In which there was Content.

As of Sunday, I will be actually running a game again! My first time running some 5e, so it ought to be interesting. I am a huge fan of the megadungeon, so we'll see how that goes down, especially since it will be my first time running D&D for Shieldhaven at all. Not the first time I've run a game he's played in; the first (and only) such being my Nobilis One Shot of great antiquity (that I never actually posted about ><). Anyway.

My setting, which is called Liel, is the oh so original idea of taking a Sigil like crossroads and making it a whole world, rather than just a city. So pretty much all races and gods are available here. To reduce burden on myself (for some values of reduce), I re-wrote most of the PHB races to get rid of subraces, and broke some of the subrace options into a cultural bonus for being an immigrant (more recently come to this work) or being a colonist/native (originally from the world, or having immigrated so long ago it makes no difference). I also changed some things because the default races are different (humans are common, but not even a little default), and yeah. The important thing here is that the natives/colonists all have an option to take a feat at first level, and I know you're surprised that pretty much all of the PCs are doing that. Go figure!

The main thing this does is make it so that I feel better about starting at first level, rather than going with my 3e inclination and starting everyone at 3rd.

When I last ran this setting for 4e, I had a pantheon of gods that granted a background feat to their worshipers. Feats being tiny and fiddly, this was a lot of good fun to come up with. I wanted to do something similar for 5e, and funnily, it actually fits better. Because there are so many gods available in the world, the most common form of worship is called Giedame, where the worshiper selects six gods of their choice and focuses their piety upon them. Technically, a PC could choose gods not listed below (historically, Dragonlance gods are popular in the world :P), and I'd try to come up with something for that, but I've only actually written things for the gods I made up myself. So... below the cut I have:

• 1 new feat
• a bunch of boons (about 1/3rd of a feat to mix & match)
• 3 new spells (2 1st level spells (one of which is a ritual), 1 cantrip)

And a bunch of gods for spicy flavor. Enjoy!

Spells, Feats, and Advancement.

When I was a kid, I fell in love with my dad's collection of Dungeons and Dragon's handbooks, and most especially the lists of spells and things. Sure, they were presented kind of prosaically and weren't laid out in a way that was especially useful, but as little scraps of interest, they were incredibly cool to me, and hinted at the neatness of being a wizard... keeping a prop spellbook, and questing for arcane knowledge to grow in awesomeness and power.

When I was first able to roll up a character, then, I was extremely disappointed to learn that what I actually got was a tiny list of what was more-or-less available, with some obvious Best Choices, and of those, I could only cast a very few times a day, and had to decide how many times I thought I might cast a given thing. Which made the Best Choices at the beginning even more important.

What I thought I wanted, at the time, was a removal of the limits on how many spells I could know/keep in spellbook, and a different way of approaching how many spells I could cast in a given day. And to some extent, I am still in favor of some slotted spells, some at-will cantrips, and prepping the spells themselves, rather than individual castings of the spells. That said, having automatic access to everything in the spell-book at level still wasn't, and isn't, to my mind, especially interesting. The problem, at bottom, was that the way one typically gains the spells is hugely uninteresting: to wit, you level up, and then you (most of the time, some DMs vary) just get access to the spells for your level, within the bounds of your int.

Yawn.

I have two basic issues with these things: one which has to do with the way spells are handed out, and the other which has to do with the way one advances at all. We'll address the first to begin with, since it's actually applicable in D&D, and, some might argue, is the way the game ought to be run in the first place.

It boils down to, "treat spells as treasure." Fully, entrench the spells in the story, as items and artifacts that are a part of the world beyond their utility/combat effectiveness. Sure, it is important that a starting mage have spells they can use and have fun with, but couching that in story about how they learned said spells, and creating the expectation that yes, the players will and can uncover new spells over the course of play that can be added to said spell book (whether or not the user can cast them right at that moment) is kind of nifty. I'd like to remove the idea of gaining spells from the idea of "gaining a level," which also brings me to my second point.

The more I play games, the more I think I'm over the idea of levels as the primary form of advancement. Stands-In-Fire, at one point, suggested a system where you could learn one new skill/ability each session, and the more I think about it, the more I like that idea. I get, and I can pretty much be convinced that, for mages, it's important to limit capacity (ability to cast more powerful spells, and/or number of spells one can cast) in the early game and have that expand, just as I don't necessarily disagree with the argument that a fighter should get better at accuracy and damage as the game progresses. Doing something like that, however, would be antithetical enough to D&D that you might as well start building a new game system around that idea. Which is certainly fine by me. The main idea here, for mages in specific (though I really love the too-underutilized idea of training/specialties as treasure from 4e), is that what advances is now much and at what power you can cast, so the level that matters is the level of the spell. You get new spells through play/research, and pretty specifically through play/research, so it's not grubbing through the boring Player's Handbook pick lists. Importantly to me, though maybe not so interesting to other people, this also removes the desire to plan ahead with spells, because you don't actually know what you're going to find in the course of play, but must think of cool ways to use the spells you earn/learn/find as you go along. Personally, I am not a fan of playing the build game, and I would very much like advancement to be tied directly to what happens in the course of play, rather than planned out in advance based on what is in a rulebook.

But like I said, that could very well just be me.

Since I touched on training treasure above, I want to take a moment to talk about Feat Systems, and why I don't care for the ones I've seen from 3.x to the current iteration in Next (yes, this includes 4e). Largely, I think they encourage optimal combo combo building, which encourages deep system mastery at the expense of newcomers, less devoted to build-play players, and in some cases, the balance of the game itself. The habit of stacking customization in feats, and then handing those feats out at regular level intervals has the effect (once again, to me), of making non-feat levels basically boring stops on one's way to grind to get to the next set of feats.

I don't know what you like to play, but any tabletop game where it seems like a good and worthwhile use of time to grind high-xp monsters over and over to get closer to leveling has missed out on the thing I enjoy about playing a role-playing game: the figuring out of what one needs to go to achieve each individual goal. The goal in these situations is meta (more XP to get to the next level) and it's obvious what one needs to do (grind difficult monsters to get there). And yes, I'm not just talking about 4e-- this happened in 3.x games too. I prefer if the goal is less meta (one of the only times you'll see me say 'less meta' is desirable), more concrete, and more story oriented, for example, "we are seeking the monk who lives atop Forsaken Mountain that she might teach us the Awesome Ways of Awesome." Still, we're talking about advancement, but we're talking about something that's in the story.

And now, I admit that it isn't the feats themselves I mind, it's the way they're handed out, and how they're presented to the players as, essentially, a shopping list to handle at level. I would have no objection to treating them, once again, as treasure, earned through acts and adventuring on the part of the players... you could have tomes of Dwarven Lumberjacking (as a tropetastic example) which teach superior skill in axes, or a cool ability that allows one to do a nifty maneuver while wielding an axe. Or enchantments/blessings that one can temporarily add to weapons, or meditations that allow one to focus one's energy on repelling blows, and improve AC for a time. And these items could pretty easily map to feats as they're written in any of the aforementioned editions, tying their distribution to and through play, rather than to something so arbitrary as level.

To be completely fair, Arcana Evolved _did_ try to do this some with their spellcasting feats, by requiring ceremonies involving certain kinds of beings or creatures in order to obtain them, though the way they were presented was pretty much entirely though the rulebook, rather than being knowledge I think it would ever occur to anyone to organically acquire in play.

Anyway, I also get that, for the most part, this can be handled through the GM's style of game running, rather than needing to be ensconced in rules, unless one is modifying how advancement works, of course. And I imagine that there are already systems in place that do the things I'm talking about more naturally.

But huh, I'd also be open to running a gladiator/arena kind of game where the point was to build an optimal character from the beginning, and swap out pieces/choices between each session to tweak for effectiveness, as something of a crunchy 180 from my play-style, here. Hrm.

Keep it Classy, or the Paladin Problem.

My dear Harbinger has been doing the heavy listing on keeping track of D&D Next playtest reactions of late, and now the last public one is out. That said, Mearls and Co. are still making some extremely interesting Legends and Lore posts, and the most recent one has spurred me out of my complaisant atrophy to make some comments.

To begin with, I want to say that I am a huge fan of Four Core Classes, combine into neat-o concepts. This post addresses the former with the idea of Mage, Priest, Warrior, Trickster, but doesn't go into the latter at all, which is a bit disappointing. Trying to decide of the Monk is a Warrior or a Trickster (one or the other) is sort of silly IMHO; use the headers here as source types (which works for everyone except Trickster, really), and call a Monk a Trickster-Warrior (though I think of Monks as more Priesty-Warrior, like more-different flavored Paladins). Then you can have cool things like Magey-Priests, and Warrior-Mages, and so on.

The problem as I see it here is that they're kind of trying to re-create Defender, Striker, Leader, Controller without actually doing that, but they're using terms that don't exactly apply to the same things. It's kind of an un-developed idea in the post, but what will make or break it, I think, is how and whether they decide to handle overlap.

