Someone should put an end to this

I need to face the fact that I don't have enough time to regularly philosophize about games. I doubt anyone will even read this, but in case someone stumbles on these ruins, I want them to know, this is the end.

Please enjoy what litters these digital dungeons.

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.

Not back, just visiting, pt. 2

On a more usual note, I lost considerable interest in 4th Edition D&D about a week after release; I was really looking forward to the online tools. I hear a few of them are out now (or maybe just the compendium, I can't remember). And as much as I like the new rules, the adventures and other supplemental NPCs/monsters/items/etc. from the e-zines just didn't seem that interesting. The lack of an electronic GSL registry (and the requirement of registration) is more of a turn-off than the prohibitive license itself (since I just want to give my stuff away for free anyways, and D&D rules could provide me with a few handy shortcuts).

I'm probably not going to come back with a typical article of the type I set out to write when I started this blog, but rather very flavorful, genericised RPG supplements.

P.S. I think the most consistently awesome thing about D&D would have to be the art. I especially like the work they've been using since 4E's announcement. At the very least, it seems D&D products will always be pretty.

Not back, just visiting, pt. 1

I have miraculously discovered $15 in an online-transaction-ready account, and have yet another month of City of Heroes/Villains. My villain hit 50 about a month ago, and my hero is almost 20.

I never got into World of Warcraft. It was mostly because I didn't like the people there, and so I solo'd up to level 20. That was the limit of the trial account, and as far as I was concerned, I had accomplished everything I had set out to do. Did I mention I didn't like the people there? Wonderful areas, mildly interesting items/spells/etc. And I'll refrain from making generalizations about the players. During the 14 day trial I didn't meet anyone I'd want to associate with. That's just sad.

So when I started up City of Villains, I made a character that could solo. Oddly enough, the Brute archetype was also in high demand for groups - if you can take on a whole mission by yourself, you're very valuable for anyone's mission, after all. The nicest folks would invite me to team with them, do Strike Forces, mop up heroes and other villains. We'd talk about our new costumes and powers and beat the tar out of anything from petty thugs to rival archvillains, and of course the occasional hero. The City of Villains is populated by the most pleasant crime lords, demons and world-eaters you'll ever meet. It helps that I chose a medium/low-population server, too, probably. The folks hero-side seem to be a little more insular, although there are far more heroes online at a given time. Still, every one of them has been better than the folks I met in WoW, even the "hero" that logged in his L50 Blaster to toast me for beating him in fair PvP. (I swear my villain has saved the world more times than is right! Just what kind of game am I playing!?)

For both sides, it's a game centered around defeating enemies in exchange for resources that make it so you can defeat more enemies. It's been very cleverly set up so that the best way to get the most exciting enemies and powers most often, you have to work with other players. A major component of the game is also the costume and power selection. I've never met another player with a build like mine - I even get lots of "dark/stone/teleport? neat build" PMs. (It is a neat build, by the way. Could use more damage, but at least I'm tough as nails - or rock.) I've also never met another player with a costume like any of my 5 villain costumes or my hero's costume. (Which is also a source of occasional compliment.)

Anyways, City of Heroes/Villains. Buying one will unlock the other, now. Definitely worth the money, and that's coming from a stingy bastard. I play on Justice. (Although I have heard stories about the Freedom server... avoid that one, perhaps, if you're not sure?)

Star Wars

So I used to play the West End Star Wars game. It was a bit different than normal games of Dungeons and Dragons that I've had (if you could call those normal). Because of the game mechanics, I had bought a plastic case of all small 6-sided red dice - there were probably about 45 dice in all - and we called it the brick. Now, I made a childhood promise to the guy that worked at Gamer's (the game store) about never losing my dice. Maybe it didn't seem very important for anyone else, but this stuck in my memory. Possessions are very dear to me, both in game on character and things I physically own such as the dice. Out of everyone in the group, I was the one who cared the most about these things. I worshipped them secretly. On my desk I would have all my dice lined up in their original plastic cases, in order. You may remember my previous story about how I obtained my first set of sky-blue dice. Hold that as a reference point now for what you are reading.

We never spelled it out, but the rules of our group concerning dice were that whenever dice were left behind, they became the property of the person who lived at that location. I'm not the kind of person who would forget to pack up my dice - I always kept an eye on where mine were on the table - but once in a while I would notice that a few were missing from my set, so I would take a look through my friend's dice pouch (That's right. A pouch. All the dice thrown together in one place without regard to keeping the ones of a set together. Ridiculous.) and find a few that I knew were mine. This was a very difficult decision whether to take them back though. I summoned all my ethical skills that I had as a child and in the end found myself unable to reclaim the dice which were mine, even though I fully believe they were stolen from me.

To get my dice back, I would be going against the rules of our group.

