Playtest “D&D Next” Like A Pro
I may not be the best game designer in the world, but if there’s one thing I do know, it’s playtesting. I’ve been a playtester for a variety of games from RPGs to party games to board games to light card games to heavy war games. I’ve been chief of product development for a startup card game publisher, and a lead playtester (and copied on ALL playtest reports) for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. A good set of playtesters can make your good idea great, or kill your bad idea before you invest too much time and effort.
With the open playtest of the new iteration of D&D coming tomorrow, I wanted to offer some of my advice on playtesting and giving feedback. Wizards of the Coast will provide plenty of instructions on what they do and don’t want to see, so obviously that could easily supersede anything I say here. These are some general guidelines to keep in mind for D&D, so hopefully you find these tidbits helpful while playing the game and collecting your feedback.
Respect Their Playtest Decisions
The designers at WotC have decided that the first thing we’re going to see is going to include pre-generated characters, and not have character creation rules initially. I understand not being happy with this decision, however, it’s not like they’re going to suddenly decide that there will never be character creation rules. So when submitting your feedback, you don’t need to tell them “I wish I could see the character creation rules.” As professional game designers, they’ve decided (after many meetings, I’m sure) on this method of rolling rules out, so try and respect that. Keep your responses to what you were provided, not complaining that you don’t have what’s already been promised. [Read the rest of this article]
The Easily Lost Explorer’s Guide to Dungeon Crawling
Now Communicate All That To Your Players
The latest D&D Next blog post by Bruce Cordell covers one of the oft-pointed to dealbreakers for many in D&D 4e: the use of the combat grid. This is actually only one piece of a whole topic about spacial thinking.
Bear with me here: if we all had perfect spacial thinking and effective communication skills, we wouldn’t need a battle grid in combat. The DM could describe the dimensions and shape of a room in the dungeon, as well as relative positions of inhabitants and features. We could just describe how far we’re going, all adjust our mental pictures appropriately, and voila: the entire time to set up a battle would be the time we need to talk about it.
Unfortunately, we don’t all have that. Some of us are terrible at it (me) while others of us are really good at it. In order to make it function at its best though, we have to ALL be reasonably good at it in the same game. Usually this is not the case: you have varying levels of spacial aptitude among the players at an RPG table, and definitely varying degrees of communication skills. In D&D, this has classically been addressed by one of the following styles:
- The battle grid, where everybody can see a birds-eye view of the entire battle, and can always determine exact distances and sizes.
- Rough battle grid (RBG) that does use a map and minis/tokens, but is less concerned with measuring distances and more simply about rough positions.
- “Theater of the Mind” (ToTM) as discussed by Bruce Cordell, where distances aren’t as important and everyone roughly imagines relative positions. (Notice there’s only one exact distance given in Bruce’s example in the size of the room.)
- A fourth style that I’ll call “Blueprints of the Mind” (BotM) that uses exact distances but does not represent them in the real (OOC) world, and is entirely reliant upon the DM to communicate where everything is.
(There is at least one other style in other RPGs I’ve played, which I’ll address later.)
Theater of the Mind, in 3D
Now, as someone with terrible, terrible direction sense, I tend to prefer one of the first two in D&D. The battle grid means that we’re all automatically on the same page. If I lay out a room as a DM, you can see how big it is without any negotiating. If I’m a player, I can easily look down and pre-plan what I’m going to do (and more importantly, get excited about what my character will do next turn) without having to wait and get a recap. The only delay tends to be working out fiddly things like line-of-sight. RBG operates largely the same way, though there’s a bit more clarification often involved.
ToTM can be OK, but also problematic. With situation that cares about relative positioning – ”Can I my barbarian charge him? Is he in range of my bow? Can I aim this Cone of Cold to hit all of them?” – it becomes messier. Because I know I’m not going to be able to track where everything is, I have to wait until it’s my turn and get a recap. This sometimes leads to embarrassing situations where I’m not sure if there are goblins still attacking my face or not until it’s my turn. In other situations, I prefer the ToTM. In fact, in many other RPGs I play, this is the only way I’ll play because it just doesn’t matter who is where, and decisions are made based on what would make sense in a story.
BotM is my least favorite, as you might be able to tell, and I think it’s more common than people give it credit for. In this style, I completely check out when it’s not my turn because it just feels punishing and frustrating when I try to listen to everything that’s going on and I still can’t form a mental picture. Sometimes, it’s even worse when it feels like a math problem: “two golems are equidistant from each other in a 50 foot square room. One of them charges 30 feet to the wizard on your left. Assuming a halfling’s speed, can your rogue reach the other golem before he pulls the lever that drops the lava on the rest of the group?” It sounds extreme, but I’ve found that’s often the case when a very spacial thinker runs a game without a grid. While I cannot picture distances in my head, I’m sure there are folks out there that can’t help but describe things in terms of feet (and sometimes, horrifyingly enough, yards).