But then, I was a huge fan of Class/Background/Specialty, which sparked my imagination enough to create a Warlock with the priest background and a cool custom specialty of Harbinger's... which led to a neat story about an apostate priest who, not having been blessed with clerical powers, made a bargain with the Lords of the Fey, and belongs to an order who heals through bloodletting. I'm not saying that the current creation rules don't include things that will spark interesting story ideas (and a lot of the impetus for this idea came from the setting itself, to be fair), but in previous versions, I don't think it would have occurred to me to have a character who combined the divine and arcane, as there was really no good, supported way of expressing that idea mechanically. And the Priest Background kept it nicely limited. Personally (and while yes, I realise that there's a lot of mechanical variation and stuff they've done to legitimise it as a class), I'd have liked to see Paladins expressed solely as Fighters with the Priest background, or Clerics with the Warrior/Mercenary background (and related specialties), depending on their focus.

It should now not surprise you that I don't care for a whole lot of additional classes, on the whole. I think that the impetus to come up with a bunch of mechanics for said classes tends to result in those classes being Just Better than anything basic... as the Paladin is in the most current playtest packet. A traditional Paladin problem. Which then results in everyone's favorite game: Nerf the Pally. It's an unfortunate cycle.

Now, the chance of me running anything at all in the next... anytime soon is incredibly slim, but were I to do so, I would probably run out of some of those earlier packets, and keep the systems I like. Which is a definite advantage of the way the playtest has been run up to this point... we effectively have several partial, but playable games with a lot of different mechanics to pick, choose, and monkey around with. Which is awesome to me on a lot of levels, the most immediate of which is that I wouldn't ever run the current playtest as written-- I am sick to death of, "just start at 3rd level if you want to have fun" games, and that is very much where they've gone here.

I have some additional thoughts on the first part of the post-- spells, spell lists, and the like, but that is a topic for another post, if I can rouse myself enough to make one later.

Information Presentation: D&D Next and Fight Building.

Shieldhaven having sent me the latest Legends and Lore post, I was struck by the following portion:

Is a monster having immunity to non-magical weapons negating the concept of not strictly needing magic items?  Or is the intent to force players to get creative when facing such monsters?

We believe that not all monsters need to be able to be defeated in a straight, head-on fight. Some monsters should require players characters to either have the right tools for the job (in this case, magic items), or be creative in how they deal with them. We don’t want the answer to every monster problem to automatically be “stab it until it dies,” and that goes for spellcasting, too; there may well be monsters that end up in the game that cannot be harmed by spells. We think this is good for two reasons: one, it makes having the right tool for the job (and the tool itself) much more special and valuable, and makes the player feel good for having it; and two, it adds texture and problem-solving to adventures rather than encouraging players to simply barrel through every adventure using violence as the only solution.

All that having been said, any time we deal with something as impactful as immunity to spells or immunity to nonmagical weapons, we have to be sparing with how often we sprinkle it throughout the game. We don’t want to end up in a situation where those monsters that provide that texture become the standard, creating a reversal where players are frequently frustrated by having to constantly deal with monsters that cannot be harmed by traditional means. Like all things that present a non-traditional challenge to the players, we need to be judicious in their use so that they retain their value as an exceptional thing that provides texture, not a constant source of frustration.

All good points on the part of Rodney Thompson (thanks to Haven for the edit. :P), but what doesn't get addressed here is how to use them as a GM. "We" here doesn't seem to imply the GM, after all, but the overall design. And that's fair; they're clearly aware that giving even a significant portion of the monsters huge, sweeping immunities could easily lead to a lot of player frustration. What they don't get into, and what I'd really like to see in a DMG 1, are some basic uses for monsters with weapon/magic immunities, and how to make them fun.

For starters, don't have that be the only kind of monster in a given battle.

This could actually be a very general statement: where possible, include monsters of different types, with different strengths and weaknesses. The NPC roles of 4e were very useful for this, as having a controller, a couple soldiers, and a bunch of minions with complementary abilities often made for complex and engaging fights with a lot of layers. The magic or weapon immune monster could be likewise interesting, but the trick is providing enough stuff for the characters whose go-tos are obsolete something to do.

Thus, my next suggestion is, where possible, include manipulable elements in the combat location, and make sure that the excludes players can use them. In a battle where the big bad is immune to spells, don't have a lot of strength-check challenges, but structural items that spells can weaken and knock into the monster? Pretty awesome. In one where the monster is immune to non-magical weaponry, having a lot of mundane adds, or say... having something like a giant fire-pit where the fighters can temporarily gain a swing or two of enchant, but have to do something to keep it going? Very cool, and gives everyone something to think about while the combat is going on. If you can't tell, I was madly in love with terrain powers, zones, swarms, and special terrain in 4e, and I very much hope to see those come back in D&D next.

I think in general, a basic ideas guide in the main released DMG on how to stat fights for this edition, and how to set up the fights to be entertaining would go a long way in helping everyone at the table have fun with it. At this point, most people playing/testing Next have a lot of expectations and habits built up from previous editions. A little bit of guidance in how to make the most of this one, and how to realise what the designers had in mind for combat structure, would be a very good jumping off place for making it their own.

Sporadic Roundup!

So, my gaming has been... spotty, at best, but I figured that it was probably time to go and take stock of what I'm playing, for my own edification, if nothing else.

First off, quick shout-out to the indie+ gaming circle on G+, which has more or less got me back into a thinking about games, and writing about them. And, of course, Shieldhaven, who is running some D&D Next stuff for which I have a couple of alts. And, as I am a lazy git when it comes to filling out WOTC's feedback, I might as well talk about my impressions somewhere.

Tabletop

Arcana Evolved: Yeah, still playing that. Made it to level 14, are Runechildren now. Still not a fan of 3.5 style combat.
D&D Next: As I mentioned a little earlier, I have two characters in Shieldhaven's game: a Veytikka duelist-bounty hunter, and a Beruch FEy-Pact Warlock. So far, I really like the fighter's stuff in combat, though Shieldhaven changed up the dual-wielder specialty a little to make it less crappy. Warlocks, on the other hand, are very dull in combat, but, well, the class is basically sooooo two playtest packets ago. Will actually go into this more in-depth in a little bit.
Over the Edge: Have not played as much of this as I'd like, for realio.
Ptolus: played a session of this, and boy, I'd forgotten how much I prefer Pathfinder to core 3.x rules. Magus is completely broken, however, and... hm, there's probably a post brewing in how much I dislike +ECL classes (I was playing a Minotaur, but we hacked it to avoid ECL).
My Game: has been on hiatus about forever, largely due to a complete lack of time. And also because levelling without DDI, which I am not currently paying for, is pretty much lame. But I've probably talked enough previously about how badly I think WOTC bungled that one.
Mage: the Awakening:  Has now wrapped, after we murdered the face of the Red Word cult. I made it to Mind 5, Space 3 as a Mastigos, and I feel pretty good about that. There's some political goals that I will pretend happened as a result of us being awesome and sticking it to the Abyss, even though they did not occur on screen, primarily getting rid of the current head of the Consilium, and installing this Mysterium dude, Potestas.

LARP

Dust to Dust: Just passed it's 6th event, and boy are my arms tired! It remains both awesome and exhausting, and I'm delighted to be a part of it.
Eclipse: Is about to wrap up its first arc soon, and I am debating whether I am going to re-roll, or stay with my current character. Hm, ponderous questions!

Video Games

Skyrim: I continue to spend way too much time in the Skyrim Province for my own good. I have the Hearthfire and Dawnguard expansions, and am looking forward to Dragonborn. No, I have not completed the main storyline, at something like 250 hours. Good times.
Fallen London (And Failbetter Games as a whole): I still play this from time to time, though I have completed Cabinet Noir, The Silver Tree and the prototype of Below, their recent Kickstarter Project. I was less impressed with Cabinet Noir and Silver Tree, as they felt too... Fallen London, really, for the Format. Below, however, I am excited about, because I feel like the new format suits the dungeon crawl experience really super well. I should totes write a pimping post about that.

And now...

So that's where I am right now. I want to spend a little extra time talking about the 5e game, because it's what's interesting me most mechanically at the moment, and because the discrepancy between what the Fighter is good at and what the Warlock is good at is so huge.

First, the Fighter.

So, in the Aurikesh Setting, I am playing a Veytikka Fighter, which means I come equipped with claws that a) count as finesse weapons and b) do 1d6+atk. You know, just like the rapier I carry. So there's a certain amount of "eh, who needs this rapier?", at least, until magic weapons come into play. Also, I carry a shortbow, and am delighted by how switching weapons is a free action. The Duel Wielding specialty allows me to roll once for an attack with advantage, and if I hit, I roll the greater attack die plus 1d6 +bonus for damage. At the moment, this just means 2d6+bonus on hit, which isn't shabby, but doesn't have me putting things down with one hit at 1st level. Also, I am pretty sure that Haven boosted the HP on the monsters, which is just fine.

