Back to Whining... the State of the OSR... Again... and Simple Cantrips

For some reason at least once a year there is blowup followed by a ridiculous contest to determine what the OSR is and isn't. Rob Conley responds to this discussion better than I could. Check out his response. I agree 100%. We have a great thing going here. Digital tools and constant connectivity have given anyone the ability to create and publish. The only limiting factors are time and drive. I have the drive, but not the time... at least not for the next few years. I am just trying to keep this humble little blog up. It gives me a little space to rant, share some of the great buys I have made, and put some new things out there every once in a while. 

My last post promoted Wormskin 5 from Necrotic Gnome. And I just have to revisit this topic and say again that it is a great purchase. I want to point out that pages 12-15 feature a simple hex crawl system which when bolted onto either your own awesome map, or any randomly generated map (which is now your new awesome map) is a great procedural tool to simplify a DM's life while keeping hex travel interesting. I have basically printed these pages off and pinned them into my screen.

I also want to bring your attention to 2 new blogs which I am now following:

Drink Deeply of the Goatman's Goblet: An Old School style blog which has a dark-fey feel (like the Dolmenwood) to its content. So far I most like his posts about fantasy canine companions; there is also a boy adventurer class which seems like it could be kinda neat too.

Coins and Scrolls: Another OSR style blog which focuses more on D&D generally with some Star Wars thrown in for good measure. The blog features a series of posts that focus on different wizard specialists. There are some great ideas in these articles... especially the summoner. I may not use them in my game right out of the posts, but I am going to use these posts for some inspiration as I look at specialists in my own game.

Joesky Tax (...and now for something gameable!) D6 Cantrips for Magic-Users/ Specialists:

I love the simplicity of skills in older editions of D&D. At first they didn't even exist. Then they were something that was slowly added in bits and pieces and there were many approaches taken. One early method used to model racial skills/ abilities: simply rolling a d6 was, and still is, an easy way to come at it.

As I start looking at how magic is going "work" in my Boreal Bohemian Borderlands campaign, I want to have some way to include cantrips for MUs and specialists. I want wizards to be able to do the basics without putting themselves at risk as well as having a simple system for hedge magician NPCs to employ basic spells, rituals, and magical wards. Cantrips are basically like skills. These are the day-to-day bullshit things which a Sorcerer uses magic for while the rest of us schmucks have to get down on our hands and news and apply some physical effort and sweat.

Last year JB suggested using a d6 to represent magical skills as cantrips. It is simple and easy but still allows for successes and failures. I need magic to be Vancian in nature but at the same time it is not a 100% fire and forget thing. You have to work and train and et stronger over time.

The list of cantrips I am starting with mirrors JB's list. Players, feel free to come to me if you think your PC needs access to different cantrips. We can always add to the list.

The list:*

1. Charm of Opening
2. Dowse for Traps
3. Ignite
4. Premonition (detect creature/ presence)
5. Revelation of Secrets (doors, etc.)
6. Scent of Water

* See JB's post, linked above, for fuller cantrip descriptions. As a rule of thumb, ranges are in multiples of 10 feet multiplied by a factor of the character's level.

MUs, including specialists get 8 pips to apply to the cantrips listed above. Characters get 2 pips to add to their totals every time they advance a level in their magic using class. One's skill in any cantrip (measured in pips out of maximum of 6) can never be higher than the character's current casting class level plus 2.

Next Post: More shilling, plus Dwarves talking to rocks.

Save vs. Simplicity: my conversion/ reversion to classic saving throws in D&D and a new rules set

Work commitments have combined with a few of my players moving away to put actually playing games on the back burner... again. This has given me some time to work on my game as a mechanical system rather than working on prepping for gaming sessions.

One way I have found to expand the pool from which I draw players is to include my daughter and a couple of her friends who seem to be pretty interested in dorking out with some d20s. As a DM I need to alter my game in two ways. First, toning down the content a bit while being more selective about who comes over to the house to play. The other consideration has to do with the game mechanics I use and their complexity. Though my new players are quite familiar with dragons, ogres, etc. they are not familiar with base-attack-bonuses (I use ascending AC), saving throws, etc. I need to cut out some complexity to make it easier for a party of beginners.

The first piece is easy. The second piece requires a little more work. I have been looking at the mechanics I use and have decided that they either need to be simplified, so that they do not slow down new players or that I need to be sure that the "work" is done on my side of the screen rather than on the players' side. That leads me to saving throws.

