Dungeons & Dragons players are not averse to gathering around a table with family and friends. I imagine that for a lot of us it's something that we look forward to doing and something that we wish we could do more often.
Today is Thanksgiving Day in the (tenuously) United States, and so many of us are home for the holiday and preparing to sit down at a table covered with turkey and fixings rather than dice and miniatures. However, I hope that we are all just as excited for this as we are for game night- and I certainly hope that the options for edibles are much better at your 'Turkey Day' table. Although maybe some folk are fine with Doritos and Mountain Dew on this day as well...
I started to wonder what Thanksgiving would look like in the myriad of worlds that we gamers occupy in our free time. In places like Greyhawk, Faerun, Eberron, and the homebrewed worlds and multiverses across the world there are a panoply of PCs and NPCs that have plenty to be thankful for. I imagine that my oldest 'living' character (a mid-level halfling rogue from my 2e AD&D days) is thankful to be retired from the life of adventure. He's taking it easy in the city of Arabel and using his ring of telekinesis to avoid as much manual labor as he can. There's also Aldym Stamaraster of Halruua, and I imagine he's thankful on this day (and most all others) for his magical aptitude- and he's also thankful that the whole Amn-Tethyr conflict was resolved? Erky, Esko, and Gloin are thankful for their tinkering abilities and their reputations as The Wondersmiths. They're also thankful that they're one of a handful of NPCs that I work in to any Forgotten Realms campaign I run...
I can imagine a lot of things that the PCs I played and (more commonly) the NPCs I DM'ed are thankful for, but most of all I am thankful for this amazing hobby and the friends I have made because of it. I am thankful for all the 20's and the 1's I've rolled this past year and I'm thankful for my positive HP value and a decent constitution. And if you have a moment today to think about what the gamer in you and the you in the game is thankful for- head over to @critthulhu on Twitter and let me know.
Thursday, November 23, 2017
Wednesday, November 15, 2017
For Sale: Boots of Elvenkind. Never Worn.
During the D&D Preview Show of Gencon 2010 Wizards of the Coast announced that they would be handling the acquisition and distribution of magic items in a new way going forward. The new system categorized items by rarity, and assumed that players could not be able to buy or craft the vast majority of items. This was a design decision that the developers said would "give the power back to the Dungeon Master when it comes to the high end magic items" and they wanted items to "be more part of the story, more part of the natural evolution of your campaign- and not the end result of a shopping trip." They even concluded this part of their presentation saying "most of the items in our books will become entirely the domain of the DM in terms of how those items get into the hands of the players." 1 This announcement was met with several rounds of applause by the assembled geeks.
1 These words were mostly Jeremy Crawford's. Dragon Talk: "August 9, 2010: Gen Con D&D Preview Show").
This was a pivot in game design in an edition that had begun by including magic items in the 4th Edition Player's Handbook (instead of being in the Dungeon Master's Guide as in previous editions. This was also quite different from the days of 3.5 Edition, when a character had to have a +X weapon and +Y armor by Z level or their efficacy as a character would suffer for it. From your headband of intellect down to your boots of striding and springing you would try and make the most out of every body slot by pouring over price lists while leafing through the numerous supplements until you had stretched every gold piece to its limit and had your shopping list for an upcoming campaign. This approach to character optimization gave rise to the "Christmas Tree Effect" which colorfully described how a fully equipped character would look when subjected to a detect magic spell.
In 2014 Fifth Edition was released and the categorical approach to magical items remained the official choice of Wizards of the Coast. All items are either common, uncommon, rare, very rare, or legendary and it is explicitly stated that magic items are the purview of the Dungeon Master.
I reached out to a big name in the field of optimal item selection advice for 3.5 characters to see how he felt about this shift in game design. He is known as Darrin on the Giant In The Playground forums, but he may as well be named Shax as he is the original poster of the thread titled Shax's Indispensible Haversack (as seen here). This thread is one of several that many players (myself included) referenced when they were creating a character- another popular thread was known as Bunko's Bargain Basement. My conversation with Darrin focused on how this approach to magic items was continued in the 5th Edition of the game.
Q. Do you like or dislike the new way that loot is handled in 5th edition?
A. I. haven't really had a chance to get all that familiar with 5E, but I am familiar with the "Christmas Tree" problem in 3.5. And I certainly understand why 5E wants to move away from that sort of loot model.