The Bounty Hunter background gives me contacts, access to a bounty board (basically, extra quests-- very cool if your DM wants to do anything with it, though I can imagine it being basically a dead spot in build), and 3 skills (spot, and... two other things I don't remember) , which is just fine, though the Veytikka advantage of keen smell gives me advantage on scent-based rolls (against wisdom), which don't stack with Spot. I'm told I can upgrade the skill to general perception later, which is certainly an interesting approach, and one I don't know how I feel about. But skills are tricky.

Combat as a fighter is not as purely awesome and cinematic as in 4e, but is likewise not as boring and staid as 3e. I have, from class, combat expertise dice I can spend to basically add damage or mitigate damage if I so choose: 2d6/encounter, which help me actually want to pay attention to combat outside of my turn, though I don't have a lot of reasons to care what my fellow party members are doing; nor do I have any mechanical way (thusfar) to keep the critters off of the casters and on me. Which I miss in an abstract sort of way, but didn't really notice when we were in game.

Also, I felt that my skills and things gave me some non-combat utility and interest, which was super nice. The character is kind of a silent, sullen type with a disturbingly honorable streak, and I don't really know where she'll go... oh, also, she's a member of the Iron Temple Warrior Society, so there's that.

Playing a Warlock is a massively different experience, and I can see why they were pulled from the packet. But I wanted to play one, because Haven is doing some awesome things with Fey in the setting that I super wanted to be a part of. Anyway.

In combat, a Warlock is basically All Eldritch Blast All The Time. I can see where Visage of the Summer Court (a wisdom-save AOE 30' charm spell, pick your own target) could have awesome combat application, but I didn't want to spend the boon for it just then. The lesser invocation that allows you to move around without incurring attacks of opportunity is sexy as hell, though as we were fighting arial opponents, it didn't come up. I'll be curious to see how it works in future encounters.  But yeah, as I didn't pick up the other Warlock Damage Spell, my combat applications are somewhat limited to blast, blast, blast.

That said, I pretty much used everything _but_ Eldritch Blast outside of combat- including Visage- and that was awesome and rocked my socks off. This is due in large part to Haven running a very fun and engaging setting with a lot of interesting NPC interactions, and that was definitely the strength of the session. I went from regretting not having bought more varied combat options to being really happy with Visage, due to its effect on Fey who, well... were just more likely to like me, recognising me as one who shared their same Patroness.

I'll be very interested to see what they do with the Warlock in future releases, if they keep it... it's a neat thematic concept, so I hope they do.

Also also, I took the Priest background and one of Haven's Custom Specialties, the Bloodletter, so that I could have a tiny bit of healing. So far, it has mostly meant that the party healers didn't have to spend healz on me, and could help other folks, so that's all right.

All told, I like it so far... I would very much like to see more 4e style terrain stuff in combat, and more of the push/pull/knockdown stuff also, as it made combat super engaging. I really like having to care about combat positioning, and I definitely miss it in this edition.



 

Grandiose Plans.

So, I learned somewhat recently that Atlas games has made the WaRP system available for use, which is the system Over The Edge is based on. And if you've read much of anything I've posted here, although that has not been a particularly frequent thing of late, you know how much I love love love Over The Edge.

So, I've had this King In Yellow/Dawning Star game I've wanted to run for several years now (ostensibly called, "The Truth in Yellow"), but, as I am not a fan of D20 Modern/Future, I'd been hard up for a system to run it.

And you see where this is going.

This will require spending some time with the Ineffable Tome of Ages and making shit work with what I want it to do, but WaRP is pretty durned flexible, and I'm excited to play around with it.

In the meantime, Shieldhaven has been gearing up for a D&D 5e game where I've got a couple of alts, one of whom (Lanth the Veytikka Fighter) you can see here, as rendered by the awesome Mr. Lich:

I am also playing a Beruch warlock, though I haven't a pic of her. Yet. :)

Redirect

So, Shieldhaven pretty much went and said exactly what I wanted to say in my last post, and in a much nicer, more coherent, and less hostile way than I managed.

So you should all go read it nao.

If I Were a CEO #2: 5th Edition D&D and the Two State Solution.

Or D&D Next, as some are calling it. Yes, it's what everyone is writing about these days. What will it do, what will it have rules-wise, why is Monty Cook working on it, OMFG. So I'm going to avoid that right now, and as I have done in the past, delve into the business side of things, at least, from my own limited perspective. Keep in mind, that as with all blogging, this is an Op-ed piece.

First of all, I was disappointed, if unsurprised, to learn that D&D was going to a 5th edition anyway, or at least, just doing a 5th edition. As I mentioned in the previous post, linked above, I don't think that adding another player to the edition wars is going to solve anything. The players who felt alienated when 3.x was abandoned for 4th pretty much either went to Pathfinder, or kept playing with the older material, and were lost as customers. They're not likely to come back in any lasting way for 5th. Also, the 4th ed base, who spent a lot of energy supporting that edition, splintered when Essentials came out, and will splinter further for this one, especially if it renegs on some of the best things about 4e (Economy of Actions, I am looking at you). While a Middle Way, which I think they're trying to do here, might be desirable, it is more likely that it will simply create more strife, because it means that 4e (which has been pretty much dumped for Essentials) and Essentials will no longer be supported at all.

A pause while those who are so inclined cheer over one or both of these things. Schadenfreude out of your system? Good. Let's continue.

As Shieldhaven will say at length, I am not a huge fan of 3.x, or Pathfinder (though I have just agreed to play a Pathfinder game. Another story for another post), because of various issues many of which I describe here (and which are actually worse than I describe, in fact). That said, every edition has both its problems, and its die-hard fans. The correct-- if perhaps difficult from a design manpower standpoint-- option?

The Two (or Three) State Solution: Support All Editions.

No, I mean it. WotC should take a clue from White Wolf, re-release all the material that they've got license to as e-texts, and offer Print on Demand. Potentially offer rules tweaks, new modules, and new content on a limited basis, primarily in an electronic format. And WotC can do this very, very easily. How?

The DDI character creator was the shit. I don't mean the online version, I mean the downloadable version that used to have all the updates. Making this a comprehensive and multi-edition database would be a product worth paying for. And how.

But I talked about all of this in the post that I linked above.

Now, while I know good and well that going back to supporting and providing content for 3.x won't, say, bring back those who defected to Pathfinder and are super happy with it. BUT it will be a more comfortable fit, and potentially get people back into generating sanctioned content for it, and allowing for more comfort with new additions, variations, and the like, as they can be secure that Their One True Edition will still be cared for. Continuing to support 4e and Essentials just means that they fail to lose people who invested in caring about those new rulesets, particularly those who are Less Than Enthused about the design stylings of Monty Cook, and what that means for future rulesets.

Also, the one New Book that I suggest for all editions is a DMG 2, much like was done in 4e. I cannot stress the importance of Show Me in how to run specific mechanics within a story.

Bring Back the Open Gaming License

Or at least, create a more wide-open licensing scheme by which people can offer home-brewed content, or small-press content at a nominal fee. This is more a point of Shieldhaven's than mine, but a huge problem with 4e, including DDI Char. Builder, is how hard it is to houserule, or for independent content reactors to actually generate compatible content. This is super good for the company in that it helps generate and spread interest; every interesting module someone makes potentially gets someone else to _also_ buy the core content.


Make it Clear

For my final point, it's less about the way the rules are (though that's important), but about how the information is presented. The biggest problem of all D&D editions up to this point is that the information in the rulebooks is explained so badly, and there's so much cruft, that finding anything is really very problematic. If the staff here spent some of their money on doing organization work on the books of the previous editions, this would go a _long_ way, I feel, to cleaning up some of the problems with them, by making things clear, and actually fixing legitimate errors and conflicts.

To sum up, I have a real problem with the idea that the best way to deal with the problems in the game(s) is to release a new ruleset every few years. I think that it's more a better way to just hemorrhage players, and drive everyone to either sticking with their old products, or going to games like Pathfinder, D20, or others. That's money left on the table, and it makes me super sad that WotC is not really looking into what these people actually want, and supporting that. I fear that they will wind up wasting a lot of time and money on an effective bust.

Session Roundup #19

I actually have two gaming sessions for you this week! only sort-of because I skipped last week. But nu, I ran my game, for the first time since March, last Friday! That was a lot of fun; I had missed it quite a lot. A DM isn't really supposed to admit this, but boy-howdy was I flying by the seat of my pants on that one. Also, Mage: The Awakening tonight! So without further ado...


