite a bit less than that. If that's permanent, that's a great thing. Regardless it's a good thing right now - In Search of the Unknown is free, most adventures appear to be $4.99. Moldvay Basic is $4.99 as well! Not every product is there but it's a solid start.

It's a good day!

Motivational Monday

Extremely Expert DM Advice #2 - Picking the Game

So maybe you're starting up with a new group or maybe your existing group has decided to start a new campaign. Either way, after you have players the next big decision is what to play. Here's the main thing to remember:

Pick something that both you and your players like. 

All the rest of this post is going to boil down to that. It seems simple, but people sometimes have a hard time executing it. No matter how much you want to run it, if  no one wants to play it then you're out of luck. We will discuss more below.

Running for a new group: In general I would try to pick something "mainstream" before I tried something "weird". Actually I would throw genre out there first, then talk rules: D&D, Sci-Fi, Superheroes, etc. then talk rules.

Yes I list D&D as a genre. Why? Because for some people RPG=D&D. Now if you're an enlightened member of the online RPG community you may not agree with this, but I've run into it several times personally over the last few decades so I know it exists. They don't play RPG's, they play D&D. They don't like fantasy RPG's, they like D&D. Now the good thing is that if you run D&D they will usually be there and be quite into the game, as long as you're running an edition they like. Oh yeah, there's that too - the I only play D&D type player likely has certain editions (maybe even just one edition) that they play and the others might as well be a different game. If the whole group is like this then consider running the one they like if you like it too, otherwise you're in for a lot of selling: "It's like D&D but..." or "It's like 3rd Edition but ..." is a phrase I have spoken many times.

If you have a group that has played a variety of games then you have more options, but don't get too smug just yet - you may have the opposite problem: getting a group of veteran gamers to agree on how spend their limited budget of free time for gaming. This can be a tremendous challenge. I have a lot of games, and if pressured I could rank them from "would most like to play" to "would least like to play" and my list would probably look very little like yours. For example, I'm not really feeling the need to play in a Top Secret campaign right now*, but some other guy in our new group might have been waiting all his life to play in a Top Secret game, and if in the course of tossing ideas around he sees a chance to get that done he's going to push it hard. The trick is to find something that everyone is interested in enough to commit to the game, even if it's not right at the very top of their list. For many groups this ends up being D&D, the universal solution to this kind of problem. If you want to do something different, you have to weigh the "weird" factor.

Weirdness is in the eye of the beholder, but players and groups have certain thresholds, usually games they've played, games they've heard about from others, games they see on store shelves, and then the weird stuff. Stuff they've never heard of, or heard something about and didn't like, or heard that it was weird. If I tried to get my group to play Mouseguard, they'd look at me like I had grown a second head - it's "weird". Same thing with Fiasco or Reign or a lot of other games they don't know much about. Truthfully I might feel the same way - if I only have time to play one game a week, why spend it on something I know nothing about when there are dozens of games I know I would like to play? If you're planning on running something the group has never heard of keep this in mind.

Beyond these considerations if you're running for an established group there may be some expectations to deal with before launching your game. Have they been playing Pathfinder ? Then your Star Wars Fate game may seem a little light to them.  Have they been playing Savage Worlds and you want to start Champions? Could take some setup. System complexity is something to be aware of if you want to maximize the chances that your game succeeds. Sometime people are ready for a fresh start or a completely new system, but a lot of the time they prefer to stick with something familiar so address that if you're planning a big change.

Besides the rule system there is also the question of setting. Some games have one baked in but others are more generic. Will you be using a published setting? If so are you modifying it? If not are you using some homebrew creation or adapting another known setting to this game system? Get this information out early so players know what they're getting into. When they start asking you about how their characters fit into it then you know you're winning.

Some final considerations:

• Do your players already own copies of the rules? Do they need to? This can be another barrier to a new game or it can be a point in your favor if everyone already has the books.
• Maps & minis - will you be using them? Do your players have them? Will you be providing them?
• Have any of you played or run the game before? Are you going to run a warm-up session to let everyone get a feel for it or are you going to dive right in?
• Are you going to run any published adventures or campaign material? If your plan was to kick off with  Temple of Elemental Evil and half the party has been through it before then you may have a problem.

*frankly with a brand new 40K codex out that covers two of my armies, I'm not about the subtle sneaking at all - more like blazing gunfire, a charge, and then stomping on the remains of whatever is left. Heck, a Deathwatch campaign might be too subtle for me right now.