Stop And Ask That Pit Trap For Directions
These situations don’t just apply to combat mapping either. Take ye olde dungeone crawle. Mapping the dungeon is treated like another job you must perform like party caller or healer or stableboy. Only, in the case of dungeon mapping, it’s entirely based on player skill, so your illiterate barbarian with a 6 wisdom could be better at it than the 18 intelligence wizard.
So you have your dungeon cartographer, and the DM can describe the hallways that snake off 20 feet to the north and 30 feet to the south, then curve at a 45 degree angle for 40 feet, and so on. The cartographer listens intently and sketches it out as we go, making the player be in charge of trying to draw floor plans only by talking to a partner, like some kind of party game. Mess up, or misinterpret, and everything could be off. This is sometimes fun, for like the first time it happens, and other times, feels like you just programmed your Robo Rally robot to walk off a cliff repeatedly. Likewise, you miss all the possibly fun connections that are had by exploring a dungeon and seeing where the things wrap around, or connect in interesting ways.
Even assuming that you’re doing it perfectly, the mapping is done by one player, who has the best sense of what’s going on. The two players sitting next to her can see the map and weigh in on informed decisions about where to go next. Sitting anywhere else at the table? “Uh, left is always good.” Certainly a good cartographer will show it to other players when needed, but by and large, exploring a dungeon is the province of the one player who really understands what’s going on.
Don’t get me wrong: I LOVE exploring in D&D. I love those “aha” moments where you figure out where there has to be a secret door because of the way things connect. That’s just what makes me sad about the style of play, since I don’t get to really participate. And trust me, you do NOT want me doing the mapping.
3d6+12 Feet Converted To Metric
All this is what lead me yesterday to declare, on the internet of all places, the following statement, in reaction to my friend Trevor stating that you need to know whether a range is in squares or feet:
I actually find feet similarly worthless in a gridless situation. Either you’re measuring exacts or not. Melee/Close/Medium/Far etc. would be fine, or some kind of zoning method.
Exact distances (like 30 feet, or my more hated 3e spell alternative, 30+2 feet per level) get you into the BotM framework. A spell tells you how far it works, and NEVER EVER goes beyond that. If you need to hit the dragon with an acid arrow but it’s 31 feet away, you’re out of luck (and if your DM isn’t out to hose you at every turn, he might even tell you before you waste the spell.) In more situations, we fudge it anyway, which TotM and RBG both live in the “fudge it/negotiate it” zone of play.
What I’m ultimately saying is that specifying exact distances in play, unless you’re using a battle grid or something similar, punish people like me, and there are more than us than you might think that are just playing along. It’s one of those things that has been a part of the game for so long it’s easy to just accept it. However, I do think there are solutions out there that can help everyone.
Virtual Matrix-Esque Worlds For Every Game Table
One alternative I floated, specifically in the context of D&D, is the idea of fuzzy ranges. That is, the range of distances is described by a rough description, like I described above: melee, close, medium, far. I can only attack in melee at melee range. My bow can hit anything I can see within far range. The cone of cold blasts everything close. You can still attach real world distances to them in the rules (close goes from 6-30 feet, medium from 31 to 100, etc.) so as to support battle grid usage. Additionally, and this is the important part, the abstract nature needs to be represented by the rules. Instead of relying on having an omniscient placement of a fireball because the spell description tells me it branches out to exactly 30 squares, it instead would say something like: “hits everything with close range of each other, up to 6 targets. You may designate a target you’re trying to avoid hitting and that target receives a +5 to their saving throw versus the effect.” Or: “Any character may try to run with an Endurance check to increase the distance of their run from close to medium. Halflings and dwarves have tiny legs and so get a -2 penalty to their check.” And so on. Those are just examples that might not work in play, but hopefully you get the idea.
Another alternative, as I alluded to earlier, is to take the approach that FATE and other games have done, which is create abstract “zones” of battle that only care about what area you are in, not exactly where you’re standing. So you might be in the ogre room zone, able to attack anything in melee in that zone, or attack with a longer range weapon into that zone or the hallway zone adjacent, but not the otyugh trash pile adjacent to that around the corner. Movement is listed in things like “1 zone.” And so on.
In both cases, you still have rules about distances, and you’re still going for the same effects that you’ve always had in D&D. It’s just thinking about them in a different way, and supporting them through the system instead of relying on DMs and players to be good at estimating distances. Heck, I couldn’t even tell you the size of the room I’m in right now, and I come to it every week day.