Tradya's Workshop: So, last session having been about a million years ago, and life being insane, I had done virtually no prep for this game. I'd left them at the first room of Tradya's library, back where they'd started. So they decided to try another path; the one beginning with 'A'.

They went down A, then R, Then B, then B again, then O, then wound up facing a huge construct spider, based on the Young Volcanic Dragon elite, scaled for their level (5) and with some adjustments...it was really completely terrible. The aura 1 5 poison damage that went to aura 3, the burning web zone that lasts a turn and deals 5 damage, plus webs that restrain, and a horrible bite that deals ongoing 5 fire, plus a triggered burst when hit with fire... yeah. Awful. I will post the stat block sometime when I am less wiped. Either way, it was a short session, but fun, and I look forward to getting back into the swing of things.

Mage: The Awakening: Followed hard upon last session, and also really good. We (by which I mean Sequela and Tommy) cleaned our evil-selves out of the gems we found, though Suriya's got out and tried to run. So Sequela commanded it to stay put while Tommy and Suriya shot Awakened Guns at it. I had... little to do in the fight, as nothing was susceptible to mind and Space doesn't have anything to attack with, so I worried about creating wards to calm down the craziness of the Fucks-With-Space labyrinth we were in. At any rate, we were able to trade the empty gems with the Indian spirits to get them to let us take the other two folks, and in exchange we would carry the spirits, in the gems, to museums that talked about their in-life tribal cultures. So that was all right.

On the way home, we called the Gravediggers to let them know we'd rescued their D00ds, then chatted with Diomedes and Madog (the other two d00ds) all the way back to Boston. Diomedes had been trapped in the labyrinth since the Clinton administration, so he had a lot to catch up on. Madog... used to be our evil-dopplegangers' apprentice. So we had much to talk about. We found out, in the long run, that the kid was from a reality where The Prince of A Hundred Thousand Leaves was the Reality. So my guess is that we're not in Total Recall, we're in Many Worlds, and that's... better. As the idea of having actually lost 3 years of memory, plus, was super unsettling.

Anyway, super cool. This weekend: AE. Foon!

If I were a CEO: Tabletop Games, #1.

This pair of posts on This blog that Shieldhaven reads and I really should read too, because it's pretty awesome, got me thinking about an idea I'd had on one of the many, many long-ass car rides I go on with Haven and/or Stands-in-Fire (I am pretty sure Stands-in-Fire was there for this one), about how I would run the D&D side of WoC, if I owned it. Also, refined the ideas somewhat through conversations with Four Color Criticism, who understands far more about publishing than I have any hope of knowing ever.

Keep in mind that this is the hypothesis phase, so I haven't thoroughly or crunchily weighed or vetted any of these things, and this can hardly be called a proper business plan. Rather, I am going by impression and wondering if these things would work. But nu, to the stuff:

Not-Roundup #6

Having failed at Roundup for the past week (though I do, now, have some stuff to talk about), I am going to do a momentary driveby to deposit this link, about Ponyfinder, a My Little Pony variant of Pathfinder.

Yeah, you're welcome. :D

RoadTrip Inspiration

As may have been mentioned before, Shieldhaven and I go on a number of road trips, usually to Georgia, which involves many hours of natter. And not a little of this natter, of various sorts, is about random design ideas and the like. The chief topic of discussion this time were a pair of branching ideas, stemming from his thinking about how to make martial combat in D&D 4e feel more parry and thrust... have a certain amount of dynamic action, where one can actually respond to attacks in a way that is logical given one's particular class (read: Martial School). One hopes he will expound further on the topic, as it was a really cool idea, and I contend that it is not that difficult, in 4e, to do something like this by adding minor action powers to classes.

However, when he was first pitching the idea, I managed to completely misunderstand what he was trying to do, sticking on the point of, "a purely martial system." Which made me think about, "wait, why no mages? What if there were NOTHING BUT mages?"

Now, it occurs to me that most of the time, when one winds up talking about any given tabletop game system, one is actually talking about combat systems. There's a number of reasons for this, but the main one is that it is more clear-cut to reduce combat actions to roll something, do something, than the huge and open field of social endeavors that people can undertake.

And then there's magic. Magic, especially in earlier editions of D&D, is pretty much a box of tools a mage can use to fight, sure, but realistically they have a potentially huge number of applications, limited only by whether or not you're the sort of person who would do well in Spontaneous Competitions in Odyssey of the Mind. So what happens in a world where everyone is basically a wily tool-user, and there's none of the beloved hack-and-slashers to stand before our dress-wearing wimpiness and take the damage?

Well, first of all, rather than dispense with the question of why there are no fighter PCs, let's come up with some answers.

Dungeon Project: Expanded Room 4, and Room 5.

For the previously mentioned Dungeon Project, sector 1, and after this:

Room 4

The red lines in the hallway leading up to here are heavy, barred iron doors with locked gates, much like the ones to the cells in room 1. A DC 15 Thievery check will pick the locks.

The chamber itself contains six 10'X10' cells with heavy metal doors of solid steel. Each of them have a narrow slit at about eye-height, with a sliding panel over it. Each door has a numeral 1-6 scratched into it. If the doors are locked, it is a DC 20 Thievery check to pick them. The door to cell 5, in the south-east corner, should be locked; it contains a rough-hewn tunnel to room 5, hidden under a trap door under dirt (DC 15 Perception, DC 17 Thievery, +2 to thievery, or potentially Arcana (DC 20, you're following the malevolent feel from the cells) checks to disarm with previous successful perception rolls).

When in this chamber, an Arcana 20+ check detects a faint malevolent energy from each of the locked cells. If actually in one of the cells, the DC on that check drops to 12 for the cell one occupies. A better check under those circumstances (17+) implies that the energy is necrotic, and growing in strength.

Each cell has 1-3 silent skeletons collapsed upon the floor, or on small, wooden stools, or the like, and one Skeleton slumped against the wall on the outside of the cell. If the trap-door is triggered without being disarmed, they'll wake up and attack. I'm going with nine Tortured Skeletons, plus a Stonespawn Skeleton in its own cell, and two Skeletal Legionaries. Between them, they should drop around 2o sp total in corroded coins. One of the legionaries should be the one that was outside of the cell; this one has a large, iron key hanging from its rotted belt.

Room 5

A room that looks like it was used mostly for hiding out than a potential escape route. There is a dusty cot piled up with rat-nibbled blankets and pillows, oily rags, a lantern, a deck of old playing cards, and numerous other oddiments and living detritus. A stack of books are piled up in one corner with many pages torn out; largely, they look like lists of names with various numbers beside them. A streetwise check (DC 15) or history check (DC 17) reveals that it is a book of prisoner names. Potentially, one of these is Palambro Alieri.

One of the corners contains what seems to be a crude set-up of alchemical components from what looks like prison cookware and cutlery. There's perhaps 50 gp worth of Residuum there, and a vial of crimson aether. There is also a page that is another list of names and numbers on one side, and on the other, says the following:

"These are the ways of travel, for the lost:

--by Knife

--By Water

--By Fiery Air

--By Night

--By Stone

--By Direct Command

--By Forgetting what is True."

***

So I'll be doing room 3 in a separate post, sometime when I have the brains to do it.

New wine in old skins.

This afternoon, Shieldhaven linked me to This Nifty Group Plan Thing, which seems like a whole lot of fun and festivity, and a thing I'll like to do. For me, this is a lovely slice of nostalgia, as my dad used to run this map as part of his half-Qasqueton & other 1e material, half homebrew dungeon. As Shieldhaven mentions, we are discussing having the dungeons be connected in some way, which should be fun. In the interim, here's the write up from the original page:



Most people that have been playing the game longer than, oh say... 15 years should recognize the rather iconic map above. Even those of you that may have cut your teeth on 3rd edition have seen it presented there. It is, of course, the dungeon originally provided in the AD&D 1e Dungeon Master's Guide. It and the accompanying sample of play have together long been a sort of touchstone for me in the way that things like Village of Hommlet, In Search of the Unknown, Bargle & Castle Mistamere or Keep on the Borderlands are for others.

I realized something about this map and I recently. Despite it's importance to my early understanding of the game I've only ever used it for off-the-cuff, ill-prepared ventures. I've never actually sat down to stock and prep it like I now normally do. That's rather a pity, I think, because it's a well-constructed level. That secret door in room 3 (hiding somewhat in plain view and challenging the party to put the clues together to find it) is a prize in and of itself. Overlook it and you've got only a handful of standard 1st-level-dungeon-looking rooms on the top half of the map to explore. Discover, it though, and the whole level opens up.

Beyond room three one can reveal the nooks and crannies of those odd passageways and the weird little side rooms whose overall layout and construction beg the questions "what?" and "why?". Why this little bit here and that narrow passageway to nowhere there? What earthly (or unearthly) purpose is served by the three 10' square rooms that terminate the narrow halls in the south-east quarter? That series of rooms beyond the secret door is just dying to be stocked and described, is it not?

