The convention was awesome, I got to see many friends again, made new ones, ran my own adventure, and, of course,  played a few games of D&D Next, the very early prototype of what the next version could be based on.

Like so many other bloggers and freelancers, I’ve signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement so I can’t discuss  specific rules. Rather I will do what I like doing best: tell stories of the games I ran, sharing highlights and special DMing and player moments during that 4 day long event.  Up first, the genesis of new heroes.

Temple of the Weeping Goddess (Spoiler Warning)

As you may know, my 1st freelance credit for D&D 4e was the publication of rules to make level 0 characters, something that some  people working on various editions of D&D wanted to bring back since the publication of AD&D Treasure Hunt adventure module in the late 80s. To supplement these rules, I also wrote a Dungeon magazine adventure featuring a group of orphans escaping a sound  trashing at the hands of drunken adventurers only to be thrust into a dangerous quest to save a lost Aspect of Avandra trapped in the Elemental Chaos.

Yes, I thought it would be cool to send pre-heroic characters to the Elemental Chaos.

Highlights of Session 1:

All players made a party of characters that seemed lifted from The Goonies . My favorite character was the dwarven divinely-touched  fat crybaby.

Fafir: “But I mean well! It’s not exactly my fault the fish market exploded last month!”

That character’s player went to town with characterization. Whining all the time and trying  make up for his many mistakes all the time.

Fafir also had a brother, Bofur, an arcane-touched human played by our very own Vanir. Yes, a human. This table was touched with the spirit of Sir Pratchett.

Fafir: I always look up to my big brother.

Bofur: Hey, no size joke, I’m just precocious!

During the first scene, while running away from the drunken adventurers, the players were discussing how to lose their pursuers. They came up with this gem:

Player: Lets lure them into a brothel!

Dragonborn: Yeah! That’s a GREAT idea.

Fafir: Oh, I don’t know guys, I hear brothels are EVIL.

Chatty: Hey, do your characters know what a brothel is?

Player: Not really… I mean, we all heard about them, this is a port city after all.

Fafir’s player: Yeah, Fafir assumes its some dark place where people drink a lot and dance.

(I love playing tweenaged characters.)

Later, the Dragonborn brute had his crowning moment of awesome. One of the bad guys was hidden underneath a fallen cupola sitting in the corner of a room.  The character climbed up the wall through the caved-in ceiling  and dove, greatclub first into the cupola, making it ring like a church bell, knocking its hapless occupant out.

At that point, I was standing up, acting the scene, hamming up each gestures, sounds and grunts. The dragonborn’s player had a grin so large, I was afraid his head would fall off.

I live for moments like these.

In the sessions’ last scene, where the young adventurers were pleading with the insanely angry and sad goddess, Fafir went to town.

Fafir (with a broken voice full of tears): You’ve got to stop blaming yourself for mistakes you did so long ago. I do mistakes all the time and I feel ashamed, but I always get back up and charge back into life, because I know I’ll get better. Please stop crying my beautiful goddess.

Chatty (stunned): Are your characters serious about loving her or are you just trying to calm her down so she can leave the plane?

Players (all nodding): Oh we’re totally honest here man, we want her to know we care for her.

Chatty: Wow, +6 bonus!

That really was a great game.

But that was just the half of it, I got to see more of Fafir during the weekend. I got served what I think is the greatest example of characterization in my 30 years as a DM.

Up next: My second session of the same adventure, some Fort Wayne stories and traveling tips!

Image Credits: Tyler Jacobson and Kieran Yanner

Lots of videogames in our modern Internets-enabled future world release beta versions of their games. World of Warcraft has their Public Test Realms (PTRs) for players to view and help test upcoming content. The game developer gets a bunch of free testers and data, and the fans get to try stuff out early. The R&D team at WotC is being all crazy and smart and doing their own playtests and asking us what we want from this thing before they build it. A lot of the puzzle pieces don’t even exist yet, and the ones that do could very likely be very different by release time.

At this point in the game, you should automatically assume anybody on the Internets aside from the people designing the game have no idea what they’re talking about. That being said, I think the modular approach that’s been talked about so much recently is showing its strength here. One of the things repeatedly mentioned at DDXP this year is a very light and flexible core set of rules, and a version of those was what we got to play.

I’m a programmer by trade, and this is consistent with what I’d do if I had a big project that needed to do a whole bunch of things. I wouldn’t start off by implementing functionality for everything it needs to eventually do. I’d start by building a base that only does the things nearly every piece will need, and I’d test it very thoroughly and get it as right as I can before doing anything else, maybe rewriting whole sections of the code if I had to. I have no way of knowing for sure, but my guess is we’re at that stage right now.

The unfortunate thing is that the core rules are in a state where they don’t feel unfinished when you play the game. It just felt like playing D&D. Right now, though, is not the time to worry about all the things we don’t know and remember instead what we do — that the system isn’t going to be ready for prime time for quite awhile.

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The NDA

At DDXP, the R&D team seemed absolutely genuine in their desire to give us all the game we want, and to get our input to do just that. One thing I don’t think a lot people understand quite yet is that they need a way to channel and distill our hopes and wishes for the new edition into a form more comprehensible than the Internet Firehose. Though I don’t know exactly how getting input from us is going to work, I’m pretty sure they will let us know the ways they’d like to receive it. We already have frequent polls from Monte Cook’s Legends & Lore column, and I’d imagine playtesting is going to be a huge part of this as well.

When I first went under NDA to do playtesting last year, I asked what I could talk about and what I couldn’t. I was, as bloggers are wont to do, trying to determine the maximum amount of stuff I could safely share with the world. I was told that I could say I was playtesting something as long as it had been announced, but that I shouldn’t divulge details.

This is an extra special kind of frustrating for us bloggery types. We are pretty much in a constant state of excitement and wanting to tell people about everything, and we have to be careful about what we discuss. Yes, there’s the NDA stopping us from spilling all the beans, but it’s more than that. It’s so tempting to speculate my little heart out, but all we wind up doing in these kinds of situations is giving people a tiny bit of context that spawns a stirge’s nest on a forum somewhere. We frequently tend to approach things as if we were going to review them, but it’s kind of like talking about how delicious the Thanksgiving turkey is when it’s halfway cooked. You’ll probably get salmonella, and then everybody else will think salmonella is a feature of D&D Next. (I can neither confirm nor deny if it is.)

In a weird way, I think the NDA saves us from ourselves. People are already pretty worked up about D&D Next only knowing a few crumbs of information that may even be out-of-date by the time of this writing. Imagine if we could all nitpick every little detail from afar up until the game’s release. It wouldn’t be pretty.

My function as a blogger, as I see it, is to bring gamers together. We do a lot of D&D coverage here at Critical Hits, but a large amount of what we do here is focused around making it easier for people to have a good time. Gaming has been a huge positive force in my life for a very long time, and I want to preserve that. That’s why I took this gig. However, it’s been my experience (especially since starting here) that stirring the pot — just getting people worked up about nothing — frequently does the opposite.

Keep Calm And Carry On

The thing I keep worrying about is that WotC is setting out to unify the editions this time out. They’re going to find out what we want and bring everybody back into the fold. We are an extremely opinionated audience with a very wide variety of tastes that we have a tendency to fight over. What happens if they can’t do this because we won’t let them?

In my mind, there’s a few things we as a community need to do while the next D&D is being developed. We need to play by the rules, and we really need to relax.

Nothing about the new D&D gives me more hope than the fact we’re seeing playtests this early. Stuff people hate will be addressed and fixed long before release, and the things people want have plenty of time to make it in. It gives me the same feeling I get when I’ve had time to really do a project right, saving myself a ton of headaches down the road.

This is an opportunity for us to be heard, so let’s make it count.

Image courtesy: http://www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/

What I learned—listening to the seminars, playing and DMing, and just sitting and talking with all sorts of people—is that for me the best part of gaming (and the best part of life) is the exploration. During one of the seminars, the D&D Next design team talked about the three pillars of the game: combat, roleplaying, and exploration. I had been thinking about the game in similar terms since the new iteration of D&D was announced, but I never broke it down into that precise configuration. When I started thinking about it in those terms, I realized what I had missed most from my D&D play experience since Second Edition: exploration. But it wasn’t really just about a single form of exploration: the one most commonly associated with the phrase “exploration” is when the players delve into a strange dungeon and draw a map as they go. But there are countless forms of exploration in the game, and the sense of wonder that each form of exploration provides can build a multi-layered experience, taking a roleplaying game from good to great. But I will come back to exploration later.

A Little Bit of DDXP

Some parts of the D&D Experience I can talk about. The most important and exciting of those topics is not necessarily the game itself, but the gamers. I know I’ve probably said this before, but I am nothing if not redundant: I love gamers. Sure, some of us are tools—or can exhibit tool-itude when certain events align, like when we are conscious and in front of a keyboard. But for the most part, everyone I played with was in the “non-tool gamer” category. Everyone was excited to talk about the new rules and the feel of the game during the D&D sessions, but everyone also rolled some dice, acted a little goofy, and contributed to a fun story experience for everyone else at the table. When managed properly by the DM, each player’s exploration of the game and his/her own character’s exploration of the game world adds to the story and the fun.

The convention and the exploration started for me before I even arrived at DDXP, as I shared the six-hour ride from my place to Fort Wayne with fellow Critical-Hitter Phil “ChattyDM” Ménard. I had met him only once, at this past GenCon for a total of 90 seconds. Within an hour we were in tears of laughter, sharing thoughts and ideas about game design, life, and the joys of a single store that can offer the best of America: pepper spray, stun guns, and sugar-free fudge. (The difference among the three? Stun guns don’t leave you retching and gagging while it incapacitates you!) Also, from this moment forward the “orc and pie” trope shall be known in my games as the “orc and wedding cake.”

After a fun first game of 4e D&D in the Ashes of Athas campaign with my fellow members of the Ravenous Halfling Horde (“Halflings always tell the truth because their bodies are too small to contain lies”), it was exploring all of the editions of D&D all the time.

A Great Deal of Exploration

Based on my experiences with previous editions, I wanted to look at how exploration has been a part of the game throughout its history. At DDXP I made a point to ask people about their experiences with the versions of D&D that they have played, and how they interacted with the rules in their games. Talking to people who played before the release of Third Edition (and especially those who played AD&D and those various editions that preceded it or ran parallel to it), a common thread ran throughout their experiences. They admitted happily that they really didn’t know or understand the rules when they first started playing, but that didn’t stop them or their groups from having vast amounts of fun. Even those who did strive for a full understanding of the rules confessed to changing or ignoring large parts of the rules sets. These changes were generally done by consensus between the DM and the players, striving to make the game more appropriate to the wishes of all involved.

This, I realized, is really an exploration. It is an exploration of not just the rules, but more importantly an exploration of the relationship between the DM and players, and a mutual pact to address the goals and desires of each party. At times this exploration leads to the premature end of a game or campaign, and the lack of a well-developed and balanced rules set in those early editions contributed to the problem. But paradoxically, the need to “fix” certain rules encouraged communication, which helped the parties in this game of storytelling form a stronger bond.

Other types of exploration are important to the game. Most campaigns I have run over the years began on a mostly blank map of a home-brewed game world. The characters start in a rather small and isolated part of the world, and the best they have is rumors of other nations, second-hand information on what the capital city is like, a fleeting memory of the one time the princess of their kingdom took a tour of their small town, etc. Their adventures see them exploring not just dark groves and dangerous caves, but the world at large. Like a dungeon map, the world map is expanded only as the PCs move upon it. This is exploration of the game world, and it spurs the characters to succeed in their current location, with the hopes of getting a chance to succeed at the next one. I have never enjoyed much, as a player or a DM, knowing everything about the game world from the start of the campaign. I want the map to expand at the same speed as the story. The exploration of the world becomes part of the game.

I’ve always felt the same way about a different form of exploration: the exploration of the rules. Some knowledge of the rules that are coming is obviously unavoidable and sometimes important. However, even during Third and Fourth Edition, I wanted my character to change and grow with the story. I didn’t want to know the exact path my character would take from level 1 through level 20, pre-selecting each feat or skill or power choice. I understand that some people like this, and I do not begrudge them that desire. In essence, that is their own form of exploration, and while it focuses on a different part of the game, it is still a part of the game for them.

A Game with No Limits

In every edition I have ever played, my favorite phrase as a DM is “don’t look at your sheet, but tell me what you want your character to do.” For players who only took part in later editions, that is sometimes a very difficult concept to wrap one’s mind around. The more detailed and codified the rules become, the greater tunnel-vision one might get on the character sheet or on the battlemat. Clinging to the letter of the rules code is totally understandable, especially if one is punished by a DM (or yelled at by other players) for not doing so. I have had to bite my tongue (not easy for me at times) when a new player wanted to do something cool like have his fighter roll a barrel at oncoming foes, only to be told dismissively by the DM or other players, “Just take a regular attack with your javelin. It’s right there on your sheet.” What a moment of potential exploration lost!