Ultimately, I think my point is that looking at the issue of just battle grid vs. not battle grid will leave us with the same issues, conflicts, and style preferences that lead us down the winding road in the first place from Chainmail to whatever comes next. Thinking about WHY we have these issues- like being unable to picture a battle in my head- and less about one style versus the other could bear some fruit in a solution that will work for everyone playing.
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Fantasy Heroic Roleplaying: A D&D 4e Hack for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying
This is a hack of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying designed to use a lot of the trappings of Dungeons & Dragons (4th edition), particularly in the classes and races. You will need to be familiar with both games in order to get much out of this.
This hack started with a few thoughts on my own for another project, and then discussing with Rob Donoghue about how easy it would be to make Race and Class into power sets, complete with the trappings of the 4e versions of them. After jotting down one or two, I found that the conversion was coming pretty easy to me, so I stole his idea completely ran with it.
I kept affiliations- the whole Solo, Buddy, Team thing- which might not be ideal, but also might be a way to get around the “never split the party” stuff. As well, 4e is sometimes referred to as having super-heroic PCs, and this just gets them closer to that. However, this write-up is specifically geared towards being closer to “1st level” feel, with mostly low dice values and small numbers of power traits.
This is only the barest of first drafts, containing the races and classes that I completed, as well as a sample milestone, and a few sample monsters. It hasn’t been particularly edited, or playtested at all. However, I saw requests online for this kind of thing, so I decided to put it out there. If you try it out, definitely let me know.
Without further delay:
Character Creation Overview | Races | Classes | Milestones | Monsters
Character Creation
- Choose your Affiliation (Assign d6, d8, and d10 to Solo, Buddy, and Team)
- Choose your Race.
- Choose your Class.
- Choose three Distinctions, related to your Race, Class, Theme, or Alignment.
- Choose one Specialty at Expert.
- Choose your Milestones (related to Race, Class, Theme, or Quest)
- Choose your name. [Read the rest of this article]
Fighters & Flapjacks
If you ask me what my favorite D&D classes are, it’s hard to pick one. My tastes range from the mildly offbeat (Psions/Psionicists, Bards), the specific (Paladins but only if I don’t have to deal with a damn horse), the edition-specific (2e Wild Mages and 4e Ninjas), and exactly one true classic: the Fighter.
However, I’ve been playing RPGs a long time now. I’m quite experienced at playing RPGs and games of all types. This is why I react poorly to statements implying that the D&D fighter should be the class that you give the new player, because they’re so simple. I don’t necessarily want a class that’s overly complicated (and we all know a few of those out there in D&D history) but I do want one that gives me plenty of decisions to make inherent in the class itself. I want to think like a Fighter, choosing what move (and maybe, what weapon) is most appropriate to the situation. I want to think like Batman in Dark Knight Returns and (paraphrasing) “There’s 9 different sword strikes from this position. 5 of them kill. 4 of them paralyze for life. The last one… hurts.”
Why is this? I point to what I want in D&D classes as a happy marriage between concept and mechanics. The Fighter- the tough, armored guy that uses weapons to fight monsters- is one that appeals to me for whatever reason. (Possibly because Con is my dump stat in real life.) The concept is awesome and there’s many, many examples of it out there in heroic fiction. Mechanics help reinforce that concept, but also serve with how I interface with the “game” portion of RPG, in giving me interesting decisions to make, and a specific outlet for creativity interpreted through those mechanics. (Slight digression: I think D&D needs better mechanics for improvised weapons and using stuff from your environment. There have certainly been rules and classes that attempt this, but it’s never quite clicked for me, and I think that could help some characters a lot, as well as having the side effect of powering cool descriptive background stuff from the DM and making the situation overall more dynamic.) [Read the rest of this article]
The Road Not Taken: Alternative Directions For A Post 4e D&D
By now, the news is out that a new edition of D&D is on its way. While I’m looking forward to further playtesting on this new edition, I’m not quite ready to leave 4e behind completely. There’s still at least one more campaign I’d like to run using it.
Of course, as a game designer, I can’t help but still tinker with some of the pieces. I’ve done it before with the game, and have thought about further hacks. In the context of a new edition, there are any number of ways that an edition after 4th edition could go, while still building on the foundation of the game. While the publicly available info on the game seems to suggest that the new version will be different, hewing to ideas created in pre-4e editions, I have a few ideas for how a closer to 4e new edition could have gone. Here’s a few ideas for the D&D hackers out there. [Read the rest of this article]
30 For 30
When the time came to figure out what I would be doing for my 30th birthday, I decided to give myself a quest. In the past, I’ve watched all of the Lords of the Rings movies (extended editions) back to back, and tried to drink 26 drinks in a single day each starting with a different letter of the alphabet (it didn’t go very well.)