I could not do it. It would have been traumatic for my young mind. Behaving with such disregard for rules and laws out of the game just could not be done because of all the illegal activities going on in the game. As you know, there are only two things in the Star Wars universe: Storm Troopers and Crime Bosses. Nobody wants to actually be a Storm Trooper, only obtain their armor which outclasses bounty hunter blast vests. So the only thing you're going to be doing in Star Wars is working for Crime Bosses to get credits to pay off those absolutely ridiculous black market fees. It was tough, but the only way do go.

I never saw that guy at Gamer's again. It might have been related to me never again entering the store, but I failed to keep my promise. My dice are gone.

Hi, atus!

My energy can be better spent elsewhere right now, so until further notice, my two readers, I will not be updating The Dungeon Blogger's Guide.

People-Food Dynamics

I was going to head over to a friend's for a game of Dungeons and Dragons. It was probably 3rd edition, I don't really remember. I don't think it matters though anyway for this story. Usually during a game, the host has a bunch of snacks ready for us to eat while we play, such as a bag of chips sitting out, or soda in the fridge. Well, I decided that it would be a good idea to bring over a food item this time. Cake is good; everybody likes cake, so that's what I made. I followed some recipe from a cooking book. This isn't about cooking food though, so I'll cut to the end of the story: the cake had a ton of butter in it, and for better or worse, the cake was the highlight of the day.

I don't know if this whole food thing whole food thing is actually a good idea or not. Depending on the type of food, it may serve as a great a distraction from the actual game. Of course, this all depends on how seriously the game you're running is being taken. If it's the type that's laid back, the game is just an excuse for meeting up with friends, it's completely fine since distractions are fairly common, such as conversations leading to tangents that have little to nothing to do with the game. For a serious game that's fun value comes from the mood it creates, a minimally distracting food would probably be best, and as players become engrossed it will become unnecessary.

When the game is being conducted over the internet, the food situation takes a different form. You can enforce a rule that all participants individually must have a specific food item prepared. This will result in a great success for a few reasons: food tastes good for those that have it. the promise of food will help with getting people to sign down to a specific time to play, you don't have to actually have food for other people, and people that are embarrassed that they don't have the food won't admit it; they'll just pretend they're eating food and no one else will have to know about it.

4th Edition: Unit Combat

I've put together what I think is a pretty good looking PDF that uses 4th Edition swarm-monster design for making swarms of humanoids - combat units! It should be similar enough to 4E that it doesn't distract from gameplay or feel like a separate system, but interesting enough to give large-scale conflict an interesting flavor when it comes up. Enjoy!

Law of the (Fantasy) Land

Your party has entered a small harbor town of your own design for a homebrew campaign. Right away that chaotic rogue gets everyone in trouble. The militia show up to the inn and shout, "Open up! We have a warrant for your arrest!" The rogue wants to know if he has the right to one long-distance telepathic collect call with A. (for Arthur!) Wizard (for Sorceror). Something strikes me as less than awesome about how this situation is being handled!

And it's a gross exaggeration of the point of this post: know your setting(s). While few people, at least in a semi-serious session, would tolerate such a modern (and nonsensical) spin on their fantasy setting, you may have a developed or developing republic. If that's the case, it doesn't make much sense to, later on (and in the same country), have people accept tyrannical oppression as a way of life or express loyalty to or admiration for the divinity of their leaders. Conversely, if the rogue is judged by a magistrate that expresses pride in having been appointed by the king, it's a risky idea to have NPCs (openly) complain about the un-democratic, rights-trampling tactics of the court; chances are, those NPCs don't have any rights to speech, either!

This isn't just about maintaining consistency, but about setting the tone for your setting. What do you want authority to represent? What are peoples' expectations regarding their rights? Is power a corrupting force, or can the common man aspire to it and do great things?

You may think these are dangerous subjects to cover in your game, and if you had your players actively developing the setting with you I'd agree. But until the players start playing, they don't have to know what kind of world they're being dropped into, and chances are they'll take whatever challenges you throw at them - whether it's toppling a military dictatorship or protecting the throne.

Just because they didn't sit up with you all night slaving away over the spiral notebook, designing the world, doesn't mean they still can't shape it. Once their characters are playing in the world they can become a driving force to hijack the setting and take it in the direction that they (and hopefully their characters) want it to go in. Take note of what the players do, and try to figure out why they do it. Are they uncomfortable with a dominantly evil setting? Do they just think all evil is meant to be vanquished? Will this become a limiting factor in future sessions involving similar themes? The foundation of your game's conflicts and the quality of their delivery hinge on these things.

Welcome, Zeefer!

That's right, anxious readers, I've added a new author, Chris K. from Zeefer Madness. Artist, cook and fellow gamer, I'm sure we're all looking forward to his nougats of wisdom.