Exploring the interaction with the environment, exploring how the rules cover certain situations, and exploring a fun, imaginative solution to a problem should never be dismissed so easily. Even if the solution is ridiculous or wrong-headed, there is the potential for a good DM and willing players to discuss the situation and form an imaginative and relevant consequence. What separates a good RPG from a board game is the ability to do anything, even things not written in the rules (or on character sheets).

Somewhere between the exploration of rules and the exploration of the game world is a middle ground where, for me, the crux of the game lies. When I play, I try to keep my focus (and my mind’s eye) squarely on the exploration of what my character’s life and experiences are like—put most simply, it is an exploration of an adventurer’s life. This is what each edition seems to have moved further away from, until it is almost hand-waved. I understand that some people do not want to deal with the minutiae of tracking every copper piece and every bolt shot from a crossbow. I respect that. But I also want a game where interaction with the environment is important, whether that environment be a monster-filled dungeon or a town full of merchants. I want to avoid using the term “simulationist,” because I do not want rules that attempt to simulate how every single element of the game world works. But I want the game to simulate how my fantasy character lives her life.

Where From Here?

When asked what my favorite D&D editions were, I answered AD&D (First Edition) and Fourth Edition. I like the way the former encouraged the forms of exploration that entertained and challenged me. And I like the way the latter expanded the utility of the classes, so that none were necessarily pigeon-holed as only effective in combat or only effective in certain situations outside of combat. If the new D&D is going to meet the goals of the designers and the wishes of the players, it is going to have to support both the very freeform game where the game takes place in the players’ minds as much as on the gaming table and the character sheets. It is also going to have to appeal to those who wish only to explore feat trees, power cards, and five-foot squares. I think the design team knows this. I believe they are working in the right direction.

The D&D fans who anxiously wait for the open playtest also have to understand that we are in the first step of a very long and complicated process. To make a judgment on D&D at this point is like saying a cake’s frosting is horrible when there is only eggs and flour in a bowl—and those eggs might not even be eggs. What the design team is currently trying to determine is how to make the flour, the base of the cake. We are all going to get our chance to taste the cake batter, and the flavorings, and the icing, and the toppings. We will get there. Keep it in perspective. Keep talking about what you like in a cake, because in the end we are going to be making the various recipes that the designers must work toward.

And then a skull-faced maniac with arm-claws will murder you in your sleep.

Hostile Acquisitions is a very useful book for the Rogue Trader line because it helps define the actual power of a rogue trader. With the main book, you knew that the rogue traders were extremely powerful and exorbitantly wealthy individuals given power to conduct business and colonize worlds in the far reaches of space, with the blessings of the Imperium. Though you were essentially above the law, you probably didn’t know much about Imperial law (as a player) other than the pervasive “chaos and xenos are bad, and if I talk to them I’ll get cooties, and then I’ll be killed by a skull-faced maniac.”

And even that started to get shaky by the time you purchased Into The Storm and started recruiting Orkz into your crew.

Hostile Acquisitions is a pretty multi-faceted book. While it is mostly for rogue traders who want to go above the law, as hard and as low-down and dirty as they can, it is incredibly useful as a flavor piece for other Warhammer 40,000 games, such as Dark Heresy. It deals with a lot of the heavy stuff of Warhammer 40k, about how law and ethics work in this society, what is right and wrong to the Imperium, and as a Rogue Trader, how your independence and power match against the law.

The book opens with a highly detailed overview of crime and punishment in the Imperium. As a society with a dark feudal tone, the Imperium hardly cares about the crimes of the lower classes – a beating, whipping or pillory will suffice for a thief, though each of these punishments could result in a broken spine given you’re being beaten by power-armored jackboots. The Imperium is in an endless state of war, and as such the crimes you really have to care about are consorting with its enemies, and heresy. And heresy is basically consorting with the Imperium’s enemies anyway, since believing in Khorne even for just a short while is inherently evil, and will likely result in you wearing spikes and maiming people for blood. For a rogue trader, who may tempted to trade with aliens or deal in artifacts tainted by chaos, these are the laws to be aware of. If you stray too far, any one of your actions is basically inviting the death penalty many times over. Every handshake with an Eldar is one more bullet in the Inquisitor’s bolter once it’s pounded into your skull. The higher you shoot, the farther you risk falling. Only a few rogue traders in the history of the Imperium have been assassinated, and you could be one! Such notoriety; this is all really interesting and useful story material. Even for games at lower levels of society, such as Dark Heresy (where you can actually play as Adeptus Arbites, the space cops enforcing this stuff) the entire section is pure gold and great roleplay fodder.

Apparently the Imperium has a whole class of extremely luxurious penance ships, where the prisoners are tortured every second of their sentence by their inability to enjoy the sheer beauty and comfort that is all around them. The Imperium doesn’t mess around with penance. They will go the extra mile to torment you if you are naughty.

The next chapter is the obligatory section in every Warhammer 40k RPG book that I lovingly refer to as the goods. You have alternate career ranks, and tons of equipment. Let’s look at the equipment first. A lot of it is flavorful, alien, heavy-duty and highly illegal stuff, from eldar and dark eldar weapons, to fake replicas of eldar and dark eldar weapons, to… crappy knockoff bolters. Frankly, I think a lot of this stuff is just excellent material for Dark Heresy, while for Rogue Trader some of it is a little lukewarm. The alien stuff is definitely Rogue Trader. But for example, footfall weapons are essentially bootleg bolters: they are unreliable but easier to acquire than other kinds. This is the kind of stuff that seems better for cash-strapped Dark Heresy Adepts than for Rogue Trader Explorers, or for outfitting NPCs. Nonetheless, it is incredibly flavorful, and goes well with the other “custom” weapons, like the stutter-las, which are illegally modified versions of existing weapons.

The new Alternate Ranks are flavorful but a lot of them are really weird, and some are pretty extreme even if your Rogue Trader players want to flaunt the law. There’s a Secessionist alternate rank that immediately gains the Enemy talent for every single organization loyal to the Imperium, because, well, you’re trying to secede from the Imperium! And in return you get a lot of social stuff like Charm. Meanwhile the Reaver is basically an arch-militant rank for when your arch-militant wants to be insane and to never actually have to roleplay. It’s not terribly impressive, really. Arch-Heretek though is cool. It gives non-techpriests a (illegal) way to get into mechanicus stuff. Swashbuckler is a pirate with a nice, well-rounded list of benefits, while Cold-Trade Broker, House Operative and Manhunter are very campaign-specific characters. They each are very well-suited to certain campaign styles, but put them together and things may get a little messy.

Then there’s the Drusian Charlatan, who sells fake religious trinkets to people. If you really want barter, charm, commerce stuff, and the ability to swindle people out of their money with cold reading, well. There it is – a whole alternate rank for it. Have at it folks.

Finally you have all kinds of upgrades, including letting an Ork mekboy tamper with your stuff and add some More Dakka and whatnot, and a bunch of commercial goods like drugs. There are also tons of new cybernetic upgrades, which is good, because there are entire classes of people that completely revolve around cybernetics, and a whole new class that revolves around illegal cybernetics. You can also get new stuff for your ship, like a library full of alien books, and crew quarters that are even more cramped and horrifying than the ones in the core book, for those times when you really hate your crew.

Chapter Three contains information on the organizations you’ll come up against if you break the law, such as the Imperial Navy and the Adeptus Mechanicus, with powerful NPC adversaries, pregenerated NPC spaceships to do battle against, and fluff about the organization. Again, this is stuff that’s also very useful for other game lines. I’ve been mentioning Dark Heresy a lot, but it occurs to me that Black Crusade is perfect for this as well. A radical Rogue Trader is likely to face all of the same organizations as a bunch of heretics will. Here you have Arbites, Administratum and Inquisition foes and fluff ready-made for some Black Crusade Heretics to take on.

I was quite excited when I read the next chapter. This stuff deserves to be the main system. The big picture element introduced for the GM in this book is the Nemesis Path in Chapter Four. This allows the GM to create the background and generate the rough abilities of an important NPC in the same way that a PC would generate his or her Explorer. You walk through certain steps of background creation, determining the origins and motivations of your NPC to produce a fleshed-out adversary. Enemies generated on the Nemesis Path get certain additional abilities and boosts (bolted unto existing enemy templates like “ork warboss” or “rogue psyker”). Enemies generated also have a Profit Factor so their influence can function like the PCs’ does. This is really good stuff, and any Rogue Trader GM should take a look.

Instead of the typical short module often included with these books, Hostile Acquisitions closes with a section on various (dodgy) ways to score big money in Rogue Trader. There’s the “Cold Trade” where the Cold Trade Broker comes in handy. The Cold Trade is the trade on alien goods and artifacts, everything from weapons, to strange fuels and foods, to alien building materials. You can get Tyranid shell armor that will make the Ordo Xenos want to kill you on sight. That’s some fashion statement. Then there’s a bunch of lost treasures you can go hunting after, like the magical and miraculous quills off the back of a revered Kroot Shaper. While you are essentially hunting for the protrusions off the back of an old, dead alien lizardman, rest assured that they are extremely profitable to own, or something. Each treasure has a good bit of story, many are strange and wondrous, and they are great seeds for Rogue Trader adventures.

Overall, Hostile Acquisitions is another fine product for Warhammer 40,000. While it is very much a conditional product, it is versatile, and a great part of the collection whether you’re playing Rogue Trader or games like Dark Heresy and Black Crusade which deal with these same aspects of law and power. Keep in mind though that the Nemesis Path is probably wonky if ported directly into those games, but the general thought behind it is perfect, and it works excellently in Rogue Trader.

The book is out now, for $20 at DriveThruRPG. I know FFG used to have wonky PDF pricing, but they’ve since greatly improved it. You can get any of their books much cheaper in PDF than you can in hardback, though their hardbacks are pretty lovely. I highly recommend this book.

Though we know little about the final game, the foundations of the new D&D are solid. The focus on ability scores, flatter power progression, and faster gameplay give freedom to both players and dungeon masters. The refined nature of the game puts a focus on the imagination of the players and the story being told by the group. This early it’s hard to see what the final game will look like. Major components like advanced character creation, tactical combat, and high-level play are still deep in development. If groups have as much fun as the five in which I played, however, we have a good system on the horizon.

A Focus On Impressions, Not A Complete Picture

This writeup won’t cover all of the information available on the new D&D. Many write-ups, transcripts, and recordings of the seminars hosted by Wizards of the Coast at the Dungeons and Dragons Experience can be found at Enworld’s D&D Next page. If you want a greater view of the total of D&D, that’s the place to go.

In this article I’m going to talk about the four areas of D&D that left the biggest impression on me. Let’s start with attributes.

Ability Scores

Since 2nd edition, ability scores never seemed to serve any real purpose. The modifiers always mattered, but the scores just seemed to be bits of complication held back from the early days. I felt that getting rid of ability scores and focusing on the bonuses was the obvious evolution of the game. Other game systems embraced that idea. One might even go further and remove ability scores completely, focusing instead on attack and defense scores.

But ability scores are core to D&D. Everyone knows them. T-shirts make fun of them. Ability scores are a part of our culture, you can’t get rid of them.

And the D&D designers didn’t. Instead, they made ability scores actually matter. As discussed in the skills and abilities seminar, ability scores now act as a sort-of passive skill check. If you want to open a barred door and that door’s DC is 13. If you have a strength ability score of 15, you don’t even have to roll. You kick in the door. It’s elegant, simple, easy to understand, and uses the whole score instead of the ability bonus. There are still bonuses for abilities, but now the score itself means something to the game and that meaning actually makes everything else much faster.

The focus on ability scores means that the core of your character is represented by those six scores. Everything else is mainly a modifier of those scores. Every tweak to your character simply tweaks those scores. As stated by Monte Cook, everything else about your character grows out from these core ability scores.

Flattening Power Progression

In earlier editions of D&D, and particularly in D&D 4e, character power progression scaled linearly. In 4e, between feats, magic items, and level bonuses, you gained roughly +1 to attacks, defenses, and skills. Since this bonus modifies a d20, you can say that every level you gain roughly equates to a 5% greater chance to succeed at something. In 4e, when you’re fighting a creature five levels higher than you, it becomes 25% harder to hit and hits you 25% more often.

As described in the charting the course seminar, D&D’s new math is flatter. This means that these 5% bonuses might be farther and fewer across levels. Now lower level monsters can still hit you and you might miss them. It means that skill checks no longer seem impossible at lower levels and stupid easy at higher levels.

This flatter progression also empowers players to try things he or she might otherwise avoid. If the chance to hit with a crossbow is only one less than hitting with your sword, they might be willing to pick it up and shoot once in a while. Skill specialization might not give you the same giant bonus that it did in 4e, instead specialized skills might only be 5% or 10% easier than anything else you might do. You won’t run into the problem in 4e where you’re trying to argue a way to bench-press a throne when having a conversation with a noble lord because your diplomacy is 12 points lower than your athletics.

This flattening of the math not only helps ensure a greater balance across levels in the game, but opens up a much wider range of choices for players since they don’t feel stuck using only the things in which they specialized.

Speed

“Mike, you have five minutes left.”

