The ENnies are open!

[Link to the ballot.] I'm not going to suggest what you should vote for, and I'm not going to talk about my votes. A lot of cool stuff has come out over the past year. Support the products you like!

Ye Olde Elfyn Classe Changyng

I decided to drain some of the water out of the OD&D pool and dump it on the people swimming in 4E, and the result can be downloaded from 4shared.

You know how elves used to be able to choose whether or not they were fighters or magic-users, and be able to switch "when the moon rises" (or whenever)? I decided that the 4E Eladrin should gain that ability; and trying to keep both the description and the usage simple was no easy feat.

That was a pun. Enjoy!

More Late News

I tend to switch from news source to news source, and focus on different websites for different lengths of time, and then return to them later and consume their archives. So that explains why it took so long for me to discover THIS.

Last October, the Wizards of the Coast put up that article to reminsice about previous Basic sets while unveiling the 4E Starter Set. Something really cool, though, was including the 1977 Basic Set's sample dungeon, and the 1983 BECMI (first?) sample dungeon. It's always nice to see this stuff again, and straight from the source, too. It would have been amusing if they included a sample party and some super-lean rules to play with, too, but oh-well. ;)

Oh, and I know exactly what I'm putting up on Monday. Won't you be surprised!

Relax

It's just a game, I should really just relax.

I love OD&D. And Basic. And 4E. And whether I like it or not, I know 3.5E. I've played AD&D. I've tried Shadowrun, and Ars Magica. I've always wanted to play FATE. I've got a few other systems somewhere, and maybe a few scars from contact with cosmic horrors too terrible to remember. Some systems are open, some are closed. Some are clones. Some are re-imaginings. Some try to reinvent the wheel.

But you know what they all are?

They're games.

Someone, somewhere, is, or was, playing them, and enjoying them. Good for them.

So what will it be on Monday? A Pathfinder (Beta) side trek? A 4E monster? A Swords & Wizardry class? Maybe I can't make a name for myself with such an eclectic portfolio, or I'll scare away die-hards of one game due to the inclusion of others, but as long as even one person downloads something and has fun with it... you know what, not even that matters. This is the Internet, and there's plenty of space for me to say what I want and release what I please.

Enjoy, or not. I'll be that one person if I have to.

• An interesting discovery.
• If I felt like meeting more people, this guy would be #1 on my list of people to meet.

Small Correction

I mentioned in my last quick "little" post, gushing over the D&D Test Drive, that I think it would be cool and worth it to digitize old-edition books and sell the PDFs.

Apparently, many old-e books were available. I had a lengthy rant (strangely articulate considering it's 6AM and I'm not just waking up) but I decided to delete it. There's no need to go backwards in time to one of those mistakes that left us displeased with Wizards of the Coast.

I'd better cut this short, I feel like every draft I delete is angrier and more costly in XP of the soul.

"D&D Test Drive" from Wizards of the Coast

I just discovered this news article on the official Dungeons & Dragons website. It includes the quickstart rules for playing D&D 4E (six pre-made Player Characters levels 1 to 3 are at the end of that PDF) as well as the first 4E module, H1: Keep on the Shadowfell. I hear that the module's been updated, as well, featuring a bit of new content, and corrections/updates (enthusiastically touched upon at Eleven Foot Pole.) Oh, and it seems you can build a character yourself, if you don't like the pre-made ones!

Now this is something new, and completely awesome, and that's what I want to focus on. Sure, the D&D website has an archives/download section with old AD&D products and adventures that were once published; but those aren't for the supported system, those weren't put on shelves just last year. Sure, the D&D website had tons of 3rd Edition/3.5E adventures put up for free download, professionally written and designed to boot. But those were all, essentially, side treks. And sure, the OGL/SRD meant that the core rules were free to lookup for anyone, legally, but that wasn't exactly the intention.

But this is different. This is generous. It's tasty, like the old Tom Moldvay basic rulebook (which also only covered levels 1 to 3 - but you had to pay for it.) This is the kind of thing Wizards needed to do to hook people into the game.

