DDXP 2012 Recap: Running the New D&D and Playing Games
This year’s DDXP was a very interesting one, as I suspected. We were actually able to get there, unlike last year, though Fort Wayne’s weather seems persistant in its attempts to keep us out. In order to help finance the trip, and because I was one of the few who had an early look at the new D&D, I volunteered to DM seven four-hour slots of the new game to eager players. While I only ended up running four games of it (mostly because I was too tired to do any more than that), I had a blast and felt good about the games that I ran. Like everyone who played, I signed an NDA (though in my case, several months ago) that prevents me from discussing the exact rules being used. What I can discuss are some general feelings after running the game, some various impressions I heard as someone not involved with the design of the game but from talking to players, and tell you about the other games I played.
Into the Caves of Chaos
As was revealed prior to the show, the adventure that most (if not all) the DMs running the playtest was the Caves of Chaos, a portion of the original Keep on the Borderlands adventure. We used the same exact map of the caves, with the statistics updated for the new system. I mentioned to some of the other DMs how funny it was to be running an adventure released in 1979 on an iPad.
To be honest, I had some hesitation about this. For one, I wasn’t blown away with the game during my one short session as a player. Secondly, sandbox-style games have never much been my thing, either as a DM or a player. Every game I run I try to include a number of elements of the PCs influencing the world, but I prefer to focus on possible storylines rather than let the game work out the stories. Thus, the Caves of Chaos didn’t strike me as an adventure I’d enjoy running. I discussed with ChattyDM and THE Shawn Merwin about some ways to jazz it up a bit, including adding some 5×5 method elements (obviously my favorite implementation of sandbox-style) to it.
Well, I was wrong. Each of the four tables I ran went great, without adding else to the adventure. Part of that is that I feel pretty comfortable as a DM and rolling with the punches, part of it was how the system does a really good job of making me feel empowered as a DM, and most of it had to do with having 100% awesome players in every game (no matter what version of D&D they liked best.) Lemme break those each down a little bit. [Read the rest of this article]
Cure Selfish Wounds
Today’s D&D Next post at the Wizards site by Bruce Cordell is titled Time to Heal and discusses the role of the Cleric class and how it relates to healing through the life span of Dungeons & Dragons. There’s a nice little recap of how healing and the Cleric class have both worked in previous editions, and then there is a poll asking how people prefer the mechanics to be handled. Reading about how healing worked in previous editions brought forward some experiences that I am dying to share with you.
After the announcement of 4th Edition D&D, Dave decided he wanted to run a finale 3rd Edition (3.x in actuality) campaign to send the edition off in style. Gathering a group of players mostly from around where I live, Dave kindly traveled a decent distance to plan and run the game for us. One of the first things that happened amongst the players during character creation is that a friend of ours called playing the cleric. This wasn’t too surprising if you know anything about the cleric class in 3rd edition and how overpowered it can become, but even this early in the process I had a small suspicion that healing would be an issue for this party. As such, and inspired by an excellent character in the Wheel of Time novels I was reading, I decided to give a serious try to playing a Bard character for the first time. This allowed me to play a character type that I wanted to play while still having access to healing spells if the need arose.
Dawn of the Selfish Cleric
Before I get too far into this, let me say that I do not hold any grudges against this player (he is a regular in my current ongoing game) and he was never elusive or deceptive about the type of character he was playing. With that out of the way, I will say that there was quite a bit of tension in this party based on the fact that we were adventuring with a cleric that did not seem to know how to heal. Ever. Having chosen his domains in the direction of war, death, and destruction, this cleric instead become potentially the most powerful and dangerous member of our party through the entire course of the game. [Read the rest of this article]
Our D&D Greatest Hits: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition
Last week, Chatty DM told you about his experiences in AD&D (aka “First Edition”) as the edition that he started in. Many of us founding members of Critical Hits got our start in RPGs a bit later in the same game group playing AD&D 2nd edition. Now, that game group has expanded, split, mutated, split again, expanded, and changed a lot since then. However, we all still have some fond memories of those early days.
Like in Phil’s experience, we didn’t necessarily know the real rules (or particularly care). Some of the game play issues that would later come to bug us would be several campaigns down the road before they really became impediments to play. We played with a DM that liked to use 4d6 in order drop lowest, leading to playing fighters with 13th strength and paladins with 4 intelligence.
