Playing with Death and Dismemberment

Hit points are supposed to be an abstraction that model a character's defensive combat prowess, physical stamina, and will to persevere. Traditionally, however, most folks play them like they measured a character's biological structural integrity. Every roll of the d20 was a swing to hit. Every roll for damage came from a successful to-hit roll, so it represented how much physical trauma the strike caused to the body.

I want to get away from that and back to the idea that hit points are an abstraction of, yes, physical trauma, but more than that, of being worn down by your foes and mental and physical exhaustion. One of the neatest tools I've seen for doing this is the Classic D&D Injury Table over at Robert Fisher's web page.

The idea behind the table is simple: any character reduced to zero hit points, or hit after being dropped to zero, must suffer the results of a roll on the table. A character reduced to zero hit points is not necessarily out of the fight. Rolling a 2 results in no effect, while any result below 6 has the character still conscious, and able to potentially return to the fight. This makes it quite clear that the "hits" your character has taken up to this point have been mostly flesh wounds and minor strikes. But once your hit points are at zero, you're no longer able to effectively defend yourself. Every attack is potentially lethal now.

I like Mr. Fisher's table, but I'm an inveterate tweaker and just had to make one of my own. Keep in mind as you read it that only the PCs and possibly very important NPCs get to use this table. If you bring your average orc or troll to zero hit points, they simply die.

(My apologies for the difficulties with this table. For some reason HTML does wacky things when filtered through Blogger. This is my third attempt to make it easy to read. Clearly, the only workable solution is to replace the table with a picture of a proper, legible table. Grrrrr...)

2d6	RESULTS
2 or lower	instant death (decapitated or other grevious wound).
3	fatal wound (gutted, stabbed through lung, broken back, etc.) die in 1d6 turns.
4	severed limb (DM's choice or roll randomly) will die in 3d6 rounds unless tourniquet applied, wound cauterized with fire, or Cure Serious Wounds cast (CSW used for this will not restore lost hp).
5,6	broken bone (DM's choice), 2d4+9 weeks to heal.
7,8	knocked out for 2d6 rounds, unless wearing a helm. With helm, only stunned for 1 round.
9	stunned for 1 round, unless wearing helm. With helm, only knocked down.
10	knocked down.
11	no effect.
12+	a surge of adrenaline returns 1d4 hit points per every other level (1d4 at 1st and 2nd, 2d4 at 3rd and 4th, etc.) At the end of the combat, the adrenaline drains away, hit points are reduced to zero, and the PC faints for 2d6 rounds.

As you can see, a lot of this table is swiped wholesale from Mr. Fisher's table. However, I've also given some love to the lowly helmet, and I've included a "rally at the last minute" option as well. It might seem a bit too Buffy, but it fits the genre, whether you're talking Conan or King Arthur.

UPDATE: Norman Harman reports success with the Table of Death & Dismemberment, but finds it too wussy. Behold his table of Deadlier Death & Dismemberment!

Playing with Fancy Combat Maneuvers

After discussing the possibility of divorcing fancy combat powers and exploits from their character classes in 4e, I’ve been toying with similar things in my Moldvay/Cook/Labyrinth Lord hack. Moldvay is completely devoid of fancy combat moves. Cook adds the “fighting withdrawal” (backing away from a foe at half your normal movement) and “retreat” (moving at full speed away from your foe, but offering them all sorts of bonuses to hit you).

This lack of complexity is, of course, one of the appeals of Moldvay/Cook D&D. However, I know my players will, eventually, want to pull some fancy maneuvers, and it would be best if I’m ready for that sort of thing. Restraint here is important, since I don’t want to just recreate all the complexity of later versions of the game. I’ve already got copies of 2e; if I wanted to play that, I could start tomorrow and not waste a lot of time reinventing that wheel.

The temptation to build a standardized mechanic is strong, of course. That’s the solution modern game design theory crowns as the best. However, I’ve also already got True20 if I want to play a modern game. There are very real benefits to standardized mechanics. However, this exercise is not based on maximizing those. This game already embraces a legacy of lots of tiny different mechanics for different jobs. I see no reason to swerve from that path now.

People love spilling ink about grappling rules, and they tend to be the most complex monsters out there. A good set of grappling rules need to do two things: first, they need to model what grappling does, which is allow one or more combatants to immobilize and wrestle a foe to the ground. However, the ability to take an opponent out of the fight, regardless of how many hit points that foe has, is extremely powerful. If you make the grappling rules too powerful or flexible, fighters will just leave their swords at home and grapple everything they meet.

Here’s how I’m tackling grappling:

If you want to grapple someone, roll to-hit as normal, do damage as bare-handed. If you do more damage in that round than your foe, they are grappled and may not move or attack anyone else until they break free. Grappled foes do damage as bare-handed. They break free on the round they do more damage than you.

Because of the way my initiative rules work, a bare-handed grappler goes after almost any weapon-wielder. You have to get past that sharp-and-pointy before you can start to wrestle your foe to the ground. And if you don’t, you’re repelled. You can try again next round, but you didn’t manage to get a good grip on your foe this round. Once a foe is grappled, their movement is so limited they can only strike at someone who is grappling them, they don’t get the full benefit of their weapon, and they can’t move until they escape the grappler’s hold.

Also notice that multiple attacks seriously increase the chance of a successful grapple. The first grappler has to do more damage than the target. The second grappler, however, only has to hit the target; assuming the target can only hit one foe per round, the target will be doing zero damage to the second grappler. This means three or more grapplers are almost certain to get a good hold on a foe. That feels right to me, though it may put the PCs at a disadvantage. I can imagine swarms of kobolds wrestling the PCs to the ground. Or a few PCs wrestling a giant down. Ok, that seems like it might be a bit much, so here’s an addendum to our wrastlin’ rules:

If the combined heights of all grapplers is less than 3/4th's the height of the grappled, then the grappled can't move but can still fight with a weapon as normal. If the combined heights of the grapplers is less than 1/4th the height of the grappled, the grappled breaks free automatically.

So, lone gnomes will not be wrestling storm giants to the ground in my game. And one or two kobolds are probably not a serious threat to a human fighter. But enough of them can pull even a big man to the ground.

I don’t plan on using these rules very often against the PCs. I’m a little worried that they might be too useful in high-level combat, when the PCs and NPCs might have dozens of hit points. I might just have to play with the rules and see.

Legends of the Long Campaign

A while back, Odyssey expressed envy for those who had run long-term campaigns. This weekend, we learned sirlarkins is just such a person:

The campaign's tone, and its future, tangibly shifted with the advent of two events about a month into the game. First, Des very kindly purchased The Great Pendragon Campaign for me. Ah, the advantages of having your girlfriend as one of your players! Needless to say, the purchase of the GPC allowed me to really delve into the source material and have a structure upon which to hang the action.