In other news, I'll have the minimum weekly theme post tomorrow at 11am sharp. You almost get the feeling I have all these articles written up already in a vault somewhere, scheduled to be published even if I wake up dead in a ditch somewhere over the course of the next few minutes.

The Name of the Game

I originally thought I had until the first week of June to get this out, but some stores have jumped the gun and delivered/shelved early, and the internet is saturated with pirated copies. You know what I'm talking about. Dungeons & Dragons. 4th Edition.

With 4E on the horizon, the choice to switch or stick with 3.x (or even AD&D!) has been brought to many game tables. The argument has been raging for over a year on forums around the world, with each new snippet of official information being released sparking a dozen new debates on each board. Some people praise the mechanics; others condemn its redesigned themes. What's important is to remember that it's a game, and that means it should be about fun.

And that means it's going to be as fun as you let it. After all, finding a stick that looks like a gun can be fun; there aren't many things you can mechanically do with a stick, and its implied "themes" (when it's just a stick) are fairly limited. But it's a tool in your imaginative hands, for doing whatever you want.

Mechanics are hardly the most important thing about a game, unless they're both strict and complex. While chess would be very hard to enjoy if every piece behaved differently under variant rules, that's not the case, so everyone follows fairly similar rules, with negligible changes based on household or tournament. But Dungeons & Dragons is a wholly different animal compared to chess. Any given edition has rules that span volumes of manuals and magazines. D&D is complex. One might argue that it's more cumbersome to stick with an older edition plagued by layers of errata and third-party materials, than it is to start with a fresh set of rules, but that isn't the argument for here, and I don't think that should be the argument for your table, either.

The argument should be, "can we get something fun out of this?" If you can use the rules on Powers, if you like the way the new classes are organized, if you like the thematic elements of the new races and monsters, and your group agrees, it might be a worthwhile investment to get a group copy to pillage for ideas. The same can be said of any other roleplaying game system. Take Shadowrun, for example. Those are some involved rules! But a few of them might appeal to your or your group. While I was in the reality-survival phase of my DMing, my favorite Shadowrun concept was 10HP for all characters, no matter what. Oddly enough, a few D&D players agreed with me about that, and we adapted our rules to accomodate the HP range and played reality-survival-fantasy. (I got sick of that after both playing and running it for a little over a year, and ever since have supported straight-up fantasy, with survival elements for thematic purposes/dramatic situations only.)

One of the biggest complaints (from DMs) seems to be the 6-hour rest, at the end of which all temporary conditions are removed and all HP is restored. Some time after my bout with realism, I more or less began handwaving away whatever held my group back from continuing the adventure. They loved (1) not having to track little details across sessions that were sometimes months apart and (2) having fairly even footing at the beginning of each session. Everyone was always able to participate. Now it's in the rules. My advice if you want to slow down characters' recovery? Don't mess with the HP restoration. Add a "long-term injury" tracker. Maybe treat them like feats. "Shot in the leg" is a speed -2 penalty that lasts until three milestones are passed. "Stabbed in the lungs" is speed -1, CON -2 that lasts until six. I strongly advise against making tables for these things. Write down what injuries you make up so you can be consistent if you use that injury again, but try to improvise based on how the game is flowing. As amusing as it might be to roll a 1, consult the chart, and say, "laser enters eye, exits back of skull," you're going to lose the narrative control and future variety that improvisation provides.

By the way, it's totally an ancient egyptian laser beam in the example above.
(Third bullet in the list.)

Name change

I found out there's a full-blown e-zine out there called Save or Die, and all-crunch/low-fluff to boot. It doesn't seem like anyone out there is reading this yet, anyways, so this is for history's sake.

Tonight, this blog has been renamed "The Dungeon Blogger's Guide."

A little idea about enjoying your role

This is probably most true with DMs who use campaign guides and buy adventure modules, but even homebrew settings probably end up with lots of these: NPCs the players keep trying to interact with, that you absolutely hate, perhaps to the point where you want to just kill off the NPC.

You really shouldn't let yourself end up in that position. Don't let any NPC exist in your world that you would not enjoy portraying (but don't get too attached if the NPC also has to die for plot reasons). Even with NPCs that you know will die three or four sessions from now, feel invested in the character. If you're worried that your interests are too narrow and your world will be populated by clones, try finding an NPC's archetype on TV Tropes, and looks around at related tropes and find subversion examples. Chances are you'll find something that can make this character more fun, without applying your typical preferences to it.

The TV Tropes trick is especially helpful when dealing with other peoples' canon NPCs. It's your game table, so even when using someone elses' work, make it feel like your own. If you're not having fun, you've got to ask yourself why you're playing a game in the first place.