It was also the system that I would first run campaigns in. First, my utter failure of a campaign that mashed-up the video game Doom and D&D, or my much more successful followup that featured such unique NPCs as Lord Dort Invader, his Twelve Penetrators, and Gigantor the Great Big Robot.
From these memories of our early days, we’ve assembled a few of us who were in those games together to pinpoint what made those days of D&D so great. [Read the rest of this article]
Game Design and Openness
Hey there. My name’s Tracy, better known to some as Rolling20s. I spend a lot of time writing and talking about RPGs, and am very happy to have a chance to do so here on Critical Hits. My biggest project right now is my own personal game development, happening over at Sand & Steam. I’m a proponent of open game design, and the recent announcement of the new edition of D&D is a perfect reason to talk about such a topic.
How Did I Get Here?
I never thought of myself as a game designer until very recently. In fact, I only started working on my projects at Sand & Steam in June of 2011. I had always run campaigns and games for my friends, or more recently, at conventions. I never really thought that I made much of anything though, as my sessions were always highly improvisational. That changed when I ran a session for some folks over Skype. I wanted to introduce a friend to Pathfinder, and I came up with the idea for a ship voyage, one with gremlins on board. The destination was a port at the southern end of a vast desert.
As we played, my mind was chewing on the whys of such a trip. Why would people go to a port like that? Why would a port exist in the lone habitable spot between ocean and desert? The answer came in the form of a black-metal city, in the middle of the desert. Full of magical power and run by a cadre of evil mages. Kage was born, my metal, desert city. As the idea became more fully formed, I thought “Hey, this is cool. I need to do something with this.” Thus was born Sand & Steam. I had reached a point of enough self-confidence to try actually making something. The thing was, I knew that I couldn’t do it alone. [Read the rest of this article]
Why I Oppose PIPA and SOPA
I realize at this point I’m by and large preaching to the choir here. Wikipedia and Google are much more likely to be people who have not yet spoken out against these two bills designed to stem internet piracy but that are likely to have wider ranging, dangerous consequences. If you’d like more information, many sites are providing it today, but I really like this point by point breakdown with examples.
However, I do want to speak briefly about why I think it’s important. You see, the house I grew up in was paid for by my dad writing books. If he were still around and writing, he’d probably be concerned about piracy in the book biz too, as well as ebook trends and everything else. It’s entirely possible that piracy could be affecting my livelihood if the last 10 years had gone differently.
In the world we do live in, my day job involves posting on the internet, and obviously that’s what this website is. The house I live in now is financed by the internet. If someone were to tell me suddenly: you can’t use the internet, I’d be in trouble. [Read the rest of this article]
Where D&D is Heading; or, How the Internet Changed a Game
Most people with a strong interest in D&D were not surprised by the recent announcement that Wizards of the Coast is in the process of creating and playtesting the next iteration of the game. The signs of its arrival were pretty clear if you knew where to look: the split in the player base, the design tenets of the most recent Wizards’ publications, the staffing changes at Wizards, the contents of various articles on the Wizards’ website, and many other clues hinted at a large-scale project in the offing.
Although the announcement was made just a few short days ago, speculation, discussion, analysis, and predictions are running rampant in every corner of the RPG world in anticipating of the D&D Experience convention, where the first public playtests will be held. As one would expect, the chatter runs the gamut from the typical Wizards-bashing on one end to outright giddiness on the other. As a freelancer who has done a bit of work for Wizards over the past few years, my natural inclination is to the side of giddiness. I have both a sentimental attachment and a professional interest that strongly hopes Wizards succeeds spectacularly. Indeed, I will continue to work to my best ability to make sure that happens in any of my projects.
However, there is the part of me that has been playing and enjoying D&D for three decades. That part of me must also look at the hobby, the business, and the game objectively. This new version of the game will be the one that my daughter will play during the same time of her life when I started playing, when all those amazing hours of fun and shared storytelling helped make me the person I am. I want the game to be fun and challenging and smart and encouraging imagination. I want that for her, and for me, and for players everywhere.
Long Ago and Far Away
The goals of the new design team are simply expressed but will be incredibly difficult to fulfill: bring all of the best parts of previous editions into a new iteration that players with different desires can play together. Cynics scoff at this as an impossible task, and they might right. That’s OK. I think that it is a goal worth pursuing, even if the final results fall short of it. You cannot even approach the goal if you don’t try.