Now, it's true that they had a running free trial... deal... thing... associated with their Dragon and Dungeon e-zines (the Insider subscription). But I'm sorry to say, that felt like more of an appeasement than an offer. The perception was that the features of DDi would be available with the launch of 4E, along with a lot of other things that may or may not have been promised. It's been a year now, and I hear it's still not where people thought it would be.

But this, it's a surprise. It's a gift. This is even better than all the pre-release excerpts (which were also generous). I hope it gets more people to pick up the game, and of course: buy the books. Or at least, generate some content of their own to give to the paying fans.

Now, Wizards can't just continue the trend and go "oh, when H3 comes out, we'll put H2 up for free." (Or they could, but it seems a little reckless.) I've got my own, rather radical ideas about what I think they should do; or more accurately: what I want them to do.

Because I really want to see old-edition PDF sales; really cheap, too, since this property is just sitting there, doing almost nothing for the company for the past decade except getting stolen. And what better way to announce that your classics are once again available than to provide some quickstart rules and a free starter module, to help old players remember the old days, and maybe introduce a new player into the wealth of content that was never before available to them? Sure, it would take work digitizing a library of game books, setting up the space, etc., but it doesn't have to be a "get this done" project. To see it done before, say, the next Summer Olympics, would be more than reasonable, but who knows; maybe by then, 4E and H1 will have gone the way of those "old editions," themselves.

Of course, if there's still time before 5E, then why not also update their old-edition adventures? They had an article on the subject, after all, and did just this (for free, no less) with the Tomb of Horrors for 3.5E. I dare say, if they updated a large and iconic adventure like, say, the Temple of Elemental Evil, then they could get away with charging for the PDF download (or even selling it.)

All-in-all, this is a sign that the Wizards of the Coast aren't going mad from lichdom, and it should be making the D&D players much happier than they seem to have been of late. I may even be inspired to get a few online sessions together this summer, perhaps seeking out people new to the game.

Ahem.

I plan on returning to this blog once summer is upon us again. This may evolve into a summer blog, even. As much fun as it is to speculate on the psychology (or would it be sociology?) of effective and enjoyable gaming, I think I'm just going to crank out cool adventures and supplements.

I'll be starting with some vanilla OGL/SRD work; D&D 3rd Edition is what I'm most familiar with, although the most fun I've had playing 3rd Edition never, with the exception of character creation, had anything to do with the rules. In fact, I often threw the written rules out and made up something simpler and more relevant "off-the-cuff."

I also kind of like 4E. I wish I had more chances to play it, so playtesting a short adventure could be a good opportunity for that. I'd also have to send in a Statement of Acceptance for the GSL. So exciting!

But what I'll really be excited about is "retro-clone" adventures (OSRIC? Labyrinth Lord? How shall I choose!?). Now, some of the oldschool conventions are bothersome, or didn't make any practical sense. For example, THAC0. I think we like to add more than subtract; we prefer to use positive numbers, and THAC0 encouraged the acquisition of negative AC. But all-in-all, classic gaming can be forgiven, because that was over a decade ago. I can be nostalgic now.

For me, it started with The Hobbit, far earlier than most people (or so I am told). Fantasy was amazing to me. A whole world, totally different and removed from our own. Totally under the influence of its creator without having to address disparity between the setting and reality. I'd learned by then that even the "future" was not immune to conflicting with reality: the 1990s were no longer the age of moon colonies and superhumans. So The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings shortly afterwards, opened my eyes to new expressions for creativity. And then my uncle brought out an old box full of books. But these weren't novels or storybooks. They were rulebooks. They were Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks, and modules. They were a framework for my creativity. Not only could I create a world of make-believe, I could share it with my friends, and AD&D could give us a common point of reference. Rules for the world we would play with.

Yes, I have a god complex.

And I've also got a soft-spot for those old memories, rolling my first dice, planning my first dungeon. Those old rules might be excessively "arbitrary" or lack the streamlined design philosophy of modern systems, but they worked. We had fun. So if the module is fun, and the DM is cool, and the players are there to have a good time, there's no harm throwing some nostalgia into the mix.

The Intarblags

Someone blogged about something on the Internet, of all places, and now I must blog about it too:

I shamelessly approve of this post.

There is no loot in it for the author, though.