Overreaction Wednesday

This is the first of two articles outlining the goals for Next and everything I read in it makes me happy. Here's a particularly choice passage:

This brings us to the second big picture goal. We're going to make an RPG product called Dungeons & Dragons. It will be the game, Dungeons & Dragons, not just a sampler or a game that guides you through making a character and playing a single adventure. You can buy D&D and play a full, tabletop RPG campaign. You will be able to start playing, regardless of experience, and will easily find other products to migrate to if you so desire.

It's worth reading the rest but to me this will be a big win if they can pull it off.

The second article is just as big, and just as important:


The current choices that are present in the game—deity for a cleric, tradition for wizard, and so on—won't appear here. The options built into characters will reflect the iconic D&D expression of the classes. Clerics will turn undead, wield maces, wear heavy armor, and heal characters. Wizards will throw fireball and magic missile. Fighters will wear heavy armor and wield the best weapons. Rogues will be sneaky, good with traps, capable of climbing walls, good at backstabbing or sneak attacks, and otherwise talented with the classic rogue abilities. This is where it is critical that new and returning players see the races and classes in their most iconic form.

The key strengths of the basic rules are that they make the game easy to pick up and play, with fast character creation and classes that default to simple but effective options. Like basic D&D, the rules are more freeform, with DMs encouraged to use the core mechanics to adjudicate corner cases as they come up.

The basic rules will succeed if they support the key concepts of an RPG, namely that you can try anything and that there are no bounds to what is possible. Like basic D&D, the focus rests on the core concept of an RPG, rather than exhaustive rules or character options.

Again, I like everything I see here and the full article goes into more detail and the plan is to add options as parts of an expansion, things like skills and deities for clerics and all the things not found in what is described above.

Overall this typifies the love/hate thing I have with Next: I love the direction they talk about for the game in general, but half of the specifics I see in the surveys and the rule discussions leave me completely dissatisfied. I'm hoping that this latest statement of intent signifies a long term move in the right direction. As with many things, intentions are fine but the execution is what will matter. FOr now at least, they do seem to be getting the intentions right.

Finally and oddly coincidentally, we have a statement of design goals for Shadowrun 5th Edition. You should probably read the whole article if you are interested, but here are the bulletpoints:

• We like Shadowrun, Fourth Edition (I don't have a strong opinion here but I know the math makes more sense with fixed target numbers)
• Everything has a price (This should lead to more interesting choices - usually a good thing in an RPG)
• Players are the heroes (As they should be, though that might not be the right word - how about "protagonists" instead of "heroes")
• Amp up the cyberpunk (I think it's been in danger of being overshadowed by the magic/supernatural side of things and the punk edge is one of the things that makes this different from Twilight)
• Make it awesome (Always a good philosophy)

I feel like some of these could be in a DM Advice column. I don't have an attachment to SR4 but I like what I'm seeing here. I am cautiously optimistic that they may finally give me a reason to move on from SR3. Time will tell.

Extremely Expert DM Advice #1 - Players!

To be a DM, you need to run a game. To run a game, you need players. Where do you get them? Rather than getting into a bunch of theoretical stuff I'll talk about my current set of players and how we came together.

• Lawful Steve* - I've known Lawful Steve since right around high school. We had some mutual friends and wound up in a long-running campaign together. He later became a mainstay in some other games that I either ran or played in. We were even roommates for a while. He's a lifer. I realize some of you may not have a friend you've known since the late 80's that still plays - heck some of you may not have been alive then. Regardless, this is where you start - with good friends who either do play or have expressed some interest in playing "sometime".  

*Because he plays Paladins. Or Superman. When he's not playing Paladins he plays a fighter, usually lawful good, sword and board, tank type fighter. he did play a wizard once - once. In 25 years. It was so shocking the campaign ended soon after.

• Eclectic Dave* - Dave joined us in the mid 90's during a Mechwarrior campaign and volunteered to be our merc unit's accountant and quartermaster - you don't find guys like that every day! He was a friend of Steve's and has been in almost all of my campaigns since, and we've played together in games run by other people as well. Another lifer, I expect we will be playing together for many years. He was heavily involved in the LFR and 4th edition D&D before I was ready for it and was especially helpful in those early months of getting the first game off the ground. He can also be counted on to actually read the rulebook, an increasingly rare trait. 

*Because he never plays the same character twice. His first 3rd edition D&D character was a halfling wizard, then a human trip-fighter, then a swashbuckler, etc. In my first 4E campaign he played a Half-Elf Bard, in the current one he's playing a Dwarf Warden. Like I said, the only likelihood on his next character is that it will not be the same as his last character.

• Mastermind Will* - Will was a friend of Steve and Dave's who joined us back around 2000 when we were kicking off my first 3E campaign. He is typically playing in several groups so scheduling can be tricky sometimes but he's solid and always ready to play when he arrives. He usually looks for an "angle" for his character which means he's familiar with the mechanics of the game at a minimum. I'd say he's a lifer too. 