Much like prestige classes, the magic items in 3.5 are one of its biggest strengths and one of its most horrendous weaknesses. The flexibility and modularity of such a robust magic item system makes in endlessly entertaining to upgrade and juggle around your loot. However, it also *requires* the PCs to load themselves down with "standard" magic items just to be competitive. So while I personally love to fiddle around with all of the unusual quirks and wicked combos hidden in various magic items, it does force the PCs into a horrible rat's race of arms & armor that tends to crush out individuality and character-driven stories.
Q. Do you think that it weakens player characters or makes things less fun for the players?
A. Hell no. A robust magic item system works against having well-developed and interesting characters. For decades, D&D managed to get around this almost accidentally, mostly by starting of characters at low-level with limited access to magic items. When magic items become much more prominent in later levels, personalities and character motivation are usually well-established and more developed. 3.5 short-changed this quite a bit by accelerating magic item acquisition. It's still possible to create interesting characters in 3.5, but it's a lot harder when your character is expected to "pull his weight" in combat and a great deal of his effectiveness is determined more by his magic items than his personality or character choices.
I see it as more of a trade-off kinda thing. Fantasy characters absolutely should get lots of loot with cool magic items, that's a huge part of the fun of the game. 3.5 sort of swung that lever a little too far in the mechanical direction, at the cost of character development and storytelling. Swinging it back the other way doesn't entirely fix everything, though... D&D has never really handled flawed characters or narrative structure all that well, and it's hard to build up the importance of those elements without wrecking large parts of the rest of the system.
Anyway, the Christmas Tree problem is a very large part of 3.5. It's a very important part of what made 3.5 so successful, but it also has some pretty significant consequences as well. That being said, having a huge variety of magic items is not a requirement to make a game "fun". You can have a lot of fun in a low-magic character-driven 3.5 game, just as much as you can have a lot of fun with a very tactical and item-driven 5E game. I'm not sure if there's really all that much value in pitting one edition against another.
Regardless of how much you may miss the 'epic lewt' feel of 3.5 or how much you appreciate the refreshing rarity of a +1 dagger- this seems to be the old model made new again. I for one have mixed feelings about it as someone who loves being on both sides of the DM's screen. I feel that without big ticket magic items to buy that I care less about acquiring wealth- and that is one less carrot for me to dangle as a DM, but I also feel that as a player finding that keen needle in the boring, mundane haystack makes for a great story... Even if I really wanted a flaming needle.
1 These words were mostly Jeremy Crawford's. Dragon Talk: "August 9, 2010: Gen Con D&D Preview Show").
In 2014 Fifth Edition was released and the categorical approach to magical items remained the official choice of Wizards of the Coast. All items are either common, uncommon, rare, very rare, or legendary and it is explicitly stated that magic items are the purview of the Dungeon Master.
There are only four common magic items in the DMG and for some reason the potion of climbing is one of them.
I reached out to a big name in the field of optimal item selection advice for 3.5 characters to see how he felt about this shift in game design. He is known as Darrin on the Giant In The Playground forums, but he may as well be named Shax as he is the original poster of the thread titled Shax's Indispensible Haversack (as seen here). This thread is one of several that many players (myself included) referenced when they were creating a character- another popular thread was known as Bunko's Bargain Basement. My conversation with Darrin focused on how this approach to magic items was continued in the 5th Edition of the game.
Q. Do you like or dislike the new way that loot is handled in 5th edition?
A. I. haven't really had a chance to get all that familiar with 5E, but I am familiar with the "Christmas Tree" problem in 3.5. And I certainly understand why 5E wants to move away from that sort of loot model.
Much like prestige classes, the magic items in 3.5 are one of its biggest strengths and one of its most horrendous weaknesses. The flexibility and modularity of such a robust magic item system makes in endlessly entertaining to upgrade and juggle around your loot. However, it also *requires* the PCs to load themselves down with "standard" magic items just to be competitive. So while I personally love to fiddle around with all of the unusual quirks and wicked combos hidden in various magic items, it does force the PCs into a horrible rat's race of arms & armor that tends to crush out individuality and character-driven stories.
