DND5E - First Pass

Hmm. Just finished a couple quick skim-throughs of the D&D Basic Rules, which I downloaded this evening. Yes, it's nearly 2am here in Asuncion, but I took a long nap today.

Um...where's the game?

We've got character creation, quite a few tables for creating random background/personality (there are some game mechanics in here, as well as a notable omission: the example character of Tika Waylan lists an "urchin background" that is not present in the book), a giant equipment list (plus "random trinket" tables), rules for ability checks, exploration, combat (big section), and downtime between adventures, and...lastly...a good list of magic spells for clerics and wizards. And that's it.

There's no information on running the game, no information on creating adventures, no information on running NPCs ("monsters"), no information on treasure, and (perhaps most basic of all) no information on how XP is earned/awarded. In other words, no information on what the objective of the characters are, or what they're supposed to do.

Because, you know, if I'm going to sit down to play a game, I kind of want to know what actions are going to reward me. If there is no real objective to the game ("Many people who play keep their campaigns going for months or years..." says the introduction) than the only real "carrot" of play is leveling up. Not only to become a badder badass, but in order to "open new content"...whether this be  the acquisition of new spells and class features, or simply moving into that realm where characters "confront threats to whole regions and continents" (explicitly stated as being in the level 11 to 16 range for characters).

So, yeah, how do I level up? I mean, if that's all there is?

Rules don't say (gosh, didn't I find this same f'ing problem with the free Beta rules of Dungeon Crawl Classics? Oh yeah...I did). The "Basic Rules" of the new Dungeons and Dragons are incomplete. This is not a game...this is a 110 page briefing on how to play at someone's demo table at a convention (along with a lot of extraneous stuff that's only necessary if the demo is going to feature pre-generated, high level characters).

It seems that people are looking at this package and seeing "here's what I like, here's what I don't" and analyzing its individual game mechanics in comparison to 3rd edition or 4th edition or 1st edition or whatever edition. Um...okay? But until I know how THIS game works, who knows how it's all going to go together? I'm not like I'm just perusing the text to pilfer ideas.

Look at this floating reroll they call "inspiration." It's cool, sure...but how do you get it? "Your DM can choose to give you inspiration for a variety of reasons." Like? "Your DM will tell you how you can earn inspiration in the game." So...does that mean it's arbitrary and variable from table to table? Who knows? There's no section that explains how the DM does anything.

In short, the D&D Basic Rules are not a new rule set. You could not give a printout of the PDF and a set of dice to a group of youngsters and say, "Go play." If anything, they are simply a re-retread of the Player's Handbook (any edition).

A cutdown version to be sure...at 110 pages, it is the shortest PHB of any edition. And this is done at the cost of the variety found in earlier editions: only four classes, only four races, only two spell lists. B/X gave us the same quantity of options PLUS a complete game in just over 120 pages...and B/X included artwork instead of padding.

Like this half a page on height and weight. "You can decide your character's height and weight," is followed immediately by a random height and weight table plus a detailed example of how to use it to calculate height and weight. Really? I mean, really? There are two paragraphs...near a quarter page!...devoted to the gender of your character under the large heading, SEX. The bottom line: you get to choose your gender and sexual orientation. I'm half surprised they didn't add a random table here as well!

But padding issues aside (and really, that's more just snickering than rage), the main issue is simply the most basic one: the Basic Rules aren't a complete game. It's being touted as a complete game, and WotC wants you to give them the big pat on the back for releasing it as a free PDF when really, they're just trying to sucker you into buying more shit in order to play.

Oh, does that sound harsh? Here's what lead designer Mike Mearls wrote:

Basic D&D is a PDF that covers the core of the game. It's the equivalent of the old D&D Rules Cyclopedia, though it doesn't have quite the same scope (for example, it won't go into detail on setting).

No, Mike, it is NOT the equivalent of the Rules Cyclopedia. The RC was a complete game system, including monsters and treasures and adventure design and awarding XP and campaigns and dominions and mass combat and immortals and a whole bunch of stuff. Only a very small part was the Mystarra game setting.

He also writes:

But the best part? Basic D&D is a free PDF. Anyone can download it from our website. We want to put D&D in as many hands as possible, and a free, digital file is the best way to do that.

And:

Basic D&D makes it easier than ever for new players and DMs to jump into tabletop RPG play.

Man, that guy's a douche.