The first step in meeting that goal is recognizing the evolution of the game. I know that many of the members of the design team have been playing older editions of the game to remind themselves, with first-hand experience, what those games were like. I have not had the chance to play the games, but I have gone through my old books (conveniently timed thanks to some house remodeling) to refresh my memory about what the rules of the game once were, and how my groups used those rules.
Rather than a point-by-point, edition-by-edition rundown of where the game has been, I must summarize. I owe my sanity that. The next months and years that the new iteration will be in design will see enough evaluation of older games to keep one busy reading. Some very smart people have already started.
What I will try to look at are what I see as the general trends rather than specific rules. (Some of these trends I have brought up in past articles in different contexts, so if I repeat myself much I apologize. Just consider it practice for when I will start embarrassing my family. More than I already do.) AD&D (sometimes called First Edition) was a mess of a rules set, in terms of mechanics of a game—and yet it was probably the most fun I’ve ever had gaming. I’m sure some of this is nostalgia, but not all of it is. I’m sure some of this is the newness of the game and the genre, but not all of it is. Looking back at that edition from the perspective of a designer and through the lens of countless RPGs, the game just excelled at getting to the stories. It might be because the game “borrowed” from so many great works of fiction that you couldn’t help be in a story as you played. Part of it had to be because there were so few choices that a character could make in terms of game elements that all of the decisions were made in the game.
I do strongly believe that a large part, and perhaps the largest part, of the games draw was that each group that played had to basically design their own game. Like I said, the rules were quite interesting, in that Chinese proverb sort of way. Those who are very generous say that the rules were written as they were because they were guidelines. Well, I can tell you that they became guidelines pretty quickly regardless of the intent, because most of them were house-ruled into something completely different. And I don’t mean “Little House on the Prairie” house-ruled. I mean “200,000-square-foot mansion” house-ruled. The game was great because it was a game that the group created as much as the published rules did.
In this game, the DM was in control. There was no question about it. Sure, different DMs ran things differently and player input was usually welcomed, but the only rule of the game was that the DM made the rules. Players who have grown up with discussion boards and errata and computer games might shudder at this, but not only was it not scary or dictatorial, it was liberating. Yes, the DM was in charge of the story, but, when done right, so were the players. For groups that got along and understood how they wanted the game to play, it was Zen-like: the more you let go of the control, the more control of the story you had.
The Connection Is Made
Another thing to remember, as it will become important later, is that there was no significant inter-connectedness like there is today with our Facebooks and Twitters and infinite niche forums. A few small conventions and periodicals (we had this stuff called paper back then) were the main places for cross-pollination of ideas. For the most part, people were playing and not really worrying about how other people were playing. A “character optimization board” was the piece of wood the DM hit you with when you thought your PC was so cool and invincible. Min-maxing was finding a way to flick your wrist just right so that your wizard PC got 4 hit points when he leveled instead of just 1.
When Second Edition D&D was released, I didn’t notice much of a change in the game. A few more options were offered to the PCs, giving the player a few more decisions to make. It seemed like a little power was taken away from the DMs and given to the players, but all of my groups soldiered on with little thought. We ignored a lot of the extra material that was released at the end of the 1990s, and just continued our happy campaigns with all our favorite house-rules and quirks.
Third Edition turned everything on its ear. This was both good and bad. It became a much better game in terms of rule mechanics. Elements of the game that were convoluted and seemingly mystical became as easy as beginning algebra. We all know that huge weight that was lifted when THAC0 went away. Players now longer had to worry or wonder about what a DM might do to make things rough for them regarding how something worked, because there seemed to be a rule for everything.
And then there were the character rules. All of the character options, the multiclassing freedoms, the customization through feats: it was a player’s dream. And for all that, it was also a DM’s nightmare. Whereas everything in the first two editions seemed to focus on exploration and story, everything in this edition seemed to focus on the rules. Opening a door became a rule. And the rule was written down. The rules became a tool of the player and a burden to the DM. This edition of the game was the first that I voluntarily stopped playing because I was just burned out. And what made it worse for me was the discussion of the rules. It was bad enough that the players were pulling out 4 different books to try to argue a miniscule point. But now they could pull out their laptops and show 45 other people all pulling out their own books and argue the same points.