So I understand why 5E would want to move away from that. But as
it always happens in game design... when you take something so fundamental out
of the system, it can have huge implications and unforeseen consequences on the
rest of the system. I haven't seen enough of 5E to know if the designers really
understand how magic items should work in a heroic fantasy game.
Q. Do you think that it weakens player characters or makes things less fun for the players?
A. Hell no. A robust magic item system works against having well-developed and interesting characters. For decades, D&D managed to get around this almost accidentally, mostly by starting of characters at low-level with limited access to magic items. When magic items become much more prominent in later levels, personalities and character motivation are usually well-established and more developed. 3.5 short-changed this quite a bit by accelerating magic item acquisition. It's still possible to create interesting characters in 3.5, but it's a lot harder when your character is expected to "pull his weight" in combat and a great deal of his effectiveness is determined more by his magic items than his personality or character choices.
I see it as more of a trade-off kinda thing. Fantasy characters absolutely should get lots of loot with cool magic items, that's a huge part of the fun of the game. 3.5 sort of swung that lever a little too far in the mechanical direction, at the cost of character development and storytelling. Swinging it back the other way doesn't entirely fix everything, though... D&D has never really handled flawed characters or narrative structure all that well, and it's hard to build up the importance of those elements without wrecking large parts of the rest of the system.
Anyway, the Christmas Tree problem is a very large part of 3.5. It's a very important part of what made 3.5 so successful, but it also has some pretty significant consequences as well. That being said, having a huge variety of magic items is not a requirement to make a game "fun". You can have a lot of fun in a low-magic character-driven 3.5 game, just as much as you can have a lot of fun with a very tactical and item-driven 5E game. I'm not sure if there's really all that much value in pitting one edition against another.
Except for 4E. 4E was chock full of stankitude.
Regardless of how much you may miss the 'epic lewt' feel of 3.5 or how much you appreciate the refreshing rarity of a +1 dagger- this seems to be the old model made new again. I for one have mixed feelings about it as someone who loves being on both sides of the DM's screen. I feel that without big ticket magic items to buy that I care less about acquiring wealth- and that is one less carrot for me to dangle as a DM, but I also feel that as a player finding that keen needle in the boring, mundane haystack makes for a great story... Even if I really wanted a flaming needle.
Sunday, November 12, 2017
Extra Life D&D Game (Part III)
Saturday, November 4th was the National Game Day for Extra Life and as part of the 24 hour gaming marathon at my friendly local game store I ran a four hour session of D&D. I didn't actually manage to get a lot of donations or pledges in support for that particular session like I hoped to (though as of the time your reading this I did make my fundraising goal), but it was actually a lot of fun.
You can get a hold of the Publisher file for these cards here.
I let all the players know at the outset that the game was a casual one-shot and that it would be okay if they didn't see it through to the end. There was a lot of other gaming going on around us, and I expected that attention would wax and wane. I also expected that some folk would be pretty wiped from the marathon. I had designed the encounters for parties of 3, 4, 5, or 6 and just adjusted on the fly as players joined and/or left the table. The pre-generated characters I made and the spell cards I pre-selected were meant to be easy enough for anyone to pick up and run with it.
The party was escorting a caravan to the border town of Northhurst- where things seemed dour indeed. The elven fighter (highest passive Perception) noticed on the road to town that there were some sallow patches of earth and evidence of failing crops. The whole party noticed that the town seemed to be more reserved than they expected, and started looking into the the reason for these clearly bad omens. The local innkeeper tipped them off that Mayor Roland was looking for adventurer types for some errand that he thought was related to the town's ills.
Mayor Roland told the party that some two decades ago a Necromancer took up residence in the ruins of the wizard's tower about a day-and-a-half's hike from the walls of the town. The town had suffered the same sense of dread and agricultural complications back then, but a wandering crusader came and dispatched the Necromancer- although Roland didn't know much about the particulars since he was a much younger man back then. The party struck out for the ruins of the tower with a mcguffin that spit out magical items in exchange for good deeds in hand (the Bag of Beleghast the Benevolent).
The party had a "random" encounter with a handful of goblins in the Yellow Wood, fought with the animated tree and dire wolf guardians at the entrance to the ruins, navigated a series of fire-spitting and spike-stabbing traps (one player immediately clued in to the Galaxy Quest reference), and solved a couple of riddles with an astronomy theme. I tried to squeeze in as much of the usual dungeon fare into the space and time as I could- and all the while I was handing out cards with fun, custom magic items saying "The Bag of Beleghast the Benevolent bursts with magical energy!"
