Brief Review: "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"
Surprisingly, no one else stepped up to review the latest (and last?) Indiana Jones flick. Here’s my SPOILER-FILLED thoughts for those who have seen it.
The Overlord Welcomes 4e! Crunch Wins!
Please take this post with the necessary grain of salt. See my comment below the post.
Ahhh it’s been a long time now has it?
What? You don’t know who I am?
I am the dark power behind Chatty’s feverish prose. I’m his id, his darkest desires made thoughts!
While he tries real hard to be balanced, fair and open to such ridiculous concepts as ‘Shared-narrative’ ‘stories’ and other RPGs than D&D, I’m the honest one here.
It’s always been about mechanics, die rolls, power accumulation and so on. All in the name of ” The Rule of Cool” (Pfaa!)
For I am the Crunch Overlord, and I’m here to say that I won!
Mwa HA HA HA!
With the inevitable advent of D&D 4e, I can finally come out of the obscurity and announce that my plan was a rousing success. Crunch wins and fluff lost.
Even my Nemesis is, as we speak, working at a 4e adventure!
I mean, Chatty’s little Characterizations tips contest isn’t garnering much participation now is it? He offers a 50$ prize (you know you can sell it on Ebay if you don’t need it, right?) and it got a mere 8 entries after 4 days!
You want proof that Crunch won?
Here’s an example from the most overlordy of Cleric spells: Command!
In the 1st edition of the game (taken from the Old School Reference & Index Compilation)
Command:
By speaking a single word of command with the force of divine power behind it, the cleric may force a creature to obey the order. The creature must be able to hear the cleric and understand the language in which he utters the command. The command may be only one word and must be completely unambiguous. “Halt,” “Flee,” and “Sleep” are typical commands, but many others arepossible.
The command “Die” has the same effect as the command to “Sleep”.
Creatures with intelligence of 13+ and/or hit dice of 6+ gain a saving throw against the spell’s influence.
Bla bla bla!
Now in 3.x (From the d20 SRD):
Command:
You give the subject a single command, which it obeys to the best of its ability at its earliest opportunity. You may select from the following options.
Approach: On its turn, the subject moves toward you as quickly and directly as possible for 1 round. The creature may do nothing but move during its turn, and it provokes attacks of opportunity for this movement as normal.
Drop: On its turn, the subject drops whatever it is holding. It can’t pick up any dropped item until its next turn.
Fall:On its turn, the subject falls to the ground and remains prone for 1 round. It may act normally while prone but takes any appropriate penalties.
Flee: On its turn, the subject moves away from you as quickly as possible for 1 round. It may do nothing but move during its turn, and it provokes attacks of opportunity for this movement as normal.
Halt: The subject stands in place for 1 round. It may not take any actions but is not considered helpless.
If the subject can’t carry out your command on its next turn, the spell automatically fails.
Can you feel the restraints of game mechanics choking the flexibility out of the description?
Now in 4e (*):
Command:
Attack: Wisdom vs. Will
Hit: The target is dazed until the end of your next turn. In addition, you can choose to knock the target prone or slide the target a number of squares equal to 3 + your Charisma modifier.
Isn’t this the most beautiful, concise, description possible for this spell? And let’s face it, it’s what people have been doing with this spell for 30 years with the possible exception of forcing a monster from dropping it’s hand held weapon.
Any DM worth his salt could have argued that drop is vague enough as a one command word to be interpreted at least 2 ways (i.e. Fall down or Drop what’s in your hand).
So there you have it. Almost all of the PCs powers are for combat use and are explained with minimalist but oh so crunchy prose.
My Fluff-inclined minions (that I keep nearby to better watch my ennemies) have pointed out that there is flavour text for all of 4e’s powers, but seriously, who reads those?
In fact, D&D finally embraces it’s role as a Combat Roleplaying Game and that makes me so happy!
I’ve won dear Mr. Baur! See you at 5th edition’s launch in 8-10 years.
* Yes I’ve seen the Core Books, don’t ask me how because I won’t tell. I’m perfectly aware of how thin the ice I’m skating on is, I will assume the consequences if any. Buy the books!
Campaign Post Mortem: Part 1, Highlights and links
I was taught in Project Management classes (I did 6 months of them) that it’s good practice and useful to go over a completed project and do what is called a Post-Mortem analysis.
Well my last D&D 3.5 campaign has been completed for more than 2 weeks and I thought, while I await for my new 4e Core Books, that now is a perfect time to do so.
I won’t get into the actual analysis tonight, but I’ll post the campaign’s Elevator Pitch and the highlights so that late readers can follow without reading the thousands and thousands of words I wrote on this game.
Campaign Elevator Pitch:
Four survivors of the Sphere-wars converge on Ptolus, teaming up with a local noble with a mysterious past. They are determined to end the threat of the Yugoloth Shadowlords who scheme over the destruction of this ravaged world.
The Sphere-Wars were alignment-based interplannar conflicts centered around our homegrown gameworld,. It was the focus of a previous campaign.
Campaign Highlights:
Four Characters were brought together, united in their fight against the Neutral Evil Fiends trying to take over the ravaged world. A fifth character, a super-human warrior escaped from a Prison world joined them in Ptolus.
Arc 1: Getting severely beaten by an incursion of Fiends, the characters retreated, regrouped, made new allies and vanquished the expeditionary force.