[I don't know why Mearls continues to rub me the wrong way. Ever since he lambasted Keep on the Borderlands...pretty much missing the point of the adventure...I seem to have it out for that dude. I don't even know the poor guy! Probably he's a very nice person...]

Okay, it's 3am now and I've spent more time on this than I probably should have. My whole family's been sick all week (well, except for me) which is why the posting has been scant to say the least. But I have been working on something. More later.
: )

Happy 4th of July!

Fast Paraguayan fun fact: the U.S. embassy in Asuncion has their big Independence Day celebration on July 3rd instead of, you know, today (apparently so they don't miss out on a three-day weekend or any World Cup matches).

So...um...we missed it. God willing, I'll be down at the local TGI Friday's drinking two-for-one beers and taking in a little slice of Americana.

Hope everyone's having a happy one!

"O beautiful for spacious skies..."

Warriors of the Red Planet Beta

Thomas Denmark's Warriors of the Red Planet is now available as a Beta version from Lulu for a measly $4. I follow the man's Original Edition Fantasy blog solely for the beautiful artwork, and WotRP looks like a fantastic piece of work...especially exciting, if you're interested in a Sword & Planet type game based on Burrough's Barsoom (who isn't?) using an OD&D style ruleset (ditto).

Unfortunately, being in Paraguay means I can't get this myself. Dammit.

I had some all-too-brief rules in Book 3 of Five Ancient Kingdoms for converting 5AK to this kind of setting, but Thomas has chosen to go "whole hog" and I salute him for it. Hopefully, some version of Warriors of the Red Planet will be available when I get back to the States.

You can purchase it here. The forum for discussion on gameplay is here.

Sword & Gun fantasy on the Red Frontier!

Revisiting Character Death

This will be a short post, as it's after 3am my time (sick children issues, though no worries at the moment).

Remember that scale I was talking about earlier that ranged from "wargame" to "RPG" (with "hybrid" in between)? Well, in thinking about player character death...what I suppose might be called character attrition...I find myself feeling that letting the players' avatars die in droves is only cool when you move closer to that "wargame" portion of the spectrum.

Why? Well, for a few reasons (in no particular order):

• the farther you move towards the RPG side, the more detailed individual characters tend to be; thus the longer chargen takes (i.e. time needed to get a player "back in the game").
• wargames are more likely to have rules regarding reinforcements, hirelings/followers, and "seconds"; thus allowing the death to be "spread around" and taking the sting out of mortality
• the time and place for "resupplying" (i.e. bringing in replacement characters for the dead) can be much more haphazard or limited, the closer you get to the RPG side (especially when relationships with the setting and other PCs has to be set up at the beginning of the game).
• the more personal the character (i.e. the closer to the RPG side), the more you want your character's death to be impactful and/or "have meaning" rather than just being a poor shlub who fell on his own iron spike

Anyway, since all the games in this spectrum fall into the "fantasy adventure game" category, I'm just thinking that knowing how and what type of chardeath (is that already a portmanteau?) you want, can tell you where on the scale your design is falling...and vice versa I suppose (though that's less important than gameplay considerations, in my opinion).

Okay, the sick children have become a bit more worrisome. Later.

Musings on 5AK

For those who are curious, the electricians finally showed up (9:20am)...only a little more than two days late. Fast Paraguayan fun fact: the average annual rainfall in Asuncion is more than that of Seattle, WA...however, it rains a lot fewer days during the year and, what with the crappy roads and crappier drainage, the streets run like rivers on rainy days. It's as dangerous as flash floods...usually you can count on one or two fatalities every time it rains.

[no, I'm not joking]

It's been raining for a couple days now, which means my boy has been home in the mornings and I've been unable to do much writing. I did write a few hundred words on revamping ability scores, but I've since lost my train of thought on the subject, and to be honest it was kind of a meandering waste of space. Yesterday, I did get an interesting idea about the undead, causing me to go back and review my PDF files of Five Ancient Kingdoms (Book 2), but that completely derailed me, as I spent all my spare time last night rereading my own book. It's really one helluva' good read. And it makes me wonder:

Why has there been so little said about it, dammit?

People continue to buy it, after all...at least the PDF copies are still selling over at DriveThruRPG. The print copies (including dice!) sell less than print copies of The Complete B/X Adventurer (which I plan on uploading as a cheap, B&W PDF one of these days). But it IS selling...and thank you so much to those who've purchased it. I just find it...well, a little weird that I've received so little feedback. Not even negative feedback.

I guess apathy is a form of feedback. But at least I'd hope someone would say, "F you, dude, for taking my money! What a waste!"