“No problem, I only have one boss battle to run.”

That’s a real quote from one of the games I ran this past weekend. In the five games I played, every one of them packed a whole lot of story and a whole lot of action into the four hour game. We fought dozens of battles, navigated many traps and hazards, and engaged in all sorts of negotiations. Instead of calculating out the game by the number of battles (usually two to three), I added in an entire hour of the session to exploring a local town because I felt like I had the room.

We might have had ten battles spread out through these games. As shown in Greg Bilsland’s pictures from the event, some of them were free-form descriptions between the DM and the player, some of them had loose diagrams just to keep everyone on the same page, and some had full tactical maps with miniatures. I ran it all three of those ways without any real break in the narrative of the game. We simply used what made sense.

Returning to the Theater of the Imagination

“What do you mean I don’t have a dagger? Why didn’t they give me a dagger?”

“If only you had just been to a blacksmith who could have sold one to you for that silver you’re carrying.”

“…F$&k you.”

Two of the groups I had both went into the Caves of Chaos with very typical 4e empowerment. They had expectations about their capability and survivability. Both returned to the Keep bloodied, battered, and with a long shopping list of door-spikes, rope, poles, and crossbows. Both groups went out as 4e PCs the first time and old-school PCs the second. The entitlement they expected in the codified rules of 4e quickly transformed into the understanding that they would need to take hold of their own destiny. The world wouldn’t save them, they would have to save themselves, and the best weapons they had were their imaginations.

Once that transformation took place, the whole game changed. The antagonism between player and DM transformed into a true cooperative story. Described by Monte Cook as the core mechanic of the game, the players told the DM what they wanted to do and the DM told them whether they succeeded or not.

The Great Unknown

While the core of the game appears strong, there is still a lot we don’t yet know. Every version of D&D played well at lower levels but in six versions of D&D, high level play seems to fall apart. Only later will we see whether high level play keeps player challenge balanced, the game running fast, and remains fun for both players and DMs.

We also don’t yet know about the more advanced classes, classes for players who like to tweak their PCs and select from dozens of options to build a specific character.

The modular approach to tactical combat also remains a mystery. How will tactical combat will fit into the rest of the game? How modular such combat will actually be? A lot of that, I expect, is still up in the air.

We do know that we’ll get to see a good deal of it over the next few months and that WOTC will be paying attention to what we think. That, in itself, will hopefully make D&D Next the great game many of us hope it will be.

To avoid fueling the edition wars, I asked Dave to turn comments off on this article. If you have any thoughts, opinions, or impressions you would like to share, please feel free to email me or follow me on Twitter.

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.

Rolling With the Punches

Adopting a “say yes” philosophy lets me run games on the fly a lot easier than what I used to. While fighting a player’s questions would close off options and ideas, saying yes means I had something to run with when trying to figure out what happens next (or what would happen later.)

Additionally, the new D&D contains a piece of 4e game design technology that goes a long way to helping power story and connecting characters to the adventure: themes. Without getting into the mechanics, it’s easy to look at the character themes (just by their names alone, but backed up by the rules) how the Neverwinter book uses them: as a way to tie the PCs directly into an adventure, and give them goals based around them. By just asking a few open-ended questions at the beginning of the session, I was able to figure out how things could go, and link the characters to what was already there. For example, if a player told me his character was searching for a lost mentor, I could tell him that there was evidence that Bugbears had taken him, and instantly, the character had a goal. That kind of thing made it much easier for me as a DM to run the adventure, and kept it from stalling out due to lack of motivation… even if the PCs main motivation was still “kill things and take their stuff.”

DM Empowerment

Here’s the overly broad and sweeping generalization I’ve made about the game: in AD&D 2e and before, many things just did not have rules, so the DM had to make them up. In 3e-4e, there were rules for many things. In this new edition, I feel like the presentation gives you the rules you most need, and then for rules that work by being the DM’s judgement call, it tells you specifically that it’s the DM’s judgment call. So for me it’s a nice balance between there being enough rules to guide me so it’s not consistently an arguing game, while still telling everyone that some rules are going to be based on what the DM says, no more, no less. If this was intentional, or even if this survives into the final version of the game, remains to be seen, but I like it so far.

Awesome Players

At one point, we joked that the real test of the game would have been to recruit mediocre DMs. Of course, no RPG system is going to be able to insulate the game entirely from bad DMs, and having a sub-par DM isn’t the best thing for a playtest this early on in the process. Players were able to focus on the game and how it played without being distracted by a “that guy” DM. (Though, considering how many PCs I killed or captured, maybe the players didn’t feel the same about me!) That said, most of the credit for how the sessions went should go to what the players brought to the table. A random smattering of some of my favorite moments:

• The Elf Wizard returned to the Keep to do some research, and at one point requested that she find an expert in anthropology to discuss the various humanoid tribes’ culture. I noticed Mike Mearls was wandering around observing tables, so I asked him if he’d like to play that expert. After some questions (like “what’s my motivation?”) he launched into it, insisting that the Elf was tracking mud into his library before rattling off tribe names that I hurredly jotted down to use in the game. Afterward, while reporting back to her group, the Elf relayed what she knew, but said she didn’t get all of it because he was talking faster than she could take notes.
• The elaborately crafted plan by the Warlord to take out a minotaur hit a roadblock when the Paladin refused to attack it while it was held in place by magic. The Fighter, whose character had a crush on the Paladin, also followed suit thereafter, gobsmacking much of the group. However, they easily leapt back into the fight once the magic had worn off, smashing the dreaded minotaur to bits before it could get a good swing in.
• That same Paladin had previously charged a room full of stirges, and become close to death by blood loss, necessitating a several week recovery time back at the Keep.
• The Wizard and the Rogue, the last surviving members of their group, tossing money at an ogre while running by him to keep him at bay and allowing them to escape from the other monsters on their tail.
• How many adventurers decided that fire was the answer whenever the situation became dire.

This was just a small sample. One of the really cool things to observe was seeing players and DMs compare their experiences with each other. I understand that was often the case in the early days of D&D, and was also something I enjoyed when Keep on the Shadowfell came out (even if the reactions were decidedly more mixed.)

Was this all flowers and roses? By no means. While I certainly had fun at all my tables running the game, I talked to a few friends that I generally only see at conventions, and they were not fans of what they played. While the stated goal is to unite all D&D fans, there are going to be fans of every edition who are just want to keep playing the edition they enjoy… which is totally cool. While there seems to be a lot of unity around the new game by those who played it, it’s still too early to tell if the final game will bring enough of them to the new game to justify a whole new game, and how adaptable the new game will be to varying playstyles.

Battle Interactive

In previous years, we’ve heard just how good this event was, and I always lamented that my schedule didn’t even seem to allow me to play it. For an example, check out Matt’s report from last year that I missed. This year, I wanted to change that by getting together a group of people I wanted to game with to tackle the Battle Interactive. We also decided that we had played enough of 1st level D&D 4e, so we were going to use the rules for making higher level LFR characters to make a group of 11th level PCs to take it on. Of course, I played a ninja.

Unfortunately, for a number of factors (tiredness, unfamiliarity, structure of event that didn’t appeal to us, etc.) it never quite clicked for us and we bailed out early on the event. However, I still enjoyed playing D&D with the rest of the group, and the DM did a good job of dealing with a party of misfits. And most importantly, I got to have my ninja throw shurikens at a giant flying squid monster, and it was flippin’ sweet.

Magic: the Gathering

I’ve relapsed hard on Magic, after many years of staying off the stuff. The new Commander decks plus the release of the super-awesome Ravenlofty Innistrad set have caused me to dive back in to Magic. In addition to playing a 6-way Commander game (and getting knocked out first), I also played two booster drafts with some Dark Ascension whose pre-release was this weekend. After making a few draft decks that I was really happy with, I’m even diving in to making Standard-legal decks and thinking about entering constructed deck tournaments again. It’s all over.

Both games I was able to fit a “tribal” theme into my deck- the first was U/B zombies, backed up by a few key removal cards. The second deck was U/W spirits, with TWO of the spirit captains, where nearly all the deck was flying creatures.

Marvel Heroic Roleplaying

Before the show, Phil and I had multiple requests to run the new Marvel RPG that we both worked on, scheduled to come out at the end of February. It turned out that we had enough interested players to run TWO sessions of it. Just like the D&D games, both groups were great, and seemed to have a really good time taking on superheroes and trying to stop the supervillains. I feel like I’ve dropped the ball  by not writing down all the various Spider-Man quips all throughout the playtesting process. I did remember the one from this session however, as Spider-Man rips a metal door off its hinges and tosses it to Colossus to hit the bad guy with:

In Soviet Russia, jail breaks YOU!

Of NDAs and TPKs

Non-disclosure agreements, while common in some industries, are one of those things that is still being adapted to in the tabletop gaming industry, which still continues to find its proper place in an increasingly connected and open world. Initially, the seminars were going to be NDA-protected, which fortunately ended up not being the case. The game itself was in a separate section, where you had to sign an NDA to enter, and couldn’t take any of the materials out with you. Now, I’m not defending or condemning this practice: I don’t work for a Fortune 500 company and know everything that goes into these kinds of decisions, which I’m sure are more complex than they appear. And as a freelancer for multiple companies, I’m quite used to staying silent on topics that the companies want protected. While I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who would love nothing more for me to break my agreements and share all the information with the world, I don’t think that ultimately serves anyone’s interests.

It does create weirdness, especially at an open convention like this. You get corporate weirdness, like Paizo employees not being able to participate in the playtest. You also get social weirdness, like trying to figure out what you can and can’t talk about with others at the convention while eating dinner, and making sure that everyone you’re discussing with has already signed the proper papers. Then when you attend seminars, and they’re revealing some of the rules, it’s hard to judge what rules you can then discuss with the public, because the guys in charge have talked about it. Finally, you get social media, or you know, blogging while trying to judge what you can and cannot tell the world while dying to share with all your readers/followers/friends.

Ultimately, the game is going to come out, and the NDAs won’t matter. I’m not even sure what the open playtest coming in the Spring is going to do, because if they do try and enforce an NDA on it as well, it’s going to be even tougher to control. It will, at some point, become moot, and for those who still need to decide whether to buy the game or not, all the information will be out there because it’ll be  available in stores. In the meantime, I’ve never signed any kind of agreement that has specified that I’m only allowed to talk positively about something, so I’m going to continue to report on developments when and where I can to the best of my abilities. I co-founded Critical Hits in order to talk about the things I’m passionate about, and D&D is definitely one of those things I’m passionate about. DDXP did a great job of reminding me of everything I love about D&D and gaming (and a few things that annoy me too), and I hope to keep that enthusiasm going and contribute helpful feedback to the next version of D&D as it gets developed.

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.

We all knew that within the mechanics of the game he could give up his spell slots in exchange for healing, which sounds like a great mechanic. However, it can lead to a lot of animosity when it is paired with a character who responds to healing requests with, “I’m not that kind of cleric.” There were rare occasions where he would choose to give up a spell slot for healing, but that was almost always in a situation where my bard character could not immediately heal one specific party member, the selfish cleric himself. I imagine if you looked at his healing habits through 14 levels of adventuring that he healed himself 80-90% of the time, with the rarest of heals going out to another character (most likely my bard, so he could wake up and heal the other party members).

The surprising part for me was that I felt some angst for playing a bard that had to be the party’s primary healer, but in the end I found it as an incredibly fun and rewarding experience. The only aspects that led to conflict around the table was that the selfish cleric player did not put any effort into differentiating between his character’s decisions and his desires as a player, so we as the party felt like both the player and the character were being really dickish. In the end I think the experience became more funny to us than anything else, and obviously I look back on the whole selfish cleric experience as just another great D&D story to share.

Avoiding the Non-Healing Jerk Situation

Going from the selfish cleric experience to running an ongoing 4th Edition D&D campaign with my wife playing the only cleric in the party was a revelation to me. I say this because, just like the player in Dave’s last 3.x game, my wife has chosen very few healing spells and powers as a cleric in 4e. However, what we have seen across 25 levels of play is that she still acts at the party’s main source of healing and is a crucial resource to the group’s survival. The 4e cleric class has the option of being even better at healing by taking as many additional healing powers as they want, but without those they still fulfill the vital role of the healer that is so valuable in many D&D groups.

My experiences are why I am very happy to see the “A cleric should have a combination of free healing and ‘spell slot’ healing” option in the lead on Bruce’s D&D Next poll (leading with over 60% of the votes at the moment). It is the option I voted for, because I think it is the perfect balance that the cleric class needs in D&D. What I hope comes about next in the discussions about D&D Next is the idea that healing, hit points, and damage in D&D go way beyond the way the cleric class is handled. 4th Edition illustrated this point nicely with the inclusion of healing surges and second wind, which are two aspects of the 4e design that I think could use some careful consideration. In addition, my experiences as the primary healer bard illustrate that other classes with access to healing are just as important to the conversation. I liked that 4e had the leader role as a defined element tying these classes together, but I always felt weird about the implication that having a cleric in addition to a warlord, bard, or artificer would be overlapping roles for the party.

