What is this Game Supposed to be About: the 4e Version

The Chatty DM has posted his review of D&D's 4th edition Players Handbook. Among other insights, he makes this observation:

I’m actually impressed that so many things can be done with this Core game. When you buy a Core set of other exception based design games, you don’t get as much stuff… (but then again, with an average 80$ entry price, it’s to be expected).

In fact, I will go against the current opinion on the subject and say that D&D 4e was probably not designed to get the Video game/MMORPG crowd to adopt Tabletop RPGs. I actually believe that Wizards of the Coast are trying to eat market shares of the very large and lucrative collectible/non-collectible card/miniatures gamer pool.

Now that's a very interesting thought. Positioning 4e as a bridge between collectible card games, collectible minis games, and RPGs gives WotC a lot of flexibility for the future of the franchise. The overlap of interests among the three sorts of hobbies is far stronger than between pen-and-paper RPGs and computer RPGs of all sorts, even MMORPGs. I'm not certain that there was anything like a conscious decision on anyone's part to do this, but that doesn't mean WotC won't leap if they find the game opening unexpected opportunities. And this is exactly the sort of strategic-level thinking one should expect from a company in WotC's dominating position.

Sean K. Reynolds Joins Paizo

Via Geek Related comes word that Paizo is continuing their conquest of the gaming universe by adding Sean K. Reynolds to their stable:

I'm very enthused. Great people at Paizo, working on great books, and it's my favorite version of D&D. :)

My history with certain Paizo people goes WAY back.
Erik Mona was one of my TSR Online volunteers way back in the AOL days.
Lisa Stevens picked me for Team Greyhawk, my first full-time designer gig.
James Jacobs and F. Wesley Schneider have been my editors and sounding boards for various Dragon, Dungeon, and Pathfinder projects.
Mike McArtor, whose vacancy I'm filling* was one of my TSRO guys, too, and when he applied at Paizo I told him to list me as a reference (hopefully it helped!). And like James and Wes, he's been great to work with.

But it's not like the industry is incestuous or anything. ;) Seriously, sounds like another great move on Paizo's part, and another reason to expect great things from them.

And after you've done reading up on Mr. Reynolds, check out this very cool Czech miniatures company he linked to.

Now You're Speakin' My Language!

Another great article over at ars ludi, this time about the possibilities to communicate through treasure:

Which leads us to the secret weapon most GMs overlook: players pay attention when you describe treasure. Treasure is (if you’ll pardon the phrase) a golden opportunity to reveal information.

There are lots of times during a game when players are half-listening, or thinking about other things, or maybe just wandering into the kitchen to get a soda. But in the magical post-combat pre-treasure window, everyone’s attention is high, their curiosity is piqued, and they are clamoring to hear what you will say next.

You want to show the players something? Put it in the form of treasure. Want to tell them about the history of the elves? Tell it through treasure. Want to tell them about the cult in the area? Tell it through treasure. Want them to give them a clue about the dangers that are three doors down? Tell it through treasure.

I can speak from personal experience, this is a great technique, and it creates really good feedback loops, where the more the players can get through treasure, the more they ask about it. It gets to the point where they simply will not accept another "silver and gemstone necklace worth 120 gp" and must know who made it, what stones are used in it, how they were cut and how they're arranged.

And this, to my mind, is all to the good.

The Gauntlet Taken Up: Media Influences

The noble, but apparently also darkly sinister, James Edward Raggi IV has tossed down a gauntlet to the RPG blogging community:

So... I challenge the role-playing blogosphere (and I know you are reading... :P) to name the primary influences in your personal game, so we get a flavor not of what set of rules you decide to use, but what kind of game people can expect to play with you! Minimum five. No maximum. Plus include what people might assume influences you that you actually reject. Bonus points for detail and explanation!

I could hardly say no to that, right? So, here we are, with the strongest influences on my fantasy gaming. (I’m limiting myself to fantasy for now in order to keep this at a reasonable length. I’ll probably still fail, but at least I tried, right?)

Sir Toby Jingle’s Beastly Journey
Say what?!? This is a children’s book, written and illustrated by Wallace Tripp. An elderly knight rides out one last time to confront the enemies he has spent a lifetime confounding. The look and feel has a hint of whimsy, but stays rooted in the realistic enough that I can still totally believe that the Goblin Well is out there, somewhere, if I just look in the right forest. The book introduced me to the griffon, and because of this book, gryphons (my much cooler spellink from old) in my campaigns are sentient. The story is a duel of wits, with lots of examples of lateral thinking. I’ve loved this book since I was three or four years old, and it’s had a profound influence on what I think when I talk about “fantasy”.

