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!

"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.

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.

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!

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.)

Off-topic: 4th Edition Playtests

I'd like to stray from the intended path with a second post this week, about 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. There are forums out there full of criticism (as well as praise) for the upcoming rules change. I was decidedly opposed to 4E, at first. I bandwagoned with the cries that roleplay was being undermined, that the gameworld was being made unbelievable and non-conducive to deep storytelling.

And then to see if my points were valid, I ran a 4E playtest using what we know about the rules so far.

It's not so bad. As a ruleset for managing the world on your game table, Dungeons & Dragons still works. It's not a perfect system - some powers have damage outputs too high or too low for the situation, although that's the only problem I've seen so far. I know I'd rather be playing Shadowrun or Ars Magica, if anyone around here was willing to give it a chance. But that's not the case, and D&D (regardless of edition) seems to attract both experienced and first-time gamers like moths to a lamp. So, we use D&D.

I almost exclusively use homebrew materials at my gametable, blending campaign settings together like smoothies and taste-testing the combination with my players, but for 4E I'm using adventures released by fans on ENWorld.org. Despite this, I've been able to put my own spin on the game. It's also taught me that the story that the GM and their players tell is more important than whether or not there are rules for Tieflings in the PHB, or what the specific traps and monsters in room D4 are supposed to be.

So, I like at-will and per-encounter powers. I like the ability to throw hordes of level 1 to 3 enemies at my 1st-level party without utterly crushing them. I don't like Tieflings, I do like gnomes. I'll probably write a lot of rituals for the casters in my party, if the PHB doesn't have a good enough selection.

Yes, I'll take up 4E. I don't care if you do, too, or not. Play whatever edition (or game) you think helps you tell the most interesting stories. Save or Die will continue to focus on weekly, setting- and game- free thoughts on roleplaying in general: it isn't the rules that make the game, it's the people, and how they play it.