LESSON ONE: Using the GPC has really showed me the importance of having a strong narrative outline in any sort of long-term campaign. This isn't an outline of plot, mind you, just an outline of what's going on in the world year to year. That way, you can have the events of the world occur and allow your characters to interact with that as they will.

There's a lot of good advice, enough of a taste of the arc to be entertaining without devolving into the dreaded boring character history, and a short paean to the joys of randomness:

Jim over at LotFP wrote in a recent post about how the current iterations of D&D have betrayed the game's sometimes random and deadly roots. I couldn't agree more. Knowing that your character could easily die from a bad roll simply adds drama and tension to the game. A recent example: Neilyn, a knight still at the top of his abilities, was ambushed by raiders while riding pursuit after a recent battle. He took a great spear to the armpit and nearly died. Just like that.

Alex, who was playing a Jewish mystic at the time, was able to heal Neilyn and bring him back from death's door--yet even that came down to dice rolling. Had the dice not cooperated, Neilyn might well have died. The drama and tension during that whole scene were palpable.

It's a long post, but it's certainly worth your time for the advice, insight, and inspiration.

Jeff Reviews In Harm's Way: Aces and Spades

Jeff Rients, after a bit of a Barbie-induced sabbatical from blogging, has posted a review of Clash Bowley's RPG of WWI flying aces. In spite of (or, more likely, I suspect, because of) a degree in history, I tend to avoid straight-up historical games myself, but this one seems to have a number of interesting flourishes that appeal to the designer in me:

Which brings us to one of my favorite parts of Aces in Spades. The players all work together to fight enemy squadrons, but they're also in earnest competition with each other for kills, general recognition, medals, mention in dispatches, and promotions. I like games with that kind of dual competitive/cooperative nature. Truth be told, when I'm a player I tend to approach any campaign that way, but that's another post for another day.

Also be sure to check out how points can be moved between attack rolls. It's a nifty and elegant system that gives players a bit more control of the random elements of combat.

Wrestling with Skill Challenges

D&D's new skill challenges are getting a lot of scrutiny right now. Amidst accusations that they are mathematically broken and attempts to fix the issue, Keith Baker discusses how he has been using them:

In any case, in looking purely at the math of +9-11 vs DC 20, you're missing a lot of the options and depth that go into a skill challenge. First you have the potential modifiers to the math. Then you have the fact that a good skill challenge should always provide interesting options; it should be more than just a few flat rolls. And finally there's the fact that failing a skill challenge shouldn't be the end of the world. In many cases I assume that the PCs WON'T succeed at a skill challenge (remember as DM, I KNOW what their skills are when I'm designing the challenge); the issue is that the closer they get, the better.

What I find interesting is how skill challenges seem to confound the assumptions many brought to 4e. The skill challenge system does not banish DM fiat from social conflict; rather it seems to return DM fiat to a system that was a simple, boring, one-roll skill check. Once again, your best chance at success comes from entertaining the DM:

In running a challenge, I'm not looking for the PC to say "I'm using Diplomacy." I want him to roleplay the scene. How's he making his case? Is he drawing on anything specifically relevant to his target? While I like this for color, it's called out as something that SHOULD be rewarded. In providing advice to the DM, page 74 of the DMG specifically notes that you can choose to reward creative action (or penalize the opposite) by applying a -2 to +2 modifier to the check. In some cases, I've specifically set up encounters where the player can get an even higher bonus if he brings up the right thing...

I honestly don't consider this a bad thing, though I wonder at the utility of a dice rolls. I suppose the system does provide the new DM with a rigorous skeleton to hang new skill challenges from. And D&D just loves getting you to roll dice.

In any event, this is one topic that's clearly stirring the natives to restlessness:

As far as I can tell, skill challenges are a game in almost the same way that snakes & ladders is a game. Player choice doesn't matter -- it's all dice rolls, no strategy. The inclusion of skills that count as automatic failures would seem to mitigate this somewhat, but tactical play requires knowledge choice between meaningful options, and the book seems to suggest you can only find out which skills autofail by using them and suffering an autofail.

For a game that prides itself on a lot of interesting tactical choice, this is bad design at the foundational level. Adjusting DCs won't make them work -- the system needs total replacement. There is nothing "X successes before Y failures" does that "one success on X skill" doesn't do, except obfuscate your chances of success.

UPDATE: Mike Mearls gives us the word from the Coast:

We had a meeting about skill challenges on (cue creepy music) Friday the 13th. We came to a few conclusions on what happened, what our intent is, and what we're going to do about it.

The system went through several permutations as we worked on it, and I think there are some disconnects between the final text, our intentions, and how playtesters and internal designers use skill challenges.

So, we've been listening and reading threads and figuring out some stuff on our end.

Playing Outside the Lines

Greywulf is having fun learning 4e, and he has an intriguing insight:

One of the many things that 4e does right is fix that. Move one square in any direction, and it costs 1 square. Just adjust for terrain (difficult costs 2 per square), and you’re done.

So here’s the thing.

You don't need a grid any more!

Read that again, and let it sink in.

Just grab a ruler to measure the inches, and your minis can move anywhere, however the heck they want. No grid needed. Count each full inch of difficult terrain as 2 inches, and move front-of-base to front of base. Go ‘round corners by following the path, and allow free movement of 1” for the shift - the old 3e 5-foot step, reborn.

Getting rid of the grid means getting rid of the battlemat and boardgame mentality. It means that grey tablecloth (the one you washed with your socks by accident. Yes, that one) is your dungeon floor, with books marking dungeon walls. You’re out of Boardgame-land where you’re counting the movement and firmly into Wargame-land with all that entails. Freedom of movement, tactical use of terrain and pure, unadulterated old-school D&D goes back to it’s Chainmail roots fun.

He's got a number of intriguing options that this makes available, including a neat idea for miniatures. I'm not sure they're all worth trading in the ease of counting squares for wrangling of rulers, but I have to admit, I like not feeling trapped in a grid.

4e, Computer Games, and Playing with Exploits

Via The Velvet Dicebag, there’s this seven page article by Tom Smith on what computer game designers might be able to borrow, steal, or learn from D&D’s 4^th edition. Mr. Smith is a Creative Manager at THQ, so this isn’t just some Monday-morning quarterbacking by a guy who thinks computer games are kinda cool.

It’s a neat article, and if you’re interested at all in how computer games are designed or in the sorts of issues that game design of all kinds must deal with, it’s worth your time. It was this bit on the last page, however, that caught my eye:

The Dungeon Master's Guide has a section on "Actions the Rules Don't Cover". One example there is a player who wants to swing from a chandelier to push an ogre into a fire. It's a fitting and interesting idea, perfect for the cinematic action style of most D&D games. But there are no core rules for it.

