Articles by Danny Rupp
Danny works professionally as an architect and serves as managing editor here at CH, which means he shares many of the duties of being an editor but without the fame and recognition. He also writes about RPGs, videogames, movies, and TV. He is married to Sucilaria, and has a personal blog at Incorrect Blitz Input. (Email Danny or follow him on Twitter).
My Love Affair With Tron
I grew up with the movie Tron. Okay, I’ll admit that I grew up with a lot of movies, but there is a shorter list of movies that I watched at least once a year for my entire life up to the age of 18. Tron is most certainly on that list, along with Aliens, Predator, True Lies, and Big Trouble in Little China. Tron, however, is a unique movie in the sense that if someone tells me they like the movie I can that I could be friends with them instantly. With such a strong weight on the movie’s shoulders, being the apparent cornerstone of my entire social life, it’s a good thing that a small percentage of people have seen the film (or will openly admit to it).
As proof, I give you this excellent quote from The Simpsons:
Homer Simpson (in the 3rd Dimension): Did anyone see the movie Tron?
Hibbert: No.
Lisa: No.
Marge: No.
Wiggum: No.
Bart: No.
Patty: No.
Wiggum: No.
Ned: No.
Selma: No.
Frink: No.
Lovejoy: No.
Wiggum: Yes. I mean… um, I mean, no. No, heh.
A few years back the Tron franchise re-appeared seemingly out of the blue with the video game Tron 2.0, which finally allowed us to explore the ‘inside of a computer’ world of Tron in first person. Fast forward to 2010, this year, and Jeff Bridges is not only an academy award winning actor but also starring in the upcoming film Tron Legacy. The movie is set to release in December of this year, and it looks like it will be exactly what you expect from a modern day adaptation of an early-80′s movie franchise. Okay, maybe that’s not the best set up but think about the first Transformers movie and then imagine how awesome this movie could be. [Read the rest of this article]
Review: “Player’s Handbook 3″
The Player’s Handbook 3 is the newest core release for 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons that introduces a lot of new content including the psionic power source. In much the same way the PHB2 introduced primal classes with a back story, this book lays out the changes to any D&D world that might bring about psionic characters and races. The new races presented are the githzerai, minotaurs, shardminds, and wilden while the new classes are the Ardent (psionic leader), Battlemind (psionic defender), Monk (psionic striker), Psion (psionic controller), Runepriest (divine leader), and Seeker (primal controller). In addition we finally see the full hybrid class rules that allow you to create a character that skirts the boundaries between roles and classes. A ton of new utility powers are also introduced for characters trained in particular skills, along with a bunch of new feats not just for the new classes and races but also many available to all characters. If you’re a fan of psionics, miss rangers that could cast natural spells, want to play classes that are more versatile and flexible, or if you’re just looking for some new options for your 4th edition game you really should check out this book.
The story elements that are presented at the beginning of this book add a lot to the concepts of aberrant creatures and psionic characters, making them more than just random elements in a game. A few of the base 4E gods are involved that could tie divine followers into psionics in some very cool ways. It all revolves around a living gate to the far realm that was destroyed and has been the cause of all aberrant creatures invading the other planes, which have manifested psionics as a defense mechanism. All of the new races except for minotaurs tie into this story perfectly, with the githzerai as a naturally psionic race, the wilden as nature’s wrath given sentience, and my favorite are shardminds which are living constructs made of crystalline fragments of the living gate itself. The overall theme of the PHB3 seems to be versatility, as each of the new races has one primary ability score bonus and the choice between two for your secondary bonus (instead of most other races having two fixed bonuses to ability scores). [Read the rest of this article]
Monstrous Races in 4E D&D – Githyanki
In the Dragon article that previewed the githzerai race from the upcoming Player’s Handbook 3, the designers stated that the Githyanki were not being developed as a PC race due to their villainous nature and they feel the drow has taken up the available real estate for a villainous race in 4th Edition.
