(Non) YouTube of the Week: D&D 4 Me Edition
Worried that 4e will be far too simplified? This video will surely assuage your concerns. Found via ENWorld.
Contest Season… and Pimp your site.
No true post tonight.
I’m reading the D&D Game Day adventure (titled Into the Shadowhaunt) to prepare for a full day of DMing.
I won’t spoil it but I can tell you that you should get a D&D mini that represents the pre-generated character you will choose (one of 5) on Saturday. So call your FLGS and register for a game!
Oh and I scored a Large Silver Dragon in my last D&D Dungeons of Dread minis booster box! Woot!
Here’s a few new community projects to make up for my lack of Chattyness.
The Propagandroid’s Wiki!
My new blogging buddy Propagandroid of the Gamer Dome has created a Game Design Wiki to bring together creative types to works on RPGs (Rules and Settings), Board games and Card games.
He’s giving out a copy of the 2nd Edition of the Talisman game or the d20 A Game of Thrones among those who join.
Is the Pen mightier than the Sword?
James and Harry (see James? I named you first) of Men with Pens have created a new web site called Escaping Reality. It’s a new experiment for those who want to explore creative writing in the form of an online Role Playing game (like you see on some forums).
They have also created a Blog specifically for this endeavor and have posted a contest to get people started! They are giving out a lot of World of Darkness prizes.
It’s a shame I can’t spend more time online, ‘cuz I’d have been there!
Chatty’s own contest!
Also don’t forget about my own contest, open until June 7th where I asked you to provide me with Story tricks and tips for characters.
Pimp your Website here!
Finally, I haven’t been able to keep up much as a community promoter. So I’d lke to invite readers with blogs to leave a comment here and pimp their site or recent posts.
Feel free to leave links. While your comments may get eaten up by my Spam filter, I’ll re-instate them… Which in turn will supposedly teach my new plugin (Defensio) to recognize true comments from spam.
See you later this week.
Inq. of the Week: Campaign to a Close
Last week, the question was asked, and you answered: 64% use the wheel attachment when playing Mario Kart, while 36% use some other form of control to guide Bowser off the edge of the haunted house level. I haven’t gotten to play as much Mario Kart as I’d like, but the wheel is definitely my favorite way to go. It’s probably more effective to use the Game Cube and do all sorts of power slides and whatnot, but damn if it isn’t fun to move that wheel all over the place. The disadvantage is that now I try to move the wheel all over the place when driving my real car, and I’ve yet to find the button to launch turtle shells at the other drivers.
Yesterday, I wrapped up my D&D campaign. It had been running since last August on a fairly regular basis, and from its inception it was designed to wrap-up just before fourth edition came out. Well, that’s behind me now, and other than a few one-shots this summer, I’m fairly confidant that I’m done with 3.5. (As evidenced by some of the stuff in yesterday’s game, not a moment too soon.)
As it came to a conclusion, I relied upon a lot of advice from other GMs on how to end the campaign. I haven’t had a chance to end a campaign in a few years, and that wasn’t even D&D. I always like being able to wrap things up and give a satisfying conclusion to the game… even if I do eventually revisit the world.
So, for you RPG players and GMs out there…
How many RPG campaigns have you been involved with that have finished?
- I've never had a campaign finish, or I've been involved in only one ongoing campaign (30%, 38 Votes)
- 1 (12%, 15 Votes)
- 2-3 (25%, 32 Votes)
- 4-5 (10%, 13 Votes)
- 6-9 (9%, 11 Votes)
- 10+ (11%, 14 Votes)
- I don't play RPGs, or I don't play in campaigns (3%, 5 Votes)
Total Voters: 128
Loading ...And I mean games that you would actually consider campaigns, leaving aside one-shots and mini-series that run on a relatively short time frame.
Chatty's Initial Thoughts on 4e
I’ve decided that I won’t review the 4e Core Books. I will probably do a few ‘Chatty on 4e’ and ‘Chatty’s Debate’ posts on things in the core but I won’t review them.
Part of this is because my way of doing reviews tend to be pretty massive. I’d end up with a multi-parter series for each book that would take this way past the period people cared about it.
Secondly is that as much as I like reading it right now, I really need to play the damn game and make my own mind as I keep alternating between anticipation and slight irritation as I read things (Especially the DMG).
But heres a few of tidbits from what I gleaned so far.
PHB:
- Races are all cool, even the half elf (who gets to learn and use another class’ power)
- The Magic Item “economy” is different. Anyone can buy magic Item, if you can work out how with your DM…If you can’t, well just buy a ritual and make your own! But buying and making it is the exact same cost (+ paying for the ritual). Selling magic item, or disenchanting it into components, yields exactly 20% of its market value.
- The Vorpal weapon is awesome, You get a bunch of extra dice of damage on crits or using it’s daily power. On top of that, whenever you play max damage with it (not just while doing a crit), you get to reroll damage and add it up. You keep re-rolling as long as you play maximum damage. Here’s to hoping to see a player break the Bell Curve!
- You get to a swap powers, skills or feat (max one per level) whenever you level up.
The DMG (partly read):
- Written by James Wyatt, I don’t quite like his writing style but once I got over it I was okay. This is not Monte Cook (3.0 DMG) or Robin Laws (1st part of 3.5 DMG II) whose styles I’m more in line with.
- The way he proposes to deal with Rules Lawyers is shocking but possibly quite effective (let him step out of the game, fading his character out, for as long as he looks in the book, missing out on the game without keeping others from playing)
- Monster mod and creation is truly easy and useful. Templates take minutes to apply. NPCs can be full characters or Faked ones where simple stats and hand picked powers simulate a full character.
- Random tables are gone. Make your own or start an Imprint and make PDFs full of random tables if you like them… If they are good you will make money.
- Treasure attribution is highly structured (I’d say even clinical), see previous comment.
I had a 3 paragraph long rant about the absence of the second Rule 0 (1st one is: Everybody must have fun, it’s there all right) which is “Feel free to ignore rules and/or make your own”.
Then I decided to properly research my rant lest I get a (well deserved) stern remonstrance by my Winnipeg buddy.
On page 189, there’s actually a full section on House Rules and how to approach them (with quite sensible suggestion of thinking things throughly).
So Rule 0 is there, in the following form:
If you disagree with how the rules handle something, changing them is within your rights
More important, do the other players agree to the need for a change? You have the authority to do whatever you want with the game, but your efforts won’t help if you have no group.
While the suggestions above is sensible, the key philosophy of this book is that it does not try to picture the DM’s as a figure of authority but more like a partner and an interpreter of the rules.
I think that is a wrong move (or at least it paints an incomplete picture). As I discussed in my 4 stages series, the partner DM is a later, natural evolution of a norming gaming group. The more supervisor-like DM is a necessity earlier in the group’s ‘career’. The needs of less experienced, less cohesive groups should have been addressed.
Once again, it’s a question of style. James Wyatt and I are describing the same elephant from different angles. Not a deal breaker… but it is making my reading of the DMG more arduous than any GMing book I have read since the 2e DMG. YMMV.
It is filled with good, sensible DMing advice but somehow it seems to be smeared in brussel sprout paste and I need to digest it before seeing it for what it is.
I get to finally play Keep on the Shadowfell next Friday, I really can’t wait. We’ll use the pre-gens as this is going to be an exercise in learning the rules. Players are also encouraged to trade PCs between encounters to get to see what each one does. We’ll see how it goes.
So there you go… I managed to make it into some sort of review after all…sigh.
Have a nice week!
