New 4E House Rule: Channel Arcanity
Developing from my post over the weekend about the new Tome Implement presented in Arcane Power and how it adds more options for the 4th Edition Wizard, several comments were made that a larger selection of spells makes the Wizard better but that the class as whole is still underpowered. Our experience is that even with more spells to choose from for Daily powers, most wizards will still choose the same spell at least 80% of the time. Sure they have a choice for their daily powers, which is an advantage over every other class… but without something to base that choice off of, it really doesn’t give much of an extra benefit.
With that in mind, I present here a new house rule that Dave and I will be using in our games to playtest and try it out with high hopes.
New Wizard Class Feature
Channel Arcanity
You have memorized your spellbook meticulously and practiced the arcane gestures in tedium so that you no longer need to prepare spells every morning. Instead of preparing spells after an extended rest, when you use a daily attack or utility power you may choose any equal or lower level spell of the same type (attack/utility) from your spellbook to cast. Regardless of how many daily attack and utility spells you have in your spellbook, you may only use a number of spells according to what you cast per day for your level and you can never substitute a daily attack for a utility power or vice versa. As such, once you have used the highest level daily or utility power that you know, all spells in your spellbook of that type and level are no longer accesible until you take an extended rest.
One-Page Dungeon Contest Update 2: Four on the Template
After 2 weeks, the one-page dungeon contest is revving up nicely. Entries have been coming in at a steady pace from all over the world. Seriously, this week we got entries from Australia, Italy and Germany just to name a few. The dungeons are also very very diverse showing off various genres and themes.
I can’t wait to start judging this as I already expect some heated discussions between the judges. Hopefully it won’t come to dueling.
This week Chgowiz and I thought it would be nice to discuss how the template can be used to help DMs/GMs create adventure faster. We’re taking a He said/He said approach to it, so after you’ve gone through my answers, have a look at his.
How can I use the template to Brainstorm adventure ideas?
What’s great about a one page template is that you can print out a bunch of them and have at them with nothing but a pencil. Depending on your personal adventure design style, you may start with drawing a map and then as you draw/cross-out/erase/redraw you might see an adventure seed unfold. As ideas come to you, you can jot them down directly in the large white spaces (The Title bar, the right box or the bottom half ‘dungeon key’) sitting around the map.
Don’t feel constrained by the page, you don’t have to finish one, you can scrap it and start again, or you can return to an unfinished one to steal an idea, a structure or complete it.
Once you’ve got your dungeon’s idea firmly in mind, you can re-do it with your favorite document creation tools (Word, Gimp, Photoshop, etc).
Alternatively, you can start by jotting down plot ideas and room contents on the template and draw a dungeon to fit your ideas. This backwards approach is also a great brainstorming strategy as the constraints you give yourself by pre-designing the adventure’s content can help you draw a map more easily.
At least, that’s how my creative process works for me.
How do I approach dungeon building that includes a sense of setting when being brief?
A common thing among GameMasters is that they get lost in the details of their adventure. They start to design an adventure and get caught up in writing pages and pages of maybes/options/background material. All this, while possibly useful in the coming game, can end up eating a lot of your most productive time where your mind is set to prepping your game.
Using a one-page document to fit your adventure forces you to focus on what the PCs are going to have to do in the adventure, and spend less time on “getting it perfect”. If you see it to the end, you’ll at least have a good idea of what’s going to happen and how.
Once you are done doing that, you will likely have a To-DO list of things to finish your prep, keeping you organized and focused. For example, when I designed the Font of Sorrows, I drew the map and filled the template in less than 2 hours (counting me inking over my pencil-drawn map and cutting and pasting the document). After that, I knew that I had to get monster stats, place treasures and work out the terrain features and of each encounter.
This was as clear a roadmap to finish the adventure as I was likely to get.
How do I make the one-page template fit my own system of choice?
I think that the one-page template is perfect for D&D 4e if you use it at two different levels of your prepping.
First off, the template is perfect to act as a summary of your site-base adventure. Exactly like the maps and short keys you find in current D&D published adventure, a completed template can represent each locale or dungeon level in your adventure. In that, the template is used exactly like for other role playing game.
But here’s where the template really shines. You can modify it a bit to use one sheet (possibly two) for each encounter! The map is there to draw a larger scale depiction of the encounter’s battlemap and you can use all the remaining white space to include monster stat cards, tactics and terrain features.
Even if you keep monster stats in a different place, you can detail individual NPC reactions and describe traps and other hazards in detail.
In fact, when I have a bit more time to focus on that, I think I’ll mod the template and release a 4e pack.
How do I think the one page can be used by other DMs?
The template is simple enough to cater to the styles of all types of DM.