Hell, someone (not me!) even bothered to add the 5AK books over at RPGGeek, but they didn't bother to actually review them. Oh, wait...they added a different "comment" on each separate entry; here's what Martin Ralya wrote:

This is a tight, clear OD&D retroclone with an Arabian fantasy spin, and it's a great little booklet. It's full of clever touches, notably using only d6s, those d6s having ZERO in place of one (and the accompanying rules for zeroing out), and being able to "push" rolls for extra dice with the tradeoff being that if you fail, you fail hard.

As a boxed set with all three booklets needed for the game, I'd rate the whole shebang an 8 as well.

[that's 8 out of 10, by the way]

Thanks, Martin!

But I do wish people would discuss more of those "little touches." Tenkar's Tavern started an in depth review, but never even made it through Book 1. Necropraxis gave probably the most complete summary I've seen (at least, in English). I haven't heard of anyone actually playing the game or stealing/hacking its contents.

The reason I was referencing it at all was to see how I approached the undead for possible inclusion in a new, project (I like to look back at my earlier work for ideas, because that way I don't have to reinvent the ol' wheel, you know?). What I found was a great, great monster section, and really one that I don't think I could really improve upon. Really! The work I put into those 27 pages...making them concise yet consistent with the cosmology of the setting, balancing them against the system, the streamlined stat table, the assignation of treasure hoard types (which, by the way, is handled quite a bit different from what you find in B/X and its ilk)...makes it one of the sections in which I take the most pride. But I suppose people probably skim over this section, seeing it as the "same old same old." Well, I suppose I did use the same "hit dice" for many monsters that are found in early D&D...but HD in my game operate a bit differently than in early D&D!

Oh, well...cry me a river, right? Plenty of people are publishing things and NOT making a buck on 'em. Five Ancient Kingdoms was written and laid out by Yours Truly, using only (beautiful) public domain art and with only a couple-three proof readers for help...and people are still buying it. I'm sure it doesn't help that the web site is still not up-and-running (maybe that will be my project for the week the wife is in Montevideo...she's taking the baby with her)...there aren't any forums to discuss or talk about the game or ask questions or provide feedback. Gosh, my original idea was to shoot it off into space as a "fire-and-forget" game, so why do I care anyway? It's a damn fantasy heartbreaker after all, what was I expecting?!

Actually, maybe the real reason I was thinking about it was due to a post by ChicagoWiz back in the day titled "Where's Our EPT and Blackmoor?" lamenting (in part) that the OSR wasn't doing enough to push the envelope. Granted, he was writing this in 2011 and plenty of weird and exciting product has hit the market since then, but maybe I was feeling that my little contribution to the collective "stuff" floating around the internet was kind of...uh..."pushy" and I was hoping it could be a spark for something.

But you know what? 5AK ain't a perfect game anyway. Even now, loving it as I do, there are things I'd like to have done differently and ways I coulda'-woulda'-shoulda' tightened it up. I feel like it needs a simpler, more accessible, less far-reaching version. Something a little more objective-specific. Something a bit more...how to say...basic?

Hmmm.

More later. Once again, I'm out of time.

The Love Affair Ain't Over

Another quick Paraguayan fun fact: people have no idea what time it is (except when it's closing time...they'll kick you out of the shop ten minutes before the doors lock). Yesterday the electricians were supposed to show up at the 10:30am to check out our wiring, as we keep having power surges that, you know, burst light bulbs, burn out power strips, electrocute you for touching the coffee maker (me only), and shoot flame from the outlets. As I told my mother-in-law, that could mean they'll be here anytime between 11am and Thursday.

Well, they did show up yesterday, but not till 4 or so (right before "closing time!"), and made a determination that they would need to return today with some extra gear. They asked if it was okay to show up at 8:30am, even though they knew that would be "really early" for us. I called their bluff and said, yes, 8:30 will be perfect and I will be here. Welp, it's 9:20 so far, and I haven't seen 'em yet. I'm guessing they'll get here sometime between 11am and Friday.

In the meantime, I can blog a bit (I've got a full pot of coffee along with an insulated glove).

When we first decided to move the family down to South America, I knew I wasn't going to take my whole library of game books and references with me...we were already going to be packing super-heavy just with the essentials (and no, I'm not talking furniture). At the same time, I fully planned on doing at least some writing down here, and so wanted to bring a few books for reading and riffing. However, one of the many games that stayed home was every single edition of D&D that I own (the actual list of books I brought are listed here, for those interested). I was feeling kind of "done" with D&D...at least at the moment I was packing.