At the end of the adventure the party fought a large undead creature that looked like a cross between a minotaur skeleton and a flameskull standing on top of a giant stone ziggurat that functioned like an eldritch machine complete with a furnace and cranks being tended to by skeletal minions. The boss was not legendary, but it was elite (a status I halfheartedly made up, but definitely need to fully develop for the future). The creature weakened as they destroyed the skeletal minions that operated the machine and powered a roiling sphere of arcane energy at its apex.
There were a lot of highlights- criticals and clever uses of magical items that I hadn't quite intended, but most importantly I was glad to be a part of the fundraising efforts. I didn't quite write up the whole adventure, but I'm happy to let you all have the magic item cards for use in your own games. Beware: These things are meant for casual play only- they are NOT balanced for legit play (they also formatted a little oddly so maybe it's just a read-only).
You can get a hold of the Publisher file for these cards here.
Thursday, November 2, 2017
Extra Life D&D Game (Part II)
For the Children!
I've been working on some pregenerated characters for an upcoming one shot that I'm running locally as part of an Extra Life gaming marathon. I consider myself a shepherd of the hobby of tabletop gaming. In the past year or so I've had the opportunity to run games for 6 people who have never had the chance to play D&D before- and 2 of the 6 of them actually took a strong liking to the game. I've found that a good pregenerated character can be very helpful in introducing a new player to any game since it reduces the time and effort needed to get the actual game started.
There's been a lot of talk lately about this article that charts the most popular combinations of race and class for the 100,000 characters created on D&D Beyond in the span of a month. It seems like this chart reinforces the popularity of established stereotypes of fantasy that we have come to expect- there are 3 Legolases (Legolai?) for roughly every 1.5 Gimlis and 2 Frodos, but the focus of all the buzz surrounding this study seems to be "How rare is your character?"
If you've been made to feel like an unimaginative hack by all of this discussion- you're not alone, but I think we all know that a cliche (or an ol' classic if you'd prefer) becomes a cliche because it works. All of the most popular race and class combinations highlight an obvious synergy statistically and conceptually. Why would you play a halfling and not be a sneaky little guy or gal? Why would you play a half-orc and not want to hack and slash?
For this game, I went ahead and made 6 characters that range in difficulty to play from human fighter to elven wizard- and each of them is what I hope that a total noob and/or a seasoned veteran would expect for them to be. I want to reduce the DC of overcoming this particular barrier to entry from 15 to 5 by simplifying everything that I can. I could have handed a new player a half-orc wizard or a gnome barbarian, but the race and class combos that I did use to create these pregens were much more standard so as to not confuse anyone at the table- "How should I play a tiefling druid?"
Obviously, it can be a lot of fun to subvert expectations and zag when you're supposed to zig- but I don't think anyone out there should feel less creative than others for sticking with what works. This goes for all the DMs out there that have ever started a game using a variation of "You meet at the inn..."
You can read more about my Extra Life game in the next post here.
If you've been made to feel like an unimaginative hack by all of this discussion- you're not alone, but I think we all know that a cliche (or an ol' classic if you'd prefer) becomes a cliche because it works. All of the most popular race and class combinations highlight an obvious synergy statistically and conceptually. Why would you play a halfling and not be a sneaky little guy or gal? Why would you play a half-orc and not want to hack and slash?
For this game, I went ahead and made 6 characters that range in difficulty to play from human fighter to elven wizard- and each of them is what I hope that a total noob and/or a seasoned veteran would expect for them to be. I want to reduce the DC of overcoming this particular barrier to entry from 15 to 5 by simplifying everything that I can. I could have handed a new player a half-orc wizard or a gnome barbarian, but the race and class combos that I did use to create these pregens were much more standard so as to not confuse anyone at the table- "How should I play a tiefling druid?"
Obviously, it can be a lot of fun to subvert expectations and zag when you're supposed to zig- but I don't think anyone out there should feel less creative than others for sticking with what works. This goes for all the DMs out there that have ever started a game using a variation of "You meet at the inn..."
You can read more about my Extra Life game in the next post here.
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