There has been a lot of chat in the OSR/ DIY D&D scene concerning saving throws (here, here, and here) and it has inspired me to take a deep look at how I approach saving throws. When I was first introduced to D&D I had no problem with the classic five-fold save system... other than knowing that every time I rolled a save I was trying to dodge a certain death. In fact the names of the saves were kind of evocative, and bizarre. When 3x hit the shelves I embraced the new universal d20 mechanic which yielded three ability score-based saves (basically three ability score checks). When I returned to D&D and discovered (or rediscovered) the OSR and old school D&D I dug around for a clone that would work for me... and found Swords & Wizardry and have adopted many hacks which have been bolted on to S&W and have created some of my own. The single save of S&W seems simple enough, And it is. But I do miss the classic saves... everybody dreads hearing their DM say, "save versus death!" The five-fold saving throw system is bizarre and even a bit cheesey (maybe), but it is D&D. After years of getting used to them and then pitching them for "modern" innovations, I am going back to the classic saves. They may seem kind of crunchy. They are not. It simply requires writing four more numbers on each character sheet.

So deciding on the classic saving throws also got me thinking about the clone I have been using. I do love S&W. I did the Kickstarter for S&W Complete and proudly show off my signed hardcopy. But S&W does not support the five-fold saving throw. Instead of just ripping them out of the Rules Cyclopedia I have decided to give Lamentations of the Flame Princess a try. It features the classic saves. LotFP is attractive to me for other reasons as well. Not the least of which is, like S&W, free PDFs are available so that my players can pick up the rules and get going with just a few clicks. The other components of LotFP which I am drawn to will be detailed in later posts.

Universal AC Compatability... Moving Toward a Rosetta Clone

Paul, over at his blog, The Blog of Holding, talks about establishing a community standard for use when we discuss AC. Whether you favor descending or ascending armor class in your games there has to be a simple, easy to transfer from method to method, manner to notate and discuss AC; whether you favor descending or ascending AC.

There is, and it seems that all Paul had to do was consider how we think about and notate bonuses and penalties in D&D... a bonus is always a "plus" and a penalty is always a "minus" whether you prefer descending or ascending armor class.

Do you remember the first time you picked up and played Moldvay (or Holmes, or AD&D, etc.)? A naked humanoid had an AC of 10 and when he put on a suit of chainmail his AC improved by 5 to become a 5... huh? An armor class modification of plus 5 translates to AC's the actual numerical value decreasing by 5. So a suit of chainmail +2 improves a character's armor class by 7. Improving his AC to either a 3 (descending AC) or a 17 (ascending AC). So a simple method we can use to record AC values, making them accessible to all dungeon masters and players, is by just annotating the vale as the AC modifier.  Thus a suit of chainmail has an AC value, or modifier,  of +5.

Without even thinking about it I have been doing this for quite a while. Take a look at the AC values of the first few pieces of equipment on this list.

More on Home-Schooling and the OSR

First check out this post by Noisms.

Then read me agreeing with him. 

To me what Noisms is saying is that D&D is great and is still played not just because it was the first table top RPG but because we have all bought in to it as a game... as a franchise... as a scene... as a whatever you want to call it. The point  is that we have taken ownership of the game and have made it our game... or games. The D&D played at my house is my D&D and the D&D played at your house is your D&D. 

The edition wars have ended. And we can all enjoy playing D&D, whether you are playing my Home-School S&W game or you are playing my buddy Kurt's 4th and a half edition game (his game is still alive even though his blog is not). No matter what your game is about... elves with swords or gorillas with plasma pistols, if it has six ability scores, d20s, and gold pieces it's D&D!

This is what the OSR/DIY D&D scene is about taking the D&D game that you play at your table and making better... and better... and better.

Home-Schooling

I have to say that I love Dyson's great new-ish "Isometric OSR" and that I would be proud to display it along the right side of my blog like so many others have. But after thinking about it for a minute or two, I realized that posting the OSR logo on my blog might not be entirely genuine of me. I am not really the strictest of OSR gamers. I do have the proper pedigree: I am of the "right" age and started playing with the "right" editions of the game (Red Box to start with, eventually moving on to AD&D). And I do still love those older editions of the game... I regularly retreat to the Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia when I need to get some clarification on some little detail or just for a little inspiration.

I do have a link to Matt Finch's A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming on the right side and I do use Swords and Wizardry as my base rule set, but I am still not sure if I am really an OSR gamer.
Maybe it is just because I am unsure about hitching myself to any wagon, even a wagon which I do so often identify with like the OSR.

I have been looking for a name for my own style of game, and I have come to calling it "Home-School". First of all... it's my home game with my house rules and hacks (many of which I have borrowed from the online community). Second it is like school, partially in the old school sense and also in the sense that my gaming table is a little like school, for both me and my players (some of them are new to gaming so it really is school for them... gaming school).