Being The Game, the answer seemed obvious: 30 games in the course of one gaming party. After a bit of discussion with my fellow partygoers, we further clarified it had to be 30 different games. I succeeded, though with a little cheating. Here’s all what I played.
Game 0: Tetris with my Dishwasher
I didn’t count it, but fitting everything in my sink into the dishwasher with the added time pressure that people were arriving was one of the hardest challenges of the day.
Game 1: Toc Toc Woodman
This is a dexterity game that was recently brought to the US by Mayday Games. I enjoyed this one since the rules are very simple and clean while creating a pretty intense experience. You hit a plastic tree with an axe (two taps on your turns) and keep anything that hits the table. Bark on the edges is positive points, the cores in the center are negative points. A fun game that I’ll happily play once or twice occasionally but probably won’t become a permanent part of my gaming rotation.
Game 2: Fiasco “All The Damn Time”
I’ve wanted to pull this playtest playset out for a while, yet always rejected it since I rarely play Fiasco with a completely experienced group, and the playset heavily cautions against playing it with new people. While I agree it’s on the complex end of the Fiasco playset scale, and it certainly shouldn’t be a GROUP’S first playset, it worked fine with one new player.
This was without a doubt one of the funniest Fiasco games I’ve played in, while simultaneously being mind-bending and, of course, a Fiasco. You all play versions of the same person, unstuck through time and encountering each other. Each person as a result ends up bringing their own interpretation of the same character (as well as their own personality) which mixes quite well with the play. While the playset has the potential for a more introspective game, we went the other way bringing out the time travel tropes at rapid pace. Predestination paradoxes where the main character Sam convinced himself that he’s his own father because of a rumor he told himself, alternate timelines trying to scam each other, a temporal twin sister, a bag of heroin that gets dragged through time, and an aftermath involving Sam punching himself as a baby and eliminating all the others from existence were a few of the many highlights.
Game 3: Dominion, All Hinterlands Expansion
After the intense Fiasco session, I sat in on a game of Dominion using all Hinterlands, which I’ve only gotten to play with a few times. Due to some various action chaining, and some Noble Brigands making keeping high treasure cards difficult, this was a slow match.
However, Hinterlands has gone up to my top 3 Dominion expansions. Its effects that trigger in other times when playing them does make the decisions a bit more interesting than in other sets. There’s a lot to be said for just using my 3 favorite sets together (Hinterlands, Prosperity, and Seaside) along with the promos- especially since my custom box is too small to keep all the cards!
Game 4: La Strada!
My first cheat, especially because I am ALWAYS playing La Strada! And you should too.
Game 5: The Game
You just lost it too.
Game 6: Sorcerer (dice game)
As a third game played while also playing the Hinterlands game, I played this silly dice game with “the designer.” Here is the gist of Sorcerer:
- Start at level 1.
- Roll a d6.
- If you rolled anything but a 1, level up.
- If you roll a 1, you die at that level.
- If you get to level 20, you can roll to try and get into the pantheon of gods on a 4+.
- However, the pantheon is full, so that’s probably not an option anymore.
- If you’re playing competitively, you can stop rolling at any level.
- Did I mention it’s not much of a game?
Game 7: Legend of Drizzt
The latest in the D&D “adventure system” board games, and the only one I hadn’t played before. I played the allied version of Artemis Entrari because assassins are awesome. We kicked Shimmergloom’s draconic ass, even though Drizzt fell in a pit for a turn.
I didn’t realize this version of the game came with more playable characters than the others. We suspect the characters are better than the characters in previous versions of the game, too. There’s a few other cool twists in the cards without adding extra rules to the core engine of the game, which is good. On the other hand, I don’t know if the missions add enough for the game to make me excited about playing it a lot more.
I did ruminate with Sly Flourish (who had brought the game, painted minis and all) that it might be time to combine all three into one mega-game though, and customize it to only contain the most fun stuff. Now that’s tempting, and gives me a few ideas for other games.
Game 8: Rock, Paper, Scissors
I held off on playing this until my friend Mark showed up, who had called it in advance. I had to turn down at least 4 previous offers to play it. And then, I lost. Stupid rock.
Game 9: Hit A Dude
I hit a dude, and play passed to the left. I did not use the player’s guide, however.
Game 10: Get Bit!