James Wyatt: “The githzerai’s evil kin are great villains, and we want to be careful about how often we turn villain races into player character options. Making the drow a playable race spent a lot of that currency, and we don’t want to overdo it.”
Mike Mearls: “While sometimes it’s fun to play against stereotypes, we don’t want every villainous race to go the way of the drow.”
This is an argument that I agreed with originally, but the more I’ve thought about it the more I begin to dislike the argument. When it comes to the core books for a game system, especially with a brand like D&D, a lot of attention needs to be paid to the racial balance and how that effects the game. The drow are the obvious first choice to fill the iconic “villainous race gone good” conceptual space, but I believe once you get further into a system and provide more abundant choices the concern of overloading a player with too many options for villainous races greatly diminishes. [Read the rest of this article]
Inq. of the Week: RPG System Showdown?
Considering the number of good friends I’ve met simply by being a part of Critical Hits, last week’s poll by Joshx0rfz (a local friend of ours and not met through the internet) was very intriguing. He asked, “How many people have you met online who then became friends in real life?” and the biggest group of you (37%) answered that you’ve met 1-5 people, clearly most of you are not “playas” as Josh put it. 34% of you are definitely the touchy-feely types, preferring to keep friendships real and away from the internets. 14% have a small posse of 6-10 internet friends and any number higher than that filled out the remainder with 5% of you saying you have more than 21 friends you’ve met through the internet.
Today I’d like to touch on a subject that we’ve never directly asked before, as far as I can remember, and that subject is specifically which RPGs you are gathering around the table to play. Back in October I asked about genres and settings for RPGs, with Fantasy coming out in a massive lead with Sci-fi in second, then Modern and Horror close behind. With that in mind, today I’m asking:
Loading ...This is really a tough question to get exactly right, so I apologize if your favorite system or current game’s system is not listed. I strongly encourage you to share in the comments so that we can get a clear idea of which games all of you are playing. I also encourage you to vote for any games you’ve played in the last few months even if it’s not still going on at the moment because getting a long running game can be difficult and I’d love to see the variety of games that people are playing!
Character Concepts: Dragonborn
The first of the race specific supplement books from Wizards of the Coast is out, Player’s Handbook Races: Dragonborn, and in a nutshell if you’re playing or thinking about playing a dragonborn character this is a book you will want to check out. More of a booklet, this is a 32-page softcover that is roughly half story and background for the entire race of dragonborn as well as for individual characters. The other half includes one paragon path for each power source (martial, arcane, divine, and primal), a large selection of new feats, a handful of new items, and a race specific epic destiny. This book is a great resource for a player with a dragonborn character or for a DM with particular interests in the race, and it provides a lot of great options for making your character stand out from the crowd and really feel like a dragonborn PC.
The elemental energy that surges within you also courses through your blade.
A dragonborn fighter is one of the toughest adversaries, not only because of the racial boost to strength but also because of the ability to combine combat challenge with a breath weapon to mark multiple creatures at one time. With the Honorable Blade paragon path for martial characters presented PHB Races: Dragonborn you gain even more ways to utilize your breath weapon to maximum effect. The level 11 path feature Dragon Breath Action allows you to use your dragon breath power whenever you spend an action point, even if it has already been expended during the current encounter. In addition, the Draconic Sidestep encounter attack power allows you to use your dragon breath power another time even if it has already been expended, giving you a minimum of three dragon breath attacks per encounter. With the ability to mark any target that you attack, this allows you to change the course of a battle several times. If you also take the Hurl Breath feat you can use your dragon breath up to a range of 10 as an area burst 2, which allows you to mark a large number of targets from a distance. [Read the rest of this article]
Inq. of the Week: A Whole Lot of Class?