New Blogs Added, Space-Age Sorcery, and Petty Gods

I have just added a few great blogs to my blogroll (right side). I have been following them for a while now. They are Swords and Stitchery, Gorgonmilk, and Heretikwerks. They are all great sources of OSR materials but I see them more than just great sources of inspiration for my own game; they have taken up the challenge and become creative centers of OSR knowledge packaging and re-distribution.

One great example of their work is this amazing new download at Heretikwerks: Space-Age Sorcery. If you want to bridge the gap between magic and technology, this is a must have. The greatest thing about it is that it doesn't create loads of new rules to make technology and magic work together... it just creates techno-spells that effect robots and other machines.

Another example is the work that is going on at Gorgonmilk. Greg has cast Resurrection on the corpse of James M's Petty Gods project... and upon rising from the dead it has become more powerful than ever just like Obi-Wan Kenobi and JC. Today sees the release of the original Petty Gods (download it here) compendium, an homage to the old Judge's Guild publication Unknown Gods. A grander, expanded version  of Petty Gods is in the works as well. I can't wait! BTW, I will have a little goddess in there of my own.

I think that Greg's banner (above) expresses the new force within the OSR scene... moving from the "Old School Rennaisance" to what I think should best be called the "Open Source Revolution". Even the most popular clones out there are open source. Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord, and Lamentations of the Flame Princess,  the most popular 1st Gen D&D clones, all have free versions available for download. That is how I first discovered these games a few years ago. Greg and the rest of the gang have become the new locus of OSR attention and they are producing some awesome resources.

There are other great blogs out there which have been inspirational to me as I have jumped back into D&D and turned to my D&D roots. I will detail some of them in the future.

Combat: Lethality, Predictability, and Simplicity.

I have been following the great blog, Dungeon of Signs, for a few months now and I have to say that I love Gus' take on gonzo sword, science, and sorcery classic D&D. In fact Gus' play reports are what turned me on to Anomalous Subsurface Environment which arrived last week. A great purchase!

In addition to the piles of great content (tables, house rules, etc.) and play reports that Gus posts, he, from time to time, discusses his take on gaming and DMing. In this post he reduces running combats down to answering three simple questions. Should combat be...

1. Lethal vs. Obstacle?
2. Unpredictable vs. Managed?
3. Simple vs. Complicated?

Gus discusses the varied implications on play of how a DM answers these questions. I would have to say that, in my game, all of the answers are pretty much down the middle.

Lethality:
Lethality in my games is a real risk. PCs die and my players know that I am not going to pull punches. At the same time, death is usually the result of bad play (i.e. making bad choices) though a few horrible rolls might still be enough to do someone in.

Predictability:
I do like to throw a monkey wrench into the action once in a while... I do use critical hits and misses for combat and spells too, which certainly adds some chaos and danger. But generally my game is pretty predictable. Items which are consumed over time (i.e. oil, torches, etc.) are metered and consumed or exhausted with die rolls (e.g. a torch is consumed by rolling a 1 on 1d6).

Simplicity:
I like to keep things pretty simple. The crunchier bits I like to take care of behind the screen. The crunchiest thing I have in my game is a spell casting roll (see my Magic tab). I am also hacking the new martial class/combat dice systems from the D&D Next playtests into my game. Character creation is not like it was in 3.5/PF, choosing not completely understood options from massive lists; it has become more of a Chinese menu thing... choose one option from each of the 4 following columns. Rolling up a new character takes a about as much time as it did when I played AD&D/2e.

Plumbing Dungeons for Loot... The Holy Quest.

Check out this great post by Father Dave.

Rarely do we make connections or differentiate between what our characters "do do" and what they "should do". Most parties tend to be made up of a combination of, at best, charming rogues and, at worst, murderous thugs. Just check out his post post about the mega-dungeon as a holy quest for enlightenment.

100+ Page Views!

I just want to say thanks to those who have been keeping an eye on and reading this blog. This blog entry concerning skills and task resolution has gotten over 100 page views. In the mainstream of the OSR/DIY universe that may not seem like much. But here, in this little corner, it is a pretty spectacular thing. After many slow starts and restarts, things are going a bit better at The XP Experience.

D&D, VTT, and Me (Part 2)

My previous post laid out some of the changes I have made to my D&D game to make it run more fluidly (my players not rolling dice ad nauseum with piles of modifiers or constantly consulting tables for random effects). I have accomplished this in two ways. First, I have adopted a lite version of the rules (basically the D&D Next playtest) upon which I am bolting on my own hacks and systems. Second, I have taken the randomization of the universe upon myself: I have many tables which I have been using behind the screen to keep things fresh. The inspiration for my tables has mostly come from the DIY D&D blog-iverse.