Harryhausen Flicks
When I was a wee lad, one of the joys of visiting relatives in New Jersey was getting to watch channel 11 out of New York (PIX, I think). They were always showing old movies, especially of the action/adventure genre. If I was really lucky, I might catch an old Zoro movie, or a pirate flick. But my favorites were the ones with monsters and magic in them.

As I got older, my parents took my brother and me out to the drive-in movie theater twice. The first time, we saw “Jason and the Argonauts”. The second time was to see “Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger”.

The thing I love about Harryhausen monsters is that they always fit into their environment. Sometimes, they’re conjured by the powers of sorcery to thwart or aid the heroes. Sometimes, they’re part of the local ecology, with their own lives and goals before those pesky heroes show up. But they’re never just sitting around in a cave, inert until someone shows up to interact with them.

Choose Your Own Adventure Books
I started reading these in first grade, and was quickly hooked. I also loved TSR’s Endless Quest books as well. Yeah, I read the Fighting Fantasy and Wizards, Warriors, and You books as well, but I didn’t like those as much. The use of dice and coin-flipping to adjudicate conflict felt like a cop-out to me. I much preferred using my wits to figure out how to overcome adversity. That said, I also loved the Sorcery! quartet, and certain aspects of mood and setting have leaked from those (especially Kharé: Cityport of Traps) into my campaigns.

The Old Testament
Ok, forget for a moment that it’s a religious text. It’s actually easier to do than you might think. There’s a reason Cecil B. Demille went back to that well again and again for his movies. There’s action, romance, the clashings of great armies, the rise and fall of powerful dynasties and civilizations, the more personal tales of promises not kept, of dreams chased and painful betrayal. Sure, I could mention C.S. Lewis or Tolkien, Glen Cook’s Black Company books, the Arthurian myths and ancient history, but they are all seen through the prism of the stories I grew up with in the Old Testament. Like most Episcopalians, I know the Bible better than I think I do, and it’s not unusual for me to look back at a plot element or character and think, “Oh yeah, that’s just like what happened in Judges…”

When my games dip into multi-generational plots and politics, when slavegirls use their wiles and influence to topple kingdoms, when armies set to march with all the pomp and panoply of war, when the fates of thousands are decided by the chance decisions of ordinary folk, I’m almost certainly, whether I know it or not, dipping into the Old Testament.

Norse Mythology
I wish I could remember the name or author of the book on Norse myth that I read in elementary school. I loved those stories, and when your PCs find themselves facing challenges in the hall of frost giant king, or getting dragged into a blood feud between warring clans, or when you realize that the old man you chatted with last night might have been, no, must have been a god, then you can thank the Norse and their myths. Because of these stories, the gods in my campaigns are not omnipotent, nor omniscient. They get drunk, they screw up, and they fall in love and they sometimes fail at their aims. But they’re still far more powerful than your puny, mortal PC. Which, I think, makes them a lot scarier.

Anne McCaffery
My mother love Ms. McCaffery’s Pern stories, and I was intrigued by the Whelan covers. People have derisively suggested that three-quarters of any McCaffery story is people sitting around in kitchens, chugging bottomless mugs of coffee-substitute, and talking. While my games aren’t quite that bad, if you’re not into talking your way out of problems, or hashing out deals and plans with NPCs, then there’s a good chance you’ll find my campaigns frustrating.

Ed Greenwood
Issue #74 was the first Dragon I ever read, and it rocked my world. In these days, the Forgotten Realms were only Mr. Greenwood’s personal home campaign. But the little peek we got to see from his article titled simply “Seven Swords” fascinated me. Every sword had a detailed history, rife with heroes and wars and politics and treachery. It utterly transformed the way I played the game, launching me from generic dungeon crawls where players might find a simple sword +1 to multi-generational epic campaigns where even simple coins might have a story to tell. I never bought any of the FR box sets or books, because what I really wanted were those tiny crumbs of inspiration Mr. Greenwood scattered about. They were perfect nucleation points for my imagination.

Ultima IV and V
Yep, the computer games by Richard “Lord British” Garriott. I loved the way he wove philosophy into his worldbuilding on these games. I loved the way you could approach many of the puzzles from different directions. I loved the way, especially in V, the world felt alive and real, and that things happened even when the PCs were not in the area. As much as my campaigns take place in living, breathing worlds, Mr. Garriott provided much of the inspiration.