So here is what I am proposing to do and this is where those reading along can come into the picture if they so desire. I'm going to stock that thing room-by-room here on the blog at a rate of three rooms per week starting next week. I'm encouraging those reading this to do the same. At the end of this process the world will have (hopefully) several stocked dungeons based on a single, iconic map. The differences and similarities between them can be an interesting statement on the game and its participants.

I offer only some simple guidelines for this venture:

1. Use any version of D&D, the clones or even another game (even genre) entirely to complete the dungeon.
   Provide as much or as little detail as you desire as you go.
   


2. To get started add a comment to this blog saying that you're getting started and provide a link to your blog so we can all go see
   
.

3. You can join the fun at any time and take as long as you like doing it.
   


4. Use as much or as little of the background and the few existing room descriptions associated with the map from the DMG as you like. The only requirement is that you use the above map.
   


5. I'll be posting three rooms per week starting Monday, February 7th. (My first post on this will probably be whenever I get around to it.)
   


6. I encourage you to not only stock the thing, but talk about your choices and dungeon-building philosophy as well. For instance, if you're using randomly generated results, talk about why. If not, also talk about why. Will it be a themed dungeon? The value in this project to me is in hearing about what a particular DM likes as well as seeing it directly applied.
   


7. Will there be winners? Will there be prizes? Everybody is a winner but there won't be prizes.
   


8. If you want to play but don't yet have a blog, start here.
   

Session Roundup #7

This week was dominated by video games and by me running my D&D game last Sunday. Yay punting!

Sunday: Tradya's Workshop-- After last session with the theatre and the rats and everything, it was about time for a low/no combat session. Which was great, because I hadn't the brain to prepare any stat-blocks for a special encounter or anything, and odd, coz I had no idea where the players would go next, but being that this is a fairly old-school dungeon crawl, the options were limited by the long pre-existing map. So they were pretty much going to go explore the northern part of the first level, which they'd looked at a bit before, or were going to go south and explore the few things that remained down there. This latter is what they wound up doing, which permitted them to get their hands on another one of their quest objects, and had them find the entrance to the hidden library maze. I won't go too deeply into the mechanics of the maze, as they haven't explored all of it yet, but it might sound a little familiar to people who really like, say, Sean Connery in monk robes.

Basically, they found themselves in a large, octagonal room with four doors, one in each wall, and stacks of books of various kinds in concentric circles. They rolled skills to see what sort of books were in the room, and if they found anything particularly useful, and also marked that above each door, there was a letter-- in order, T, R, A, & J. They knew, from the previous adventure, that the dude what owned the dungeon was called Jaylamer Tradya, so they decided to take the J path, and see if the subsequent rooms would have the rest of the letters of his name. And lo, they did! Each room was a trapezoid-shaped chamber filled with books on a common theme, with varying numbers of doors and a letter over each. This was consistent until the room with the final 'R' in Jaylamer, anyway, which contained 2 doors which had no letter. They found some palimpsests (not to be confused with the city of the same name... or were they?); the Avenger was able to create a rubbing to see the note that used to exist on the page. This gave them a couple of hints as to what they could find in each direction, and they decided to go through the one at the top of the trapezoid, which said it led to 'the center'. This took them back to the first, octagonal room, and of course, going back the same way did not work. Alas!

In the course of their searching, I remembered that this was the sort of party where I could give them magic treasure what didn't have any combat application, and so they found the following trinket:

Box of Delicious Creation

An ornate silver box with a lid of black wood, just large enough to hold a mug of something tasty.

Daily (standard): Creates a single item of food or drink, which is wonderfully delicious and comforting. Use of this daily item does not count against other daily magic item uses.

Random, I know, but the players seemed to really like it, and that made me happy.

Also, a couple of other plot advancement items were accomplished that I prefer not to discuss here, but which pleased me greatly.

Shadow Hearts: Covenant-- So, I forget which day it was-- possibly Monday?-- but the day sucked holy ass, and required that I go out to dinner with Shieldhaven immediately, and also buy a video game. Instead of doing so, however, I bought a PS2, and set about playing another run through of my favorite JRPG, Shadow Hearts: Covenant. It's frigging hilarious, and also a festive testament to the Japanese obsession with Jewish Mysticism. Fun!

I also have the first one, but the second added depth and scope in a way that I've only seen in games like Overlord and Overlord 2. Here you have the perfect setup what people ask for-- give me a sequel that's a game changer, keeps what we loved about the original, but does something new and better. The full customization of the judgement ring combat mechanic, having the turn based combat care where you stand for AOEs, and the addition of a combo system were all that is awesome, and I'm enjoying my second playthrough quite a bit.

Pretty much the rest of my whole world is eaten by culture packet writing for Dust to Dust, so yeah. That.

Go through the motions of exploring the familiar.

In my last post, I mentioned This Post of Shieldhaven's, and now Wombat's gone and responded here. So now, I must needs venture my opinions on the topic.

I have an odd position in the groups I game with, in that I'm generally the only Person of Color(tm; also, unless you count the Angry Cuban in our AE games). Incidentally, until having the conversation with Wombat (who is white, but a jew), I was also the only person who generally felt that the presence of humans was okay, sure, but not necessary in a game world.

So, how this conversation even started:

Shieldhaven was talking about the new races he'd created during his late night maundering, and mentioned that, in order to have people actually pick his classes, perhaps he should strip a game with them in down to just humans and the new races. To which my question was, "Er... why include humans?"

Now, as implied above, I realise that my question and feelings on the matter are solidly in the minority. Anyone who knows me even a little will not be shocked by this. Shieldhaven felt, at base, that giving the players something understandable and familiar-- i.e., humans-- was important, so as not to lose them. I marked that the new races-- the Veytikka in particular-- were written in such a way that they kind of did not make sense unless you had another, baseline race to compare them to. The Beruch as well, and the Rindari have not been written yet, but-- they were all designed to be minorities. And while this was not, from talking about it, a conscious decision on Shieldhaven's part, it was... curious to me.

And here is where I will dispense (for the moment), with the issue of player investment and whether or not players will buy into a game setting where there's no human baseline. I, personally, would like to play a race in the context of what they're like internally, _without_ comparing them to a human genero-culture. As is pointed out in both of the posts I mention, there's sort of a problem with humans-- they typically wind up with their racial trait being, "generic". Of course we know what humans are like-- we are humans, aren't we?

Thing is, as game designers are themselves human, apart from some physiological details, and a pointed attempt to make the things that they feel, do, or care about completely unrelatable, any new race is going to be some variety of "like humans, but..."

Take the Veytikka. They have certain physiological features (claws, snout-like faces) that make them inhuman and change the way they interact with their environment, but as far as their attitudes and actions go, they're actually pretty darn human, but...

...They eat carrion. They're well designed for it, and for them it is the right and proper thing to do. Thing is, a human culture could just as well do that, out of some philosophical inclination, and then we get into trickier issues of intra-species race. Apart from that, the racial culture is given as tribal, and they are suited to some specific classes, like most D&D races. They're statted to fit into 3e and 4e D&D, so they'll be further colored by the rather familiar expectations of the classes they choose. Tl;dr, the text already explains the ways that Veyttika differ from humans in the context of the player's own person and culture, so why would there need to be humans in play to underscore the difference?

As part of my objection to the philosophical part of the "people need a familiar race to be the point of reference" is actually the "point of reference" part. Because I am human, I will automatically be thinking of how this race is different from a human. It bothers me, to then have to, in play, be ever conscious of my character in the context of, "I am different from this other group, which is normal."

I realise that this does not address the issue of turning off players through an excess of difference, but I feel that that aspect of the question is dealt with at length and better elsewhere, and I'd like to deal with the aspects so avoided, which are, frankly, relevant to me. Let it also be said that I don't blame anyone for choosing not to deal with stickier issues and assumptions when it comes to race in gaming, but... well, I think that it's just possible that part of the reason for my preferences in story telling and roles therein might have something to do with my own background, and the same for other folks. This doesn't say anything about myself or anyone else as people, but is objectively interesting to me.

Let me use another example, which has about an equal chance of refuting or supporting my point: the 4e race, Wilden.

Wilden are supposed to be a new race just out of the feywild, terribly curious and eager to learn about new cultures and races. They're a tablua rasa, looking for things to ape so they can learn how to be actual people. They have a hatred of abominations, but apart from that... well, they're plant people.

And let me tell you, they're hard as hell to play, esp in the party I'm in.

I picked one up in Chessenta as a power gaming option-- I wanted to play a Protection Shaman, and they had the best stat options, and were also something I've never played before. Now, I am in a party with two humans and an Orc-- fighter, avenger, and rogue. Given that my racial MO seems to be, "try to be like the others you're around," how do you suppose I play my character?