Moving Forward with D&D Next

As I’ve stated before, one of my biggest hopes is that I will be able to play a style of D&D very similar to my experiences with 4th Edition with the system that is being called D&D Next. I would love to see a module for this new edition of D&D that allows something more like “heroic survival” that incorporates healing surges and second winds into the game. Having some characters at the table with this option and others without it wouldn’t be too difficult to manage, and if it were applied to tough fighter or barbarian characters or even available to Dwarf characters as a feat or bonus I think it could really add a lot to the game. This would allow me to continue running and playing the game with some of the flavor of 4e D&D without forcing everyone (even at the same table) to use that style of healing.

No matter what D&D Next ends up looking like, the issue of healing goes way beyond the cleric class and I’m sure quite a bit of attention will be paid to how that all ends up coming together in the end.

Behind The Screen For Perfect Strangers

As some of you who read my column already know, I’m not big on 4e combat. The decision to run some games at DDXP was born from a strange mixture of wanting to help out and curiosity about what it would be like to run a table full of strangers who weren’t used to my crap. The idea didn’t scare me too bad at first. I couldn’t be worse than some of the judges I’d had at these things, I rationalized. I didn’t realize the idea made me anxious until it was far too late. I was to run my first game on Friday morning, and I was nervous enough about it by that point that I wanted out. I wasn’t about to shirk my duties, though. I familiarized myself with the module I was supposed to run the night before, and I reported to the marshaling area at 8am sharp as ordered.

It was about then one of the staff came around and said they needed another warm body for another table. I quickly volunteered, thinking this meant the table needed another player, and I would be able to get out of running the game. On the way to the table, I asked if I needed to go roll up a character. “No,” the staffer said. “You’re running.” No worse off than before, I smiled and reported to my table. They provided me with a printed copy of the module, but I brought the module up on my laptop anyway so I could see the monster stat blocks. I started to get confused, as the pages weren’t matching up between the paper and digital versions. Suddenly, it hit me.

This was a different module. I’d just volunteered to run a game completely cold.

Uh oh.

It all turned out OK in the end. The module I was running was pretty heavy on combat and light on other details, and the players I had were experienced enough that the combats ran themselves for the most part. I roleplayed whatever I could right to the hilt, and it was all full of mucousy aboleths and people turning into octopi and other weird acid-trippy visions. I get +5 to WTF rolls, so this was right up my alley. The players said I did a lot better running this than the last guy (they’d played it the day before, apparently), so for zero prep and not liking 4e combat much I considered this a resounding success.

Battling The Interactive

That being said, I knew I had to run a table at the Battle Interactive on Saturday, and that was 8 hours of nothing but combat. Despite the module for this being some 150 pages, I felt a little better about this because I was going to be in a group playing in a different Battle Interactive game (same content) on Friday. At least I’d be familiar with the material.

Unfortunately, the group wasn’t really into it, and we decided to leave about halfway through. We had a couple players who just weren’t having a good time, and I wasn’t feeling particularly well and was happy to go somewhere less loud. I know we probably ruffled a few feathers by walking out, which I feel bad about, but our DM was a friend of ours and we expressed to him that it wasn’t anything he was doing wrong. It was terribly awkward.

The whole affair didn’t leave me with a burning desire to put myself in our DM’s shoes the following day, that’s for sure.

Enter Clan Beerbiter

I spent the morning playtesting the new D&D stuff and live-tweeting a seminar, which kept me from worrying too hard about running the BI until immediately beforehand. I showed up and requested a table running low-level characters. I’d heard horror stories about running epic-level adventures in 4e, and I wanted to make this as easy on myself as possible so I could do a better job. A staffer takes me to a table, and asks the people sitting there what adventure level I’ll be running.

“20″, they reply.

Uh oh.

The group introduces itself first and foremost with an apology for what is to come. I have a habit of doing this myself when I meet a new DM, so I didn’t think too much of it.

I didn’t appreciate the gravity of what happened next until much later. I’m handed a sticker and a business card. The former appears to be a label for some sort of dwarven alcoholic beverage. The latter has all the players and their RPGA numbers printed on it, which was handy, and on the front is printed “Just Let It Happen”.

I should have listened.

The Dwarven SEAL Team

The BI begins, and we enter our first combat. I decide, given the circumstances, that the monsters wouldn’t know the PCs are coming so I give them a surprise round. I hear chuckles from the group. One round later, I realize why.

Half the monsters I started with are dead. The other half are bloodied and most have at least two status effects on them. I try to hit back, and I am met with counterattacks the likes of which I did not even know existed. I do not own as many d12s as these guys were rolling for a round’s worth of damage. They were all wearing rings of sympathy, which meant if one of them made a saving throw they could chain it to another person wearing one — who could then chain it to another person wearing one ad infinitum. Status conditions on any member their team did not usually live past the round. They had magic items that could do a tiny amount of AoE damage, and were adept at scouring the board of minions in a round or two. Assuming my creatures weren’t stunned, they were dazed and I usually had the choice between not moving and performing basic attacks that would never land due to them counterattacking, or moving to try to do more effective attacks and never making it there. It was insane.

One of them told me at some point during the second combat that they’d been training for this event. I believed him.

Turns out most of these guys have known each other for decades. The newest had been with the group for 5 years. And this is what they do.

By the third combat mission, I’d gotten over my initial shock and was starting to enjoy the greatest example of 4e minmaxing I’d ever heard of. They were fast. Dear sweet Pelor, were they fast! Everybody knew in advance what their next move was, and if one of them took a turn longer than 30 seconds the rest would chastise them. It was in similar fashion that I determined they weren’t cheating as they blended each and every opponent before them into a fine puree – everyone was very much concerned with playing things by the book and four people would be ready with a decisive answer to any rules question within seconds. I’d never seen any one person with their game together like this in 4e, much less six people, and at 20th level to boot!

The Legend

The Battle Interactive is known for having difficult combats. In fact, in the first half of the BI this year, they decided to give everybody unlimited healing surges. The catch is that each healing surge would chip away at an energy shield protecting the city they were defending, and the entire room would be draining the shield. At the halfway point, 192 surges got used, which was more than enough to take the shield down completely. Apparently, in addition to the room needing a lot of healing, one of the groups had declared themselves to be undead saboteurs and were deliberately using surges.

To bring it back up again, the organizers asked for healing surge donations. At this point in the game, Clan Beerbiter had used exactly zero healing surges. So it was that they donated 32 healing surges back to the common good. Out of several dozen tables that donated, 196 total, they alone donated 16.3%. The module’s designer, M. Sean Molley, was so impressed that he erected a temple to the dwarven god Tempus (with an alehouse beneath it) in the middle of the elven city of Myth Nantar. The wrath of Tempus was brought down upon the saboteurs, and the DM was told that 3 times for the rest of the adventure they could turn any miss on the die into a critical hit.

Later in the adventure, I finally managed to damage someone enough (with the help of a colossal 6 headed hydra that critted the entire party twice) that they opted to use one healing surge. I thought I had finally caught them cheating, and said “Hey! Didn’t you already donate all your healing surges?!” Turns out they all still had 7 or 8 left. Because, you know, they’re all dwarves.

The Only Ones Standing

The second to last combat involved the group planting battle standards in the ground and trying to keep enemies from removing them. For most groups, this would have been a big problem. There were a good dozen minions on the board, a few tougher foot soldiers, and three very powerful cultists. Unsurprisingly, Clan Beerbiter had the board clear of minions by the second round, the foot soldiers dead and the cult leaders effectively neutered by the third (despite me having been able to dominate one of the Beerbiters for a round).

This was a relatively short endurance-based event, so it wasn’t too long before we heard time getting called. The crazed superdwarves at my table had the 3 cultist leaders about a round away from going down with absolutely no hope of even fighting back. They’d authorized us to call combats in the interest of time, and I had full faith they’d have won easily in the next 5 minutes, so I declared them victorious.

First, they asked for everyone to stand. Then, for groups to sit who had not placed their battle standards. Several groups sat, and were booed. Then they asked for those to sit who had not defeated the cultists. Everyone in the entire room sat except Clan Beerbiter. They stood alone to the applause of over a hundred people. Someone yelled “BIG SURPRISE THERE!”

I was very proud of them. Which is a really weird feeling to have after you try to kill someone.

Dag0wn3d

The end fight was against the elder god Dagon himself, and (unsurprisingly) the Beerbiters opted to fight the hard-mode version.

I got one (1) attack off in the first round, immobilizing 3/4 of the team. It would be the last effective thing I would do. The rings of sympathy mass-fired, and the next thing I knew they were doing absolutely unspeakable things to Dagon and his tentacles, which is kind of a weird role reversal if you think about it too long. I never did quite understand why you could easily knock Dagon prone but not dwarves.

We were done about 20 minutes before anyone else. I was not surprised at anything by this point. M. Sean Molley had put the Beerbiter logo up on the city map to show where the temple of Tempus had been erected, and he signed the map and let the Beerbiters take it home.

Aftermath

Afterward, I heard some of the players talking about how good it felt to have all their hard work pay off. One of them told me he thought the things they do expose some of the flaws in 4e’s tactical combat system. I agreed. Heartily.

I still wonder if I was running those combats right. I had to stat up monsters on the fly based on adventure level. I had sheets full of tactics I was supposed to use but things were going down or being held down so fast I never got the chance most of the time. I’ve already told this story to a couple of people who would have used their omnipotent DM powers to crush the infidel dwarves, but it wasn’t my job to crush their spirits. I was just supposed to run a fun game, and I tried my best to run things as they appeared in the module to kill them and failed miserably. I can live with that!

One of the Beerbiters started to tell me their origin story right before one of the combats started. Apparently, they were having a rough go during some LFR event, and decided halfway through that they were going to redouble their efforts and win. So they did, and never stopped.

Clan Beerbiter Facts

• They all took a sacred vow never to spend another healing surge again as long as they lived. That didn’t work out, so now they all share one healing surge per year.
• They are the Raven Queen’s landlords. Her rent is never late.
• Dragons hoard treasure so they can be more like Clan Beerbiter.
• They are being hunted by the government for a crime they didn’t commit. However, the forces sent to take them out haven’t been able to do any damage yet, so Clan Beerbiter hasn’t noticed.
• They can combine, Voltron-style, to form the dwarven god Tempus. It fights giant monsters with a sword made of pure beer.
• They can travel through space and time at will. They consider it boring.
• They visited Athas once, partied too hard, and burnt out the sun.
• They are directly responsible for all errata in every edition of every roleplaying game.
• They are the best stoneworkers in the multiverse because they just tell the mountain what they want and it is too afraid not to comply.
• They were voted “best smiles” of any adventuring company, 12 years running.
• They defeated Chuck Norris twice in combat. They used their yearly healing surge the first time, so they had another go.

Congratulations to Clan Beerbiter! Being destroyed and emasculated by you was one of the highlights of my con. You guys win the LFR.

Aside from all the games being run (of the new D&D, 4e, and every other edition), there were also four seminars run by Wizards of the Coast staff. I was able to attend two: “Charting the Course: An Edition for All Editions” and “New Product Seminar.” Vanir attended the “Class Design: From Assassins to Wizards” seminar. A fourth was unattended by us (because we were all making our way home.)