Blah, blah, blah. Who really ever gets "done with D&D?"

This time around, I changed my gaming inventory a bit, and two of the things I packed were copies of D&D...specifically Holmes Basic and Moldvay's Basic (the "B" in "B/X"). True, I didn't really need them, especially Holmes (I've got PDFs of both the Blueholme Prentice Rules and Mazes & Perils firmly ensconced on my hard drive)...and yet, I've already read Holmes once through since getting here and am working on a second read. Likewise, Moldvay is an invaluable reference.

These "basic" games are so chockfull of promise, I can understand why people continue to create adventures and supplements and clones and blogs for them. There's just so much potential in them...reading through Tenkar's Tavern's last dozen or so blog posts, especially with regard to to his "free RPG day offerings" just got me positively inspired! Gosh, it makes me want to create another semi-clone game myself...maybe even a free one, God forbid!

*ahem* ANYway, I don't have time to do that NOW mind you (I need to feed the boy some oatmeal and get him off to school, and I'm sure the baby will be waking up soon...at the moment she's rocking in an auto-swing next to me while I type). But someday, perhaps, and perhaps someday soon. The point is, my love affair with these games hasn't ended, and more than reworking I think they simply need refining.

Or maybe not even that. Maybe they just need some loving.

Sorry, I'm feeling a little whimsical today. Ugh, and right now I really have to go...I'll try to get back to this subject in a bit.

Wargames, RPGs, and Hybrids

I have very little time at the moment, and I may be nursing a bit of a hangover (it's hard to tell...it may just be too little sleep added to stress and subpar nutrition), so this is going to be a shorty of a post.

Ever since dipping my brain back into wargaming (thanks to watching Chirine's videos...see this prior post), I've been in a weird mental space when it comes to the games I'm designing/working on/brainstorming.

You see there's this assumption that I've been living under for awhile that is (I'm starting to think) is not just fallacious, but A Pretty Bad Idea. Namely that these things we call RPGs (like D&D and its different genre'd ilk), while descended from wargaming roots, have evolved beyond those roots into Role-Playing Games which (by my definition) are games that allow one to role-play, that is:

The act of matching the player's objectives to the objectives of the player's character.

Now, some folks may not remember that a few months back I wrote an eleven (or twelve) post essay called On Role-Playing, that wasn't really "on role-playing" so much as a discussion of the particular instructions for role-playing that are found (or rather, NOT found) in various editions of Dungeons & Dragons. The startling thing I discovered was that there was so little instruction to be had on a topic that is so immensely important to the game itself...the thing that makes an RPG so markedly different from other forms of entertainment. At the time, my knee-jerk reaction to this was "bad on you, D&D" as in, it's a bad game that doesn't offer proper instruction for play.

However, I was operating under that aforementioned assumption...an assumption that D&D had crossed a bridge and was no longer a "war-game," but this new, Promised Land Thing of a role-playing game...just a poor one when considering the objectives of role-playing. And like I said, I'm now starting to think that whole assumption is fraudulent. D&D never "crossed the bridge." D&D IS "the bridge."

In other words the game (and many self-identified RPGs like it) are HYBRIDS. They are not true role-playing games, they are not war-games, they are something in between.

[okay, so just FYI...it looks like I have some more time to devote to this post after all...yay!]

The "action" of the game isn't solely confined to an imaginary space, despite the implicit language of the rules. The concrete, numerical ranges of the game require real measurements, even in virtual space. These ranges include movement, they include distance for combats (both melee and missile), they include the effective range and area of spells and special monster attacks (like dragon breath); they include the measurements of dungeon maps. The inclusion of these ranges prevents the game from being a product solely of the imagination, because they have to be taken into consideration, rather than used only in the abstract.

What would it mean to be "in the abstract?" Well (for example) why not simply say, "the opponent is in missile range" or not? Why not simply say, "I cast charm person at the ogre," as opposed to checking range. Why is granularity important to speed, when you could simply say "you're walking or running" and roll dice (with or without adjustment) to see if you can evade pursuers?

Come to think of it, using real world scale for TIME (ten minute "turns," ten second/one minute "rounds") likewise adds real world considerations (and therefore restraints) on the virtual world. Why not simply have turns and/or rounds and not worry about the time consideration?

The reason, of course, is that the game still has one foot stuck in its wargaming roots.