D3 – Vault of the Drow
You cannot fight your way through this adventure. Don’t even try it. You’ll be slaughtered. And I will laugh at you. Seriously, this isn’t a dungeon to be hacked through. It’s a culture to be encountered and explored. If you must swing swords and shed blood at least once per hour, or, heck, even at least once per gaming session, my campaigns are not for you. If you enjoy authors like Martha Wells, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Ursula K. Le Guin, Jacqueline Carey, Carla Speed McNeil, Desmond Morris, Joel Rosenberg, and Neil Gaimon, if, in other words, you think you might enjoy a genre laughingly described as “anthropology porn”, then there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy my campaigns.

Vlad Taltos
Not so much the assassin character as the way Stephen Brust creates a world that works on D&D-like principles and makes it feel real. Your characters will almost certainly get dragged into the fights of obscenely more powerful beings, and they will be too busy defending themselves to watch out for you. Trying to live through the experience will be a bitch, but if you do, someone with a lot of clout or raw power will owe you a favor. Spend it wisely.

Camille Paglia
Especially Sexual Personae. Her descriptions of how art arises from a conflict between the Apollonian and the Dionysian influences a lot of how cultures and societies work in my games. It provides the groundwork for how Law and Chaos work as well, and when I use those terms, I’m thinking about Paglia even more than Moorcock. When I dip into the works of Poe, Coleridge, Tennyson, the Brownings, One Thousand and One Nights, Shakespeare, Byron, etcetera, Ms. Paglia is always on my shoulder, whispering in my ear.

Also, my games usually swerve into R-rated territory. When they do, it’s usually with a bit of Paglia’s influence. Unless I got there by way of…

Dark Crusade
My favorite work by Karl Edward Wagner. This book unabashedly wallows in the brutal horrors of a world untouched by the gentler philosophies of such cults as Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, etcetera. No other story I’ve read better conveys the sensual and savage brutality of a world in which the strong unapologetically rend what they will from the weak. Where Howard’s Conan stories draw a curtain, or Moorcock’s Elric turns away in brooding boredom, and Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” flees in horror, Wagner lingers. There’s a touch of Lovecraft here as well, but the horror of incomprehensible, alien gods pales beside the all too understandably human evil that saturates this book. My games can get dark, because there are evil people in my worlds, and the do horrible things. Some of that evil is so common in these worlds that most people hardly feel it worthwhile to comment on. Whether or not the PCs join in, struggle against it, or fall victim to it, I leave largely up to the players.

Goddess Mythology
I suppose being a fan of both ancient myth and Paglia, I’d run into this eventually, though it was actually by way of Joseph Campbell that I discovered Goddess myth. There is usually some faction whose philosophy encompasses the embrace of opposites, who celebrate life and see all things as divine and good, no matter how unpleasant, and who venerate the generative principles in my campaigns. They don’t always make pleasant neighbors. This is about as close to dealing with real world religions as I usually tread in a fantasy game, but I’m also not above blatantly using, say, the Roman Catholic Church in Shadowrun or Hinduism in my space opera. If this sort of thing disturbs you, best stay away.

Yikes! I was supposed to list at least five. That’s thirteen. So what might folks be surprised isn’t a profound influence on my gaming? That’s actually a much harder question to answer. I’ll tentatively say…

Anime
I love anime. I have in the past written reviews for American audiences and own a few complete series and individual movies. That said, there’s little in anime I bring to my fantasy gaming. The arcade-like blasts of Technicolor power, the giantly oversized weaponry, the blatant anachronisms all turn me off when I get to the gaming table, as much as I enjoy them on the screen. “Record of Lodoss War” is about as close to my gaming as anime tends to come, but as that’s blatantly influenced by D&D, the similarities have more to do with diverging from a common source than anything else. (Sci-fi, however, is another matter entirely…)

Tom Moldvay
Yeah, ok, so he wrote the rulebook that got me started in gaming, and so he’s certainly had an influence there. But I cannot stand most of his adventures. Castle Amber feels like a madhouse of random elements just sort of shoved in, willy-nilly, unless you’re familiar with the stories, and even then, you have to wonder how all of this is supposed to hang together when the PCs are not around. I appreciate the ideas in The Lost City, but I can’t run it without seriously reworking a lot of the premises and many of the encounters. I can handle a bit of anachronism, even mix some sci-fi with my fantasy. But I love my verisimilitude, and Moldvay generally can’t be bothered with anything so pedestrian.