I have laid out the basics of what I am doing now, but many do not now know exactly where I am coming from. I am an old-ish D&D player. I have been playing regularly since 1990 (though I first dabbled in D&D a few years before with the Red Box). The first book I bought was the 2e PHB, and I still own it. We played a mash-up of AD&D and 2e, taking what made sense from each rules set.

After a break of quite a few years I returned to D&D through 3x in the early 2000s (like many of us out there) and have been playing regularly ever since. I have come away from 3x liking many of the rules "innovations" from this edition. After moving to Europe a few years back our old group had to take a break from gaming. With the introduction of 4e and the push for VTTs, we started up again. We looked to 4e to invigorate our game and to re-connect our group. We were initially pleased with the newest edition of our old game. We used Skype as a talk channel and used the Fantasy Grounds VTT as our online gaming table.

I do not want to come off like an edition warrior; play D&D however you like to play D&D... just roll some dice and get some XP. Even in the "old days" every game was different from every other game. We all had house rules back then just like we do now. But, after a year of playing 4e we were tired of it. The rules heavy, encounter-to-encounter style of play combined with the need for long periods of preparation required to have a good game had started to wear on us. We decided to switch back to something more like what we had started with when we were kids. It fell to me and another one of the guys to begin searching for something new... or old.

At about that time (a year ago, give or take) I stumbled into the online OSR or DIY D&D blog-iverse. I saw what was going on in other peoples games and saw that they were doing the same thing I was: trying to find, build, and cobble together the best forms of D&D for themselves, and then they were sharing their experiences through blog posts and published materials with the rest of us. You can look to the right to see which blogs I have gotten the most out of. Most of the hacks that I use in my game have originated from one of these blogs.

So, now we are basically playing a D&D 2.5 hack. What about the VTT? Fantasy Grounds is a great tool and I am glad that I purchased it, but we have decided to pitch it and have found that using a simpler method to play online is more our style. We have followed the lead of many others and have gone to G+ gaming, using Twiddla as a shared, online mapping tool. I am a signatory to the FLAILSNAILS Conventions and eventually I will be putting some games up on ConstantCon.

So, this is where I am. The tabs above are not all updated yet, but I am working on it. This information is for all current players in my game, future visitors to my home campaign: Saedom, and for anyone to look at get some inspiration for their own game.

D&D, VTT, and Me (Part 1)

Back to my own comments,the growth that I have made since as a DM, and how my group is now playing Dungeons & Dragons.

First, as I have said before, I am not an edition warrior. I had wanted to explore my own way to finding a new edition of D&D, trying my best to recreate the style of play that we had when I was a kid and first started playing during the TSR era of D&D. I had pretty much settled on going for a 2e/3x hybrid which I had been working out on my own... then the D&D Next (5e) playtest hit and I found a good base onto which I could bolt on my own hacks (house rules). The basics of the rules, to me, feel like 2e with a move towards the 3e universal mechanic... kind of like D&D 2.5. I have found the addition of the advantage/disadvantage system to be both lite and elegant.

In addition to basically playing D&D 2.5, I have added my own hacks which have sped up play by cutting through the superfluous rolling of dice and by taking mastery of the rules and systems which I have selected upon myself (some of which are based on the work of Zak S, Jeff Reints, Brendan, and others). Some examples are the hacks which are listed under my tabs above (20 Questions, Encumbrance, etc.). A lot of the hacking I have done effects the game that I am running behind the screen, making my life as a DM easier and making the game more fair for my PCs; sometimes random, crazy shit happens and I have a pile of great tables and lists which I have been developing to help me run my campaign instead of just picking what should  happen next ad hoc: I have implemented a system of carefully planned randomness.

My next post will continue my exploration of what is going on in my Saedom campaign and some of the other tools which I have been using to level up my D&D game.

More on the Future of D&D

Since having made my last post I have been doing some more reading on the subject of the future of D&D. The sources I was consulting included the blogs Bat in the Attic and OEF. Both authors refer to Ryan Dancey's recent rant about the coming doom of D&D and pen and paper gaming as a whole. For those of you who are not quite sure who Mr. Dancey is, he is/was a game designer and was, in fact, one of the designers who was involved in the complete overhaul that D&D received as it moved into its 4th edition, but more importantly Ryan is one of those who made playing D&D the way we do possible... he is on of the minds who was originally behind the Open Gaming Licence (OGL).