The book encourages the DM to improvise, giving a skill check (Acrobatics against the standard Easy Difficulty Check, provided in a chart) for grabbing on and swinging, and an attack (Strength versus Fortitude) to knock him back.

Now this is very interesting to me. Pushing enemies around the battlemat is, I thought, a specialty of the rogue class. Some of those powers, I’m sure, are per-encounter and per-day. But if I want to just knock that ogre back a few squares, I can do it without spending any of my special powers? Doesn’t that kinda suck some of the wind out of the rogue’s sails? Can I get something like the magic-user’s ability to smack multiple foes at once if I toss a bench at them? If I do something to inspire my allies, can I give them extra attacks, or movement, or healing surges like a cleric or warlord?

You can see where I’m going with this, I’m sure. If I can invoke special moves like that without having the requisite abilities, why bother with those classes? The 4e warlord is suddenly in the same boat as the OD&D thief; instead of making the game more interesting, he’s stealing the chance for the players to be creative. A chance to interact with the world, NPCs, or even your fellow players has been reduced to a single roll of the dice.

I’m not quite ready to bring healing surges to my Moldvay/Cook/Labyrinth Lord hack (though I haven’t completely counted them out yet, either). However, using the terrain for fancy maneuvers or inspiring henchmen to give them temporary bonuses to the moral certainly are not beyond the realms of the reasonable. And we already have lots of rules we can use to adjudicate such things. We could treat them like skill checks, for instance, roll under a stat or the tried-and-true 1-plus-bonuses or less on a d6. If it’s a fancy combat maneuver, you could just tie it in to the to-hit roll. After all, there’s no reason why the to-hit must be about damage. That’s what you’re normally trying to achieve in combat, but if you instead are more interested in maneuvering your opponent, or disarming them, or forcing a moral check, I see no reason why those can’t be invoked from a to-hit roll modified to reflect how much easier or more difficult the desired effect is than simply wounding and wearing down your foe.

Goodies and Tools for 4e

Via the At Will blog comes word of a nice collection of useful tools for 4e, gathered by the Propagandroid of The Gamer Dome:

I’ve run across some really great accessories and play aids for 4e D&D during my internet journeys and I figured, “I’ve got a blog, why not share them with my readers?” Revolutionary thinking, I know. I’ve already used some of these in games, and I especially enjoyed the crib sheet, which really helps new players (all of us!) figure out what they can do on their turn.

Power Cards - Complete Set: These things are swwww-eet. They’re pretty, and functional, and cover every PC power in the 4e PHB! Megaprops to Ander00 over at EN World for these. EN World post

Kiznit’s 4e Character Sheet: It’s pretty good now, but I’d keep checking back as he’s going to add a third page with blank power cards. Of course, you won’t need those if you keep reading. Direct Link (several pdf version links in the post)

And that's just the first two. There's more gold in them thar hills, including other versions of character sheets, initiative and effects trackers, and other helpful aids.

These are the sorts of things I would think WotC's D&D page should be highlighting. Still, it's good to see the community really charging ahead with these sorts of tools.

Can't Keep the '70s Down

And yet more simulacrum gaming goodness is looking for critique:

The second public draft of the rules and spell list for Microlite 74 is available on the message board. A few minor rules changes have been made to give the system more of that 1974 first Fantasy RPG flavor and feel and I've started to make the spell effects more closely resemble those of that era. Sleep is as powerful as it used to be, for example.

Microlite74 is based on Microlite20. Randall's also including info on Judge's Guild products over at the RetroRoleplaying site:

I've added a number of Judges Guild products (mainly adventures) to the Original Dungeons & Dragons section of this website. Although there are more to come (like the Wilderlands of High Fantasy), I think this is a good start.

"Final" Draft Version of Swords & Wizardry Available

Mythmere has posted what he's calling the "final" draft version of Swords & Wizardry:

What this means is that I’m still asking for and integrating comments from everyone, but I’m hoping that the next thing we see is the actual final version. The file is hosted at http://mythmere.keepandshare.com, and it is a .doc file. I won’t try to play with layout at this juncture.

Keep in mind: this is the GH-style version that will provide compatibility across many systems - it is not the White Box version that I’m working on with Finarvyn. That will likely come later: the monsters in that one still need to be brought down to the White Box damage/HD scale, and Fin may have other changes he wants to make.

Frankly, I'm very happy to see that there's now to be a split between the Rosetta Stone version and the White Box version.

The Consequences of 3d6 In Order

There’s been a lot of talk about ye olde 3d6 in order. Beyond the simple “brass cojones” aspect of living with what you roll, it meshes very well with Odyssey’s comments about 1e being more about the ongoing, shared world than the individual characters. Rolling randomly gave you a chance to explore, interact with, and help build this shared world from many different perspectives. It’s easier to care more about, and be more invested in, the setting’s pantheon if your previous character was, or your next character might be, a cleric.

There are other interesting results from straight 3d6 in order. If you assume that every player adopts the character class most favored by the resulting stats, you should have a fairly even mix of starting characters from all available classes. That is, if you’re rolling up six OD&D characters where the only character options are fighting-men, clerics, and magic-users, it’s perfectly reasonable to arrive at a team that includes two fighting-men, two clerics, and two magic-users.

At least, that’s what you’d think, but it doesn’t really work out that way. Because the magic-user is the most likely to have the cash available, after buying starting equipment, to hire henchmen, a character whose highest stat is Charisma is likely to also be a magic-user, even if that character doesn’t have a high enough intelligence to qualify for the XP bonus.

I suspect this is an example of unintended consequences. Still, if you’re using a club or West Marches model for your campaign, you should also expect the number of magic-users to be weeded out fairly quickly. The lack of armour and low hit points is a deadly combination. The only class with a higher mortality rate would probably be the thief, if allowed, since the thief probably faces more save-or-die checks than any other class.

Which means that when you’re looking at 5^th level PCs in the same group, you’re probably going to see lots of clerics and fighters, and only a smattering of magic-users who have managed to stay alive that long. That would make each magic-user of that level a very precious resource, and give the players with those characters a bit more clout in the group. “Yeah, well, if you guys really want to take on the trolls of the Greenskull Hills, you can do it without Frebble the Mysterious. Unless, maybe, you want to offer me a greater share of the treasure?”