On New "Old School" Art

What do I think art that paid homage to the Old School greatness of Willingham, Dee, and Trampier, but didn't slavishly attempt to reproduce their style, might look like?

How about this?

The Grand OGL Wiki Breaks Ground

From The Gamer Dome we learn that The Grand OGL Wiki, spurred on by the generosity of Mongoose Publishing, is beginning to take shape.

Amagi Goodness

The Gamebits of Amagi Games continues to fill up with all sorts of gamey goodness. Mr. Kornelsen has two new additions. Strain is a mechanic for handling character transformation. It's less about leveling-up and the like, and more about lateral moves:

The swordmaster, hand hacked off, apprentices himself to a Magus. The princess, having shunned the court, takes up archery, and begins to lose her polished manner in exchange for lethal skill.

I can see some use for this sort of thing in my Moldvay/Cook/LL hack, but I'd rather just let these sorts of things arise organically out of play.

However, I adore games with lots of complex scheming and machinations going on in the background. Keeping all those plots running requires levels of organization that I'm rarely up to. So Long Knives is great for me. Not only has Mr. Kornelsen detailed a quick and easy way to record and access information on the political maneuverings within a campaign, he's also included a fillable, saveable PDF form to help out! I haven't had a chance to really play with it yet, but it looks perfect for my needs.

Old School and New: the Aesthetics of Layout

Gallons of digital ink are being spilled all over the grognardy intrawebs today about “old school” art and the place of such aesthetics in new products. It started with James Maliszewski’s review of Matthew Finch’s The Pod-Caverns of the Sinister Shroom. That led Noisms to wax a touch ranty on the knee-jerk reactions against innovation he sees as a toxin that limits the appeal and growth of old-school gaming. Matthew Finch responded in the comments of this response by Mr. Maliszewski with a wonderful exegesis on the art of the original publications of Dungeons & Dragons. I especially appreciate Mr. Finch’s insight into “the moment of decision” versus “the moment of action”.

Tastes, of course, can differ (just see Mr. Maliszewski’s comment about Elmore’s art being “soulless” in that last link, an opinion that will receive no support in this blog). One man’s art is another man’s birdcage lining. And I certainly will not advance the notion that the succession of RPG rules, from the early ‘70s to now, intrinsically follow any sort evolution or natural progression from worse to better. Reactions to a set of RPG rules are as subjective as reactions to a style of illustration, just as they are as much influenced by what the observer is looking for as by what is actually there.

Page layout, however, has undeniably advanced in real and important ways in the nearly forty years RPGs have been with us. This is due in part to technology, which gives just about anyone reading this blog tools for layout and composition that would have been the envy of the folks who put together the original little brown books of D&D. In addition, the science of ergonomics, which deals with how people read and learn as much as it does adjusting your chair to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome, has given the graphic designer additional tools for arranging text to make it easier to read and use. If there’s one place where aping the styles of the past is foolish, it’s in layout and design. Gygax, Moldvay, and the rest did the best they could, but their tools were not up to the standards of even the most casual weekend-publisher today. So, inspired by the comments on old-school aesthetics and the impending Worldwide Adventure Writing Month, here are some simple layout and design techniques to help people get more out of the adventures you write.

Taste the Rainbow
One thing those old modules lacked was color. The interiors were entirely black-and-white. On one hand, this is can be a strength. Printing these old modules from PDFs and the like doesn’t eat through an entire color cartridge. Also, too many designers just go crazy with color. While I appreciated the aged notebook feel of the 3e core books, they were also horribly busy. All that clutter exhausts the eye and makes it harder to find what you’re looking for. If you’re going to use color, remember that less is often more.

What is color good for? Transitions, for one. I’m loathe to use my own blog as an example, only because it badly needs a facelift, but this is one area where the pre-packaged layout works fairly well. Notice how each blog entry’s title is green? As you scroll down through my most recent posts, these titles are easy to find, because nothing else looks like them. You can scroll so quickly your eye doesn’t have time to actually read the words, but you’ll still know when you’ve reached the end of a post and the beginning of another by the flash of green.

You can also use color to draw the eye to important text that’s buried in the middle of a paragraph. You probably already have experience doing this. Most of us in school used highlighters to mark up our textbooks and class notes. The bright colors of the highlighter draw the eye immediately to those sections of particular note, so you don’t have to scan up and down the page, hunting for what you’re looking for. Keeping that experience in mind, have you ever found yourself hunting through the vast, grey tracks inside a module, holding up the game while you search for information? I have, and the usual culprit is stat blocks. I love the tiny stat blocks of old school games, but they very easily blend in to the rest of the paragraph they usually inhabit. Adjusting the color only slightly, adding a bit red for instance, can make them pop out more, so you don’t hold up the game while you try to find the hell hound’s THAC0.