Before I get into the meat of this post, I need to say one thing. I am a fan of virtual table tops (VTTs) in table top role playing games (TRPGs). In quite a few of my earliest posts I talk up the merits of using VTTs in D&D. I have been using Fantasy Grounds for nearly two years with my group and we are quite pleased. Fantasy Grounds in conjunction with Skype has allowed us to keep playing even though we are separated by thousands of miles.

So, for a quick recap: either (according to Mr. Dancey) D&D and TRPGs generally are doomed, or (according to much of the blog traffic in the D&D Old School Renaissance (OSR) scene) the industry is changing and while it now provides few (and in the future, fewer) opportunities for large publishing houses to populate the market with their products, it does provide opportunities for almost anyone who has a great idea to get out there and to sell it to the gaming community.

I have to agree with the rest of "us" out there... sorry Ryan. This is a great time to be a D&D enthusiast. Digging into the past a bit we have to look at the OGL. According to Dancey:

"We wanted to ensure [the division of 2nd edition vs. 1st] did not repeat, by trying for an (unobtainable) goal of 100% conversion...The OGL was a big part of making that possible...it let hundreds of developers fill in the niches that Wizards didn't have the time or the inclination to do itself, including a lot of content desired by 1st and 2nd edition players."

This is the point at which the modern OSG movement first got going. Third party publishers happily seized the opportunity Wizards of the Coast had provided them. The market for new, old gaming products exploded. I remember getting back into D&D through 3rd edition in 2000. It was a great time to be rediscovering The Game. One of the publishers I got into at the time was Necromancer Games. The name says it all... their products brought a darker feel to the game. They had (and still have) some great products. I loved their goal of bringing a "1st Edition Feel" to 3rd edition gaming.

The movement continued to grow. According to Dancey :

"[3rd edition] was the most successful RPG published since the early years of 1st edition AD&D...It outsold the core books of 2nd edition AD&D by a wide margin. I attribute some of that success to the OGL and to the massive amount of player network support the OGL engendered."

Dancey cuts right to the core. It was the player support which made, and has made, 3rd edition a success. The Pathfinder TRPG has picked right up where D&D left off when it re-edition-ed D&D and 4th edition in 2008. Armed with blogs and high-speed internet we have taken control of our own D&D games. The days of TSR are over. The release of 4th edition D&D (a game I tried to love) splintered the D&D community. The community can now be reduced to a series of different mini communities all playing D&D their own way. House rules have come out of our cellars and are being published both on blogs and in actual manuals. Big publishing firms have lost control of The Game. It has become everybody's game. Even so, Pathfinder continues to be the D&D center of gravity. It is the most successful RPG on the market today. Basically D&D is not being sold as D&D anymore... amazing. The age of long tail economics in gaming is upon us, and I think it is great. Armed with the OGL, a huge file of PDFs and my gaming group I am nailing down my own version of D&D. It takes inspiration from every edition of the game as well as some other great D&D variants that have come my way, such as Conan d20 and Mike Mearls and Monte Cooke's alternate D&D series of products: Iron Heroes.

Now back to VTTs. Today the game may look differently when you see it played. e.g. I don't play in my parents basement anymore, now I play in my living room; we leave our books behind and bring our laptops (for easy access to our PDFs of the rules), etc. So now I use Fantasy Grounds and it is great. My group should start playing again in a few weeks. We have had a 6 month sabbatical because of a work conflict. We are going to follow in Zak's footsteps and try out G+ and join the ConstantCon rather than using Skype. We will probably also be running Twiddla allowing party members to quickly scratch out maps and whatever else they may need. We will still be using Fantasy Grounds, it is great for running battles and mapping in Fantasy Grounds makes running combats easy.

Joesky's Tithe: Actions in Action

After having played D&D for years I have often found it hard to nail down exactly what I could or could not do (as a player) or allow my players to do (as a Dungeon Master) in a round. Until 3rd edition I never really knew exactly what I was allowed. In 3rd edition I finally got some clarification, but it was a bit wordy and convoluted. 4th edition, in its drive to be a "DM-less game" nailed it down and they did a great job (it's one of the handful of things they got right). I am going to be going with a very 4e-esque method for categorizing actions in my D&D Mashup:

Move Action: This includes any sort of movement. It can be running, swimming, etc. Move actions typically draw attacks of opportunity, but they do not when a character takes only a "free" 5-foot step. 5 feet typically equals one square on maps used for running encounters. Each character gets one move action per round.
Standard Action: Typically involves a large amount of effort or concentration. Attacking with a weapon or casting a spell are typical standard actions. Each character gets one standard action per round.
Minor Action: Drinking a potion or drawing a weapon are minor actions. Minor actions involve limited amounts of concentration to be done well. Each character gets one minor action per round.
Free Action: Yelling to an ally is an example of a typical free action. A character may have many free actions in a round.
Interrupt: An immediate interrupt occurs when one of the above actions occurs out of sequence; e.g. waiting for a trigger before executing a declared action. These can be immediate interruptions or as reactions to actions that occur during combat. The amount of interrupts that a character may have is dependent upon the situation.