A few folks there had never tried it and asked me to play, so we busted out my “primo” copy with all the extras from the Kickstarter campaign. We had 7 players interested, and because of the promo pink robot, 7 player sets. I didn’t want to jump into the Sharkspansion either with new players. I also couldn’t just sit it out, so we tried it with 7 players, which I have never tested before.
As expected, there’s lots and lots of ties early on, and goes longer than I’d like. However, it still works as a game if you don’t mind it being more chaotic and punishing. I wouldn’t recommend it officially for the published rules, though. The Sharkspansion is still the best way to add a 7th player, and in my oh-so-biased opinion, adds a lot to the game.
Game 11: Loopin’ Louie
A friend of ours brought this over, unaware of my tournament-level past. I taught him the tournament rules, and enlightenment was had. And then I won the mini-tournament, showing that my skills have not atrophied much over the years.
Game 12: Crappy Birthday
We had a crowd around, so I busted out this party game from Northstar Games. It was appropriate since it’s about recieving gifts on your birthday, and inappropriate since my party and gifts were not crappy at all.
This is a quick, Apples to Apples-ish party game about giving the worst gift to someone on their turn, from a deck of cards of gifts whose quality ranges wildly. I do enjoy playing this, yet I may try some of the optional rules about giving someone a gift you think they’d like and one you think they would hate, and go from there. Also, it usually ends far too quickly if someone gets a better hand of crappier gifts.
Game 13: Seven Dragons
I busted out this game to play with the “Rainbow Dragon!” guy from the promotional video.
I enjoy Seven Dragons more than its predecessor Aquarius, not just for the Larry Elmore dragons but also for the added gameplay improvements. This is one of those games that I’ll rarely suggest on my own but works well in a group of both gamers and non-gamers.
Game 14: Tic-Tac-Toe
The Main Event suggested this one and threw down a piece of paper and allowed me to have the first move. Somehow, I lost, in plain view of many partygoers. I suspect I’ll have to relinquish my title of “The Game” as a result, and you would not be wrong to take it from me.
Game 15: Hangman
I had my revenge on The Main Event in this game, who also screwed up the rules. Unfortunately, the message was “Y O U S U C K” so it indeed was a victory and great cost.
Game 16: Spot-It!
This real-time game, brilliant party game is easy to bust out for a short amount of time, choose your own preferred rules set with the same basic play (match the symbols on two cards, which is much harder than it sounds), play, and then be done in a few minutes while still feeling satisfying. Simple enough for kids to play, yet fun enough for adults as well (especially when you add swearing to everything), I’d say this is one of the hits of the year for me.
Game 17: Pit
As it was getting late into the evening, and some players were already leaving, I started to push for quick playing games to hit my quota. Pit is an old game, which I jokingly call a “shouting game.” It’s interesting because there are strategies there, and I have seen people (including those who have actually worked in the stock market) do consistently very well at the game. I know some basics and still haven’t figured out what the best way to play is. Still, for a game that goes that quickly and includes a bell, hard to go wrong with this one.
Game 18: Hey Waiter!
Another quick-playing game designed by my friend Anthony, you are given a stack of dishes (represented by poker chips) and try to serve them before your opponents do. We played partnership, which means you look for opportunities to help both yourself and your partner while blocking your opponents.
The design of the cards and the available actions gives it a bit of a learning curve for a pretty simple game, yet there’s some real decisions to make during it that make it fun. If you’re a fan of trick-taking games or similar, this one may appeal to you despite not being trick-taking at all.
This is also the point where I realized I was playing a lot of games with a “!” in the title.
Game 19: Falling
Another of my top 10 games of all time (alongside Loopin’ Louie and Dominion), Falling takes more time to teach the rules than it does to play, which means you can get in a few rounds of it very quickly, and each game still feels like a frantic rush… just like falling from the sky. This is a real time game where your only goal is to hit the ground last (which happens when the deck runs out). This game is hated by many but remains one of my favorites. I almost pulled out my other favorite real-time game (also from Cheapass) Brawl but didn’t make it happen.
Game 20: Jenga
This was one of the most intense games of Jenga I’ve ever seen, including a late game twist where one of the players developed a forceful strike to knock blocks away from the table where they would land with a violent fall. He ended up pulling this off three times, and was among one of the winners. The tower was very tall by the end, and went many rounds past where we thought it would. I also got to regale other players about playing Dread and getting really lucky with my pulls so that my complete bastard of a character got away in the end.
Game 21: No Merci (aka Geschenkt or No Thanks!)