And that, frankly, fits very well with the source material James Maliszewski’s been citing for the earliest editions of D&D. Wizards might be cranky, grasping, and difficult to work with, but they’re also too powerful to safely ignore. Throw in some mechanics that earn the magic-user XP for building magic items and you could end up with PC magic-users who rarely adventure, but are eager to hire other PCs to go on quests for the necessary ingredients to craft the potions, scrolls, and enchanted swords they sell to adventuring parties preparing to head out into the wilderness. I’d consider a class of PCs who were helping to create new adventures for the group like this a benefit to the game, and I’d probably say that they earn XP on a per-GP basis for any magical item they craft and sell to another PC.

The Other Brian Murphy Reviews Moldvay's Basic D&D

The Basic D&D box set with the Erol Otus cover, containing both B2 - Keep on the Borderlands and the Moldvay rulebook got me started in roleplaying. It's part of the basis for my next campaign, and the skeleton I'm hacking onto.

Mr. Murphy over at The Silver Key has a review of Moldvay's rulebook:

I still own the same careworn copy of Moldvay basic that I bought back in 1981-82 or so. As I look at it now it remains a marvel of utility, organization, inspiration, and playability.

To begin with, Moldvay basic comprises a total of 64 pages. Take away the title page, foreward, and glossary, and you have a total of 60 pages. Heck, there are longer modules than this. By way of comparison, a single issue of Dungeon and Dragon magazine exceeded 100 pages towards the end of their run!

When combined with Cook's Expert D&D rulebook, you get a complete game for 128 pages. It's amazing how much goodness is compressed into so few pages, especially when you consider how frequently art and tables are included.

Fun with Random 4e Encounters

Deacon Blues brings the fun of random to 4e:

Anyone with a copy of the new DMG and MM can play along.

How It Works: Take the first letter of the last word in the post above you (not counting signatures). Translate that letter into a number; A=1, B=2, C=3, D=4; etc. That's the level of your encounter.

Now, take the last letter of the last word in the post above you (again, not counting sigs). This determines the scenario of the encounter, per the following chart:

A,B,C,D,E :: Battlefield Control
F,G,H,I,J :: Commander and Troops
K,L,M,N,O :: Dragon's Den
P,Q,R,S,T :: Double Line
U,V,W,X,Y,Z :: Wolf Pack

So you've got an encounter level and a scenario. Pick some monsters from the MM and design an encounter!

Don't forget to include some flavor text and tactical advice at the end.

What follows is numerous examples as people play along from home.

Pramas Plays 4e

I've noticed a lot of continued interest in my post back from March in which I discussed Mr. Pramas' first impressions of 4e. He's still playing with the game, and has noticed a pattern in people's reactions to it:

Some interest things emerge when we break this down. Of the three that really like it, one is a rules junky, one is primarily a minis gamer, and one is a MMO player who had roleplayed for the first time with 3.5.

Of the three that hated it, one is a 1E grognard, one is a 3E fan who just doesn't understand why so much had to change, and one is a hardcore roleplayer (though she does also like to kick some ass; see my previous post).

In the neutral group was one brand new roleplayer and two people who hadn't played in a decade or more. My GMing experience so far has done nothing to dispel my feeling that these rules are not friendly to casual gamers.

Of course, we should always keep in mind that the plural of "anecdote" ain't "data". And we don't know what other factors, like Mr. Pramas' DMing style, might be skewing the outcome one way or the other. Still, it's interesting stuff.

Putting 4e Through its Paces: the Newbie Files

Heather at The Things They Still Carry is really putting 4e through its paces by converting a 3e adventure to 4e. And she's blogging it while she goes. Not only do we get to see how an encounter gets transformed by swapping out monsters wholesale, we also get to watch as she uses the rules in the DMG to modify existing critters:

The harpy that was supposed to be in the next room presented another challenge. It was not a simple matter of finding harpy in the MM and rolling with it. This would call for more serious modification because the Harpy I wanted (alluring song) was a level 6 controller (ack!). I needed to tone her down a bit. To do this, I was looking at building a whole new monster…kinda.

What makes this especially intriguing is that Heather isn't some beardy grognard who's been playing the game since dinosaurs walked the earth. She's fairly new, and is doing a lot of this stuff for the first time. So not only do we get a fairly in-depth view of how 4e performs behind the screen, we're also seeing how newbie friendly the rules are.

Houserules for the BFRPG

Turloigh of RPG.net has posted some houserules for a game of BFRPG:

Aside from "streamlining" the rules, the main goals are to have more flexible character creation, stronger “newbie protection” at lower levels, and bringing fighters and mages on more equal footing (at least up to level 10; I don’t think we’ll be playing as long as that).

There's some neat stuff in there, based in part on True20 and the Star Wars: Saga Edition. With lots of folks talking about building their own systems or knocking out houserules for new campaigns, I thought there might be some interest in what other folks are doing.

Beware the Stalkercrotch Orc!

Via James Mishler comes word of the amazingly edifying and nutritious

KOVALIC'S SCROLL OF SWARMING FOURTH EDITION NOMENCLATURE!

As for me, I'm going to be doing well, should I ever DM 4th edition, to resist yelling out at the beginning of combat, "Kuo-toa Harpooner, I choose you! Kuo-toa Harpooner, use your LIghtning Fist Attack! You can do it, Kuo-toa Harpooner! I believe in you!!!"

Conversations with Raven

I'm not a huge fan of Gamer Zer0, but the show does let you put faces and voices to the names in the 4e books. One of those names I was curious about was Raven, an artist with a handful of pieces scattered through each of the three core books. Raven's work tends to be a bit more moody and atmospheric than most, with a slightly brooding air, tres appropriate, considering his name. That I remember his name says something, because he's one of very few artists in the three core books whom I can name off the top of my head, and I'd never heard of him before this.

I can say "his" now that I've seen him in this Gamer Zer0 video. When I was flipping through the core books, I somehow arrived at the notion that he was a she. He is, in fact, very much a he, and he clearly acquires his fashion tips from klingons. Gotta love that mustache.

(I should also point out that he did the not-so-great art of the gnome in the MM. I'm not going to hold that against him; everyone but WAR and Wood have their worst work in the MM.)

Gettin' Down and Dirty with Sham

Er, wait, that didn't come out right...

Ahem. Anyway, Sham's been posting some combat hacks for older versions of D&D and their simulacra he's calling "What Price Glory". These are short little houserules that can be added to make combat a bit more crunchy and detailed. They're definitely worth the time to peruse, even if you don't use most, or even all, of them, just for the inspiration.

What Price Glory: Part 1

What Price Glory: Part 2

What Price Glory: Part 3

Deeper Into the 4ether

Ok, yeah, the whole 4=A thing is getting a bit old. What can I say, naming these entries is the hardest part of my day sometimes.