More Rules:
1. A round (not a turn!) is 6 seconds long. 10 rounds equal a minute.
2. Many effects will last until then end of an encounter; e.g. counting rounds to see how long a Bless spell lasts is no longer be necessary. Another rules innovation from 4e (though I have been doing this for years; as a DM I would rather concentrate on keeping the fight interesting for the PCs rather than counting down how much time a spell still has in play; furthermore I have found, over the years, that most of the time spells stay in play for whole encounters, so this is pretty much a moot point). 

New Year, New Old Discussion.

After having settled back into home life (I was away with work for quite a while) I have started delving back into the dungeons of D&D. I have started catching up with the blogs which I follow. On Bat in the Attic I found a few links to three smart, simple articles from the The Escapist.

Basically the articles work to lay out a simple past and present of D&D while also making some dire predictions concerning what may come in the future.

After having read these articles, I feel a bitt more grounded in where The Game is right now. I feel like I have missed a lot in the last six months; these articles have let me know that not too much has changed. Some things certainly have changed though... for the better. Some examples: my Dungeonmorph Dice have arrived and they are awesome; James M. over at Grognardia has been busier than ever, releasing Thousand Suns while closing in on releasing the Dwimmermount Codex and the Petty Gods supplement; and Zak S. over at Pornstars seems to have inspired/led/traced the birth of the online Google + gaming scene which he calls Constantcon.

After having caught up a bit, I do not feel that D&D is in the bad shape that Hasbro seems to feel it is in. Yes, D&D is not going to be a big brand at Hasbro. And this is ok with me, Hasbro is not in my emerging markets portfolio. But, there is a huge market out there and there are great products out there. The DIY/OSR community continues to produce great products and they just keep getting better. And Pathfinder continues to grow, giving new players a place to ground themselves before they jump into the water and start creating their own games.

I totally agree with what Mike Mearls... lets cut the collective "bullshit" and play some great games. Others are saying this too.

Interlude: What We Do

I just want to throw this out there. I saw this and knew that I had to put up a link.

What do we do when we play D&D?

You can find the answer in this post.

My next post will still be:
The Geomorphs Have Just Leveled Up!

My D&D 4th Edition Legacy

So... After deciding to ditch 4e and move on to... or back to... 3X/PF I started to examine 4e and to focus on the strong points of of 4e. The right things that WotC did with 4e focused on slimming down the rule requirements for getting through a combat encounter: a simplified combat sequence for characters (free, move, minor, and standard actions), the removal of book keeping from dealing with the durations of spells and other abilities, and the standardization of stat-blocks for spells, abilities and monsters.

The first change: the modifications made to what a character can do during a round, simpley taking the guess work out of what a character can and cannot do in a round. The different actions in 4e are intuitively named. With 3X/PF, in the past, we had trouble figuring out what could and could not be done in a round. The problem revolved around dealing with standard actions, full-round actions, swift actions, etc. The naming of the actions in 3X/PF does not give much information about what one can do during the different segments. There was also the problem of having to choose between different action combinations, cobbling together different actions to best execute a character's activities for a given round. Often, we had to resort to consulting our D&D books to be sure we were using the differing actions correctly. Over time we kind of broke this component of 3X/PF; the lines between the different actions became blurred. The result was that, too often, a player would come up in initiative without being sure about what his character could or could not do. The DM would have to referee what a character could and could not do.This sounds great... right? DMs making rulings and running their games... instead of allowing the rules to run their games. But that is not what was happening... our DMs were turning into time keepers rather than referees. In fact, having to help manage the PCs' time clocks made it harder for our DMs to run their games; it was just one more distraction keeping them from focusing their attention on running their games.

4e simplified durations of spells and abilities. Basically, in 4e, everything has a duration of either a complete round, the remainder of the encounter, or the remainder of the day. This was a great, simple innovation. It took the book keeping required to track durations out of the game. During a combat, either an effect will last until the end of the encounter, it is very limited in duration (1 round) or it has run its course. In any case, the tracking required to keep a handle on what is going on, effects-wise, is minimal. In previous editions durations differed from one spell or ability to another, making the tracking of effects a hefty task for DMing any encounter.