Fourth Edition came just in time. I was seconds away from taking up a less frustrating pastime like demolitions or shark baiting. This edition began to return some of the power to the DM. Not a lot, but a little. Most of the power was returned by streamlining rules to get them out of the way so the story could come back into focus. And some of the player rules were streamlined as well. Those of us who had DMed and played in the earliest editions could see the old “exploration and story” light at the end of the tunnel. But things were still a little off. That light was blocked a bit by a strong focus on “encounters” which emphasized the same grid-and-movement mindset that 3e introduced. The feeling of “campaign” that the earliest editions encouraged was still a bit hazy, especially for those who only played 3e and 4e.
Old Arguments, New Technologies
And the Internet is still there. It gives us the beauty of communication, but we use it to clamor for errata and clarification and justification and perfection. We have a tool for sharing stories like no other, and we use it to nitpick and gripe and limit our imaginations rather than free them. I am as guilty as anyone in this, perhaps moreso. I have striven to make campaigns that embrace the ugly perfection of rules over the beauty chaos of a story shared. And in my foolishness, I would probably make the same mistakes again.
Having said all this, I need to make it clear that this is just my severely biased opinion, and it is a bunch of opinions that have been simplified and distilled down to an essence that does not capture my whole experience. I have loved D&D since even before they added the “A” at the beginning. Even at its most frustrating, I would still take a game of any edition of D&D over just about any other hobby to share with a group of friends (or in some cases, strangers). There is still more story in even the most tactical game of D&D than there is in all reality TV put together. Unless “Celebrity Housekeepers of Waterdeep” is on some network’s spring schedule.
So, as I sit with everyone else and wait to see the first draft of the rules that we will all get to playtest, I have much hope for what the game can become. I would love to see the streamlined balance of 4e, the players’ ability to create a truly unique character of 3e, but the power for the DM to bring about an inspiring and fun story that was enjoyed most in those earliest versions of the game. It may not happen, but count me as one of those cheering that we are all going to get a chance to make it happen together.
Dungeons & Dragons of Future Past
I have a lot of other things I want to talk about here on Critical Hits, but with Monday’s announcement of a new style of Dungeons & Dragons in the works it feels wrong to talk about anything else. The 4th edition of D&D brought about the only long campaign I’ve ever managed to run, and I attribute a large part of that to the ways the new edition changed the role of being a Dungeon Master and the tools it provided. Another large part of my ability to run a long game was this, right here, the (online and otherwise) RPG community that I’ve had the benefit of being a part of for many years now that has provided me with limitless resources to aid in my DMing efforts. After D&D Next (as I’ll refer to it for simplicity) was announced the online RPG community went crazy, and I saw a number of people sharing lamentations that 4th Edition was now “old” and “going away.” I’ve finally managed to wrangle my thoughts about D&D Next, and they are overwhelming in their hope that whatever D&D Next is it helps me to continue running 4e D&D.
I say “continue running 4e D&D”, but what I really mean is that I hope D&D Next doesn’t mean the end of support for and the release of new content for 4e games. I’d say with any of the editions of D&D that I’ve played they never lasted more than 3 months without picking up house rules amongst our friends. My primary desire with D&D Next and its modular ideals is that it effectively presents an edition of Dungeons & Dragons that embraces the house rule approach many groups take and says, “Here’s D&D, here are some different ways to play it, and here are some tools to help you make it your own.”
No Edition is Perfect
I believe the primary issue with the “edition wars” and people arguing about D&D is that sooner or later, one or both sides forget that no edition of the game has ever been perfect. There may be some people out there who found Basic D&D, 2nd Edition, 3rd Edition, or 4th Edition 100% perfect as they were published, but I would hazard to guess that these people are in the extreme minority. If you look at the market right now, you can see the proof: Pathfinder expanded and modified 3.x and there are tons of old-school D&D hacks and clones that choose different pieces of the game to change and others to keep the same. The problem is that every person and every group is different and they’re going to have different expectations and discoveries as they play D&D. In the end, I hope that D&D Next is representative of all editions of the game because as a game that has no edition of its own it could really be perfect for everyone. [Read the rest of this article]
New Edition of “Dungeons & Dragons” Announced
This morning, in the New York Times, and followed up by a new Legends & Lore article, it was announced that Wizards of the Coast is working on the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons. The combination of the WotC staff playing in games of all editions, plus the hiring of Monte Cook, plus the subject of the previous Legends & Lore articles, all added up to a “D&D Greatest Hits” edition, with the goal of bringing D&D players of all stripes together instead of driving further “edition wars.”