Anyway, James of Kill the Wizard First gives us his second report from his scrutiny of the 4e PHB:

I think an important part of this is getting used to the idea that unlike 3e, where character capabilities changed massively over 20 levels, 4e characters really don’t. A 4e character has essentially the same capabilities at 5th and 25th level, with bigger numbers. And while the specifics of the numbers are problematic (an issue I will address in either the DMG or MM sections), the concept isn’t offensive to me, though I do find it less interesting.

He shares the good, the bad, and the decidedly bizarre:

Pro Tip: Mounted Combat. As mentioned previously, you can’t cast Fly until level 14, but you can buy a hippogryph and ride it around starting at level 5. Do the math.

One area he touches on is a specific pet-peeve of mine:

Guys, Diplomacy needs a system. Preferably one that doesn’t let you win the game.

Honestly, the Diplomacy skill is an evil poison, a sickness that turns what should be the best part of the game into something even more mind-numbing than the usual combat chant of: I swing, I miss, I swing, I miss, I swing, I hit, I do 6 damage, I swing, I miss...

It encourages players to say, "I use Diplomacy to convince him to give us the gem." And just that, roll the dice. How is this beneficial to an RPG? And how is this any sort of protection from jerk DMs? They'll just gimp the roll anyway, or twist the results. Strong rules might help out inexperienced DMs (though I'd say the jury is still out on that front) but they do nothing to protect you and your game from twits and jerks. Never, ever underestimate the endless, infinite power of human stupidity.

Machinations of the Elder Elemental God

The Greyhawk Grognard has been thinking about classic modules, especially the great G1-3, D1-3 and Q1 cycle. One aspect of that epic run that has caught his attention is the Elder Elemental God, mentioned frequently but never detailed:

To return to the specifics of the Temple of the Eye, which we find in areas 9-11 of the second level of the Hall of the Fire Giant King, we find here a fully functioning shrine to the Elder Elemental God, one of the images is quite striking, even given the Lovecraftian theme of the area:

...a scene of various creatures crawling, then creeping, up to huge, vaguely squid-like creatures with 10 hairy tentacles. In the forefront of this mass self-sacrifice are elves and men, but ehre are also dwarves, gnolls, orcs, trolls, halflings, ogres, goblins, etc. amongst the crowd. Those near the monsters are being torn apart and eaten as dainty morsels. There are 3 of these ghastly things, mottled in various shades and tints of purple and violet.

Three??? What might that portent? It's quite obviously something that hearkens back to the stories of Lovecraft, but why would there be three squid-like things, in a temple supposedly to the "Elder Elemental God" (note the singular)? Obvously it's not the EGG itself being depicted. Perhaps... just perhaps... they are priests or elder worshippers of the EEG, rather than a representation of the EEG itself. More HPL goodness (and maybe those things are still to be found in the Depths? Serving House Eilservs as advisors? Oh wouldn't THAT be interesting to show to a rival house in Erelhei-Cinlu)

There's lots of good stuff here, and if you plan on running those adventures, the Elder Elemental God easily lends itself to be a central theme of the series, a mystery to be puzzled out by the PCs as they work their way towards the center of the conspiracy. Even if you don't, there's lots of inspiration here for your homebrew adventures and campaigns.

4rt vs. Elmore

David at The RPG Corner tackles 4e's art and doesn't have much nice to say about it:

Today's art is all about the action--and then some! Cram as much emphatic intensity into a painting, goes the current reasoning. It's a reflection of the age--music is mastered to leave no "open spaces", to be as loud as possible regardless of what the music sounds like. There is little room to breathe; it is an assault on the senses. It goes beyond mere action, which was amply illustrated in old school art (see the classic "Bridge of Sorrows" painting for an example of an action shot that still leaves room to breathe).

I'm going to take a whack at placing 4e's art in my discussion of the shifting aesthetics of D&D eventually, but I haven't had enough time with it yet to feel like I can speak definitively on the topic. Like David, I'm not wowed by it, but it also doesn't me want to poke my eyes out with a stick. (Well, ok, the Sorrowsworn comes close.)

I think I'm willing to hesitantly posit that there's a strong Games Workshop influence in the art. I'm getting a strong, "see how cool" vibe from many character portraits and combat scenes that just rings similar to Warhammer art. But I'm also reminded of something Odyssey wrote recently, inspired by reading the 1e DMG:

As I was writing about the assumption of a long term campaign in 1st edition, it occurred to me (at least partly) why that is. The game is about the world, not the characters. That's why Gygax keeps going on about "the milieu," that's why the game is supposed to last as long as possible. Because the point is the world that everyone is building.

I'm not sure it's quite as emphatic a character-vs.-setting dichotomy as Odyssey's writing implies, but there's certainly some truth to that statement. And it's revealed in the art. Whether it's the "you are there" style of Elmore or the fever dreams of Otus, yeah, those works are about creating a world. You get a sense of place and culture, a hint of a reality that may be alien to our own, but still feels solid and possible.

4e's art has a much stronger focus on the actions of individual characters. Lots of characters exist without any or very minimal backgrounds. I think I'm even seeing a difference from WAR's wall-o'-action pieces in that the heroes of 4e really pop more, and command the attention and the foreground. These characters don't need backgrounds or settings unless they serve to accentuate the action and individuality of the characters. You don't get many detailed backgrounds because detailed backgrounds are not what the art is attempting to communicate. The art is speaking about the joys of playing a cool character in D&D, of being the focus of the story and the linchpin of events.

To my eyes, this leaves the characters feeling ungrounded, floating without restraint in the eye, untethered by culture or environment or any sorts of preconceptions that could limit their potential. That makes them harder to accept as "real" but does make it far easier for the viewer to adopt them as their own. Much like the simplified facial features of anime characters, a lack of detail invites viewer empathy by avoiding details that might be off-putting.

Anyway, those are just my random thoughts to-date, but I don't own any 4e books and so I really haven't been able to immerse myself in the art of the new edition to the point where I feel confident about anything I've written about it. But yes, eventually, I plan to add 4e to the discussion of the changing aesthetics of D&D.

Goblins and Skeletons and Iron Guardians, Oh My!

For those of you who want a little more random in your 4e, check out Ian Toltz's random encounter generator. You tell it the parameters, and it searches the Monster Manual, and some recent issues of Dungeon and Dragon, and spits out some monsters for you.

Here are the results of a request for a 5th level encounter:

Attempting to find an encounter with monsters of level 3 to 7 worth approximately 1000 experience...

Qty	Name	Type	Exp	Source
2	Troglodyte Mauler	Level 6 Soldier	250	Monster Manual
1	Greenscale Marsh Mystic (Lizardfolk)	Level 6 Controller (Leader)	250	Monster Manual
2	Skeleton	Level 3 Soldier	150	Monster Manual

Total experience: 1050

Experience per character: 210

Encounter level: 5

The randomness can get pretty wild, since even with all the parameters it's looking for, it still doesn't return results that make obvious sense. Of course, those of us who love randomly generating content for our games know that taking seemingly nonsensical results and massaging them until they do make sense can create magic.