Freeform DMs that prefer Sandbox campaigns can create many one-pagers to drop on players at a moment’s notice and improv anything that isin’t already written. In fact that’s probably what many old-school users of the template do.
DMs who prefer more structured game notes can use the template like I’ve been describing above. First they can use it as a brainstorming tool. Then, they can use it again as a more refined adventure summary to place at the start of thier gaming notes.
Also, note that the one-page limit only applies to the contest we’re having now. DMs are free to explode the template to take as many pages as they need too.
There you have it. Now I’m curious to see what Chgowiz said on his side… I guess I’ll know later when both posts go up.
So don’t wait, send in your entry if you haven’t done so already. The number of prizes is large and the pool of entries is not that big, you have a good chance of coming out with a prize!
Best of luck!
Contest Rules:
1. Participants create a one page dungeon using the template found here. For a contest entry example see here.
2. The dungeon must have the following features:
- Name of Dungeon
- Map
- Dungeon Key (in an edition-neutral form: Description of monsters, Treasure, Traps, etc… No game stats)
OPTIONAL (If you can fit them on one page…)
- Wandering Monster or Random Event tables or a list of scripted “events” that can occur over the adventure
- Background
- Additional descriptions that add to the dungeon, such as detailed description of trap or trick or unique feature.
3. Only one entry per participant. Participants may revise/replace their entries up till the end of contest, with the last revision counting as their official entry. Entry may win grand prize or one of the runner up prizes, plus any number of alternative prize categories.
4. Participants are allowed to modify the template, provided it remains a one-page entry.
5. Submission must be emailed in PDF, Word or Open Office format at the following address: onepage@chattydm.net
6. Submitting a dungeon to the contest releases it under the Creative Common Share-alike license (US 2008) with credit to the contest participant.
7. Contest closes on May 14th 2009 at Midnight.
The prizes (oh yes, the prizes!)
Grand Prize
- Patron membership of Wolfgang Baur’s Open Design
- Quarterly membership to Monte Cook’s Dungeon a Day
- A full Licence for Smitework’s Fantasy Grounds II
- 1 year membership to Obsidian Portal
- 50$ Gift Certificate from One-Bookshelf
- 4 Badges to Neoncon 2009
Grand Prize Runner-Up: Old School Dungeon Design
- Bundle of Goblinoid Games product
- Bundle of Brave Halfling Production products
- Otherworld Miniatures Demon Idol Miniature
- Bundles of Fight On and Knockspell issues
- Bits of Darkness Bundle from Tabletop Adventures
- 6 month membership Obsidian Portal
- 2 Badges to Neoncon 2009
Grand Prize Runner-Up: New Edition Dungeon Design
- D&D 4e Dungeon Delve & Adventurer’s Vault
- Fantasy Grounds II License
- 6 month membership Obsidian Portal
- 2 Badges to Neoncon 2009
To divide among other Categories
- Open Design’s Kobold’s Guide to Game Design
- Quarterly membership to Monte Cook’s Dungeon-a-Day
- Bundle of Necromancer Games products
- Bundle of Brave Halfling Production PDF products
- Bundle of Knockspell and City Encounter PDFs
- Bundle of Fight On Magazine (issues 1-4 PDFs)
- Tabletop Adventure’s Bits of Darkness Bundle
- Tabletop Adventures’ Deck O’Names Set
- A few D&D 4e Adventures and Hardcovers
- Otherworld Miniatures – Pig Faced Orcs (Or Box of Minis)
- Goodman Games – Random Esoteric Creature Generator
- Badges to Neoncon 2009
Our sponsors!
These prizes have been generously donated by our sponsors – they really are excited about this contest and we hope you are just as excited about their support. Please be sure to show them your support as well.
- Avatar Art
- Brave Halfling Publishings
- DungeonADay
- Fight On Magazine
- Goblinoid Games
- Goodman Games
- Mythmere Games
- Necromancer Games
- NeonCon
- Obsidian Portal
- Open Design
- Otherworld Miniatures
- Smiteworks
- Tabletop Adventure
If you have any questions about the contest, please feel free to contact either of us: Phil (Chattydm@chattydm.net) and/or Michael (chgowiz@gmail.com)
Free 4th Edition
- GURPS Lite: “GURPS Lite is a 32-page distillation of the basic GURPS rules. It covers the essentials of character creation, combat, success rolls, adventuring, and game mastering for GURPS Fourth Edition.”
- Ars Magica: “The fourth edition of Ars Magica’s core rulebook introduces improved systems in several key areas such as combat, character advancement, and covenant generation.”
- Shadowrun: “Shadowrun, fourth edition quick start rules, strips Shadowrun down to the core with fast, playable rules, an introductory scenario-Food Fight 4.0- and four ready-to-play characters.”
and now…
- Dungeons & Dragons: “These quick-start rules provide an overview of the game so that you can play the Keep on the Shadowfell adventure.”