Now please, this doesn't mean that role-playing can't happen in a game of D&D (even if instruction is a bit inadequate). As I said, these games are hybrids. But the only reason for keeping real time and real distance in the game (as opposed to letting them slide into the abstract) is to preserve the strategy and tactics associated with them. As Gygax says on the subject (paraphrasing the 1E DMG), some folks are going to waste their time, while the 'superior' player will make good use of it.

Players lacking in wargaming roots may simply choose to ignore things like weapon versus AC or length of weapon or speed factor (1st edition PHB), instead simply taking the weapon with the biggest damage die affordable and useable by their character. I can remember my early days of AD&D when the only melee weapons being selected were two-handed swords, long swords, and bastard swords...depending on whether or not you wanted to wear a shield. Later on, we started incorporating things like speed factor and weapon class versus AC to spice things up (especially as more and more of our opponents became high level NPCs, i.e. spell-casters and other weapon/armor users). But as an adult, returning to the D&D game for its role-playing aspects, I found the B/X lack of intricacy to be preferable...after all, if I wanted to play a war-game, I'd play something like Warhammer or Mordheim. Give me optional encumbrance, abstract weapon damage, and a wider latitude for my gaming pleasure.

[before I go any further with this thing, I should probably explain why "real" time and distance are kind of antithesis to "true role-playing." To be brief, having to account for these things mean a certain degree of metagaming, which can take one OUT of the mode of "playing in character," thus hindering the ability to role-play by definition. Except for those with real military (or perhaps architectural) training, we don't usually measure actual distances and times without tape measures and time pieces...things unavailable to your average fantasy adventurer]

SO....having said all that, I should say that I'm NOT faulting D&D (or its many imitators, shared genre or no) with being a "hybrid" game....I'm not disparaging hybrids for being hybrids, in other words. What I'm doing here is ACKNOWLEDGING that this third type of fantasy game exists in place where I used to think there existed only two. I'm adding a category (for my benefit if no one else's) to the general heading of games where people use their imagination and a set of rules for the creation of stories.

[yes, even war games create stories...the end result of a skirmish or battle can be described as "this is what happened" as if an actual event had taken place when, in reality, the only thing that happened is that a game was played. As I've written before, even the basest D&D game creates a story, just not necessarily one that is particularly good, dramatic, or emotionally impactful. Games focused on addressing premise and designed to facilitate story creation...like several indie "Story Now" games...can create fantasies of higher "quality," but the escapism and imagination present in these games (from war-game to RPG) is what links them. At least in my mind]

And so we come to this weird mental space I was talking about, waaaay back at the beginning of this post. As I sit down to write a couple-five, D&D-style games (i.e. "hybrids") I find myself wanting to include rules that push the game either one way or the other...i.e. more "wargamey" or less, rather than split the difference. I find that all the "little adjustments" and "tweaks" that I would give to the D&D system (in hopes of making a "better game") simply - instead - push it more deeply into this weird hybrid realm that I really don't want to spend time in. Because, of course, I like quick-paced games and detest bullet-counting and range-finding in general. Hell, wilderness travel in B/X is so terribly, terribly slow (to play out) that I've tried to find ways to circumvent it completely since...well, since I was ten years old or so. The version in Five Ancient Kingdoms was just one more stab at it, but most likely I'd still "hand wave" travel if I were running a 5AK game in the wilderness. Probably.

But let's not digress too much...here's the thing: one thing people like in their games (including me) is more specificity. Just look at that giant chart of weapons in the 1st edition PHB (or even the 3rd edition PHB)! People love the customization that comes with feats and skills and minor adjustments to characters to get little in-game advantages....and I've tried (in my games) to give folks this, too, while still keeping games streamlined and simple-ish.

HOWEVER, this kind of thing is really only useful in a hybrid game!

In a wargame...even a skirmish-scale one like Mordheim, you want to cut down on excessive characterization in order to keep the game moving. The original Warhammer 40K provided extreme detail and individual characterization, and you can see GW's move away from this with every successive edition (it's just too unwieldy otherwise to play out a battle).  And yet for a game of "pure" role-playing that forgoes actual measurements of time and distance...well, most of these little "extras" are designed to specifically address these measurements (or make an impact through these measurables)!

Okay, now my time really has run out; I've got a kid's birthday party that I've got to get ready for. I'll consider posting some specific examples later (like tomorrow) using an actual game or two I'm in the process of writing up.

Till then.
; )