The final change that I will be bringing back to 3X/PF with me is using a unified stat-block for spells, abilities and monsters. This simple innovation has eliminated the need that had slowly crept into the game of having to consult rulebooks to get through a session. The problem I did have with this in 4e was that the blocks tended to suffer from giving too much information. e.g. NPC/monster stat-blocks iclude the creatures' ability scores; the actual strength of an orc beserker is not important to me as a DM or a player... I only need to know what the attack and damage bonus modifiers are!

The only pushback I can see from bringing any of these 4e elements into my 3X/PF is the often heard critique of 3X/PF and 4e is that they have sacrificed the overall experience of playing and DMing D&D into a tactical game in which balance is more important than having a fun gaming session which flows from event to event. I agree wholeheartedly with Justin at the Alexandrian: D&D is not a tactical game. D&D is an RPG in which tactical encounters play a critical role. Balance is not required to have a great time playing D&D. In fact, I would have to say that balance can even hurt the game, taking away from the overall D&D experience. The strange thing about this critique is that the question of balance, in this case, would be reversed: gamers complaining about the lack of balance which this 4e mechanic brings into 3X/PF.

Finally, I want to say that I am not the only one out there doing these things: pulling elements of 4e back into older editions of D&D. I stand on the shoulders of giants. Almost nobody plays D&D right out of the box. Barad and Zak at gnotions and Playing D&D With Pornstars have talked about their own edition-mashed, house-ruled games. Further, the notion of bringing stat-blocks from 4e into other editions is also not totally my idea. Though, I have slimmed down the stat requirements that I use to run NPCs and monsters, I owe the idea of bringing a standardized stat-block into other edtions to Justin and Zak. Thanks, Guys. My next post, Dungeon Doors, deals with a simple mechanic for running doors in your dungeons.

Moving Forward to the Past: Back to 3rd Edition

Continuing from last post:

The second element of 4e that has pushed me away from 4e is the heavily preparation dependent method of creating encounters. This is certainly a DM’s problem rather than a player’s problem… at least in the short term.

On one hand the simple, though time consuming method of structuring encounters in 4e is simple and produces great results. My players have fought their way though some great encounters.

In the past I would have only spent the amount time I now spend on every 4e encounter on special encounters: a dungeon boss, or a significant NPC. When the party is digging its way through a dungeon and it comes upon some Carrion Crawlers munching their way through recently “retired” adventurers, that is really all that is happening… a random encounter with some Carrion Crawlers and dead bodies.

Maybe part of the reason that I, as a DM, have turned away from 4e is that I am not willing to spend the time necessary to prepare all of the encounters that I would need to run a classic tent-pole, sandbox campaign. We are all pretty busy, and I am no exception. I have a great family and a satisfying career both of which require a lot of time. That leaves me with a limited amount of time for D&D. I have been forced to adopt James over at Grognardia’s just-in-time preparation philosophy. This means that I need to be sure that the limited amount of time I do spend working on the game is well spent. That means that the players and I must make use of everything I have prepped or else I am wasting my time. So, if I spend a relatively large amount of time prepping a few encounters, we must use them or I have been wasting my time and the quality of the game will suffer. To be a good DM I do need to spend some time preparing and I need to be sure that my party and I are making use of the products of that time.

With using all of my preparation time to prepare encounters,  in 4e it is difficult to put together an encounter on the fly, I have been pushing my players into the encounters: a path of strung together linear events. I have given in to the tendency to railroad my players, effectively giving up on running a sandbox. Yes, they do have great, memorable encounters, but they no longer have player choice: the role playing part of a role playing game. Their characters are not adventuring anymore; they have become actors in a DM scripted drama. The players are not complaining about being railroaded… yet. But, in my experience, a group of players is only willing to follow a linear path for so long before they start getting bored.  

Finally, all of us, players and DM, have started to find flaws with the character generation process. Whether the flaws we have found are actually mechanical faults of 4e or they are based on our own historical D&D preferences is immaterial. Characters do not feel the same as they had in previous editions of D&D. The powers, though they were cool to us at the start, have lost their luster. The oft mentioned push to create balance between classes in 4e has resulted in a watering down of classes’ abilities. Though there are four distinct roles, it seems to me that they have all become the same to one degree or another. The iconic D&D classes are no longer familiar. The mechanical need to create a well-built character that can battle his way through “perfectly” designed encounters has pushed 4e away from being a classic role playing game and closer to being a tactical miniature game. Now I do not want to be classified as a role playing purist who disdains using maps and tokens to run battles. I love using maps and tokens. I have been playing with dry-erase battle mats, maps and tokens for twenty years.