Find Yourself in a Drop Box
The folks doing RPG design these days love drop boxes. They’re a wonderful way to include a little bit of extra info that doesn’t really fit into the main flow of the text. They can be used for parenthetical comments, to remind the GM of special cases or situations, or as a way of offering additional options or details. There are a couple of things to keep in mind when using a drop box. First, they should be short. If you’re writing more than a handful of sentences, or more than a single paragraph in your drop box, this information probably needs to find a way into the main body of your text. Second, you really want to make sure they stand out from the rest of the document. The folks at Paizo (who are some of the best in the business right now in terms of layout) make their drop boxes stand out by use of both colors (background and text within the box) and changing the font they use inside the box. The first thing in the drop box should be its title, which ought to remind the harried GM what’s in the box. “Oh, that’s right, these goblins might ally with the PCs against the ogres in area 3. I’ll just scan this drop box real quick to remind myself of the details, just in case…”

Drop boxes are also a great way for you, the designer, to speak directly to the GMs running your adventure. You can explain why your adventure is designed the way it is, suggest ways the adventure can be adjusted in response to what the PCs do, and share amusing anecdotes of what happened when you play-tested the module. Imagine how differently the history of RPGs might have gone if Gygax had been able to use a drop box to explain that the inhabitants of the keep on the borderlands didn’t have names in the module so that each individual DM could better tailor them to fit into the preferred genre or milieu.

Wisdom of the Ancients
There are some things that I loved in those old modules I don’t see much in the new ones. I loved the handouts, for instance. These were rare, but worked really well when they were used. For instance, the infamous Tomb of Horrors and Expedition to the Barrier Peaks both included numerous black-and-white illustrations of places and things the PCs might encounter. Some second-edition AD&D adventures took things even further, giving the DM maps and letters to hand to the players as these things were discovered by the PCs. Ptolus did this as well, with all sorts of handouts like official writs and menus from different restaurants.

If you’re a weekend-publisher, any art you include is likely to represent your greatest expense in publishing. That being the case, get the most bang for your buck by making that art directly useful to the GMs running your modules. I love the way Paizo gives us portraits of important PCs in their adventures, but since those portraits are often buried in the middle of the adventure, it’s difficult to share them with the players. Make it easy for GMs to show their players a sketch of the villain’s throne room, or the rickety bridge over the bottomless gorge. And please, ditch the traditional illustration of a group of heroes facing off against a monster on the cover. Not only does that picture serve little purpose in the middle of the game, but it might even spoil details best discovered during play. If you must include cover art, make it useful. Displaying the entrance to the dungeon, for instance, would be a great use of cover art.

There’s a lot more that could be said on this topic, such as the interactions between serif and sans serif fonts, the placement of elements to break up blocks of text and encourage the flow of reading, and the arrangement of tables for easy use. But right now I’ve got to go whack Mr. Maliszewski upside the head with a clue-by-four. Soulless indeed…

Stupid Random Encounter Table Tricks

Ktrey of d4 Caltrops has decided to prove that there are inspirations for cool houserules lurking on every page of the Rules Cyclopedia. Honestly, I know I don't need or want that many houserules, but that doesn't mean it isn't fun to look.

In the first of what promises to be a running series, Ktrey starts with the City Encounters subtable on page 98.

Here's a fun house-rule he offers up that would work great in urban or investigation-heavy campaigns of the sort I prefer to run:

Characters start the game with d4+Charaisma Bonus Contacts. Either randomly roll (my personal favorite) or choose some “contacts” from Subtable: 11. City Encounters. These “contacts” are people that your character knows and who are automatically considered “friendly” for the purposes of NPC Reactions. Remember that Armorsmith in the sample adventure from the Mentzer Basic Player’s Handbook who let your character trade his chain for plate? These NPCs are people have known your character long enough to do you the odd favor or two, and likewise if they needed help from you, you’d be hard pressed to refuse.

I'm not sure I'll use it in my Moldvay/Cook/LL hack (I'm tempted to allow players to invent such contacts as needed based upon their backgrounds), but it's the sort of thing that would fit very well into most of my D&D campaigns.