The following is a summation of the two seminars I attended with some of our commentary and thoughts. If you’d prefer to read the entire transcript, or watch the video, those are available elsewhere:

• Charting the Course: An Edition for all Editions (transcript) (report)
• Class Design: From Assassins to Wizards (transcript)
• New Products Seminar (transcript)
• Reimagining Skills and Ability Scores (transcript)
• All chat streams from WotC
• Video recordings the last three seminars

Charting the Course: An Edition for all Editions

•  This seminar was moderated by Greg Bilsland, and on stage were Monte Cook, Mike Mearls, and Jeremy Crawford. This was the seminar to discuss the goals and challenges of the new edition of D&D, but not anything about what specific products will be made or about any kind of digital tools.
• The panelists discussed what they wanted to make sure was carried forward from all editions of D&D: the relationship between the players and the DM, players being creative and exploring a world, a synthesis between a toolbox for creating worlds and stories by using creative magic plus good game design. Also, fireballs.
• The first thing they looked at was what all RPGs do. And then, the focus was on what D&D does that not all RPGs do. Then from there, it was a focus on shared language: things like Armor Class, saving throws, etc. Then there are shared stories that make up D&D culture, like the gazebo or the Head of Vecna.
• At first, the goal was to distill the entire history of the game down to a core game, a foundation on which different modules can be added to faciliate all the different styles of those who play D&D. While you can just play the core game, you can add on different modules depending on your style, to make it a much more tactical battle-heavy game or a heavily story-driven game that even lacks dice. (At this point, I could see that some of the panelists were thinking about the Penny Arcade comic.)
• While that was the goal of the design team, the development team meanwhile looks at what the designers have made, along with what goals they have, and help to assess if those goals are being met or need further work. Each rule is considered for its potential consequences, both short term and long term, and if those consequences are good for the game or maybe bad for the game, or perhaps initially good but bad in the long run. The development team also handles the math end of things, like expected monster damage by level.
• How is the concept of modules being reconciled with groups that have an expectation of game balance? Modules aren’t necessarily an on/off switch, but instead a spectrum of choices. So the seeds of any potential module are planted in the core game itself, which has a certain expectation of balance. As an example, the fighter is built on some core abilities and concepts. Players can opt-in to more customization to exchange some core abilities for others. Between two given fighters, one may be more complex, but because it’s always a trade-off, they remain balanced with each other.
• Meanwhile, DMs have optional modules to customize the game for what they want to run. If the DM says that he wants to run a very tactical game, the players know that they should probably create their characters appropriately, or at least they know what to expect. Even if the DM is running a very character-driven game, a player could still make a very tactical character with the understanding that won’t be the focus of the game.
• Modules would even allow the game to shift styles in mid-campaign to react to DM and player needs. Modules can even be used for a single story, like using mass battle rules for a session, or used for the entire campaign for a campaign that focuses on that. The modules will contain multiple options, so that a war campaign could either focus on things from a broader perspective, or the PCs as unit leaders.
• They’ve identified three “pillars” of D&D: combat, exploration, and roleplaying. Those three pillars have helped the designers with class design. It gives a lens to recognize each class’s contribution to each one. Likewise, classes could be customized to let players move their priorities. While rogues tend towards being exploration heavy with their skills, they could be customized into more of a “stabby” rogue.
• High level play is being looked at closely, since there is a general impression that every version of D&D has broken down at a certain level. They’re committed to making high level play work, but to get there, they’re looking to playtesters to tell them what exactly hasn’t worked in previous editions. Mike conjectured that disparities are always going to develop the longer a game goes on just because of familiarity and mastery. Once the team identifies what a functional high level game should look like and why it is perceived to not work, it’ll be easier to design towards that goal. A later seminar clarified that one idea is the ability to trade multiple lower level abilities for one high level ability, so the abilities get stronger, but you don’t keep an overwhelming number of options.
• One goal is to make sure that lower level threats remain relevant at all levels. Orcs start scary to a 1st level character, become easier to deal with, but in previous editions could become a threat that could not pose any danger to a higher level party, even in greater numbers. Under this model, a nation of orcs still could do damage to higher level characters. In order to accomplish this and several other goals, the focus will be on providing higher level characters more interesting things to do instead of focusing on higher attack bonuses. This also has the effect that if the DM needs an orc for the story, he can always open the Monster Manual (or equivalent) and use the orc as is, instead of having to fudge it, let it be useless, or go through some kind of leveling process that takes time.
• Internal playtesting to the new edition has been going on about 9 months, and the main lesson they’ve learned is how diverse people’s experience is with D&D as a whole. Of course, this means that sometimes feedback is diametrically opposed. It’s the designers’ jobs to come up with new and creative solutions that will help address the concerns of both groups.
• Part of the challenge with coming up with what the D&D version of something “is,” like what being a D&D wizard means, since that’s distinct from a Gandalf or Harry Potter. Is the D&D ranger best represented by Aragorn or Drizzt? Those are the questions that they need to answer.
• Adventure design for published adventures is another challenge of the new game. The plan is to design some adventures broadly to try and hit all play styles and adapted by the DM to their group, while others will be more focused on a specific playstyle, and the module system should help in identifying who a specific adventure is designed for.
• The team on stage was asked what their style is in D&D, and thus what kind of modules they used. Monte said he likes using minis but not for super-tactical games, with lots of social interaction and exploring. Mike prefers games that start with a simple core game, then introduce new pieces as the campaign goes on, making a flexible campaign for the players. Jeremy likes to use the modularity on a session-to-session basis dictated by the story: an adventure based in a city that doesn’t use minis or even dice rolling is one example, as is a session that features a big battle and uses minis and lots of dice rolling.

Audience Q&A

• Will customization be more like multiclassing, or within the class itself? Both are viable options. Class customization is easier, while multiclassing is more of a drastic change that requires more committment and rules mastery. The playtests will hint at some of these options. For example, in the playtest, the fighter could also be a noble which grants some social skills.
• What support will there be for new players? Complexity will be managed by products, all supported by the same core game, to give the right experience for the audience picking that product up, but the rules will transfer between games.
• What empowers the players to be more creative in the game? They’re moving away from looking at a character sheet to provide most of the options, and instead to think beyond what is listed to create limitless options. As well, empowering the DM means that they have the power to adjucate better the players being more creative.
• What will be the role of random charts in the new edition? There are different styles of DM that are inspired by different things. One type of DM likes to make their adventures using random tables. Random tables will be back in this edition, but will be a tool and not a requirement.
• How easy is it to switch play-styles in mid-session? Modules will all have a basic implementation that is easy to pick up and run.
• How will the new edition address organized play? No specific decisions have been made yet, but there will probably be a set of modules that’s standard for organized play, similar to what’s in place now. There will still be room for DMs to customize for their game, but the basic implementation will be shared.
• What’s the expectation of getting playgroups together with different styles? They want the game to support multiple styles at the same table. So a player that wants something simple can play it, and even as the campaign goes on, can remain a simple character or can decide to add more complexity as they get more familiar with it. One example of this kind of implementation is the Essentials vs. pre-Essentials 4e class design. This spectrum will be widened even further in the new edition.
• If some characters are simple, and some are complex, how will the game deal with some players taking considerably longer to take their action? One goal of the new edition is to keep combat quick, no matter what kind of character you’re playing. The game should keep moving no matter what options are there.
• Has D&D taken itself too seriously recently? According to Mike, D&D always needs an element of chaos that can lead to silly or serious situations. One area where they’re addressing the “overly-serious” D&D is in art direction. The art conceptualization process for the new D&D has lead to images of more grounded characters. Not all PCs will look like superheroes: some heroes will look like they’ve just barely survived. Some heroes won’t look like they’ve shaved in a few days. Some halflings will look like they’ve eaten too many muffins.
• Will classes by specialized to specific pillars? Classes will be better in some areas than others, but not character will ever be completely useless at any of the pillars.

New Products Seminar

•  Mike Mearls was the primary presenter on this seminar, with other WotC staffers occasionally taking the stage to clarify. This seminar contained no information about the next version of D&D, but instead the remaining 4e and systemless products. Only the first part of the year was covered, and they want the products going forward to all have elements that can be used for other games.
• The first was the big news about the AD&D (1st edition) reprints, owing to the fact that they discovered pristine copies of the original books in storage that they were able to scan and use to make new copies. The only changes are going to be the cover (the current mock-ups of which are pictured to the right), and changing the old ads in the back for ads for the Gygax Memorial Fund. As previously announced, these books will only be available through hobby game stores, and are a limited print run.
• The next cycle of products was referred to as the Rise of the Underdark. An Encounters season will focus on the Drow.
• May will have the Dungeon Survival Handbook, which will contain themes that tie into story elements to inform DMs of villains, plotlines, etc. (similar to the way Neverwinter handles them). The Q&A later also said that the book will have new Underdark-themed powers for other classes, and new PC races like Goblin and Kobold.
• June will have an Urban Underdark dungeon tile set, and a new D&D Lair Assault with a Drow theme.
• Menzoberranzan setting book comes in August. A new kind of campaign setting, with both options to use it as a standard setting for adventurers, or to play Drow who compete with each other directly as representatives of various Drow houses. Concurrently, a new type of Fortune Cards will be released called “Drow Treachery” cards that will support and encourage PCs to go after each other directly. Both are a first for D&D that directly support confrontation between PCs as a primary way to play.
• July will see the release of another map pack for Forests of the Underdark.
• Fourth quarter will see a book called Ed Greenwood Presents: Elminster’s Forgotten Realms. This book is modeled after Ed’s original campaign notes as well as his ongoing campaign. It is Ed Greenwood’s vision of the Realms as it has developed as he has run it, not the “official” presentation from TSR and WotC. It is still a playable campaign world (though it will be largely game mechanic-free) that is kind of a “What If?” version of the Forgotten Realms, different than what has been released to the public so far.
• Lords of Waterdeep board game releases in March, a “euro game” style board game set in the Forgotten Realms. A few demo copies were played at the show, and the feedback was largely positive.
• Dungeon Command, a tactical miniatures wargame, releases in July. Two faction boxes: Heroes of Cormyr and Sting of Lolth. Each box contains pre-painted minis, cards to play the war game, puzzle piece tiles to battle on, and Adventure Game system stats (i.e. Castle Ravenloft, etc.) The minis are a mix of new sculpts and existing sculpts, and new sculpts will likely depend on the success of Dungeon Command boxes. Each box will retail for $40, and a Game Day will support the launch of the game.
• DDI will continue throughout 2012, supporting 4e with new content. Some content was teased: some Ravenloft and Dragonlance support will come out, the monthly Eye on Dark Sun columns will continue and there will be a Dark Sun-themed month, and an article called “Ecology of the Vegepygmy” will be released at some point.
• Missing from the slides was Halls of the Undermountain, a big adventure that extends from the D&D Encounter season. The product will be a mega-adventure sandbox style game.

Audience Q&A

• How will the Forgotten Realms be presented in the new edition? Mike said “it is not our job to tell DMs how they should feel about a time period of a campaign setting” so they will include them all as options. Like Star Wars has multiple eras that fans understand the differences and could play in any of them, they want to treat the Forgotten Realms the same way and let DMs choose where in the timeline their game takes place.
• Anything to announce for digital games (i.e. video games)? Nothing new to announce: D&D Online is still ongoing, and Neverwinter is still in the making.
• Will the Underdark cycle fit together? You won’t be able to take your character between them, but much of the Underdark organized play content is looking at similar events from different perspectives which will become clear once it’s going on.
• Are DDI submissions changing? All DDI submissions should be for 4e until they say otherwise.
• Any more support for Gamma World? They consider the game complete from a product perspective. (Probably the most disappointing part of any of the seminars.)
• What is the status of 3rd party support going forward? Nothing new to announce on an open game license or similar, but they are looking at their options now and know that it’s important.

That’s all for the two seminars. Coming up next: everything else at DDXP, including what it’s like to run the new edition of D&D 4 times with the same adventure module.

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.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (2e)

• Age Range When Played: 12-17
• Nostalgia Factor: High
• Rules Mastery: Low

1. Flexibility

The O recalls those times fondly:

My D&D memories from that time have mostly been pushed out from all the cramming I had to do in school, but the ones I do remember are near and dear. My viewpoint comes directly from a novice player’s standpoint. What stood out the most to me in 2nd edition was the flexibility for both players and DMs. It felt as though the game was more open-ended, left more room for the imagination, and allowed greater room for house-ruling.

By far my favorite memories, and also my most saddening, involved my first long-standing character, Gurias the Half-Elf Wizard. Most of the great times involved our gaming group’s head DM, Abe. He was quite volatile and would quickly make rash decisions that could, to quote They Might Be Giants, “lead to excellence or serious injury.”

I recall once making Abe laugh because a couple of players were arguing amongst themselves, and I quickly ended the argument by saying, “Make half-elves, not war!” This campaign also involved my greatest failure both in D&D, and possibly life in general. Gurias was True Neutral and Abe created a magical neutrality test. He presented a white knight and a black knight fighting a complete stalemate, then asked me which I would choose to support. I chose the white wizard. I missed out on a great reward while being mocked into oblivion.

One memory, which I mention because it’s Dave’s favorite, involved Gurias’s demise. Gurias sadly died at mere level 7 and it was my first experience with character death. Remember how I mentioned the nice flexibility of 2nd edition? Well, rolling 1s and 20s with volatile Abe’s house rules were QUITE dangerous. Critical hits would lead to some heroic, amazing, over dramatized feat, while a critical miss lead to serious consequences. Our party was locked in a heated battle against an illithid mage. Gurias was at full health when said mind-flayer threw a fireball at me. I rolled my saving throw and it came up a natural 1. Abe’s response was that Gurias was blown to pieces then disintegrated by the fireball, preventing any chance of resurrection. Keep in mind that Gurias had enough health to withstand the fireball even if the damage dice rolled the maximum! I would eventually bring back Gurias in Dave’s 4th edition game, and the lore about the mind flayer’s fireball made it into that campaign.

Abe ended up giving me some redemption when my replacement character for Gurias, an evil Elven Fighter had a two-handed sword which received bonuses against humans. We were fighting a death knight and I critically missed AGAIN. This time however, he declared that the sword flew into the air, stopped, spun around making beeping sounds (as if a heat-seeking missile) until it locked onto a human character in the party (he randomly rolled which one), and stated that the sword flew at him and sliced off one of his legs. The best part? That party member was a guy named Ben… Abe’s younger brother! What ensued was a complete firefight of sibling warfare and sadness that words cannot describe. I can say that tears were shed and furniture was overturned.