4e: Counting the Cost

While James Mishler might be warming a bit to 4e, some issues still set his teeth on edge:

The economic system is so broken I don't even know where to begin. To provide a few examples:

Cloth Armor (i.e., "clothing" to most folks) provides a +0 armor bonus to AC and has a purchase price of 1 gp.
+6 Magical Cloth Armor provides a +6 armor bonus to AC and has a purchase price of 1,125,000 gp.

Plate Armor provides a +8 armor bonus to AC and has a purchase price of 50 gp.
+6 Magical Godplate Armor provides a +20 armor bonus to AC and has a purchase price of... yes, 1,125,000 gp.

The cost to enchant either item? 1,125,000 gp. The time required to enchant either item? 1 hour.

One. Hour.

Yeah, ouch. But this is what happens when you try to balance your economy around game considerations.

"Witchdoctory, sewing people up like garments!"

Today's Add-in from Ripper X is The Office of Mazion the Leech. I especially appreciate how Ripper X has taken the time to explain the place of mundane healing in a society with cure light wounds spells.

What is This Game Supposed to be About?

Let’s try an interesting thought experiment.

Have you ever played the Star Trek computer game, Starfleet Command? It’s a real-time strategy version of the old Starfleet Battles table-top wargame, where you take command of starships from the Star Trek universe and duke it out with one another. It’s a fun game. Part of the game is earning prestige. You can spend prestige on improving your ship, or upgrading to a larger ship, or getting more experienced crew assigned to the ships in your squadron.

Now, obviously, Star Fleet officers don’t actually accrue any such currency, nor do they “buy” ships and crew. The prestige system is an abstraction of the sort of politicking that goes on in a naval force. The more victories you win, the more clout you can bring to bear on getting things done. You can bend the ears of admirals and cut through red tape.

But the game’s not about high-powered cocktail parties or mentoring promising young cadets as they make their way through the ranks. It’s about maneuvering into the Klingon’s six and putting a few photon torpedoes up his tailpipe. And so all of that political and personal and personnel stuff is abstracted. Victories and promotions earn you prestige points. You “buy” the things you want by spending those points. It’s quick, easy, and a fun way to enjoy the rewards of success on the battlefield.

Now, imagine you’re making a NASCAR racing game for the computer. The fun part of NASCAR is, of course, the racing. You’ll have controls to steer, accelerate, and brake. This is central to the game, of course, but these are fairly simple activities. They might take up only a single page in the instruction manual, even though most of the game will be driving your car around the track, squeezing into the inside past the other cars and trying to block them from doing the same to you.

But you might want other aspects of the NASCAR experience in your game as well. Pit crews are a vital part of the game. But you don’t want to bother the player with trying to change the tires or filling up the tank. That all happens at once, and doesn’t really lend itself to a mini-game (though I guess you could do something like how fast you mash a pair of buttons dictates how fast your guys get your car back in the race). There’s too much going on. So you abstract it. Maybe you do the button-mash mini-game, or maybe prestige can buy more experienced crews, like in Starfleet Command. And you could do something similar for the patron decals on your car, so that as you win bigger and bigger races, you get more prestigious advertising on your car.

But again, the core of the game is driving. And while more pages in the instruction manual might be given to things like “buying” pit crew or attracting sponsors, you spend most of your playing time maneuvering past the opposition as you floor it through the straight-aways.

You see where I’m going with this? Ok, then, let’s cut to the chase.

Suppose you’re making a fairly complex game, like an RPG. The game is about taking on a larger-than-life role. You don’t worry about rules for interaction or role-playing. That sort of thing just happens, right? And then there’s the central focus of the game. You might not spill a lot of ink about it, but it’s there, and you give it the information it needs, then get out of the way so it can be enjoyed.

However, there are these other, tangential aspects of the game that need to be addressed. So you slap together some abstractions for adjudicating them, throw in some random elements, and move on.

In D&D, one of these tangential aspects is combat.

No, seriously think about it. Yes, there are tons of rules for combat. But the system is extremely abstract. A single die roll covers either 10 seconds of combat (an eternity, as anyone who has ever practiced a martial art will tell you) or as much as an entire minute of thrusts, parries, attacks, blocks, and dodges. While the games include long lists of weapons, the rules do little to differentiate between them. Whether you’re wielding a hand axe, a fauchard, a horseman’s mace, or a short sword, in 2e you’re doing 1d6 damage. And the effects of combat, fatigue, pain, and bleeding, are further abstracted as hit points, the loss of which has no effect on your character’s abilities until the point of death (or unconsciousness, if you used popular houserules).

So where was the focus of the game? Exploration. Yes, you could earn XP from slaying monsters. But you were more likely to earn more XP from gathering treasure. So it made sense that gathering treasure without risking combat was the best way to play the game. The earliest players strove for the maximum return for minimum risk.

Don’t believe me? Let’s see what Mr. Gygax had to say on the matter. First, notice why the adventurers are heading into the dreaded dungeons beneath Castle Greyhawk:

This same magic-user now commanded a party of four bent on despoiling the wicked dwellers of the underworld beneath the castle of some goodly treasure.

Not to slay, but to pillage. Not to root out the evil of the place, or rescue a princess, or to slay the boss monster. Their chief aim was to find treasure. Notice how they avoid combat whenever possible, and only fight when absolutely forced to. And notice that, when they do secure some treasure, they do so without combat.

That’s how Mr. Gygax and his crew played the game. You think they might have known something about the intended playstyle of D&D in its original form?

Post 401: 4dvanced Sales Blowout

4e seems to be selling extremely well:

I preordered the core rulebook gift set in February and it looks like that just wasn’t soon enough. Amazon sold out entirely and is unable to fulfill orders placed as early as 4 months before release.

It'll be interesting to see how future sales shake out in comparison, but so far, things look very positive for the books. Considering how many leaped into 4e sight-unseen, I'm curious to see what WotC does to build on that momentum.

Erick Wujcik has Passed Away

A lengthy and warm remembrance at the Retro-Roleplaying blog.

Chatty Drinks the Kool-aid

Chatty ran two games yesterday for the World-wide D&D Day. He's officially head-over-heels for 4e:

I like it a lot! It’s an entirely new action role playing game based on common elements of prior editions. I love how fluid and fast the action can get, how easy it is to adjudicate actions not directly covered by the rules. All calls felt natural and players agreed to my proposed calls without debate.

