Inq. of the Week: 4th Edition Books?
Dave come out with a lot of good information from New York Comic Con, and last week he asked if we attend non-work conventions and how often. A large majority of 42% are occasional attenders, responding ‘A few times, when I can‘. The second largest group at 20% have never gone to cons at all, 16% of you attend conventions regularly, and then 10% of you used to go to cons but don’t anymore. It’s nice to see NYCC coming more into its own and spreading some of the love to the east coast.
Just under a year ago Dave and I were getting our first looks at 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, and now it really feels like the edition is going ahead full steam (maybe even TOO fast?) with a growing list of supplements coming out and the second round of the core books coming out very soon starting with the PHB2 in a month. With Dave’s recent discussion of the Draconomicon on the Tome Show, and reading through Open Grave on my own, I began to wonder how many people have bought these books. This led me back to a thought I had when 4E first came out, with the shift of magic items to the Player’s Handbook it became much less important for players that aren’t DMs to buy the Dungeon Master’s Guide and the Monster Manual, and back then I wondered how many people bought all three anyway. These curiosities have now combined into this poll!
Loading ...If there’s a book that you particularly like or don’t like please share in the comments, I’m very interested to see which books are the top sellers and which ones are favorites among fans.
The Tome (Show) of Dragons
Just a quick note: I was honored to be a guest of The Tome Show with Jeff, as well as with Quinn of At-Will. We talked about the Draconomicon, chapter by chapter. In case you didn’t get enough information from our review (or you just want to hear my sexy voice talk about beating up Tiamat), definitely give it a listen.
Critical Bits for the week ending 2009-02-14
- Holy crap, I don’t play Vampire or any White Wolf games regularly, but this looks amazing
- “All the mechanics actually felt like they were part of the same game…allowing more time for tactics and bad jokes.”
- 1st Dominion Expansion to contain everything you need to play (i.e. treasures and kingdoms)
- Soon, you can die of dysentery wherever you go (And I assume it’ll be better than our interpretation)
- Spoiler for Watchmen (though one we already suspected)
- More information about Goodman’s 4e magazine, “Level Up”
- Graham found a YouTube of that weird Gatorade parody of Holy Grail
- The last Digital Insider column reveals that May will feature a playtest of the Monk for PHB3- so ki for PHB3
- Ema of the recently shut down Ema’s Character Sheet responds to the circumstances around the C&D
- Geek Sleds
- Penn & Teller working on a “Bullshit!” episode about video game violence
- Take the Dungeons & Dragons survey
Pain of Campaigning VIII: What About the Bad Guys?
Intro: Looking at the Campaigning Inquisition, I saw that the vast majority of people favor heroic or at least characters that have the potential to be heroes. Considering the nature of the D&D beast, this makes sense, but I worry that people may be hesitant to try one of the most enjoyable modes of D&D: playing as one of the bad guys. My favorite D&D game of all time had us play demon-summoning, undead-raising, townsfolk-terrorizing evil sons of bitches waging war on civilization; until my character betrayed the party when he realized ruling over an empire of uncivilized barbarians would be completely unacceptable. This article is going to give some tips on how to organize and maintain an evil party, how to make enjoyable for players that may be leery of the idea, and how to make it enjoyable for you even if you have reservations about such a game as a DM.
Maintaining & Organizing Play: The first problem people have with an evil party is keeping it together and focused. Rather than abiding moral sense to help people you have a group of pricks and selfish jerks. So, you have to have a hook that keeps the party together and you have to make it clear that it’s necessary during character creation. Some good hooks involve the need to overthrow a sickening empire of good, an even more evil apocalyptic power seeking to destroy the very world that the PCs would dominate, or a simple case of necessity where law enforcement, good religious groups, or polities are going to hunt them down one by one. Either way, make it clear and firm that these motivations are required AT THE START.
Winning over the Dubious Player: Some of your players may have understandable reservations about hanging up their hero boots and switching sides to the villains. First off, just because a character is evil doesn’t mean they have to contemptible murderers. You could play an honorable, but brutal, warrior or a otherwise selfish spell caster that’s looking out for his family. Alternatively, some parties have the resident bad guy that works with the heroes: a character could be the opposite: the good guy that finds himself amongst cutthroats and bastards because of circumstances. Or a character could be the mole or spy, but this time a spy for the good guys. Its important to realize that just because the party may have selfish/evil goals doesn’t mean each PC has to be that way.