Answer: Well, like a bear shaman. Because that's what I'm actually doing, leaves or no leaves. The role of the Shaman is much stronger than the role implied by my race, except in the (hasn't actually happened yet) incidence where I need to use a racial power. And the same is true for humans, actually-- except in AE, where humans are marginalised as compared to Giants, I generally see human players playing the trope for their class. Only Grish, the Orc, plays a racial trope to any extent, and even that is second to his outstanding thievery. Well, and Ullentarni the Dragonborn, but that's because his racial story was supported by the game, and the circumstances in which we encountered him. For the rest of us, race doesn't actually matter, or much inform how we play.

So... what does all of that mean for the presentation of a game, before and during play?

First of all, I have the strong temptation to strip stats from races, and give them basically the human stat choice. If including humans in the game, I'd be further inclined to write specific racial abilities for them which were something other than, "I'm so generic, I can do anything with my generic self," depending on the setting. That is to say-- If other races have specific, geographically or otherwise bound cultures, it makes more sense in a given setting to have the humans be so too, than otherwise. In my game, I get around it by having most races be pretty much ubiquitous-- only races of a fey or outsider sort of origin are in any way concentrated, or have cultural norms outside of the norms for their region. I did not go so far as to change up races that much, mostly because my game is at least partially about teaching 4e to its players. But I think next time, I might, so as to make the race choice more purely about preference, vs. optimization.

And I'm tempted, especially if offering a setting where it makes sense to do so or I am offering all-new races, to just not have humans in the game. Now, it's at this point that the Player Investment issues come to the fore. We'll go ahead and take it as read that players dislike having high barriers to entry, and/or having to do a lot of reading in order to play a game, or understand their characters, unless doing said research was their idea in the first place. So let's think about how to address this.

1) First of all, sticking to a well known system, OR a system where everyone is expecting to do reading because it is all new. Personally, I prefer the former, partly because I like D&D so well and well... I am used to it. This could, however, work okay in a system where the expectation of newness is working for you. Nonetheless, I think that changing as little as possible about a system that the players (assuming all the players are familiar with said system) know, and explaining early on the conciets of the setting, you'll probably have a better chance of not throwing them off. In particular, I would not introduce any new classes, but have everyone stick to existing stuff.

2) Keep written material to a minimum. At most, I'd keep the info about the size of any racial write-up in a character creation book. If the setting is such that it demands it, include info about how the race fits into the world, how they behave amongst themselves, and what, if any, prejudices and assumptions they have about the rest of the world. This is the part where you're pretty much highlighting what makes them different from humans, what sorts of stories they are likely to have as a race. In all other ways, it should be clear, or at least safely assumed, that they are just like any other people.

3) Support the races in-world. Once you're in the game, the structures and social constructs of the world should reflect the people who live in it, and the GM's job is to convey this to the players in as seamless a manner as possible. Players are likely to look to NPCs for clues on whether a thing is common or unusual, good or bad if they have no other guide, and a couple of lines of dialogue can speak volumes about how the players should feel about a given situation or people. It's all right for there to be minorities and marginalized groups, or majorities that are not generic, but it's important for the world itself to convey that that actually means.

The example I can think of at the moment is actually pretty problematic-- Karnath, in the Eberron setting, specifically as run by Wombat. This is a place where Undead Soldiers are the norm, and the whole country supports that construct pretty completely. If we, the players, had been playing all Karnathi, the world did a very good job of playing this particular social construct up as normal, and we'd have had to do some twisting to not be at least tolerant of it. As it was, we all played people from elsewhere, at least one of whom had character reasons for objecting strongly. My character, being from a country that had formerly allied with Karnath (and which no longer exists), didn't really have an opinion one way or the other until very late, though she had some very strong in-game pressure to find the Karnathi Military Structure pretty darn appalling. I am marginally curious as to what would happen if we _had_ all been playing people who were raised to accept this situation as normal.

Permit me, for a moment, to refer to a thing that I mentioned earlier, about my problems with a culture that can only be viewed through the lens of a somebody else. That can be done well, and the ways in which it is done, interestingly, change the "point of reference" race/culture. Let's look at the Veytikka, for example. In a world where this race is common and reasonably accepted, it'd make a certain amount of sense for some non-Veytikka races to say, be all right with having established places to dispose of their dead, for Veytikka to come and clear away, in a symbiotic sort of way. Or to have some shady characters try to scoop up all the dead things before the Veytikka can get to them, and try to sell them back at a profit, controlling their food supply. It all depends on where you want to go with them, and if you're having the Veytikka be hunters who kill and eat their food raw, or if they say, disdain hunting and prefer finding as a cultural Thing.

But anyway, there is a certain point to be made there about the usefulness of humans-- it is easier to change them, and the way they see things or act, to accommodate their relationships to other races, than it is to do the same for races where one's understanding of them is learned. When we're talking about human vs. non-human, that's pretty much all of them.

I'll save this topic as it relates to non-European-based cultures amongst humans in Sci-fi/Fantasy/Gaming for another post, as this one has gotten really quite rambly and long.

So, more about my game... custom gods and feats.

In the company of Such Illustrious Game Designers (by which I mean thems what has actually found themselves paid for this sort of thing. Whereas I have only been paid for the heartless crushing of dreams), it is with a little trepidation that I offer up my humble efforts in this realm for scrutiny. Nevertheless, it is perhaps of interest to some few of you to see the ways in which I have potentially broken my D&D game horribly with a few extra Divine Feats.

To explain. In the setting I have created, a world called Liel, the most prevalent form of religion is called the Giedame. In this faith, each worshiper claims a personal pantheon of six gods, which may be any god in this setting, or any other setting for which rules exist in 4e-- and if rules/feat choices did not exist for a deity a player of mine wanted, I promised to make some up. As for setting deities, I provided the local pantheon of Ar'Siva, the island continent where the main of the game takes place. Entering the worship of each god allows access to that god's feats, which may be taken at any level. In the interest of avoiding tl;dr, I'll break this up into groups. So here's the first bunch:

The Hero-Gods (Atailan)

The Hero-Gods, Begaren, Vai'Varin, and Pi'kati, are called thus because of their roles in various myths and stories. It is not known whether they were once people who lived and were later deified, but the stories treat them as if they once, indeed, lived in the world like men.

Begaren

-- The God of Honor, Valour, and Nobility, his worship is common to warriors and those who value codes of honor above all else. In Ar'Siva, he is a favorite god of Military Knights, though his worship is more common in the other countries. His worship suggests proficiency with all manner of heavy (not thrown) swords and/or shields. His symbols are a sword cutting through tendrils of dark energy coming from below, or a shield with a hand and three orbs upon it, parting a wave of dark energy from above. Those who consider themselves Dedicate to Begaren may choose from the following divine Feats:

Shield Brethren

If you have shield proficiency, grant +2 to a defense as an immediate interrupt, once per encounter to one ally who is adjacent to you, or adjacent to the attacking enemy.

Sword Brethren

If you have proficiency in light or heavy blades and have a sword equipped, +1 to attack rolls for flanking allies using melee weapons.

Vai'Varin

-- The God of Humility, this god is never himself depicted, though like Begaren, he is considered a hero-god, and spoken of as such. His symbol is a common household item-- a shoe, a kettle, a broom, et al-- held singly, or on a plain field. Leaders benefit most from the worship of Vai'varin, and many warlords serve him. He is a common household god on Ar'Siva. Those who consider themselves Dedicate to Vai'Varin may choose from the following Background Feats:

Helping Hand

Adjacent Ally gains a +3 bonus to their surge value when they spend their second wind, +5 at 11th level and +7 at 21st.

50 Feet of Rope

You may spend your move action to grant one ally an extra 5 move before the end of your next turn. Allies who start a climb or a jump adjacent to you gain +2 to their Athletics check.

The Best Cook Ever

During an Extended Rest, you may sacrifice a Healing Surge to add +2 to all Allies Surge Value, as you are up cooking the entire time.

Pi'kati

-- the God of Tricksters and Rogues, he is a god widely worshipped by people in all walks of life. He is especially popular in Ar'Siva, in the country and among the proleteriat. It is not uncommon, apart from those who are of the Rogue or Bard profession, for someone to feel themselves Pi'kati's in Soul, and honor him thusly. His symbol is a four-holed flute with one hand open and one hand closed; sometimes with his grinning Face behind it. Those who consider themselves Followers of Pi'kati may choose from the following Divine Feats:

Unassuming Pickpocket

+2 to stealth and thievery or you may also treat Stealth and Thievery as trained skills, even if your class does not permit it. Once per encounter, you may make a bluff check as a minor action to gain combat advantage over an enemy within close burst 10.

Made You Look...

Once per encounter, as a move action, you may shift from a square adjacent to an enemy to another square adjacent to the same enemy. You have cover from enemies until the end of your next turn as long as you remain adjacent to that enemy.