I adopted 4e once and for all sometime during the afternoon of my 2nd game… Here I was with complete strangers (most of which had no intention to switch to 4e), killing their PCs and still seeing excitement, trepidation and fun on all their faces.

One thing I will say for 4e: it's got a very kinetic vibe, with characters running across the battlemats and all sorts of "toys" to interact with. So hearing that Chatty is smitten with the game is hardly a surprise.

What is a bit of a surprise is hearing that James Mishler appears to be warming to the game.

One and Five and Perceptions of Reality

The Borges madness continues! Max gives us a pair of metaphysical golems over at Malevolent and Benign:

The wizard Suligrebos died before he could solve the ten thousand formulae of his magico-mathematical proof of consciousness. The parchments on which he sketched and scrawled his theorems are incomprehensible palimpsests, black with symbol upon symbol and crumbling from the scraping knife and the eraser. Two of Suligrebos' creations survive, a pair of strange golems used to test his formulations. They are gaunt 10' humanoid sculpted from marble, attacking with powerful fists. They are able to see the invisible, and are never surprised. Magic weapons are required to hit them.

Dr. Rotwang Rocks Harkwood

GURPS products are famous for being extremely useful even to people who don't play GURPS. The simple factual details in their sourcebooks, the inspiration supplied by their supplements, and the broad range of topics they tackle mean it's an odd GM who doesn't have at least one of their books tucked on the games shelf for occasional reference.

Dr. Rotwang recently scored GURPS Fantasy Harkwood during a trip to the used bookstore, and he's very happy with the purchase. Harkwood is a typical GURPS product in that it tackles multiple jobs at once, and handles them all well:

Now...not only is this supplement impressive by virtue of putting so much information into a comfortable 64 pages, it pulls a second duty that's not as obvious: it's a hellaciously good template for creating, detailing and totally messing up your own fantasy kingdoms. I'm two whole chapters in and already thinking, I need to something like this for my stuff.

As Dr. Rotwang points out, this one is available still as a PDF over at e23.

Jilted Gnome Still Full of Love

For 4e, that is. Martin Ralya has posted a long DM's-view review of 4e, and it was love at first sight:

I was excited about 4e’s release, but after slowly souring on 3.5e I was nervous that the new edition wouldn’t live up to my expectations. It did, and it exceeded them across the board. I was most surprised by the usefulness of the DMG and most pleased by the structure of the PHB — and the implementation of at-will, per-encounter and daily powers, which will completely change the way the game is played and the level to which your players enjoy it.

He even likes the art, but what can you expect from someone who considers a red pointy hat to be a the sort of daily centerpiece you can build a wardrobe around? Still, when he calls the artwork of the MM "consistently good and evocative", I can only think the some pages must have stuck together, so that he missed the picture of the Sorrowsworn. I also fail to see how arranging the special powers by level instead of alphabetically is a step in the right direction.

That all said, this may be the most in-depth review of 4e yet, and he's got a lot of good points about the system. If you're still on the fence, you owe it to yourself to check this review out.

Water, Water Everywhere

Dang, and I thought my posts were long...

Ripper X has a very long and informative post about exploration at sea, mostly based on the European Age of Exploration, but with some nice application to D&D. Again, it's good stuff, and the sort of thing that would headline an issue of Dragon magazine back in the day.

Playing with Initiative

Earlier I mentioned how I was handling weapon damage for my hack of Moldvay/Cook/Labyrinth Lord. The question was raised: why bother lugging around a sword if it only does the same 1d6 damage as a dagger?

Good question. The answer is initiative.

Initiative is an iffy beast in ten second rounds. Ten seconds is forever in a fight. There’s going to be a lot of back and forth. But you need some way to decide who gets to wound the other guy first, unless you just say everything is simultaneous (which I was tempted to do).

So once you decide that initiative is important, there are all sorts of ways you can handle it. Highest Dexterity score, or fastest weapon, or longest reach. Of course, then you have to wonder which is most important. If a fast man is swinging a two handed sword at an average man wielding a short sword, who should have initiative?

Mr. Moldvay dispensed with all that headache by granting initiative to the luckiest. That is to say, it’s a dice-contest. Both sides roll a single d6 and the highest roll wins. If you are feeling fancy, you could do individual initiatives, which are handled the same way, but everyone rolls instead of just one roll per side, and you add an adjustment based on individual Dexterity scores.

I, however, lack Mr. Moldvay’s wisdom and gleefully charge ahead where angels fear to tread. Why would I do this to myself? Simply because I think your choice in weapons should matter. Weapons look and work differently because they’re made for different jobs. A sword is easy to wear and great for slicing up unarmoured foes. An axe is a bit unwieldy strapped to your belt, but it’s much better at busting through chain or getting around a shield. A mace or hammer is even better at hammering around heavily armoured opponents, while a flail is great at getting around shields, but doesn’t work well at all if you really just need to decapitate an insolent peasant.

Keeping that in mind, I’m banishing randomness from initiative and basing it solely on your choice of weapon. If you’re fighting with two weapons, your initiative is based on the lower initiative of the two.

How am I deciding what weapon gets which initiative? I’m using a variety of factors. First, and most important, is reach. If a weapon’s got reach, you have to deal with getting past the hurty part before you can get to the soft, squishy wielder on the other end. Reach is a function both of how long a weapon is, and how it’s wielded. If a weapon is meant to be swung, it might be longer than a stabbing weapon, but the stabber might arrive first since it doesn’t have as far to travel. Mass, of course, is another issue, since a weapon with less mass is faster and more maneuverable. Finally, there’s the weapon’s flexibility, the number of different ways it can be used to put the hurt on someone. A weapon with greater flexibility opens up more options for the skilled the warrior, while forcing the warrior’s opponent to be more cautious.

Ok, keeping all that in mind, here are the weapons:

WEAPON	DAMAGE	INITIATIVE	NOTES
Bastard sword	1d6	9	2d4 when wielded two-handed
Battle axe	2d4	8
Club	1d6	2
Dagger	1d6	4
Hand axe	1d6	3
Lance	1d6	9	Double damage on charge.
Mace	1d6	6
Pole arm	2d4	8
Short sword	1d6	7
Spear	1d6	10	Double damage when set to receive charge
Staff	Highest of 2d6	7
Sword	1d6	8
Torch	1d6	1	+ 1d4 burning damage
Two-handed sword	2d4	7
War hammer	1d6	5

And there you have it. Highest initiative, adjusted for Dexterity using the initiative adjustments listed in the Moldvay book, goes first. Fists have an initiative of 3 and feet 1. Missile weapons firing at range always go first. However, if someone is in your face with a melee weapon, you can’t fire. And I’ll have to come up with initiatives for monsters who don’t use weapons. As a general rule, canines and reptiles have initiative 5, felines and bears 6.