2. Authority

The Main Event has this to say:

I did not know it at the time, but 2E’s byzantine bloated and vastly impenetrable rule set vested great authority in the DM. Adding to this dynamic was the fact our play group tended to have ‘older’ and ‘younger’ players… the older being somewhere in high school and the younger being in middle school. So, my first era of 2E play involved older players running games with a set of rules that was unfriendly to universal comprehension as a n00b. Rules-lawyering happened, but most of the time it was easily squashed with DM fiat. The thing is, it made for damn fun games. Rather than being hung up on the rules we were immersed and in love with the game and the game world. Part of that was my age and part of it was game design that I’d never endorse, but it was a different play experience in that era. The DM was in charge, end of story.

And you know what? With a good DM it can make for a better game and a better story.

3. Worlds of Wonder and Danger

Bartoneus recalls his first steps into D&D:

2nd Edition D&D came into my life at just the right time. I was ready to enter other people’s worlds and play a part in their stories, but I wasn’t yet to the point of wanting to create my own worlds or tell my own stories. For me my memories of 2E will always be tied to my first introduction to the planes and fantastic places like Sigil. I remember vividly the first time I had a character step out of a portal and into Sigil, but for me it wasn’t just entering “Sigil,” it was stepping into this wondrous city where the street arched upwards and kept going into the sky and all of your assumptions about the world were immediately left behind.

Back in 2E I always felt like non-weapon proficiencies were something special for my characters. I remember several instances of being encouraged as a player to sing my way out of certain situations because I had decided my Dwarf Fighter was proficient in singing Dwarven Drinking songs. Then of course there’s the instance of my first character’s death, where he was beaten unconscious after a courtroom scene involving Gigantor turned bad and the rest of the party fled through a portal to safety. When one of the players, I believe The Main Event, was asked by the DM if he wanted to try and save my character lying on the floor, he thought about it and responded, “No.” My character perished under Gigantor’s foot as the portal closed.

4. Whimsy

And finally, I recall some of my favorite characters and moments, driven by what was in the game:

The first D&D book I ever owned was The Complete Psionics Handbook. Without having a PHB, using what I could infer from the rules in the book plus half-remembered rules from convention games I had played in, I created an Elven Psionicist named “Spock.” The gaming group I tried to play him in didn’t let that fly, but I still got to play a Psionicist with all kinds of arm-stretching, weapon grafting, Id Insinuating goodness.

The second book I owned (yes, still without a PHB) was the Tome of Magic, and from there, Wild Mage easily became my favorite class. Memorized spells not coming in handy? No problem: cast Nahal’s Reckless Dweomer, roll on the wild surge table, and hope for the best. Though the results were heavily skewed towards something wacky (and not at all impactful) happening, I always felt like I had a chance to impact the situation… even if it was only a 1 out of 100 chance.

I also played a Halfling Cleric of chaos (once again using spells from the Tome of Magic) who was reincarnated into a skeleton through some chaotic consequences. Later, another curse would force his alignment to Lawful and necessitate worshiping a deity of law (I was NOT happy when that happened). There even came a battle against a powerful mage where my chaotic spells would have come in handy in scrambling his spellcasting, but all I had were law spells… except for the ones I had stored in my Ring of Spell Storing before the change. That last vestige of chaotic magic used at the right time saved the day, and my halfling would eventually revert to his old chaos-worshipping self before heading off on his immortality quest.

This is only a sampling, not even including the food mage, the berserker whose presence was announced by an organ, the bevy of characters based on Squaresoft games, the rogue who saved a gold mine and power-leveled through 4 levels thanks to the gold pieces therein, and much more. You still had the races and classes that had already become classics, alongside new and crazy options. And whether your fireball was turning into butterflies, or you were pulling a string of Christmas lights out of a Robe of Useless items, this is the edition to me that embraced some of the wackier sides of the game, for some memorable times.

Do you have any fond memories of AD&D 2e that you want to share? Please do, but remember to keep it positive.

Next week, we tackle a big era in D&D and the gaming industry: 3rd edition.

Please allow me a few moments to beat a long-dead horse: people pirate D&D books all the time, and WotC hates it. It’s very hard to keep it from happening because it’s easy to copy printed books. All it takes to make a pirated PDF of a D&D book is a computer, a scanner, a couple hours, and somebody patient enough to push a button about 200 times. That’ll just make an obscenely large PDF full of bitmapped images of each page. Real dedicated pirates might sit down and type in all the words on each page so the document is searchable. We’re still talking a couple hours’ time here.

I understand WotC’s apprehension about distributing digital copies of their stuff, and I understand them wanting to take steps to stop it, but they’re not really doing anything but making their paying customers crazy. DRM is a wonderful thought, but let’s face it: somebody is going to eventually figure out how to break any protection scheme, followed by copiously bittorrenting an unprotected version. All the DRM in the world isn’t going to stop it. Not offering legitimate digital copies of their books definitely isn’t going to stop it (right now there’s only one way to get a digital version of a D&D book, and it ain’t legal).

So what is going to stop the piracy of WotC’s intellectual property?

To be honest, I doubt anything will solve the problem completely, especially as long as there are print books. Ebook publishers have long used other methods to ensure books don’t get widely pirated, such as custom-generating an individual digitally watermarked copy of an ebook for a customer. I’m much less likely to distribute a copyrighted PDF I bought to random strangers with dubious intent if it has my name and email address on every page.

I’d be happy if we just got that, but I think everyone’s interests would be much better served if WotC came up with a business model where stopping piracy isn’t necessary.

Prepare To Repel Boarders

Piracy-resistant business models already exist in today’s market. What separates them is that they can offer something that you can’t get simply by copying files and data. World of Warcraft and other MMOs are an example of this. There have been cases where the WoW client and even the server software have been pirated. I hope those guys had fun questing all by themselves, because they definitely weren’t getting anywhere near all the game had to offer. Many software companies will check for a valid registration before they offer tech support, access to forums, and other online features.

See a trend there? The Internet gives us options we didn’t have 25 years ago, and WotC already has a lot of the infrastructure they’d need to leverage these options in the form of D&D Insider. The people pirating books probably aren’t going to be giving you any money anytime soon. Providing a subscription model that gives you things you can’t get anywhere else might be a way to turn these people into customers.

That, to me, is pretty powerful stuff.

The D&D Book Of The Future

Remember all that business with the server I was going on about last week where it could spit out lots of cool data? Here’s one idea where that sort of thing would really shine:

Imagine having a digital copy of a D&D book. It’s searchable. Woo hoo and all that. I know you guys are thrilled. We’re at a quality level pirates can provide to us. Now let’s make this thing epic.

All of this stuff would pull in the most recent data from DDI, effectively making each book a living document. We could start by having the book automatically update itself with the latest errata. Handy, but not earth-shattering. Now let’s throw in some tools that make the book’s content easier to use.

There are a lot of little tables in D&D books, and most of the time you’re looking in those either to figure out what you get at X level, or rolling up something random. We could not only take the work out of this, but always have the latest options to choose from in these tables courtesy the data from DDI. Imagine, instead of “Table 1.8: Random Treasure Rewards”, having something that could take in the party’s level and it tells you what they got. The DMG might come with tools that let you do simple things like rolling random encounter tables, or it could randomly generate a whole encounter for you (including a unique map), complete with options you could tweak.

I like the idea of little boxes and apps that perform useful functions, but the real magic in this is these materials could be available right there in the relevant section of the book. For instance, when you’re selecting feats, spells, and other abilities, the PHB could read your character sheet and filter its content or make suggestions based on what prerequisites your character meets. Sure, the Character Builder does some of these things already, but this would give you that kind of power while keeping things in a more human-friendly context. How awesome would it be to look through a spell list in the PHB and drag your choices to your spellbook in the Character Builder?

The magic is that you could do all these cool things, but still use your D&D books in a very similar way to what you’ve done since the late 70′s. And there’s certainly nothing that says these tools couldn’t be all indexed in one place for easy finding, or that hyperlinks couldn’t be made in various parts of the book to access relevant materials. I’d especially like to see these books able to print and export the things you create so your prep time is diminished.

I could go on for hours just coming up with random neat ideas. The possibilities are wide open.

In The Year 2000

This isn’t science fiction. The technology to make this happen already exists. The use of laptop computers and tablets these days is very widespread, even at gaming tables. PDFs can have custom code in them that allows them to access data remotely, as can proprietary ebook formats like those the Kindle, Nook, and iPad. (Though, when doing this, it will be necessary to keep cross-platform compatibility firmly in mind.)

One thing I’ve never quite understood about the D&D Compendium in its current form is that (with your subscription) you get access to information from every 4e book out there regardless of whether you own it.  Sure, I like having access to it, but in a situation where you’re trying to get a decent revenue stream, it seems to me like you could mark data on the server with what source it came from and restrict content to only what a given user has purchased (and registered). A strategy like this would incentivize new purchases since all your books (and 3rd party DDI-powered applications!) would update with new material every time you got something new. I understand there are some challenges that have already been discovered about linking physical purchases to unlocking online content, but this might be worth revisiting if the benefits outweigh the problems.

Will it take lots of development work? You bet. But if a lot of the magic happens server-side and requires a DDI account to utilize, you could pirate it all day and it would be largely unusable. Are there some tradeoffs? Sure. Some people won’t like needing an Internet connection to use the books, and there are doubtless other technical considerations and pitfalls. Past those, though, you’ve now got a version of your book that keeps itself current, links itself up to all the other legit D&D products you own, and will be a lot more desirable to have than a pirated 40mb unsearchable PDF file that takes forever to load each page and crashes most tablets.

Don’t try to stop piracy. Make it irrelevant.

Pixellated Hopes For A Digital Tomorrow

I realize I have just pipe-dreamt up an enormously tall order that probably won’t come into being anytime soon. Nobody has what I’ve talked about above, and I sincerely doubt I’m the first to think of this. Whether the piracy-resistant nature of a system like this will make a tabletop gaming company invest the money and manpower into developing and maintaining it remains to be seen.

I have hopes that we’ll see something like this eventually, but I’m not holding my breath. I think effective use of DDI will be the key to WotC’s digital success, digital books or not.

Ultimately, though, I hope I’ve nudged a few minds toward the notion that a company can keep its intellectual property safe in a way that encourages business and greatly increases the user experience of their customers. I hope that’s WotC ultimately shoots for, no matter what solutions they decide to go with.

Photo Credit

Announced two weeks ago, Evil Hat Productions is going to be producing the Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game, based on the hit comic series written by Brian Clevinger and illustrated by Scott Wegener. The game will be designed primarily by Mike Olson, and managed by Evil Hat Co-President Fred Hicks. We sent them a few questions about the announcement and the game.

CRITICAL HITS: How would you explain the world and adventures of Atomic Robo to the uninitiated?

BRIAN CLEVINGER: Take The Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, Buckaroo Banzai, and The Rocketeer; cram them into a robot; give that robot some pants; bam, you’ve got Atomic Robo. He was invented by Nicola Tesla in 1923 and our comic book follows Robo’s adventure ever since. He fought a pyramid, the planet Mars, Stephen Hawking (metaphorically), Nazis, a super-intelligent time traveling dinosaur who may be none of those things, and run of the mill mad scientists.

But not at the same time.

CH: What kind of campaign models are you envisioning?

MIKE OLSON: First off, one that gets started quickly. You could say character creation is going to be more action and less science: It’ll be a true pick-up-and-play game without a lot of character creation on the front end. That’s been an important design goal from my earliest conversations with Fred about ARRPG. The actual stories Brian and Scott tell in Atomic Robo are definitely informing how we’re thinking the game will play — not just in the sense of what happens in a story, but how they’re structured. The default campaign expectation will be one that takes place in multiple eras during Robo’s long life, even if Robo himself isn’t present, with each of those eras having its own treatment and distinct feel. But if you want to play a story that involves Jack Tarot in the ‘30s or Sparrow in WWII, you can do that too. Regardless, you’ll have the tools to run the kick-ass Atomic Robo game you want.

FRED HICKS: I’m particularly excited about the multi-era play. Moreso than Spirit of the Century, I think the Atomic Robo RPG will be exactly the right kind of game to handle a play-group with variable attendance. “Oh, only two folks are showing up tonight? Well, let’s jump back to 1971 and play out a smaller piece of this story there. Who wants to play Carl Sagan?”

CH: For those that aren’t familiar with FATE, what makes it a good fit for an Atomic Robo-based game?

CLEVINGER: FATE gives a great deal of freedom to model every weird idea you can imagine. And to do it on the fly. And then to destroy it in a spectacular explosion that may or may not have been accidental. If that’s not every single Atomic Robo story, then I don’t know what is.

OLSON: This may be a tough one for me to answer objectively — FATE’s my go-to system, and I love hacking it for various genres. But what makes it so strong for a character-driven book like Atomic Robo is how easily it lets players define their character through mere words, via aspects. The particular iteration of FATE we’re planning is going to be tailored to what’s important to a Robo story, including a special emphasis on Science (and “Science!”) that gives all that witty techno-banter mechanical heft. Look at that invasion from the Vampire Dimension. Does Robo save the day by punching them? Does Jenkins, by visiting horrific off-screen ultra-violence upon them? Nope. It’s quick-thinking new-hire Bernard. Using Science. FATE’s great at that — that’s what FATE does.