Random Thoughts Table: Sounds of Free D&D with new Tools!
Here’s a mix and match of some of the things lying here and there on my blogging desk.
Worlds of Sounds
Earlier this year, I got a complimentary set of 3 CDs from reader Giorgio Vezzini. Giorgio runs a studio in Italy called World of Twillights where he produced 4 CDs of sounds to use in your favorite tabletop Roleplaying games.
- World of Creatures: 19 short tracks of monster sounds from the Tarrasque to Giant Ape.
- World of Magic: 19 tracks of magical effects and incantation. The Evocation of Yog-Sothoth is particularly creepy.
- World of Ambiances: 19 tracks of sounds you are likely to hear in the background of a fantasy RPG scene, from city sounds to the nightly noises of the forest.
That last one is my favorite one, mainly because the tracks are long enough (a few minutes each) to be left playing in the background while playing out a scene. The sounds of the taverns and town square are great tracks to create immersion and I’d like to find a way to include this in my game.
The other CDs, being usually shorter tracks, would require more fiddling on my part, potentially creating dead air in the game. In fact, as I muse about using such tracks in a game, I’d likely put them in my iPod and play them as needed in the game. With a playlist of sounds arranged to fit with some of the scenes I plan in a game, that could work while limiting fiddling with a CD player or browsing 16 GB of files to find the right tracks.
Oh and each CD has a 20th track with music composed to fit with the CD’s theme. They are all very good.
So give them a look, Giorgio has a few samples available on his website.
D&D 4e Test Kit
I got an email yesterday informing me that Wizards of the Coast was releasing the Keep on the Shadowfell freely as a PDF along with the Quick Rules booklet that came with it.
Here’s the press release:
Today it’s even easier with the release of the 4E Test Drive, a collection of downloads that contains everything a gaming group needs to try out the D&D game for the first time, for free. The gaming kit, which is available on the Dungeons & Dragons Web site, comes with the following:
- The popular Keep on the Shadowfell adventure, revised with the latest rules and updated, action-packed encounters
- A set of pre-generated characters for quickly jumping into the game (or create your own character using the Character Builder, free for levels 1-3)
- A downloadable set of Quick Start rules
You can check it out for yourself by going to http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4dnd/dndtestdrive
All right, I know this news might be taken left or right by the various people debating Wizards recent business decisions or the relative financial health of D&D 4e, but here’s how I like to see it.
With the Quick Start rules, the Character Builder demo going from level 1-3 and Keep on the Shadowfell, D&D 4e now has a complete basic game that includes character generation. If you combine this with the 19$ Starter game, you now have a full roleplaying game that includes many monsters, dice, Tokens, tiles and and extra adventure.
It does imply that someone needs Internet access in order to get all this, but I suspect that Wizards’ target audience is the online 12 year old+ market that are well acquainted with the Web.
So I see this as good news.
An alternative to D&D insider?
My friend Yax of Dungeonmastering.com has been hard at work to create some D&D 4e tools that allow a DM to create monster cards, templates, encounter and trap cards (with Power and Magic Weapon cards in Beta).
It’s completely legal since the tools do not have any 4e information in them when you create an account, you still have to enter all the numbers of your favorite monster/trap etc. However what it does for you is create nice looking cards with the now familiar 4e formatting. You can print out these cards or export the code to either your Obsidian Portal campaign wiki (the Tools were created to be easily integrated in Obsidian’s structure) or any other website.
Of course, this service is not quite free. Yax calls it freemium, an expression I see cropping here and there in web-based businesses. Still, with the basic account, you’re allowed to create unlimited trap and power cards and you are limited to 10 monsters, 3 encounters and 10 magic items cards. That’s enough to decide if its worth the 7$ monthly (57$ yearly) fee.
So give it a try!
All right, tomorrow I’ll be posting the weekly update of the one-page Dungeon contest, in which Chgowiz and I will be answering 4 questions about the template in our own way.
Take care!
Origins Awards Nominees 2009: Picks and Commentary
icv2 has published the list of Origins Awards nominees. The nominees are decided by retailers at the GAMA Trade Show, and then attendees of Origins vote on the winners, and are announced at a ceremony on site (which we’ve covered two years in a row now).
Opinions vary on the validity and choices made by both the nominating parties and the voters themselves, but they still remain the premiere awards that cover the entire adventure game industry, not just one sub-set. Plus, while it might not matter much to the average gamer who doesn’t attend Origins, it’s still an immense honor to the game designers and publishers to be recognized by the award. (Some day I shall have a Calliope of my own!)
Here’s the categories I know a good amount about the nominees, and what I think will win in each. [Read the rest of this article]
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