Winning over the Dubious DM Inside You: The idea of having a bunch of bastards scheme, connive, murder, and rampage through your campaign world may not win you over at first, however there are a lot positives. First, there’s something morbidly amusing about watching PCs deal with normal legal authorities and going totally against the grain. Secondly, as big, bad and evil as the villains are that you’ve created, you’ve never seen anything compared to the scheming of a group of PCs. The plans they execute and the things that truly ‘evil’ characters come up with can be pretty mind blowing. Which leads me to my final point that the long term can fully appreciate. When its all said and done, and the baddest, most despicable PCs have built their empire of evil you have something great: a ready made second campaign. Imagine the horror of your players when they’re forced to retire their magnificent bastards and be the poor group of souls that have to figure out a way of BEATING them…
The Pain of Campaigning I: Story and Pre-Game Decisions
The Pain of Campaigning II: Starting the Game
The Pain of Campaigning III: The Plot Thickens
The Pain of Campaigning IV: Put a Little Politics In It
The Pain of Campaigning V: Suitable Villains
The Pain of Campaigning VI: Give Your Villains Some Panache!
The Pain of Campaigning VII: The Finale (Part 1: What You Want the Adventure to be)
The Pain of Campaigning VIII: What About the Bad Guys?
Inq. of the Week: Con Get Some
The most popular trait among campaigns? Character driven, which is favored by 60% of you. 48% of you enjoy being heroes, and 39% of you enjoy that old sandbox to play in. (We may make an argument otherwise in an upcoming article.) The least popular trait? Playing the villain, with only 5% enjoying that style.
I considered asking, because of what this Saturday is, about your relationship status. But I just did that a few months ago, so instead I will ignore the holiday entirely! Take that, romance.
Instead, I’ll just ask about a subject that has been on my mind lately: that of the convention. What better place to meet others who share your hobbies, and argue about them? (Not counting the Internet, of course.)
I’m an old hand at the convention scene, but how about you? I’m not talking about a convention you’ve attended for work (though there may be some overlap), I’m talking about a con you’ve gone to for fun. Gaming, science fiction, comics, Star Trek, anime, whatever you like.
Loading ...And of course, do tell us which ones you do/did/would like to attend.
Review: "Dungeon Delve"
It’s not often that I review a book without having read it cover to cover- this may be the first, in fact. But Dungeon Delve is a product that doesn’t require much explanation, and should be easy to figure out if this is something you need or not.
The book’s concept is simple. 30 short adventures, one for each level, consisting of 3 encounters per adventure. If you’ve read any of the published 4e adventures, you know how the encounter blocks look.
Each delve goes as following: an explanation of the background of the delve, story-wise. Then there’s some advice about how to expand the delve into a longer affair or tie in other adventure hooks. Every delve can be done with dungeon tiles, and they tell you right at the beginning what dungeon tile set they need: DT-6 are the oldest used, and most adventures use only one set, though some require multiples of the same set (and the level 30 delve uses two different sets). The delves also contain a variety of helpful sidebars- for example, there’s one that gives advice on how to use minions effectively, one that tells how best to move your bugbears, and one that contains goblin taunts. [Read the rest of this article]
Dungeons & Dragons at New York Comic Con '09
Even though I’m a comics fan myself and could have found plenty to do without it, the main reason I wanted to get to Comic Con was to play D&D. Here were the different parts of Dungeons & Dragons at NYCC.
BEYOND THE DOOR
This was the featured “special” adventure for the con. 18th level, but incorrectly advertised as 15th (which meant I ended up scrapping the Dwarven Ranger I brought in favor of a pre-gen Battlerager Fighter). Both Matt and I were looking forward to trying out some Paragon-level badasses. [Read the rest of this article]
New York Comic Con '09 Report
About 3 days before the convention, I decided that I was going to attend New York Comic Con. Mostly spurred on by the presence of WotC running a couple events I wanted to be at (and having missed going to DDXP), I recruited Matt (a friend and reader of the site) to come along and purchased two Amtrak tickets up to the con. It required waking up at an hour I don’t normally think of existing and spending a bit of money, but it meant we would be there for a decent chunk of Saturday and wouldn’t have to worry about falling asleep at the wheel and careening off the Tappen Zee.
Anyway, after arriving in Manhattan and following a few Jedi down 34th street to the convention center, we made our way through the crowded main entrance. Signs everywhere proclaimed that Saturday and Weekend passes were sold out at the show- apparently there were plenty of others liked me who just wanted to show up for the day. This caused a great deal of anxiety: if the show was sold out, would they be cutting off press passes too? Would I have traveled this way for naught? [Read the rest of this article]
Critical Bits for the week ending 2009-02-07
- Goodman Games announces GSL licensed magazine. A shot across Pathfinder’s bow?