DungeonPunk as Setting

WyzardWhately has an intriguing idea for a fantasy RPG setting:

1. A World in the Grip of Monsters
Nearly ten thousand years ago, the last of the human empires fell. They could not stand against the dark forces and magic of the Deep Kings. Whole armies of conscripts were slaughtered or enslaved in the final battles, and fortresses were left without a single stone standing upon another. Now, the good races of the earth are forced into feudalistic serfdom for their inhuman masters. The Dragons, Beholders, Illithids, Liches, Devils, Titans, and other titanic forces of the world rule. Their kingdoms are administrated by their foul spawn, the goblinoids, humanoids, giants, and innumerable lesser monsters. They slay, kidnap, and steal as they will under color of "taxation." The true rulers do not care for the suffering of the people, so long as the production numbers stay high. Towns are walled, but the walls are to keep people in, not out.

2. The Deep Kings
A couple things are required to become a Deep King. One, you must have a large amount of personal force. This is generally represented by being at least a tenth level solo monster, higher than tenth if you're an elite. Normal Monster Deep Kings are practically unheard of (since any normal monster of that height and significance should probably have a template applied.)

The second requirement is that they have to go down, deep. Power radiates from out from the center of the earth. Stone tunnels collect and concentrate it. It disperses swiftly toward the surface. Getting closer to it, and living there, down under miles of rock...that's how you become truly powerful. So, you dig.

But not just straight down. A simple well-shaft isn't enough. You need it to be complicated, with lots of zig-zags, splits, chambers, and mazes. That keeps the power in. So, you build a dungeon on your way down. And you need a way to keep in touch with the surface. So, you get a lot of less powerful monsters to boss around. And they'll come easy, once the Power starts to gather inside you. It lets you lead them, lets you bend them to your will.

I'm not crazy about his gold -> magic -> residuum cycle, but it certainly makes the magic item economy in 4e D&D make a bit more sense. I do think adding a corruption mechanic would be fun. As you push deeper to face the Deep Kings, the corrupting power at the depths of the world begins to infect the PCs, slowly transforming them into the monsters they fight.

- Brian

GSL?!? We don't Need no Stinking GSL!

Here's something intriguing.

First, here's a bit from the 4e D&D GSL:

Notwithstanding the foregoing, except as otherwise provided in this License no Licensed Product (as defined below) will have a first on-sale date prior to October 1, 2008.

The added emphasis is mine.

Now, go here and scroll down to where it says "GenCon Releases (In Stores Early September)".

Yeah, interesting, huh?

Winning Friends and Influencing People... with Use Rope!

Yeah, I'll just let you ponder that for a while, huh?

Mr. Kornelson continues to impress with his Amagi Games project. His latest is on using usually non-social skills in social situations. I find this paragraph especially intriguing:

The somewhat more intense version of this idea is to dispense with standard social skills altogether, and use everything else as social skills. This isn’t as odd as it sounds. For groups that prefer to roleplay out social interactions, only resorting to the dice when there’s a factor that’s hard to play through involved, many of those skills are secondary appendages, a cruft that can be done without; the value is in acting it out, and the ‘normal’ die rolls are a factor that doesn’t actually deserve to be weighed into the equation. By restacking the social elements that are actually useful to this style into other skills, the excess can be done away with.

This is actually the way I've been running social challenges in my D&D games for years. I'll probably use similar ideas in my Moldvay/Cook/Labyrinth Lord hack.

Ignorant Wizards and Brilliant Fighters

Odyssey is our canary in the 4e mine these days:

It's also got me thinking that the wizard may now actually be the least complicated class to run. Everyone has the same power scheme, and if the wizard has a good team backing her up she has a lot less to juggle than the rest of the group. Which is weird, historically, but I may start recommending that the new players play wizards and ask the veterans to play defenders. Crazy edition.

I found that interesting when I read it last night, but today, I ran across this post over at RPG.net:

Group and I played through the first two KotS encounters last night and our "Tank" couldn't "hold aggro." What's up with that? As far as I could tell, the Pally did everything "by the book." He charged into the fray, he marked and marked and marked again.

But the freaking Kobolds just didn't care! They were all "-2 to hit? Whatever." And then they went ahead and killed the rest of the party!

I could gripe that maybe his mere +1 Charisma mod wasn't threat enough to make the damage from ignoring him worthwhile but, really, the point of the Defender isn't to actually "hold aggro", right? The point is to make it not worth the enemy's while to attack someone else. But the -2 to hit still left the rest of hte party as squishy enough targets that the Kobolds attacked us anyway.

And this was after the author, playing a wizard, had whacked most of the die-on-any-hit mooks.