I like this for a number of reasons. First, it makes your choice of weapons more interesting. The spear is an excellent weapon, as it should be. There’s a reason it’s been a popular infantry weapon throughout the world since pre-history all the way up through the 20^th century. But a spear isn’t always welcome at social events, or easy to hide under your cloak like a short sword or dagger. The swords are still good choices, especially if you want to use a shield, but the staff remains an interesting choice for warriors on a budget.

Second, there’s no need to roll for initiative, with all the searching for the right die, then searching for any modifiers and all of that. We get all the benefits of individual initiative without waiting around for people to roll dice. Your initiative is a flat number, pre-calculated. If you know you’re attacking with a sword, then you know what your initiative is. Saving time is vital when you’re playing online and already dealing with the slowdowns of the ‘net and typing.

*BAMPF* Eladrin in Your Face!

The guys over at Critical Hits have sat down and with their 4e PHBs and reviewed the races there in, roundtable style:

joshx0rfz: Level 6 utility spell for wizard - dimension door 10 squares - DAILY.

Eladrin racial ability - feystep for 5 squares - ENCOUNTER - if you look at the teleportation rules (286) it becomes even more ridiculous. My verdict is broken.

Bartoneus: I wouldn’t go as far to say broken with Feystep, I’d just say really good. I think it opens up a lot of interesting options in any given combat, but doesn’t make other players feel like they suck in comparison but can do other pretty cool things that the Eladrin can’t.

TheMainEvent: Eladrin rogues may not have the stat synergy of Halfling rogues, but their teleport translates into combat advantage and sneak attacks. I guess the main reason I did not give them higher marks is that the teleport seems a bit redundant for a melee based Warlord that specializes in making people move around.

joshx0rfz: I look at the Eladrin ability and immediately compared it to the dimension door ability. This is a level 1 racial ability that can be used per encounter compared to a daily use with a better range. I see great ways to abuse the feystep ability.

Honestly, the more I read, the more I wonder why anyone will play anything other than Eladrin. That per-encounter teleport ability allows your eladrin character to go all Visa card on the battlemat: he's everywhere he wants to be. Ok, so it might not be a big deal for wizards, who might be able to reach out and touch you even if you're all the way across the room, but for defenders who need to get between the baddies and their friends, and especially for strikers who really shine when they can get past defending screens of skirmishers to wreak havoc in the backfield, a five-square teleport looks hard to beat. Combine it with ranger or warlord movement goodies and it could get really sick.

UPDATE: the Critical Hits folks delve deeper into classes, stats, and other mechanical player-creation issues, and dig up some interesting issues:

Shakespear: I tried to create a sample Paladin last night, and I found something that is a big negative. If you want to do a Cha based Paladin, first off, there is no race that gets Cha and Wis bonuses (for that matter, there is no race that gets Wis and Str either). Secondly, Cha and Wis are from the same defense trait, so if you go Cha and Wis as your two main stats, you’ll only have 1 good defense instead of 2. I consider this to be a major negative for both the Paladin and Cleric classes and I suspect this means that “style” of character will see little to no play time. I don’t see this flaw in any of the other characters, and I have to wonder why it was put in. As this flaw is inherent in either healing path, perhaps they thought they needed to make the healers a little more squishy?

Bartoneus: Am I the only one who doesn’t consider race based on stat bonuses and how they relate to the classes?

Shakespear: It’s one of the first things I consider. It’s not a make or break thing, but I’m not going to play a Dragonborn Wizard because they just aren’t designed for it, and ultimately I’m reducing the effectiveness of my class.

Who Are You?

DDogwood waxes pithy on RPG.net about the need for mechanics to define a character:

Would Gandalf and Saruman be too similar if they had the same game stats? How about Yoda and Darth Vader? I can't think of a single character in fiction who was memorable because of his or her skills or special abilities.

If killing orcs and taking treasure was all that old-school games were about, then why did they ever become so popular? When I was 8 years old and first started playing RPGs, I already had an inkling that the game was about how a particular character, or group of characters, would react in a particular situation.

You're not your character class. You're not how much gold you have looted from orcs. You're not the magic sword you carry. You're not the contents of your spellbook. You're not your fucking platemail. If your character is only unique thanks to the particular set of special rules on your character sheet, then maybe old-school RPGs are a bit more than you can handle.

Wyrm on the Shadowfell

Massawyrm of Ain't it Cool News has reviewed Keep on the Shadowfell:

I like where the story is going and I’m eager to run the next adventure Thunderspire Labyrinth. But it’s mostly a good tool for new DM’s to get a hang on how to run a solid adventure. Experienced players might find it a little too vanilla for their tastes (until the final battle, which really is pretty damned cool.) And the $30 price tag is a little steep for those ending up with duplicate maps. But if you’ve got your books and you’re unsure of where to go from here, this is a pretty great place to start.

He does exhibit the AICN tendency towards excitability, but seriously, if you don't enjoy enthusiasm, you just won't enjoy AICN. He also swerves briefly into the old notion that old-school D&D was all about slaying monsters, straight up and without any silly things like plot or story to get in the way. Otherwise, I'm enjoying this new addition to AICN, and I think it's great exposure for the hobby. He also doesn't assume his audience are steeped in the lore of the game and actually speaks to how the products might serve his audience, which is an attitude not seen enough of in RPG reviews.

Crom Count the Points!

Mike Hensley has posted a neat little point-counter for point-buy stat generation in D&D 4e.

Take a Walk on the Indie Side

Are you all 4ed out already? Ben Robbins has some suggestions for you at his blog, ars ludi:

I’m not saying you should abandon your favorite game or change what you usually play, but trying different systems can open up the way you think about the games you already play. Playing a completely different game can make you _better_ at that game you played for years. Your gamecraft is a muscle: stretch it.

Rockin’, you say, let’s do it! But there’s a catch: gamers play to have fun. You might be fearless and pick up a radical indie game only to discover that it’s so different from what your group is used to that the session is a total disaster, which will just make them (and you) less likely to ever want to experiment again. The world is full of stories of gaming groups who tried a different thing just once, confidently declared it crap, and then retreated to the safe and the known.

Nobody wants that. So in the interest of successful gaming, here are some games I think a group that had only played “traditional” games like D&D could pick up and enjoy right off the bat. You’ll be able to try something new with maximum fun and minimal risk. Consider this your Indie Exploration Kit — it worked for me, it can work for you too.

What follows are links to a pair of indie games, complete with suggestions about how to play them, potential pitfalls that might trip you up, and a brief description about what makes each game an interesting experience to play.

The Cup of Janus

Badelaire has unearthed an inspirational treasure at CNN.