At the beginning of December, I was flown out (along with a number of other folks) to Seattle to consult on some upcoming programs. While not the primary purpose of our visit there, we were able to find out about this new game before the official announcement happened. Many of the goals were outlined for us, and we were given a very early demo. While there is a limit to what I’m allowed to talk about- not just for the usual secrecy reasons that they are notorious for but because of how early into the process it all is- I’d like to just put a few bullet points out there about my impressions of the entire presentation. [Read the rest of this article]
The Real State of Dungeons & Dragons
There has been some discussion in the D&D Twitter community over the past several days regarding The Escapist’s The State of Dungeons and Dragons: Present article.
Although the Escapist interviewed Mike Mearls for a followup article, I don’t think that either article properly addressed the state of D&D as it exists in December 2011.
So, here is my take on the current State of Dungeons & Dragons.
In a nutshell, D&D started off the year in a state of confusion and concern, but has ended the year fairly strong. WotC is looking towards the future and D&D’s torch holders have done much to improve relations with their customers.
Significant Changes to the Publication Schedule: Quality Over Quantity
2011 started off on a sour note when WotC announced that several titles that had previously been revealed had been cancelled, leaving some fairly large gaps in the schedule over the first six months of the year. However, there was a silver lining: the focus for publication was going to be producing fewer but higher quality products. I believe that the success of DDI had something to do with this change in strategy. Many (if not most) people are now consuming their “crunch” electronically rather than purchasing hardcover books.
In the end, I think this change in publication was a success. All of the products that have been released since that announcement have been of high quality, and the fluff to crunch ratio has improved, even in what used to be nearly 100% crunch products.
Madness at Gardmore Abbey has the potential to become the first “classic” 4e adventure. Monster Vault: Threats to Nentir Vale revealed a style of monster book that almost combines a campaign setting with the monster blocks. The Neverwinter Campaign Setting showed a different way to produce that type of book, focusing on one Tier of adventuring, integrating Themes with the setting and concentrating on a small geographic area. (Though I do hope that they don’t focus on this style to the detriment of other settings- I still want Mystara, Spelljammer and the like). Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium brought back the “magic” to magic items, continuing a trend seen with the Essentials products of dialing back some of the changes in 4e to something more satisfactory to older players. [Read the rest of this article]
The Pain of Publication: How I Got to Where I Am
For those of you who don’t me, I was one of the original group that started writing for Critical-Hits, but as my life changed, my time as a DM/GM dwindled. As such, my status as a regular columnist shrunk to that of a mere guest columnist. I grew up with TheGame and Bartoneus and can even be seen grinning foolishly in a few Ennie Award pictures. My column, the Pain of Campaigning has languished and faded into obscurity, but from the ashes of that experience I would like to introduce my new column: The Pain of Publication.
If you want advice from guys that have actually been published in the gaming world, frankly, there are plenty on this site. None of my work has seen publication. My efforts are focused more on fiction writing. However, even in that regard, I have also struck out. I never tried to get the first novel I wrote published. I realized it was deeply flawed and I lacked the dedication to fix it. My second novel was better, and after a major overhaul I even had agent representation, but my agent never did get it published. Now, years later, I am nearing the completion (read: temporary stoppage in editing) of my third completed novel and seeking once again to find an agent and get published.
The Pain of Publication is a journey through this process. I emphasize, again, that this is a process. I can offer no advice on what works, because nothing has for me, but what I can do, is discuss my regular activity related to this subject. This column’s focus will range from the obvious (getting an agent), to related (how do I make my novel worth publishing), and all the way through tangential subject matters (I have not yet fathomed what those might be).This first installment is going to focus on how I found an agent. There are literally books written on this, and agents out there with information on how they find and evaluate talent. Those books and resources are more qualified to speak on things as an expert, but its my hope that my own anecdotal experiences and lessons learned will be useful to some people out there. [Read the rest of this article]