The strikers have a fairly easy job, in that they just have to get into position to maximize their damage. This might mean maneuvering behind a foe, or flanking them. The "leader" classes (probably better called "support") just need to be in a position to bolster those who need it the most, which will probably keep them running between the strikers and the defenders. But the defenders are the ones who really need to exercise their tactical acumen. They need to both shield the softer members of the party (especially the wizards and warlocks) while also supporting the strikers. Granted, the battles in Keep on the Shadowfell are a defender's nightmare: completely open terrain with lots of highly mobile kobolds. The primary job of the defender is to fix the enemy, pin them in place so they can't go where the PCs don't want them to go, and making them vulnerable to the strikers' attacks. 4e kobolds just refuse to be pinned.

All the wizard has to do is stay away from enemies while bringing down the pain whenever they bunch up too much. It's a far easier task than the one faced by fighters and paladins. It might be more challenging than the warlock's job, or the archer version of the ranger, who both seem to be snipers now.

Vegetables at War!

Jennifer Shoonover's series, "The Vegetative State of Your Campaign" is currently in the middle of a series about plants in warfare. The latest article deals specifically with plants used in warfare during the Middle Ages. The primary focus is on Europe, but we get a few Asian touches as well. I love this sort of stuff:

Spears
Ash was the traditional wood for spear shafts—being light and very springy—so as to absorb the bending force applied when the spear point engaged the target armor without failing.

Axes, other handled weaponry
The favored Early Medieval wood for shafts was in Old English called 'corntreow' or 'gatetreow', this translates as cornel cherry. As this is from an english text and the cornel cherry is thought to have been a 16th C. introduction the dogwood seems more likely.

Hickory was for axe handles, a very tough wood that absorbed the shock impact forces generated in use.

She also talks about plants as aids to healing, as wards against sorcery, and their use in heraldry. She finishes with a list of ideas for incorporating some of the ideas in your campaign. I love to use this sort of stuff for color and character, such as when I describe what happens when a character uses non-magical or herb-based healing skills, or discussing the weapons and equipment of soldiers and enemies.

The One-sentence NPC Contest

The Chatty DM loves him some contests. He's teamed up with Johnn Four of Roleplaying Tips, for his latest contest:

How do you enter? Quite simple!

You need to write a One Sentence NPC, generally based on the tips provided in Johnn’s latest edition of the e-zine: Use 3 traits, include a contradiction, Make it generic but interesting.

Every NPC you submit is another chance to win, so you can play early and often with this one. And the prizes are quite sweet, including Hero Lab software, adventures, and a Senior Patron Open Design account for one of Wolfgang Baur's adventure design projects.

The contest looks like fun, but even if you decide to not enter, you should swing by anyway to check out the NPC design tip it's based on.

Sham's Take on Stats

Sham's spent a bit of time considering what the stat scores in D&D actually mean, and has come to some surprising conclusions:

Consider the odds of rolling an 18 using 3d6. It’s 1 in 216. Like me, you probably say “Wow!” when a natch 18 is rolled with 3d6 (and an equally emphatic “Ugh!” when a natch 3 is rolled). It’s almost as if the mindset in D&D is that an 18 in any ability is somehow superhuman in nature, but when we look at the chance of rolling an 18, we realize that this is hardly the case. Think of it this way; take a large body of people you have observed in real life…High School or College, or even an arena filled with fans for a concert or sporting event. Now, think of the way you might envision a D&D character with an 18 Strength, and realize that in High School, the chances are that 10 classmates had an 18 STR, in College 140 had 18 STR, and at an arena 350 fans had an 18 STR. Not so superhuman now.

He also considers save-vs-stat rolls and other such houseruling goodness. I think the idea that the stats are actually vague isn't a new one, but we don't consider all the possibilities. The classic example is Charisma. A lot of ink, digital and otherwise, has been spilled over Charisma not being a measure of physical beauty. But there's no reason why a high or low Charisma score can't be impacted by a character's physical appearance. Is your character's low Dexterity score due to being clumsy, or being nearsighted? Since Dex covers hand-eye coordination as well as balance, a low score could be due to deficiencies in either. Or both. Or even something else all together.

Anyway, it's interesting stuff to think about, especially in terms of character generation.

RedBrick Signs on the Dotted Line

RedBrick has posted a press release, claiming to be the first folks to complete the GSL authorization process:

RedBrick Limited are pleased to announce they have successfully concluded the signing and acceptance of the first Game System License for Wizards of the Coast’s DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® 4th Edition Roleplaying Game.