Arc 2: Investigating a new Drug appearing on the streets of Ptolus, the PCs uncover the existence of an alien entity that mutates humanoids into plant-like bipedal extension of it’s consciousnesses. Entity is vanquished, but not before it transforms a human Dragon Shaman into a 1/2 Dragon Barbarian!
Arc 3: PCs uncover a Xanathos Roulette plot to take over the world by the Neutral Evil Fiends, The Drow Spider Goddess and a Demon Prince. World is saved from absorption into the Abyss. However, it is being destroyed while the Great Planar Wheel collapses. It is saved by fusing with the Beastlands and linking with the Realm of Shadow, creating a tri-plannar world.
As a reference please find the combined links to my whole campaign:
The Adventure Prepping Posts
- Adventure Prep, Session 2
- Adventure Prep, Session 3: Adapting a published adventure
- Adventure Prep, Session 4: The Dynamic Dungeon Crawl
- Adventure Prep, Session 5: When Frustration leads to Inspiration
- Adventure Prep: Tomb Re-engineering 101
- Adventure Prep: When Fun and Logic collide…
- Adventure Prep: Finishing a Campaign Arc
- Adventure Prep: Of Planescaping and High Intensity Hacking, Part 1
- Adventure Prep: Of Planescaping and High Intensity Hacking, Part 2
- Adventure Prep: Strapping it all together to get it going good!
- Adventure Prep: When the end of an era draws near
- Adventure Prep: Icing on a planar cake
- Adventure Prep: Planning Ahead for the End
- Adventure Prep: My Rewind button
- Adventure Prep: Hide in Shadows
- Adventure Prep: Grand Finale, World Saved? Roll Credits!
The Campaign Log Posts
- DM Chronicles, Session 1: Harsh Beginnings
- DM Chronicles, Session 2: When Cool meets Satisfaction, (Part 1)
- DM Chronicles, Session 2: When Cool Meets Satisfaction (Part 2).
- DM Chronicles, Session 3: Of Pools and Crashes
- DM Chronicles, Session 4: The Storytellers’ Ball, part 1
- DM Chronicles, Session 4: The Storytellers’ Ball, part 2
- DM Chronicles, Session 5: Graveyard Shift, Part 1
- DM Chronicles, Session 5: Graveyard Shift, Part 2
- DM Chronicles, Session 6: Perfectly Paced Action Crunch! (Part 1)
- DM Chronicles, Session 6: Perfectly Paced Action Crunch! (Part 2)
- DM Chronicles, Session 7: Of Performing Crunch and Norming Fluff, Part 1
- DM Chronicles, Session 7: Of Performing Crunch and Norming Fluff, Part 2
- DM Chronicles, Session 8: Heroic Conclusions
- DM Chronicles, Session 9: Troubled re-beginnings
- DM Chronicles, Session 10: Oh My! Drows are squishy!
- Saying goodbye to a PC: Lillee’s letter to Cruguer.
- DM Chronicles, Session 11: When the stars are right. Planar Awesomeness! Part 1.
- DM Chronicles, Session 11: When the stars are right. Planar Awesomeness! Part 2.
- DM Chronicles, Session 11: When the stars are right, we get Planar Awesomeness! Part 3
- DM Chronicles, Session 12: The Great Game! Part 1
- DM Chronicles, Session 12: The Great Game! Part 2
- DM Chronicles, Session 13: Of Moons and Xanathos Railroads, Part 1
- DM Chronicles, Session 13: Of Moons and Xanathos Railroads, Part 2
- DM Chronicles, Session 14: You Wanted Planescape? You Got It!
- DM Chronicles 15: Weathering the Apocalyspe with your Poker Buddies
- DM Chronicles 16: Are we there yet?
- DM Chronicles 17: This is the end, Fiend
Up Next:
In the next post, I’ll review the big decisions that drove this campaign (and their consequences). Also, using my usual lists, I’ll go over what I feel my players liked and disliked most about the campaign. I’ll try to quiz them on it too. I’ll finish up with my campaign-wide lessons learned.
For a lucky few, 4dventure begins
Looks like a certain online seller shipped out at least some of its copies of the 4th edition D&D core books almost two weeks before the street date when they were supposed to start selling it. Of course, several threads have popped up to start tossing out scoops left and right.
While there is a certain amount of jealousy that has kicked in (both for wanting the exclusive for journalistic reasons, and just plain wanting the darn things), it’s a bit sad to see. Not only is it a complicated issue in the distribution chain process for Wizards employees to have to deal with (at least it wasn’t Wal-Mart… they break street dates all the time because there’s nothing you can do to them), but it’s really bad for your Friendly Local Game Store. The distribution chain from Wizards to Alliance to the local stores takes a while, and the earlier online retailers release the books, the less likely it is that game stores will be able to capitalize on the feeling that “I must have it now!”
One interesting non-rules fact released so far is that the books were printed in the USA. Printing is usually cheaper overseas, but it’s harder to keep control over quality. I wonder if Keep on the Shadowfell was done at the same place. If so, it would mean that WotC’s attempt to keep work here in the states resulting both in a more expensive product and a low quality print job. (Usually, you deal with one or the other.)
YouTube of the Week: Death to Mario! Edition
Just a few ways that Mario could die, but doesn’t, the first few classic ones being the best.