CH: For those that are familiar with FATE, what kind of changes are going to be made to fit it, especially since it has a Spirit of the Century vibe already?

OLSON: Spirit of the Century has been a hugely influential game for me and for a lot of other people, but I think it’s safe to say that FATE technology has come a long way since its publication.

HICKS: YES! Spirit was published in 2006. Six years! The whole landscape of FATE is just different these days.

OLSON: Right. And if the recent proliferation of FATE games has shown us anything, it’s that people love to tinker with it — and because it’s such a malleable system, tinkering’s both fun and easy. So even though we’re very early in the process here, I can say for sure that we’re going to take full advantage of everything the system has to offer.

For one thing, you won’t see any big lists of stunts. Like I said, character creation will be more action, less science. That’s not to say there won’t be stunt-like options for customizing your character, but just as in Dresden Files Roleplaying Game, the emphasis will be on coming up with your own based on some broad guidelines.

Likewise, the concept of Phases is great for Spirit of the Century and its meta-conceit that all of the characters are protagonists in pulp books who are Centurions in the Century Club. The default assumptions of ARRPG are much different, though. Sure, the PCs are likely to be Tesladyne Action Scientists, but their stories could take place anytime over a more than 80-year period. Instead of writing down past events in their characters’ lives, we want people to actually play them out, or discover them through play. The era-hopping thing is definitely part of that.

HICKS: Yep. And part of that whole multi-era thing, really, is that groups that embrace it will probably have people playing different characters in different timeframes — they can’t all be ageless heroes like Robo. So the whole phased character creation thing from Spirit and Dresden won’t really apply here — though there’s nothing stopping folks from importing the idea from other FATE games.

OLSON: One of the big things we have in store, as I alluded to before, is giving Science its due — making sure it matters more than mere “color.” But it’s hard to say much more at this point, simply because the real work has yet to begin — FATE Core is our starting point, and that’s still in development. But we’ll be previewing more throughout the coming months.

CH: Will there be any campaign tools in it that can be borrowed for other games, like City Creation was for Dresden Files?

OLSON: We’re talking about some random idea generators for missions, villains, and science-related catastrophes — I love that sort of thing — that would certainly be applicable for other games. The skill system we have in mind will be both unique to ARRPG and compatible with “mainline” FATE, and will in fact accentuate customization, so I’m sure that will find its way around. Most FATE gamers I know really dig hacking the system, so I’m sure that even stuff we don’t think of as being broadly applicable will get that hacker treatment.

HICKS: Yeah. I have a feeling that the gearheads out there like me are going to find Robo’s ideas highly portable. Really, if anyone looked at Mike’s work on “Strange Fate” for The Kerberos Club and wanted to see an iteration of it that was highly compatible with main-line, core FATE, they’re going to get that here.

CH: With villains like Edison’s Ghost or a brain in a jar with a robot body, will there be other examples of how to make your own villains in the Atomic Robo style?

CLEVINGER: I’m hoping for a whole array of play styles. There’s a century or so of history, so the game is a tremendous opportunity to play around with the parts of Robo’s world we don’t see in the comics. Want to play pulp adventurers from before Robo was created or from back when he was terrible at adventuring? How about a generational campaign with a character per player per era? Want to play as “bad guy” factions like Majestic 12? A team up of Robo’s worst arch-enemies? An alternate history where Robo was taken out mid-century? One where he and Tesladyne never came to be?

So, to finally answer your question, yes. We’ll have some guidelines on how to best cater villains and (their?) antagonistic organizations to best fit your needs!

OLSON: In general, my answer to any question that takes the form of “Will there be guidelines for doing X the Atomic Robo way?” is “Yes.” One of our most important design goals is making sure the mechanics support the kinds of stories we expect people to tell when they play ARRPG. That definitely includes Robo-propriate adversaries, from brain-in-jar science villains to time-travelling Dromaeosaurs and everything in between.

HICKS: Crystals!

Psychology of D&D (70 minutes, 69 MB)

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• Analyzing Combat Encounters, Returning to the Penny Arcade Podcasts
• Riot Acts: The Dungeon Master Experience
• Power Options, Status Effects, and Mutual Assured Destruction
• Rule-of-Three: 12/19/2011

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.

The Road to Openness

I do all of my design work at Sand & Steam openly. Every bit of what I do is laid out for everyone to see, warts and all. When I first started, I choose openness not because of any high-minded philosophy about information needing to be free. No, I did so for one very simple, very motivating reason:

I was scared.

The self-confidence that I used to start the project was a tenuous thing. When I started doing design work, my first thought was “I’d better share this stuff so people have a chance to tell me how badly it sucks while I still have a chance to fix it.” I loathe updates to published content. For me, once a work is published, it’s set. Errata in game rules drives me mad. I figured that if I put my work out in its pre-alpha form, people could find everything wrong with it, and correct me. It was designing with a safety net. It gave me the confidence to move forward.

As I kept writing, I noticed that I wasn’t getting many negative comments. I was waiting for the day when someone would rip my setting as lame, also-ran, or worthless. Maybe I don’t have enough exposure for it, but I’ve not gotten that, not even once. I’ve got to say, that helped build my confidence.

As time has gone on, the openness of my design process has changed from  a safety net to something that I believe in very strongly. Openness is almost not an option for me, as I’m a really open dude, but I’ve got the confidence now to develop any way I would like, open, closed, or otherwise. I choose openness.

Open vs Closed

It’s important to note here what I feel the differences between open and closed design are, as it pertains to RPGs. For me, the amount of openness is determined by examining how much access the public has, and the cost of that access. It’s also important to distinguish between the design of a game system being open, and the system itself being open.

• Open Design - Design happens in a manner where the public can see early builds of the system, see the design process as it happens, and give feedback throughout, from the announcement of a new project, to the completion of the project.
• Closed Design - Everything happens in-house, and the public sees nothing until the release of the final product.
• Open Systems - The mechanics/setting of the game is available in a form that can be distributed at-will. New products can be made with the system with no restrictions on distribution or sale.
• Closed Systems - The mechanics/setting much be purchased from the entity that made them, and all distribution is controlled by the creating entity. New products can be made with the system only with the express permission of the creating entity, often with a monetary fee involved.

Which one is better? Openness comes at a price. There is an inherent giving up of control of your content that happens when you open it, not matter how you make it open. There are benefits that come to openness, but there are downsides, as well.

Perks to Openness

• The Hivemind – Many brains are better than few brains, and you can get a lot of great ideas from a large group.
• Free Publicity – If people get excited about your game, they can share it without worry.
• Built-in Community – An excited community can make stuff with your thing, and they don’t have to worry about your getting mad about it.
• Accountability – It’s a check on your power, your ego, and your stupidity as a persona and designer. Openness means anyone can call you out.

Downsides to Openness

• Fragmentation – Easy access to groupthink means that differing opinions can fragment things easily. Factionalism can happen in the blink of an eye.
• Lack of Control – You made your thing, but it’s not yours to control. The public can do with it as they want, and what they do can reflect on you, for good, or ill.
• Free Publicity – You might not like the ideas or the reputation of the person who’s espousing the merits of your thing. Get the wrong associations formed, and it’s hard to un-form them.
• Accountability – Sure, you can be held accountable for your creation, but have you ever tried to hold an anonymous, faceless group accountable for its actions? Yeah, it doesn’t happen.

Perks to Being Closed

• Singularity of Vision – No distractions, just you and your ideas, flowing forth and taking shape.
• You Pick Your Partners – When you’re closed, you choose who gets into the Inner Circle, and who can influence your design/finished product.
• Control – You control your message, and you can work to silence any voice that mars what you want to say.

Downsides to Being Closed

• Only a Small Group – You could easily design yourself into a corner, and not be able to find a way out.
• Error Magnification – If you’re in an echo chamber, errors can be compounded on, and not fixed.
• Isolation – You can be so closed that you’re the only one who cares about your creation.

I don’t know of any design process, or game system that is completely open or completely closed. All of them are various degrees of open or closed. As well, some are different types of open. OGL products (like Pathfinder) can be made using all OGL-licensed mechanics, but not art assets, layout, etc. Also, the final product cannot be freely distributed. A Creative Commons-licensed product (like Eclipse Phase) can be freely distributed in its final form (art assets, text, mechanics, etc), but derivatives of that work can not be made for commercial purposes.

Also, it should be obvious that I have a natural bias towards openness. I need it. I crave it. If I’m not sharing, using friends and other designers as a sounding board, or checking my work with the public, I’d get my head so far up my own ass that the light of day would become nothing more than a memory to me. As I said before, I’m an open kind of dude.

Openness isn’t a cure-all. It comes with its own problems, as I listed above. That said, if you look at WotC and the things that happened to prompt them to look at D&D, you can see that they were dealing with many of those problems even though 4e wasn’t an open system, or designed openly. In fact, you could argue that, because the Internet is inherently open, they will face those problems no matter how they design. My question is this: if you’re going to face all of the problems of being open, and being closed, why not just be open and deal with only one set of them? It seems like that’s the direction that WotC is trending and I, for one, couldn’t be happier with it.

I was very intrigued with Mike Mearls vision of creating a “D&D’s Greatest Hits.” It evokes a plethora of images about modular designs and piecemeal “build your own game” elements that inspires the writer and budding game designer in me. This gave me an idea for a series of post here at Critical Hits. Some of the bloggers here have been playing various editions of D&D for the last 4 decades, I thought it would be interesting if we shared our five DMing Greatest Hits for some or all of the versions of D&D we played as dungeon masters.

Let me start with my first foray in RPGs:

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (1e)

• Age Range when played : 10-16
• Nostalgia Factor: Very High
• Rules Mastery: Moderate

As I mentioned in my RPG DNA post a while back, I discovered  tabletop RPGs when I was 10. A schoolmate invited me over to show me a made-up  game based on what he had played with his cousin (the original Red Box) over a weekend. We played for hours with hardly any rules more complex than “Roll a d6 to fight, you die on a 1, you kill the monster on a 6, we roleplay the inbetweens“.

When I showed that game to a 13 y.o. friend of mine, he came back a few days later with a borrowed Player’s Handbook he got from a buddy in high school. We played with that for months.

I bought the Dungeon Masters Guide one year later. And more or less taught myself English while reading Gygaxian prose. The rest is history…

So onwards with the Top 5 elements I loved most about running AD&D, admitting I am heavily biased by the nostalgia factor.

1. Inspiration

The AD&D core books ooze with inspiration for games, NPCs, dungeons, traps, tricks and plots.  Charts, titles (brazen trollops anyone?), random tables, weapon names, monster lore and the much misunderstood concepts of Gygaxian Ecologies.  From random dungeon generators to  monster lairs found in the wilderness, I yearn for as many inspirational aids I can get to design exciting settings, campaign arcs, plotlines, and encounters for my players.

2. Exploration

What I remember most of AD&D is that sense of discovery about almost anything as I deciphered Gary’s teachings. I wanted every stone turned, I wanted to draw dungeons that took multiple pads of graph paper (and I did), I wanted to use and create monters that made no frakking sense (Crap elementals FTW), and I laughed when  friends threatened each other by comparing their character sheets.

Joel: Oh yeah? Well just wait till my illusionist levels up and I’ll Phantasmal Killer you with images of your parents DOING IT!

All editions of D&D have this, hence my nostalgia warning. Practically speaking, as a DM I expect to be provided concise tools (tables, charts, generators, short blurb) at my gaming table (in paper or e-format) and more elaborate online resources to help me cater to my players’ sense of exploration.

3. Attitude

You’ve got to hand it to Gary Gygax, he had a very strong opinion of how his game should be played. Now, while I HATE to be told how a game MUST be played, I loved how Gary’s attitude and certitudes transpired in the pages of his books and lent them a sense of credibility that made you feel like you were invited to join a club (or attending a heartfelt lecture).

While I’d like to do away with the most glaring patronizing passages (as I ignore them now), I like engaging, authoritative or conversational tones in my rulesbook. AD&D certainly had the tone right to engage my tweenaged mind.

4. Resilience

I’ve rarely met people that played AD&D 1e with all the rules and subsystems and ENJOYED it for a prolonged periods of time. Yet AD&D’s chaotic goo of crunch could take some severe misinterpretation, heavy handed house-ruling and glaring omissions while remaining very playable. I like that in a game. Keep giving me a system that has a  simple core and allow me to eject almost anything from it without threatening its fundamental integrity as an engine and I’ll be happy.

5. Modules

The early AD&D modules were simple, had low page content and were direct.  Short intro (ex: do this quest or the baron burns you alive), dungeon rooms with minimal description… and an emergent sense of plot that arose organically through play. (I’m referring to  modules like Village of Homlet, Against the Giants, the slave lords and others of that ilk). I want more of that.

What about you? Did you play 1e? What was the elements you liked the most about it.  Please keep it positive, we all know the warts of our games, let’s focus on the awesome.

Up next, Dave and friends tackle that multi-headed beast that was Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition.