James Flowers, RedBrick’s Managing Director, said "This is an exciting opportunity for us. We have been looking forward to working with Wizards of the Coast for some time. Now that Wizards have accepted RedBrick’s application for a Game System License, we can move forward with our plans for publishing DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® 4th Edition compatible products. Once details of our forthcoming product releases have been finalized, we will make a separate announcement."

This is a surprise, honestly. RedBrick are best known as the caretakers of other peoples' IP. They currently keep in print and publish supplements for FASA's Earthdawn, Holistic's amazing Fading Suns, and Biohazard's Blue Planet. Could they be talking about a 4e version of one of those games? Possibly, but it seems more likely they're thinking about completely unrelated projects. Blue Planet is a through-and-through sci-fi game. The sci might be a bit soft, but it would certainly be better served working under the as-yet-promised GSL for non-fantasy projects. Ditto for Fading Suns, though it does have some fantasy elements. So the most likely target in their current stable would be Earthdawn, and I'm not certain there's a market for a 4e version of that game. The 3e version, as I recall, didn't do all that well.

So I'm guessing that RedBrick is hoping to start a new line of products to support 4e. They're well positioned to do this, already having the resources in place to create and distribute professional-quality dead-tree and electronic books. They also already have access to some professional-level writers and designers. A new 4e line of sourcebooks and adventures would be an additional revenue stream for the company. In addition, without any OGL products in their catalog, the "poison pill" provisions of the GSL are not an issue for them.

So that gives us RedBrick as a confirmed GSL publisher, and Necromancer Games as an all-but official GSL publisher. I'll be surprised if Goodman Games doesn't also announce that they're signing on to the GSL as well.

"I only do one-die-four..."

"...that's why I'm always the first to die."

(Via d4 Caltrops.)

Amagi Games Has Gone Live

... and I had no idea something like this was happening.

What is Amagi Games? It appears to be the new online home of game-explorer ('cause that's what he really is, a guy who is exploring and expireminting and just having a grand old time with games) Levi Kornelsen. Mr. Kornelsen and I have this tradition of not understanding one another at times, and talking in circles around each other. This, I think, stems from the fact that we both think faster than we talk/type. That said, I have a lot of respect for him, and the sort of things he does for gaming. And that went up a few notches as I poked around Amagi Games.

What's so special about the site?

THE TEXT OF AMAGI GAMES IS PUBLIC DOMAIN
What does that mean? It means that everyone has the right to use the material in any way they like. Period. No credits are required, you don’t need to ask, you don’t need to follow a license. These things belong to everyone. You could mirror almost everything on the site (there are pieces of not-public art here and there), share it, publish it for free or for money, splice it into a game you’re working on, whatever you like (and so can Amagi). You could make a brand-new plug-in with the Amagi name on it, and release it as if it came from here. It’s free, all the way. Free as in air.

Is Mr. Kornelsen crazy? Maybe. Or maybe, crazy like a fox:

For quite some time, webcomics have been giving away the products of their imaginations. There are no (or, at least, very few) concerns with people sharing the material; you never hear about people “stealing a subscription” or “committing webcomic piracy”, because those ideas don’t make any sense.

Their business model is already totally in tune with online environment; they sell advertising, printed books, and the like, instead of the easily-shared digital information. So, why couldn’t a tabletop roleplaying game designer, tinkerer, article-writer, do that?

A few have, but don’t think of themselves as game companies. Why not? And, if the ideas are being given away… Why not really give them away? Not just the ideas, but all of it; let people use the text however they like, let go of copyright anywhere that it’s possible to do it. Free and full gifting of ideas means that others can take something written, and show you something entirely new that it’s good for.

Now, it may not be a solid route. It may be an insane, stupid, implosive idea; certainly, it’s not the right way to go for everyone, or for every project. But, even so, it’s awesome. And someone should totally give it a try, and find out if it could work…

Honestly, to me, this could be the single most exciting thing to happen in the RPG blogosphere this year. I'll certainly be keeping an eye on it. And you should check out some of the stuff that's already up there. Temptation Dice, for instance, looks like a very cool mechanic, and one I may be adding to my games.

And special thanks to the Gnome Rodeo for pointing this page out.

"WHAT... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?"

Via Robert Fisher comes a link to "Making Better Puzzles", an article by Stephen Granade on, erm, well, better-puzzle making. Brass Lantern is primarily aimed at computer games, but a lot of the principles carry over to pen-and-paper RPGs.