Coming next: The Gods of Ascension and the Gods of Detriment.

I will also note that thanks to DDI, adding custom feats and making them apply correctly is really bloody difficult, and thus a hard thing to have 4e players do. Also, I have not really dealt with Divine Power dailies for these gods, except for Vai'Varin, as my Cleric and my Artificer worship him (The Rogue and the Avenger primarily worship Pi'kati). Still, the most efficient way of breaking one's game is through handing out utterly stupid custom magic items. But more on that later.

Are We Having Fun Yet?: The Mirror of Life Trapping.

After the last session of my game, it occurred to me that there were a few things that had happened that I don't think I could have pulled off in my other gaming groups. I am going to see if I can phrase this without giving away any of the things my party did not figure out, as they could still do some stuff in this room. But nu.

Lemme 'splain.

Basically, in one of the rooms there is a mirror of life trapping which, in order for there to be any real intrest or immediacy to the adventure, requires that one of the PCs fall into it, whereupon they are stuck in a small black room with no doors, and only one window-- to the room where they just were, where they can see and hear their party members, but cannot interact with them. Generally, they can't do anything now but wait until the party rescues them. This could potentially go very badly as more members of the party get trapped, which, after the first one, releases one random creature that had been previously trapped in the mirror.

If you are a gamer like my usual team, you are probably thinking, "Oh man, if that happened to my pc, I'd be so pissed off! I might walk out of the session. Sitting there trapped with nothing to do is not my idea of a good time. That would hugely suck. I feel so lame."

And you'd have a valid point. I have gotten hugely upset myself in the AE game upon falling unconcious, when, since I was all but out of spells, waking me up while the combat was going on would have been a serious waste of party time. That's right, I'm sitting there with nothing to do because, the way combat is structured, to do so would be sapping valuable rounds in which damage could be done, because there's no way to heal and do damage on a single turn, and AE doesn't really (as far as I know) have dedicated healers, unless, say, you went hardcore mage on nothing but the Positive Energy Template. But I digress. Being locked out of the action is no fun, and I can't deny that.

Nonethless, the players I have run through this have all really liked it (in the interest of full disclosure, the second time, I trapped a player who was going to be missing the session), and I am going through this here in part to try to suss out why, and also to justify why I thought this was a good idea in the first place. Anyway, here's the skinny on what justifications I can think of for why this might not just innately suck:

1) the puzzle /is/ avoidable.

The first two times, run in 2e and in 3.5e, you had a dex check to avoid looking in the mirror, and a will save if you did look. When I ran it just now in 4e, I had skill checks to avoid looking (with a bonus after the first party member got trapped, since they knew what it did), and the mirror made a +10 vs. Will attack (yes, against 1st level characters-- not looking is supposed to be the best way to avoid this) if you did look into it. After the first person got trapped, most of the party had no trouble keeping their eyes averted-- the Rogue kept covering it and uncovering it as they tried to get the Avenger out, flubbed one roll, and wound up getting caught also. Fortunately, by that time, they had figured out the keywords, and had no trouble getting the Avenger out. The Rogue... well, that's another story.

That said, if the whole party manages to avoid looking, you're fine. Also, when the party enters the room, I made a random roll to determine which of the 3 mirrors in the room (a heavily modified Mirror of Mental Prowess and a non-4e style Mirror of Opposition) is uncovered; the other two have cloths covering them. Which is a mixed blessing, as poking at the covered mirror may well get you trapped, when you don't know what's under there. But there are ways, such as utilizing the mirror of Mental Prowess, to figure out what is going on with the mirror and even solve the puzzle of it without a party member getting trapped-- if say, the party decides they want to free the other things that are trapped in the mirror.

Which brings us to...

2) There are multiple ways to solve the puzzle.

The first two times I ran this, the players solved it pretty much the same way, which was not even close to the way the 4e party solved it. Using the mirror of Mental Prowess (which worked kind of like an Infocom game in that you had to phrase things in very specific ways to get the results you wanted, but asking enough questions or even regular conversation where the mirror could 'hear' would eventually get you clues to help you out), the party figured out the passcodes to the Lifetrapping Mirror, and only wound up acidentally freeing one thing that was trapped beforehand-- and that one was friendly. There was another way they could have done it-- finding some other living thing (or the creature they'd released, an Orium Dragon Wyrmling) and forcing it to look in the mirror in hopes of releasing the party members randomly, and that option got discussed. Also, if they'd come up with something really neat, I'd probably have let that work. Actually-- well, here.

Because of a number of factors, one of which was that the Rogue was the one who had solved the puzzle of getting the passcodes in the first place, and had tricked the mirror of Mental Prowess into believing she was its master, I allowed the Rogue to make a skill check from inside the mirror to free herself. Doing so was narratively the right choice-- it served the drama of the scene, as for reasons of her own, the rogue bluffed the party into believing that they had actually freed her. One person made their insight roll and is now suspicious, which adds interest to the role play. On the other hand, I can't really claim that this choice was anything but DM Fiat, which topic ought to be another post entirely. But my thought, basically, is that in this case the players trust me enough to realise that if I see them not having fun with this, I am going to do my damdest to make sure they start having fun again as soon as possible. Also--(very tiny invocation of) rule of cool, which in this case is more, Rule-Of-Your-DM-Is-a-Narrativist. Which is yet another future post topic.

That said, I am curious about opinions as to whether this kind of thing is really too risky to run much-- I mean, overdoing the, "oh no, now you're trapped in something and have to be rescued" is no good, but on the other hand, dangers that aren't death seem like a kind of neat thing. Does it fall into the realm of, "This is Not Okay, and you should only do this if you want at least one PC to have a miserable session," "Naw, this puzzle is cool! Do it moar!" or "Well... run right, I guess this might be okay sometimes in moderation," as far as things that might actually ruin a game.

I suppose that part of the reason that I am wondering is because this is not a question I'd even ask myself in 3.x or earlier. I'd say, to any player that whined about it, "don't lawyer me, suck it up and deal. "Having played more 4e-- and just more, with more power-type gamers-- I worry about mechanics screwing things up a lot more, as I like the players knowing how the world works and how to use the tools they have to fix problems-- hence, my love of skill challenges. I've been very fortunate in having players that enjoyed 'stuck in a box' rp-- and man, the poor Avenger has been running foul of every trap in the dungeon, coz she doesn't like to check things out before she messes with them. Whoops. Anyway, I can't help worrying if this sort of puzzle is actually a Douchebag DM Trick(tm) that's squeaked by because I have players who have the patience for it and don't know better, or if it's really all right, and I've provided enough outs.

Anyway, tis something I am thinking about right now.

Also, I will add that this is something you should NEVER do in say, a LARP. Taking agency away from characters when they do not have the option to, you know, go get a snack or go to the bathroom or make snarky commentary around the table, and they have to be in character is a recipe for lameness all around. Also, your resources are very limited, so back up plans to salvage the situation are probably going to look even dumber. But LARP mechanics and Tabletop mechanics are two very, very different things. Well, obviously.

Yes, this is a reference to something that happened at Eclipse this weekend, though not to me. Still, it was a thing which reminded me that I wanted to make this post in the first place.

B's Game tomorrow, gaming schedule-wise. Delicious 12th level assassin antics.

Fun for all.

Indecent Indexes.

For ease of reference, I shall list the recurring games in which I am participating, of all genres. Coz otherwise... ja, confusing.

4e

• B's Game (Formerly Road to Bael Turath; original world based on Dust to Dust)-- Revenant Assassin, Hane Al'Druth.
• Eberron (Armistice, run by G., who also plays in Planescape and Chessenta)-- Tiefling Artificer, Ballast.
• Planescape (The Custodians, run by Standing In Fire, who plays in B's Game and Eberron also.)-- Aasimar Psion, Sa'réja.
• Chessenta (Book of Serpents, run by Standing In Fire) -- Wilden Shaman, Kinnav Vinnet.
  
• My Game (Keep waffling on a name, Original World + Old Skool Dungeon Crawl).

3.x and variants.

• Arcana Evolved (Cloud and Shade, run by Nemo.)-- Human Magister, Basel Atullican.

LARPs

• King's Gate-- Full time NPC.
• Eclipse-- Harper Kell, Imperial Swordswoman.
• Dust to Dust (Website in Progress)-- Campaign Committee.

Also, I play a level 57 (mostly) Holy Paladin on Whisperwind in WoW. I'm not actively playing any other MMOs at the moment due to crappy computer-having, but I actually liked Age of Conan-- probably the result of playing mostly the Destiny Stuff in Tortage.

Right now, perhaps my greatest personal tragedy is that I have neither time nor money to play much Magic the Gathering, as my old Magic group was a) through my old work and b) pretty much over it when Zendikar came out. I dunno about you, but after being used to the Alara Block and the ones before it, the name of which I forget and am too lazy to look up right now, Zendikar was way too slow and (in terms of mana cost for cards) expensive. I'm curious about the Scars of Mirrodin set, but-- once again, time and funds for Drafting. Meh.