Our previous inquisition talked about the game Dragon Age and its impact and inspiration on DMs as well as asking which character origins you’ve played in the game. I personally haven’t played the game yet, and it looks like 24% of you are there with me but I certainly plan on playing it once I get the chance. The Human Noble Warrior origin came out in a narrow lead with 28%, followed by Human Noble Rogue tied with Elf Magi Mage at 26%. Behind them was Human Magi Mage at 21% with Elf City Rogue and Dwarf Noble Warrior tied behind that at 18%. The least popular origins were Elf City Warrior at 6% and Dwarf Noble Rogue at 5%.
Martial Power 2 comes out tomorrow, and having gotten a look at the book I am very disappointed that my current party does not have any martial classes at all out of eight players, not even through multi-classing. This passed weekend I had the opportunity to run an adventure of Dave’s game while he was out of town and really enjoyed seeing the Fighter class in action for the first time as a DM. All of this has led me to wondering exactly which classes all of you are playing and as a result which classes are the most played and which don’t get that much love. This becomes even more interesting when you think about the fact that the Player’s Handbook 3 is coming out in about a month and will introduce six new classes to the game. Since there are playtests available for a few of those classes I’ll include them in this week’s inquisition.
Loading ...I’ve been running my D&D campaign since 4th Edition first came out, and haven’t played a regular character more than once. The few times I have played, however, I’ve played a barbarian in Dave’s game, a cleric in Phil’s Drinking D&D adventure at GenCon 2008, a druid in a delve at GenCon last year, and a ranger in E’s Eberron game. [Read the rest of this article]
Review: “Underdark”
The latest 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons supplement from Wizards of the Coast is simply titled Underdark, and it contains all kinds of information and fleshed out details on the entire realm for which it is named. This book is along the same vein as The Plane Below book on the Elemental Chaos, but the Underdark is a subterranean realm just beneath the surface of your game world and so will always be more accessible than the other planes to your players and their characters. That means that while your game may be able to get along without ever going near the Elemental Chaos, it is much less likely that your players won’t journey somewhere in the Underdark during their dungeon delving careers. Thankfully we have this book, Underdark, which is 159 pages of exquisite and pure D&D content that any game can benefit by including.
Roughly the same size as The Plane Below, this book contains 39 new types of monsters (compared to Plane Below‘s nearly 50), but among those new monsters are some essential additions such as oozes, cultists, kuo-toas, mind flayers and the King that Crawls himself, Torog. The beginning of Underdark starts exactly where it should, with a brief description of how the subterranean world is viewed from the surface and then a great description of how the underdark was created by the torture of a deity. Torog, the god of torture and prisons, is properly featured very prominently in this book so much so that his holy symbol can even be seen worn by the mind flayer on the cover.
Once again one of my favorite parts of the book are the adventures and campaign arcs that are tied into the setting that is detailed. Underdark presents us with three new campaign arcs that each emphasize a different facet of the realm. The first focuses on aberrant creatures and has the adventurers attempting to avenge the deaths of their retired adventurer parents. The second campaign arc focuses on the most prominent race of the underdark, the Drow, and has some very interesting elements including the option for characters to be transformed into a drow between the heroic and paragon tiers. This is one of the first published campaign arcs I’ve read that skirts the lines between good and evil, allowing things to play out either way depending on how your DM or players want it to go. The third campaign arc features Torog and his torture dens and a large plot by the deity that can have a wide variety of outcomes depending on what the players decide to do. [Read the rest of this article]
Let Me Tell You About My Campaign: Age of Awakening
About two months ago Dave decided to tell you about his campaign – the setting, world, how it all began, characters, planning, and some of his house rules. He set me up to share about my campaign also, as a large part of planning for both of our games was done together. In fact his game is being run in a world that I designed and handed over for him to take and expand upon as he saw fit. What I’d like to touch upon in this post is how I went about aging an old campaign world as well as the interactions of PCs and storylines between my game, The Age of Awakening, and Dave’s game.