This short yet brutal filler hasn’t seen much play lately, yet it’s still high up there. The rules are really simple: either place a chip (worth positive points) or take a card (worth many negative points.) Getting runs of cards means you lower the amount of negative points you have. That’s about it, except that random cards are removed from the deck, and are hidden, so you don’t know if the cards you need to connect are in the deck. There’s a combination of gambling on what will come up, as well as trying to milk points from other players at the right time and for the right amount.
Game 22: Mamma Mia!
Another great filler. Part memory game, part hand management, you play ingredient cards into a center pile along with pizzas recipes that have different requirements for the cards under it. When the deck runs out, you see if people were able to make their pizzas or not. You play for 3 rounds and see who has made the most pizzas.
I like this game because while there is a memory element, it’s is far secondary to smart card play. I managed to score all of my pizzas, easily winning.
Game 23: Magic: The Gathering Commander
Using two of my decks, we tossed down a quick one on one Commander duel: Kresh vs. my never before played Wrexial deck. I didn’t draw the right mana for most of the game, and Wrexial’s ability to pull instants from the graveyard didn’t end up helping that much. When Phage the Untouchable hit the table, it was over for me. I do have some tweaking to do with the Wrexial deck, yet I still like the idea and play of it a lot.
Game 24: Treehouse
One of the quickest playing Icehouse/Looney Pyramids games out there, I hadn’t played this in so long I forgot how all the different actions worked. Fortunately, I had a trained Looney Game Technician there to help me with it (and I won with a well-timed Aim.)
Game 25: Dots And Boxes
I managed to convince a few players that wanted to get to Risk Legacy (which I wanted as a closer) to help me hit my goal before we could play. Thus, this was the first of a few rapid-fire games.
I hadn’t played this since I was a kid. I won with some friendly assistance. I probably don’t need to play this again until I’m 40.
Game 26: Win, Lose, or Banana
I got a banana.
Game 27: High Card
I wrecked this game by pulling the Ace of Spades immediately. I have mad High Card skills.
Game 28: Texas Hold ‘Em
We dealt out two cards to everybody sitting there. Several people called. I folded my hand in this no stakes, no consequences game, then cashed out with as much money as I started with.
Game 29: Blackjack
Yes, my penultimate game of the evening was Blackjack, a game I’ve never played in a casino. After one hit, my 20 was enough to defeat the dealer. Good enough for me.
Game 30: Risk Legacy
This has been a frequent centerpiece at our Thursday game nights lately. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a game that could potentially define a whole new category of games.
Essentially, the game evolves, and is never the same from game to game. You make permanent changes to the board, the rules, the available resources, the other components: it all permanently changes with each game you play. As a result, a meta-storyline develops. You write on the board to name cities and immortalize the winners of conflicts. When certain events happen, you open envelopes.
In the game prior to this one, we opened two envelopes in the same game, and each was a mind-blowingly awesome twist that forever shaped how later games will be played. I’m trying very hard not to spoil anything just because of how cool it was to experience those.
The game we played was our first chance with the new stuff we unlocked in the previous game, and as expected, it made a big impact on how the game was played, and even had much more subtle repercussions in the strategy of the game I couldn’t predict. When people have asked me about the game, I’ve responded that it’s a really cool idea, but the game play is still Risk, so judge that carefully. I’m not a big Risk fan and didn’t play it much growing up, so I’m at a bit of a disadvantage when I play. Still, despite the fact that I’ve never won, I still look forward to every time I play just to experience more of the story we’re creating with the game.
In short, other than losing again (when so very close), it was a very satisfying close to 30 games in a single party.
Final exclamation point game title count: 6
Redesigning the Epic Tier
Both Sly Flourish and I have talked a lot lately about the issues we’ve run into at epic levels in D&D. While there are certainly rules issues, I believe fixing them all would take up a lot more than single column. However, I do have some ideas on alternate ways to restructure how the campaign plays out to put the focus on epic in a way I find satisfying.
As I experienced in my campaign, I never felt like there was enough actual epic storylines to justify a full 10 levels. When every combatant was supposed to be earth-shattering, it drained much of the impact away from each individual one. Plus, unless you’re just going on a tour of gods to kill, the variety of monsters ends up being a bit tough to manage- one or two times fighting a balor and his epic demon minions is cool, but the third or fourth? It loses a bit of its cool factor.
So what I propose is an alternate campaign plan that doesn’t focus on trying to make all 30 levels of a game operate similarly. It breaks out the epic tier into several segments with different focuses, and even changes a bit how many D&D campaigns are run. A good part of the inspiration for this was a 2nd edition D&D campaign I played in that borrowed heavily from the D&D Immortals Boxed set. [Read the rest of this article]
The Plastic Is Too Damn High: Miniatures Pricing Primer
Like many of you, I was dismayed at the cancellation of the D&D minis line. I had been collecting (and playing the miniatures game) since the very beginning. Even before that, I had seen some very early Mage Knight demos at conventions and loved the idea of plastic pre-painted miniatures, having previously burned out on painting Games Workshop minis for many years.