So… back to the future of my D&D campaign: the Dungeons of Saedom. We will be switching to a house-ruled 3X/PF. This is what we need to do to keep going with D&D. I will be using OSR elements that I have been skimming from other games in the OSR world. I am especially keen on much of the stuff that comes from the workshops of Zak S. and James Raggi. I do not want to sound like a total complainer though. As I mentioned in my last post, 4e got us playing D&D again. And for that I am thankful! Also, there are some elements of 4e that I am going to be brining “back” to 3X/PF. I will discuss these in my next post: My D&D 4^th Edition Legacy.

Dungeons and Dragons: Encounter

Recently Mike Mearls (of WotC), one of the chiefs involved in the supervision of D&D in its present form as well as one of the captains of the D&D ship as it steers its way into the future, wrote this great article about the state of the hobby. I like what Mike says even though I do not like what the company he works for is doing to D&D.

His article reminded me of a D&D encounter I had over the summer. At the time, I was playing and DMing 4e with the same group of guys I have played with for 20 years. I was travelling in the Green Mountains of Vermont with my family. We wandered into a Barnes and Noble to peruse the gaming books (D&D) and to have a chai latte. While poking through the D&D books, I encountered (see the title) a couple D&D fans who were sitting on the floor goobing back and forth about which sci-fi authors they were into. The first, rounder, goober asked me why I was even wasting my time looking through the 4e books. He assumed that I must be new to D&D, otherwise I would not have been wasting my time. He suggested I go home and try to find some 3X/PF stuff online. The other goober suggested that after 2e the game changed and he had not been happy with the state of the game for years. They were starting their own little edition war and I was caught in the crossfire. I responded, innocently, that D&D was a great game and that no matter what edition one plays, D&D is an awesome game about exploring dungeons and filling sacks with loot. I finished looking at the books and caught up with my wife and daughter.

In my last few posts I let my anger and irritation about the direction Wizards has been taking get to me. I have cooled off and coming back to D&D with a new plan… or with some new plans!

The first thing I have to say is that, for my group and me, our trust with 4e has ended. I am glad 4e came along because it (along with Fantasy Grounds II) has gotten us playing again. The announcement of 4e got us psyched about D&D again. We played 4e on and off for about a year before we started getting tired of it. There were 2 elements of 4e that were dragging on us. First, for some of our players (all veterans) it was too far off from older editions of D&D. They had started playing with AD&D (mostly). The changes from AD&D to 2e and then 3X/PF were slow and gradual enough that the required adjustments had never been too difficult to make. And we always discarded newer elements that we did not like. The problem (for them) was that the newest incarnation of D&D was too different from the games we had always played. It was taking us way too long to get through few encounters. The powers and the new classes originally seemed like they would speed play up and make D&D bloodier and faster moving. What actually happened was just the opposite. The adjustments that players were required to make just to play were sweeping. We found it nearly impossible to bring mechanical elements of older editions into 4e while it was similarly difficult to strip away parts of 4e we did not find appealing. Our group was slowly moving toward wanting to switch back. WotC’s decision to do a laughable job with its DDI/VTT combined with its introduction of CCG-like elements to 4e were the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

The second element that pushed us away from 4e will be discussed in my next post: Moving Forward to the Past: Back to 3rd Edition

More on the D&D VTT.

Over at Dread Gazebo, I found these informational videos about the 4e VTT. Take a look. I am not really impressed. As I mentioned in my last post, the product we were led to be believe was coming will never arrive. For me and my group we have already found another VTT and have been playing  with it for a year now: Fantasy Grounds II.

I have been waiting so long for this?

Rob Conley over at Bat in the Attic put this new bit of info out there for us last week. The Official D&D VTT (virtual table top) that we have all been waiting for is finally here!  Yaeh... but, wait. Hold your applause until we get a little bit of background information first.

The summer of 2007 gave us a blast of new information about the newest incarnation of D&D was going to be like. 4e was on its way! I was psyched. But there was even more great news. A new way to play D&D was in development. Wizards was in the process of developing an awesome, online interface: a VTT. The D&D VTT would be part of a complete package of tools which would be bundled with subscriptions to newly revamped, digital editions of Dungeon and Dragon magazines. The VTT, tools, and magazines were all going to be part of something called DDI (Dungeons & Dragons Insider). Now of course it was not going to be free. A modest, naturally, charge would accompany any DDI subscription. This cool video from GENCON showed us the great stuff that was in store for us.

But wait... after three years of waiting, we had not heard a word. In fact, the topics relating to the VTT were removed from the D&D/Wizard's website. Now, finally we have some news... yeah (muffled)? WTF! That is nothing like what we saw in the video. In fact, it is nothing like something that might only be something like what we saw in the video. Horribly disappointing.