From The Ground Up

One of the most annoying things about 4e’s digital offerings is one that need to get addressed in the new edition immediately before all the decisions get made: the choice of development platform. 4e’s online tools were at first a PC-only application, then went to Microsoft Silverlight — which caused a lot of issues, especially for gamers using Mac or Linux. The programs themselves were far more bloated and slow than they needed to be, and they weren’t particularly stable.

The new D&D needs to choose something light and scalable to create their next-gen digital tools, and they need to keep cross-platform compatibility and various device form factors in mind. PCs and Macs need to be able to use this stuff, and both iOS and Android smartphones and tablets are common now.

With so many devices and possible configurations of machines using these tools, One Frontend To Rule Them All is going to be unwieldy and unpleasant to use. Developing for multiple platforms can be time-consuming and expensive.

One way to address this issue is to develop an extremely robust backend system to serve out data (using XML, JSON, or some similar format) to a series of relatively lightweight frontends designed for each platform. Especially with a system that’s probably going to rely on pulling data from the Internet, it makes a lot more sense to do the heavy lifting server-side instead of replicating similar functionality for each individual client program.

With a good backend system, developers are now free to write platform-specific apps using tools appropriate for that platform. It also means that when the game rules change, it’s much likelier that a program needs to get changed only once (on the backend) and the client apps may never know the difference.

In simpler terms, I want a giant WotC supercomputer in the sky that programs can ask for things over the Internets. It does the math, and sends the results back to the program. That means the apps we use on our smartphones and tablets don’t have to do much aside from knowing how to ask for data and how to process what it gets back, and that means they’re easy (and cheap) to develop.

API IDSPISPOPD IDKFA

As a software developer, it is my natural tendency to want to make things that are fun and useful. Especially in this day of Internets-capable mobile devices that I can have with me at the gaming table, I’m perfectly happy allowing the tiny computer in my pocket to handle lots of math and randomly generate a level-appropriate encounter at my whim. I like the idea of searching for a game mechanic in multiple books at once, cutting down on research time and reducing the Rules Lawyer Filibuster to only the length of time it takes to argue something pointless.

D&D is a very complex beast, and there’s an awful lot of data associated with pretty much everything. To make tools that are really useful, we need that data in a form we can find quickly.

That big WotC sky-computer I was talking about before? It already exists (to a certain extent). Problem is, we have trouble talking to it.

With D&D Insider, WotC  made a big giant database full of monsters, abilities, and items (which many of you access today). To their credit, they’ve been really good about keeping this database up to date with all their latest materials. They also provided us with an API (application programming interface) so code-monkeys like me could query their database for stuff using our own programs. Unfortunately, the API was never very well documented, and seems to have been abandoned at some point. This means it’s really hard to make apps to use with 4e, and the data you can retrieve is pretty limited. There have been some cool hacks out there, but (especially in a community as creative as ours) it’s really hamstrung what we have been able to do.

I think a powerful, easy to access backend system is pretty essential to the success of any digital products for the next edition of D&D, both for internal and 3rd party tool development. I hope it’s at the forefront of their digital team’s minds this time around.

Project Hive-Brain

Everybody has their wishlist for the upcoming edition. I have a few bullet points on mine, but only one that I really want to stand up and fight for:

I want WotC to shore up their digital offerings by encouraging the community to fill in the gaps.

Official polished D&D apps created by WotC would be extremely nice. If I can’t have that, I want WotC to let us ENCOURAGE us to make them.

Ideally, I’d like to see WotC showcasing popular D&D apps — even buying out/sponsoring/giving its blessing to/unofficially adopting really good ones that provide for its customers’ needs. It would spur a lot of development and raise the morale of the community, and in return their game could now do things it couldn’t before. If WotC needs them to a particular specification in order to get the Official D&D Stamp Of Approval, my guess is a lot of developers would comply.

It’d be great if we, as 3rd party developers, could work more closely with WotC on our projects. I don’t know what form this would take. It might mean giving us access to speak with their IT team, or designating someone (either in-house or from the community) to act as a developer liaison. This isn’t one of those projects where you can determine everything everyone will need at the start. Things will change, and being able to relay these changes to someone who can make it happen is a huge boon to our community. Whatever happens, better communication would be a really welcome thing and would smooth out a lot of problems.

Allowing 3rd party development to flourish means that the reasons we don’t have good digital D&D tools no longer include WotC having insufficient staff, time, or budget to make them. Our hobby has a stereotype for a reason. The sheer amount of computer science in our community is staggering. Let’s put it to good use.

End Of Line

I find it amusing that the R&D team keeps talking about the new D&D as a core system that you can attach modules to so you can play they game you want to play and it’ll all work together.

That’s basically what I’m proposing with this whole big backend/little client idea. I’m sure everyone would accept the idea based on nothing but how accurate the analogy is, but I do really think it’s a good idea (and a commonly used practice). It is, though, just one idea and I’m certain there are those who will disagree with me. If you do disagree, or if you have some other ideas, let’s hear them.

At the end of the day, I just want WotC to make sure their digital offerings help them to make D&D Next the game everybody wants to play, rather than being annoying. With so many potential play styles and other factors in play, having something that can do the work for us is going to be necessary.

TL;DR beep beep boop 110011010011

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.

4.G Edition

This version of D&D would use the new Gamma World as its model (minus the cards.) Attacks, damage, defenses, etc. scale at +1 per level. Damage can be swingy, but if you can get through a combat, you recover all your HP at the end. Races and classes form your two templated halves (which could be random, or not.) Your class and race each give you a primary stat, then roll 3d6 in order for the rest. You get skill bonuses from your class and race, plus a random one. Feats are also a thing of the past.

One thing that I really wish D&D would adopt that I could never see happening? Generic weapons stats: two-handed weapons do this, one-handed weapons do that, add a few attributes to customize (this one has this property, so it’s an axe!), and done.

Static Numbers, Better Powers

Another alternative would be to toss out the “plus half level” concept entirely. You get your baseline attack bonus, defenses, etc. at character creation. Feats, items, and other pieces may still tweak those bonuses. However, your powers continue to get better still, dealing more damage, inflicting harsher conditions, and generally being more powerful. HPs still increase though, so the attacks from lower level bad guys matter less and less, even if they can still hit you. Likewise, the bad guys are doing the same, so while a goblin remains equally easy to hit or miss, their relatively lower hit points means they could automatically become minions in a way after enough levels. This concept is what I was roughly going for with E11.

Powers Everywhere

One aspect of 4e that gives it the “combat-centric” reputation is how many powers are combat powers. However, there’s nothing about the powers system in and of itself that suggests this. Powers are merely templated ways to standardize how characters affect the game world, giving you range, what you roll to have it be successful, the effect, how often you can use it and so on. Thus, there’s no reason you couldn’t still use that format to open up the range of powers.

You still have your combat powers. You have utility powers as well, though the kind that aren’t usable in a fight like many of the utilities are. So more “gain a bonus to a skill” than “teleport 6 squares and get a bonus to attack.” Then you also have social powers, like a daily power that lets you find the word on the street, or a power that automatically lets you detect a lie. You could have investigative powers that point you in the right direction. All the utility style spells, something covered now by rituals, could make a comeback as powers, like your Rope Tricks and your Patternweaves and your Goodberries.

To take it further, I’d force every class to take a mix of combat and non-combat powers, the former like 4e to make sure that everyone can contribute meaningfully to a fight against monsters, the latter to round out the non-encounter portions and provide interesting flavor. The non-combat powers could even overlap interestingly with themes, the intersection of theme, race, and class giving you your powers. Currently, we have racial utilities, skill powers, theme powers and optional theme utilities. Mix those altogether and bring those to the forefront, and I think you’d have an interesting game.

Are there any major 4e hacks that you’ve experimented with?

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.

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.

The old saying, “If you try to please everyone, then you’ll please no one” is a big pitfall for this kind of a game. However, I believe that more than ever before the game of D&D is ready for this kind of an approach. I’ve heard many times over that 4th Edition was closer to the earliest versions of the game than 3rd edition or even 2nd edition. I think that if you approach D&D Next as a game of modular decisions that replicates the design processes that happened over several decades to take Basic D&D to 2nd Edition, then 2e to 3rd Edition and 3.5, and then to 4th Edition and back to Basic D&D you could end up with a solid set or rules modules that would allow you to pick and choose the elements of each edition that you like best and include them, or choose the elements you like the least and diminish their impact or remove them entirely from the game.

The Future of D&D for Me

No matter what D&D Next ends up as, for me the future of D&D is going to be a modified version of 4th Edition. I’ve run and played 4e for 3 years now and there are things I enjoy about to so much more than I’ve ever enjoyed in D&D. The fact that there are elements of the game, the system itself, and how it plays that I don’t enjoy has been a constant in my experiences with Dungeons & Dragons. This is nothing new, and as such I have become used to it and learned to house rule and adapt the game to suit me and my players better. The best thing that D&D Next could do for people like me is provide the tools for me to play 4e D&D as I’ve been playing it but also remove some degree of the “but I don’t like these elements as much” factor.

D&D has always been customizable, it has always been a game that each DM and each player can make their own, but never before have we really seen a company or a system for the game that embraces this idea. Instead it has always been “here’s a game system, you’ll enjoy these elements but you’ll also ram your head against these other elements.” Now we have the possibility of a system that says, “here, take the elements you like, and leave behind those you don’t.” That, to me and I imagine to you as well, could be an incredible achievement for Roleplaying Games.

Recycle, Reduce, Revenant

When the day-star shines, I am a computer programmer. People of my class are usually pretty familiar with the concept of modularity. Those of us who are not tend to either be unemployed or promoted to management positions. I love writing modular code, and there is a very specific reason why: I am incredibly lazy. I want to write something I can reuse a bunch of times in a bunch of different situations. I want other code I write (or *gasp*  code someone else writes!) to be able to use this thing I made without having to modify anything. I hate redoing things for no reason. It’s why I don’t much care for MMO’s.

If I want to stick the same menu at the top of every webpage I write, I’ll write the menu code once and put it in a reusable module. Of course, to do this, you need to make your code ready to use modules, and that means you’re probably going to have to lay down some ground rules. These would include things like knowing what to give the module to make it do things, and knowing what to expect the module to give back when it’s done. It probably also should include some means of keeping the module from accidentally blowing everything up if you get back something completely unexpected from it. It’s kind of like loaning a car to your teenage son, and when he brings it back it’s full of zombies. He is SO GROUNDED.

One major advantage of writing code in this way is that it’s possible (although frequently not easy) to pop off an existing module and put something entirely different in its place. It likely will do similar things, and it may work much better for whatever purpose you had in mind. However, changes to the programs that used the old module might need to get made in order to accommodate the new module’s use. It might expect different things from you, or give you different stuff back. This time, the car might come back full of zombie mermaids. Where the hell does your son go at night?

This Is Not Computer Science 101 What Are You Doing

Nobody’s really quite sure what specific parts of the The Next Version of D&D are going to be modular, but a lot of the above principles will still apply regardless of whether we’re talking about computer programs or game rules.

There’s probably going to be a barebones set of rules for the new game. It may be completely playable all on its own, but I suspect that we’ll start by using a recommended set of starter modules for various game functions. One of the major questions for me in all this is how deep this particular rabbit hole goes. “Modular” could mean literally anything.

Will they have a combat system that uses a battlemat that you can swap out for one that doesn’t?

Will there be 4e style magic, Vancian magic, and a mana point based system?

Another interesting question: does every player follow the same rules, or can individual players choose what style of [your module here] they want to use for their PC?

Whatever it is they let us fiddle with, though — there is a price…..

The Price Of Flexibility

I’ve been on several projects in which people want an incredibly wide range of deliverables. As I have gained XP in coding (and scar tissue), I have learned that building a degree of flexibility into one’s code is a very smart move that tends to save one’s butt.

However, as the complexity of a project grows, so does the amount of time it takes to develop it. I’d love to shoot for the moon and be able to tweak every little thing, but I’d like to play this game before 2050. That’s not the worst part, though.

The other problem with a complex project is the number of things that can go wrong with it — especially if you’re going to be swapping out major portions of functionality. One would think just getting something up and functional is the hard part, but the real work comes in squishing all the little bugs. So often, problems will appear sporadically and be difficult to track. This is one major reason why a nonzero quantity of my hair is now grey.

I absolutely love the concept of The Next D&D letting us swap out things we don’t like and maybe putting stuff we do in. It concerns me that every feature they do this with will have to first be designed to work with every other iteration and combination of other modules, and then it’s time to find all those little bugs. However, as I spend a large part of my day finding and squishing bugs, I know it can be done. I also know that bugs don’t always bring the entire system down, and may just be temporarily annoying. (Why the hell is that text blue?? It’s not supposed to be blue!)

One very encouraging part of all this to me is the fact that we’re probably looking at a nice large open playtest. As the Open Source community is fond of repeating, ”given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” I’m not sure I completely buy into that statement, but I do think having an army of gamers reporting in to WotC to tell them what worked, what didn’t, what was fun and awesome, and what ruined the evening BEFORE  the game is launched is an extremely good idea.

Of course, then we start to run into the problem where no matter how flexible a system is, it still can’t satisfy everyone. But that is another story.