Anyway, I was sad for the D&D minis to go- I thought the last set had been a huge step up from the past few, and was hoping to see more minis to fill in all the new stuff coming from 4e, even if the release schedule had been cut back to something like once a year. Instead, the announcement was made that D&D minis was ended, citing rising costs and other factors.
Understandably, this raised some questions among the community. “Are minis really that expensive to make?” “Why can’t I just buy a box of assorted monsters?” “Isn’t it stupid to reuse sculpts?” I hope to be able to answer some of these questions, with what limited knowledge I have about the situation.
First a fairly strong disclaimer: I am not an expert. My experience comes from working with/for a few board game companies, most notably for Robot Martini who first put out my game Get Bit! which used plastic figures that were produced under similar circumstances to how a miniature would be made. Thus, my experience is slightly tangental, and many of the numbers I can provide for it are based on something different, and are 4-5 years old. And I absolutely have no insider knowledge into WotC’s business numbers whatsoever. Still, I hope that it can at least provide some context for the whole situation, and will help you understand some of the economic realities of miniature production.
Still with me? Let’s start off with one of the most important parts of the plastic figure-making process: the mold.
Molds, and I Don’t Mean the Kind That Cause Disease
Meet the Dismembermen
The process used to create the Get Bit! plastic “dismembermen” involved a factory in China injecting liquid plastic into the mold to give it its shape, after which it cools off, becomes solid, and you have your hunk of plastic in the shape of a dude ready to have his limbs torn off by a shark.
That mold isn’t a trivial cost, though. Each shape you want your minis to form requires a different one. So that D&D minis set with 80 different minis requires 80 different molds, and possibly even more depending on how fancy/multipart you get with the set. On Get Bit!, I was working with someone who had previous worked for a defunct toy company who already had this mold created for their product line. Thus, we didn’t have to pay to get the mold created, which was a huge savings. At one point, we priced it out (including for a shark figure to include) and some estimates came in the $5,000 to $10,000 range. The pieces aren’t very detailed, though they are articulated. For something more detailed, the cost might even be higher, or for something simple, might be cheaper. (I can’t discuss numbers on the new Get Bit! run with a new company, but I can say the goal was to make it cheaper.)
Another cost that is easy to overlook is that someone has to design that mold. Depending on the process, you might be paying someone to do it all in a 3D design program, or actually starting from a sculpted figure then translating it into whatever form the factory needs to actually make it.
More Filled Than a Gelatinous Cube
Of course, what you hope is that the cost of the mold will get spread out. Since you only have to pay that mold cost once, usually no matter how many figures you make with it. So if you have to make the mold for $5k, and you make 5k of that particular figure, you’re potentially adding $1 to the cost to make each individual mini. However, if you make another run, you already have the mold, and you’ve already paid to have it created. Thus, the more of the same exact mini you make, the more you’re spreading out that cost.
And speaking of spreading out the cost, plastics factories are classic economies of scale, just like printing. The more you make at once, the more of a discount there is. Our original run of Get Bit! was 500 copies- a very small run by the factory’s standards. For just solid colors of plastic, our cost for each piece in dismemberman ran around $0.60 each. We priced out paint jobs for the figures that would have added painted on eyes, clothes, etc. but it would have added further to the cost for each color of paint they would use on each figure. This could easily have added another $1 to the cost of each plastic guy we were making. So mold cost + plastics cost + paint cost, and you have a rough estimate of the minis cost.
Your Owlbear Cares About International Diplomacy
Now, let’s throw some curveballs in here. Remember how I mentioned that the factory we dealt with was in China? That’s because, by far, the world leader in mass manufacturing of cheap plastics like these is China. So taking your business anywhere else is likely to come with a hike in those raw costs I’ve already given you.
But, those low prices come with some setbacks. The factory in China has made them, but how do you get them back to the US in order to sell them in Friendly Local Game Stores? The cheapest way is to put them on, literally, the slow boat from China. Of course, you’re going to have to pay the transportation costs on those too, as well as any import costs once the ship hits shores… and account for the time that all is going to take. Now what if the US and China are having a spat over, say, a human rights violation or any number of other international issues? You might have all those costs and processes changed by foreign policy- something out of the control of a company like Wizards of the Coast (until they hire a LOT more Enchanters on staff.)