Aging a World
As I explained in my post about being an inexperienced DM, my first attempt at running a D&D game was during my first year of college. After its very brief run I found myself with as detailed a back story for a group of long forgotten heroes as I had for the party and time period that I’d just run. The campaign featured no empire or ruling nation and simply had a spread out collection of barely associated townships. One of the locations was a prominent port city on the edge of a sea, but the lands beyond and around the sea were never explored. For my second campaign, still in college, the game was set entirely within a thriving city and the surrounding lands of a single kingdom with only the hint of the nearby sea. If the two maps were put side by side, you could begin to see the larger continent that I’d started in pieces with only hints and clues for what lie beyond. [Read the rest of this article]
Inq. of the Week: PHB3 Classes?
Now that Critical Hits 6.0 with the Chatty DM (and many other new writers) is up and running, everything seems to be going quite well! Last week Dave talked about the new design and new things going on with the site, but he also asked an interesting question about who brings the miniatures to your game table when you play RPGs. A whopping 46% of you responded that the DM brings the minis, and 28% responded that the answer lies somewhere between the players and the DM bringing the minis. 10% said the players provide the minis, and 8% don’t play with minis while another 8% somehow have a different answer altogether. For me the answer is that sometimes I use Dave’s miniatures but for the most part I end up using my own small but sufficient collection, unfortunately I end up using representational minis rather than having the exact right ones but my players never seem to mind.
With D&D XP behind us now, the Battlemind class out in the open, and the Runepriest nearly confirmed it seems like a good time to look at the Player’s Handbook 3 that is coming out in March this year and figure out which class is the most hotly anticipated. This is especially fitting because at the end of last year we ran a poll asking which D&D product all of you most want to get your hands on in 2010 and the PHB3 came out in the lead just ahead of Dark Sun! [Read the rest of this article]
D&DXP News: D&D Encounters
Today at D&D Experience 2010 Wizards of the Coast announced their new program titled D&D Encounters, a natural evolution of the Delve Night concept. D&D Encounters is aimed at encouraging players to mingle and interact more with other gamers in their area and will allow players to participate in contests to win cool prizes and D&D swag.
This new program is set up for your local game store to host a short play session each week, usually 1 or 2 encounters in length, from February through the rest of Spring. They will also be giving out Renown points for accomplishing tasks in these sessions that can be traded in for in-game rewards along with the above mentioned contests for players and stores to win prizes “that will make stores an even more exciting place to play D&D. I have no idea what that could mean, but my money is on fog and light machines!
Here is the official information:
D&D Encounters:
- D&D Encounters sign-ups open February 8
- Each D&D Encounters play kit (arriving in stores March 10) comes with all the materials needed to support 12 players and 2 DMs – adventures, maps, tokens, rewards for players and DMs, and a promo poster which doubles as a play tracker
- Each Wednesday, players participate in a one-encounter D&D play session lasting about 1-2 hours
- The first season of D&D Encounters features the iconic dungeon of Undermountain in the Forgotten Realms and runs March 17 through June 2
The first D&D Encounters mini-campaign takes place in the Forgotten
Realms exploring new areas of Undermountain, with their own
characters, one they create at the store, or a pre-generated character
provided with the kit. It’s a good chance for players to experiment
with a new character…or try DMing for the first time, since there’s a
full kit of materials provided, it’s easier to get into running a
game.In each battle, players will earn Renown Points redeemable for in-game
rewards; as players progress through the campaign, they will earn
Renown Points for completing encounters, finishing quests and engaging
in other adventuring activities. Before and during the game, we’ll be
encouraging discussion via the Web, (Twitter and the Wizards community
site) to share experiences with other players from around the world
and even get clues/bonuses for use in-game.And to support participating stores, Wizards will be hosting contests
and promotions to offer prizes that will make stores an even more
exciting place to play D&D. Information on D&D Encounters and related
promotions (as they come up) will live at www.dungeonsanddragons.com/dndencounters.