- DDI Updates: The Shaman Preview, Wizards and Worlds (Mordain the Fleshweaver / Summoner Wizard preview)
- WotC Updates: Previews February and Beyond, Build Them, and Games Will Come
- L4D Valentines Cards
- Boardgamegeek 2.0 is live
- Digital Insider: New York Comic Con info. Also updated character builder FAQ.
- Dungeon Twister headed to the 360. Hopefully this has better luck than, say, Talisman for the 360. [Read the rest of this article]
Chatty DM Presents: Stargazer's World
Last week’s post where I presented Zach’s RPG Blog II was a frank success, particularly among the blogging crowd. I guess that means I can continue!
This week I want to present you a blog straight out of gaming-friendly Germany. I give you Stargazer’s World.
In the world of its author (who goes by the Stargazer alias) this blog is…
When I found out that there are quite some excellent roleplaying blogs out there on the internet, I decided to start my own blog dedicated to the pen&paper roleplaying hobby. And as soon as I had some posts, I joined the RPG Bloggers Network, in hopes to get some people interested in what I have to say. The Stargazer‘s Blog features mostly reviews of roleplaying game books and music suited to set the mood in roleplaying session or gives my thoughts on the job of Game Master. I’ve also written some posts about one of my pet projects namely the steam-fantasy world of Asecia, that I am currently working on.
Stargazer is a modest, friendly blogger that is making slowly making his way out of the RPG blog pack by discovering his own voice and pushing through the periodic dips in motivation that blogging entails.
Here’s what I have to say about a few of his best posts (As submitted by the author):
Roleplaying Music- Five Essential Soundtrack albums
In which Stargazer presents 5 movie/game soundtracks that are good to use in Roleplaying sessions and explains what each specifically brings to the table and what genre they are best suited for.
I’m a big fan of using music at the table but I’m terribly lazy in that aspect of gaming. I usually just put on one of my playlists from Last.FM (ID: pamenard) or ask one of the players (usually the game’s host) to put some background music.
Laziness aside, I’m well aware of how music can affect a game’s mood and energy level. For instance, whenever someone puts the Matrix soundtrack during a combat scene, you can feel the thumping sounds of Rob Dougan infuse the game. Players are head nodding to the beat and the pace of playing is faster. It’s also quite evident to see that a series of slow tempo, somber tunes (like the seconf half of the Trainspotting soundtrack) creates a drop in energy and focus.
So choosing a specific mix of music for a game is definitiveky a plus. If you don’t have time to create your perfect playlist (or mix-tapes for any rabid technophobes among my readers) a soundtrack is a great timesaver. I might give the Conan or Oblivion ones Stargazer proposes a try.
Stargazer’s contribution to the Blog Carnival I hosted before the holidays. He explains how to inspire yourself with the premises of the Heroes TV show to create a Superheroes campaing without the use of the common tropes of capes, costumes and secret identities.
As I was reading that, my trope-starved brain kept telling me, that’s not what YOU want in a supers campaing right? I’m very much the Marvel 1980′s era superhero fan. Were I to DM a supers game, I’d go all out with the costumes, the secret identities and the corny catchphrases. These tropes are what I like in a supers game. It would not be serious, it would not be dark. It would be over the top, filled with Robot ninjas and gadgetering Evil Overlords!
And I’d have a random table to determine which way the PC’s capes fly so that they look exactly like City of Heroes where a family protrait has 7 capes flying in 7 different directions!
Hmmm, maybe not that silly.
Stargazer reviews this H.P.Lovecraft meets Robotech cross-genre RPG. His thoughts seem to be: looks nice and the idea and setting are intriguing but the mechanics are iffy.
While I won’t comment on his review itself (I’ve limited interest in that game) I must say that it seems that the ‘looks like a winner, plays like a road wreck’ comments crops up relatively often about these new small press RPGs.
This makes me realize just how hard it is to design a RPG, much less one whose mix of rules and setting/theme elements will meet general approval. I think that one of these reasons is that amateur game designers tend to trip on rules and either over-think or over design something. Having discussed game design with some friends lately, I’ve notice just how easy it is to lose oneself in one subsystem and before you know it, you’ve got 15 pages just to explain how to mix and match medieval armour.
I’ll stick to prepping games and writing adventures.
All right there you have it. Stargazer’s World is a typical example of a quality RPG blog that may ‘make it’, the author is still mastering his ‘voice’ and has a modest readership, but through the posts I’ve read, I feel a potential to grow quite a lot more. Good luck!
You want to be next?
All right, if you’d like your blog to feature here, remember, send me a one paragraph description of what your blog is about and links to the three articles you are the proudest of. I’ve received a few proposals, but I’m always willing to see more.
Send your submission to chattydm@chattydm.net.