That’s one potential problem with keeping the costs manageable and predictable, but there’s one that we all deal with: the cost of oil. As Wikipedia says, “The raw materials needed to make most plastics come from petroleum and natural gas.” That’s right, the next time you’re cringing at how much it costs to fill up at the pump, realize that your plastic orcish hordes were affected by the same thing. That’s why the rising cost of oil was cited at DDXP for a reason to discontinue the minis line. So that $0.60 cents per model I quoted earlier has probably gone up quite a bit since I was involved in 2007- and much higher than the state of things when Harbinger was released in 2003.
That’s not the only things that can go wrong either. Just as an example, the factory with the original Get Bit! mold went out of business and, so I heard, burned down. The original mold is gone, gone, gone. So in order to make a new version of the game, a new mold has to be created. In the case of WotC’s miniatures, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the old molds were long gone, whether it was because they changed factories and couldn’t take the mold with them, the factories changed technologies and couldn’t use the old mold, or like my example, they were just plain lost.
Collectability and Extra Unicorns
So now that you have some idea of the costs involved in producing miniatures, and how much they can quickly go out of control, here’s some closing thoughts about how this relates to WotC’s business model.
Remember just in the past year or two when WotC released miniatures that weren’t blind and collectible, the PC heroes set and the monster sets with one visible? From what I’ve heard, those didn’t go over too well, and it’s where blind packs have the edge: gamers like you and me are more likely to buy multiple packs in the hopes that we get what we need, instead of buying multiple packs of something we don’t need.
Obviously, any unsold packs sit around on game shelves and don’t make money. That has to be factored into the cost too- if something doesn’t sell, you won’t recoup the costs put into making it in the first place, and orders for subsequent products go down, which is likely what happened in the last few sets. Couple that with there just plain being a lot of minis already out there from previous sets, with a strong secondary market, and you have a recipe for likely flagging sales and rising costs.
Now, one question that came up while thinking about their minis cost is why can’t they just use the molds they have, and produce some of the boxed sets filled with minis that many DMs have clamored for since the beginning? They’re doing it, just with a bunch of other stuff included: it’s called Castle Ravenloft (and Wrath of Ashardalon.) Those are all molds they had previously, but with solid color filling, and no extra money being spent on paints. They’re also producing them in enough quantities to manage the costs, and bundling them up with a fun board game and rolling the costs all into one package.
Yes, this isn’t the same as being able to buy a big bag of orcs or whatnot, but is a way around the “sit around unsold” problem, since you can buy it for the minis, or you want the game, or both (thus creating a more varied demand.)
Would I like to see something like the orc bag (that sounds dirty) or even better, more new miniatures? Yes, definitely. Unfortunately, with these economic realities I don’t see it significantly changing until technology changes. That’s one reason I’m following technologies like 3D printing: maybe someday, instead of needing to buy a box of minis, I’ll just be able to download a pattern from the internet, hit print, and wait for the resultant Dwarf with a santa hat wielding a double battleaxe with a fox on his shoulder. There’s some possibilities, I’d say.
Mage: The Ascension Job
It’s no secret that I’ve been a bit Leverage RPG crazy for the past few months- in many ways, it’s a system that just flat out “clicked” with me as soon as I played it. One of the outcroppings of that is my desire to hack it into other settings. I’m a huge fan of modern settings, and while Leverage RPG scratches that itch, there’s lots of room for modern games beyond heists and capers. Enter my early ideas about combining it with Mage: The Ascension, to which I (and as I discovered recently, many other gamers) have very fond memories of.
With two sessions under my belt, with completely different players each time, I am convinced that this is a combination that works. In fact, one player of mine who was a big Mage fan described it as “note perfect.” Here now then, is my combination of Mage: The Ascension and the Leverage RPG. You will need both books for this hack to work, and prior understanding of both. [Read the rest of this article]
The Combat “Out”
"Run Away" by Ironshod
Combat speed in D&D is an oft-debated topic, and while much of the conversation is useful, I have one method that I trumpet above all others to make your combats take less time and work better as a scene in your game, and that’s the combat “out.” Since this technique is primarily in the hands of the DM and takes place in the story instead of the rules, it’s easier to implement than a lot of suggestions and is useful for most RPGs, not just D&D.
Though it’s a technique I’ve discussed before, to recap the core of the method:
In a given fight, have alternate means for the combat to end beyond the D&D default “one side is dead.”
To start, put yourself in the situation and in the mind of the adversaries. Now make sure you know their goals. Why are they fighting? What do they want to get out of it? Would they be open to negotiation? Is their heart really in the fight, or is there something else forcing them? Is one of the bad guys in the fight in charge? And so on. [Read the rest of this article]