Speaking of time, there are a few other things that I'd like to either run or play, and the first of these is a Psychic/Horror Game based on the Dawning Star setting, where I am still waffling on the actual ruleset I want to use. Dawning Star was written to be a setting for D20 Modern/Future, but I am not sure that I will be able to get the right horror feel for it. Call of Cthulu has some good things about it, but the sanity/mythos mechanic isn't really appropriate here. 4e has some interesting possibilities as far as cool terrain stuff and having combat that I adore, though psionics in 4e don't fit-- look for a post about how awesome is the setting psionic mechanism, Red Truth, coming soon. Some of the White Wolf stuff (as in the Second Sight splatbook) may be good, but not sure yet. Anyway, the plan is for this to be a 3 session (or so) short-run game with pre-gen characters. We'll see how that goes.

And that's the break down, as much for my own benefit as anyone else's.

...So, About My Game...

(Last Direct LJ Re-Post for a while, I swear. This one is, surprise surprise, after the first session of my current game. Context is so awesome.)

All right, finally, I'm gonna talk about the game I am running in specific. I have five players, all girls, only two of which (not counting myself) are currently playing another tabletop game. Two others have played before, but not for years and not 4e, and one has never played a tabletop game ever. The party makeup is as follows:

Juuntzi -- Shadar-Kai Avenger (Never played 4e)
Rory -- Halfling Trickster Rogue (Never played 4e)
Dhalia -- Deva Invoker (Also plays in Chessenta)
Aretha-- Deva Artificer (Never played tabletop before)
Dian-- Human Cleric (Strength) (Also plays in Planescape)

So, if you know anything about 4e roles, the first thing you'll notice about this party is that there is no defender. the Avenger has also spiked Dex, which was an interesting choice, but I believe she's gone with the Pursuing Avenger build, which is all right for that. The only one with a Strength score at all is the Cleric, which is all right since there is a second Leader in the party to heal her. The most interesting thing about that is how much of the party decided to go for daggers (the Rogue, the Artificer, and I think the Avenger are all using daggers)-- we'll see how that goes in the long run.

I suppose that the adjective which applies here is 'naturally'-- naturally, this is a fairly roleplay focused group, but the interesting thing that I've noticed is that there isn't really more rp than the other games I'm in. This may have to do with how, since everyone is pretty new, the level of tutorial and rules/strategy table talk is pretty high, and this group may want to cut it out later, but I'm unsure on that. There's a lot of table talk in my other games, and, at least in those, since pretty much everyone is involved in it and setting up what they're going to do, it doesn't slow things down too much. There are certainly games where it could, and I've been in games (though I've been playing 4e with pretty much the same bunch, so those not so much) where the chatter just got obnoxious. We'll see how it goes. Either way, the introductory bit, where the party got their instructions from the half-elf components merchant who has hired them, went pretty okay, and the party used it to help them get into their characters by and large. The Rogue and the Avenger, as it was pointed out-- probably by Dian or Aretha, I don't remember which-- are set up to be quite the pair of Trouble Twins, both being thieves by profession. The Invoker, Dhalia, and the Artificer, Aretha are fairly quiet by comparison, and Dian the Cleric is the grounded, Rational One.

A moment about Clerics in this campaign. All PCs have the option of worshipping a pantheon of 6 gods called a Giedame; they can choose from any deity in the game, or the ones I've created. They can only purchase god-related feats (or Channel Divinity powers) that are for a god in their pantheon, and, though it's a bit rules-breaky, I am allowing Clerics to use an extra Channel Divinity power that is specific to one of their 6 gods once per day, which does not count towards the 1 Channel DIvinity power per combat. I may also make that for divine classes in general, though I'm still mulling it over. I'm not really worried about the power level in this game just yet, though that may well change.

As they left the tavern and approached the curio shop which is the entrance to the Dungeon, I threw them directly into combat with a bunch of goblins that had come out of there-- the party is not sure why, natch. Being that this was my first time running a 4e combat, I went with a fairly basic spread-- 1 3rd level Goblin Hexer (controller/leader), two Goblin Warriors (1st level skirmishers) and 7 ist level minions.

The important thing to keep in mind about goblins, who are sneaky little bastards, is this right here:

Goblin Tactics (At-Will)
Trigger: The goblin is missed by an attack.
Effect (Immediate Reaction): The goblin shifts 1 square.

All of the goblins have this. This is compounded by the following power of the Goblin Hexer:

Incite Bravery (immediate reaction, when an ally uses goblin tactics, at-will)
Ranged 10; the targeted ally can shift 2 squares and make an attack.

But initially, they had just seen the two warriors, who were behind the rogue and the Avenger in the initiative order. So Rory and Juuntzi decided to try their hand at tanking, ran as close as they could, and started throwing daggers and oaths around, to some effect. The Warriors, being skirmishers, skirted the group and threw javalins, getting +1d6 to their damage if they moved at least 4 squares. Then came the minions-- all seven of 'em, dogpiling on the closest good guy-- in this case, the poor halfling.

Which is why controllers are awesome. When it came Dhalia's turn, her Area Burst 1 attack took out all but two of the minions, bam!

Then came the Hexer, who has a lockdown ability that resets, a blinding ability, and this awfulness:

Vexing Cloud (standard; sustain minor, encounter) Zone
Area burst 3 within 10; automatic hit; all enemies within the zone take a -2 penalty to attack rolls. The zone grants concealment to the goblin hexer and its allies. The goblin hexer can sustain the zone as a minor action, moving it up to 5 squares

After a couple of turns, the Warriors were finally locked down into melee with the Avenger, and the Rogue was locked down by the the Hexer's Stinging Gaze, which does 3d6+1 if you move on your turn once it's hit you (save ends). Un-fun. This is also the part where Goblin Tactics and Inspire Bravery started to really suck, as the goblin warriors kept getting an extra attack on Juuntzi, while trying to be sure that they were both adjacent to her at the same time. She did a pretty good job of this when it came time for her to use her Oath of Emnity, and poor Rory did the best she could with ranged attacks. So the Hexer decided to help out his buddies by dropping the Vexing Cloud on Rory, Juuntzi, and the Warriors, and then high-tailing it out of there.

At this point, the Cleric decides to charge the Hexer. And we start to get into that whole Economy of Action thing that I love so much. All class healing, and quite a lot of general healing is done as a minor action, which means that Dian can heal Rory after her pummeling, then charge down and try to smack that Hexer. Which she does successfully, because her melee basic attack is pretty darn decent.

But yes, you heard right, those of you who don't play 4e and don't know why anyone would. This is why. Because the party healer can heal you in combat, and also hit things ever. Also, most Leader powers, in addition to doing damage, hand out smexxy buffs to the party. This does not mean the other classes are short-shrifted, oh no, they can grant movement, combat advantage, knock things prone, and do all kinds of other stuff to help everyone out. So yeah, you're a team, in mechanic as well as attitude. And no one is useless. Really, you want everyone to be as effective as possible, because if you all as a party are running at max efficency, you are bloody unstoppable. It takes time to get there, of course, but yeah. It's a really cool feeling to me-- that no really, you'll pass up something that might upgrade you, if it means making up an item deficit for another party member. Also, resource management matters to everyone. No one is standing there looking and feeling useless because they're out of stuff-- only if they've gotten stunned or something. But I digress. If there had been no other changes but this, I would swear by this edition for it. But moving on.

Unfortunately, the Hexer's rolls were all really gross, and he wound up blinding poor Dian (save ends) and locking her down with a reset Stinging Gaze. Doubleplus not-awesome. She wound up going down shortly, as one of the warriors and the last were dispatched and the Hexer and the other Warrior tried to take off. Which is why having a second Leader in a Two Striker Party is so very good an idea. The Artificer, having not spent any of her heals yet, was able to get in close burst 5 and get Dian up within the round, and the party chased the Hexer down-- while being careful to stay on the outside of the gawd-awful zone that the Hexer was hiding in. The Avenger pulled him to the edge of it, and-- I forget who killed the last warrior-- but Aretha nailed the Hexer finally for Exactly Enough damage. It was at that point that I realised that the only one who did not have a magic weapon/impliment was the Invoker, who had had some issues with the fight-- fortunately, the Hexer had a +1 Hexer Rod on him, and she-- well well!-- uses a rod impliment. So that worked out well for everyone.

The party now being free to explore the curio shop and the dungeon entrance, they did so, and this is where I'll stop, though they did some more exploring-- one because this is getting very long, and two, because that encounter is not entirely over. I did it as sort of an informal skill challenge, which I think I would have preferred to have more... tight? Alors.

Anyway, I want to maunder on the topic of skill challenges some other time, but for now, sine.