*Because he always has some plan with his character and he is extremely averse to character damage. Anything he suffers better be dealt with in a hurry, but it's better never to suffer it at all. In 3E he played a Cleric in my longest campaign. In 4E he has played a Warlock and a Bow Ranger. I think that speaks for itself.

• Lady Blacksteel* - I assume the method of acquisition is fairly obvious, but in most nations this will only net you one player at a time. She came around during my final 3E campaign and got tired of watching after a session or two and rolled up a character and the rest is history. She's been a part of every game since. I'd label her a casual lifer - she does it mainly because of me but she does have some interest in it of her own- some of it is the novelty of something she was never exposed to before me, some of it is the social thing, and some of it is the competitive challenge of understanding and contributing to the pary and occasionally showing up other characters. 

*Because I MARRIED her! This changes the nickname options a bit.

• Barbarian Warlord Jeremy* - Jeremy contacted me through Gamers Seeking Gamers on ENWorld a few years ago - yes those online gamer meetup things work! Well, it did until the site was hacked and destroyed, but it used to work! He was apparently a bigtime 3E player but has been completely consumed with 4E and he and Dave are our resident system experts. I'd say he's a lifer, and probably the most enthusiastic among the group during and between sessions. He's been a part of every 4E game I've run or played in and I don't expect that to change. 

*Because those are the two main characters I've seen him play, both were memorable, and it sounds cool.

• Jeremy's Friend Marc* - Marc is a friend of Jeremy's who joined us last year. He plays Warcraft and was interested in D&D but had never really played it before so Jeremy talked him into it. He gets into it but he's been struggling with the schedule - family, job, gametime, WoW time - it can be difficult to integrate something new into the routine and that's what he's been trying to do. Not sure if lifer.

*Because he's Jeremy's friend, and his name is Marc, and he's the new guy.He's playing a Dwarf Cleric but this hasn't really been something to make fun of him with - yet.

So what does my little rundown above tell us? Well, find people who have friends. After you run a few games, they may invite their friends. I suppose you could call this "networking" but that sounds very buzzwordy and it's not an active process - I'm not selling my game to people and asking them to invite their friends, I just do my thing and this stuff comes up naturally. "Hey I have a friend who's interested, can they come watch next time" - "sure". We tend to do a lot more breeze-shooting than monster shooting the first hour of a session so it's easy for someone to get acquainted before we get into the abbreviations, lingo, and monty python references.

What if you don't have friends that play? 

Don't forget family! Kids are great but they take years to grow into it. Extended family is a potential resource too - cousins, nephews, nieces - a gamer could be lurking nearby.

I have not tried the game store posting myself, but one of my friends that ran games used to do it and had about a 25% keep rate. By that I mean if he had 4 people interested only around 1 of them would show, play, and be someone you'd want to hang around for a game. That's not terrible I suppose, but it does disrupt the flow of a normal session when you have a totally new person walk-on to the game. There's everything from personality to hygiene to play style to mechanical familiarity to consider, and that's why I've found the friend-of-a-friend to work better- they have a "guide" who can give them the rundown of the players and the game and they have a friend at the table when it comes time to play. Still, if you're starting from scratch this is definitely an option.

Another option is the online posting for players. Gamers Seeking Gamers was the one I liked best. It's dead for now but it did work. I put up what games I was running, what our usual schedule was, and what zip code I was in, and over the course of a year or so I got 3 hits. One was Jeremy, one was a girl who showed up about 4 times then disappeared forever, and one was a guy seemed to be somewhat interested in the game and quite a bit more interested if we were 420-friendly (look it up if you're curious) which is not really my thing. So while I don't know that it's any better than a store posting it is easy to update and easy to access at weird times of the day. There are various rpg meetup and gamer meetup and locator groups but none of them seem to have the size that the ENWorld one did - plus I was running a lot of D&D and that's a pretty big crossroads for D&D. Another suggestion: the main online forums for the game of your choice - it couldn't hurt.

As far as playing online I'm not much help - I've tried it twice and both game fell through before anything got going, which soured me on the whole thing. Plus I have enough to manage juggling the face to face games. I know there are people making it work though.

In a way this can be the most difficult part of being a DM - starting! Especially starting cold. I've been fortunate enough to be part of an active group of players for the last 30 years, with some turnover but in general with more new players joining our extended circle of friends than leaving it. Not everyone has that good fortune. For those I will say two things:

1) Find a local store. Go there. Play stuff, even non-RPG's (40K, Magic, etc). This will lead to meeting other people who play games and might plug you in to an existing group or give you some candidates to start your own.

2) Keep trying - it's worth it.

That's all for now!

Motivational Monday