A Critique of Wayne Reynolds' Art

There are some folks out there who think I don’t like Mr. Reynolds’ art. Some assume this because I like to tweak 3.x-philes by pointing out his skill at making “furry” art. Others look to my appreciation of Elmore, Otus, and Parkinson, and assume that I must therefore denigrate Reynolds.

A lot of this appears to be based on how deeply the art of Wayne Reynolds has become associated with D&D’s 3.5^th edition. For whatever reason, when people think about current D&D, they imagine Mr. Reynolds’ work. And well they should, because Mr. Reynolds is a master at his craft.

But it’s a lot harder to write a critique of Mr. Reynolds’ art than it is for other artists who have put their stamp on D&D. The others have a very firm, easily recognizable, and rarely changing signature style. The work of Erol Otus has its bizarre, fever-dream feel. Larry Elmore is the chief practitioner of the you-are-there school.

But among the many things that make Wayne Reynolds’ work unique is his mutability as an artist. Simply put, Mr. Reynolds adjusts his style conform to the needs of his clients. To show you what I mean, let’s take a look at some warriors he’s painted. This first was for WotC. She’s clearly an exemplar of what has become known as the “dungeon punk” style. Note the insanely spikey armour, that would seem to be as great a threat to the wearer as it would be to her opponents. Also notice the shield and sword, which seem heavy, ornate, and unwieldy. It’s hard to imagine anyone actually trying to fight in that get-up, but it’s certainly eye-catching, and fits perfectly the feel WotC has gone for with their D&D 3.5 products.

Now, let’s take a look at something different. This depicts a historical clash between Asian and eastern European warriors. Notice how much smaller the weapons are, how the armour and shields are clearly functional. Notice also how much more you feel drawn into the picture. The first picture is cool-on-display. This second has a much stronger you-are-there vibe. I believe it was done for Osprey’s series of military history books, so you’d expect them to stress historical accuracy and the ability to put the reader into the action. Again, Mr. Reynolds’ delivers, though the challenge is quite different.

Finally, here’s a dwarven warrior created as one of Paizo’s “iconic characters” for their Pathfinder series. The first thing you’ll notice is all the gear the poor guy is loaded down with. What sort of moron, you might say, would burden themselves with that much junk before venturing into a dungeon… that is, until you looked down at your own favorite D&D character sheet.

Oh yeah. Pot, meet kettle. Big time. ;)

It’s an interesting stylistic choice. I’m not sure who should get the credit, whether it belongs to Mr. Reynolds, or Sarah Robinson, the art director at Paizo. It’s not the anime-esque ultra-cool of artists like Wen-M. It’s also not exactly the you-are-there realism of Elmore and Parkinson. Instead, Mr. Reynolds is illustrating our RPG adventures. Sometimes, they’re heroic. Sometimes, they’re creepy. Other times, they can be a little silly.

I can’t think of another artist who has better captured the feel of our games as much as Wayne Reynolds has. Whether it’s the heroes strapped down with a hundred-and-one little odds-and-ends, or the black humor of the gaming table, or the joy that comes with struggling against what seem to be titanic odds, Mr. Reynolds has, for me, captured those slices of gaming life better than any other artist. Where Larry Elmore’s art illustrated what we were striving for in our gaming, I think Wayne Reynolds shows us what our games are actually like.

As such, it’s excusable when his anatomy seems a bit off, or the details seem a touch hazy around the edges. In his fantasy art, Mr. Reynolds appears less interested in capturing a world-that-never-was than in providing you, the viewer, with a visceral experience. Nothing exemplifies this better than his wall-of-action pieces. This is the stuff of childhood daydreams, where a hundred things are going on at once, gravity is a suggestion, and plausibility depends entirely on how much sugar you had in your breakfast cereal. This is what fans of D&D’s 3^rd edition artwork mean when they say the new art is full of action and energy, where the art of older editions seems static, lifeless, and placid. Again, for these, Mr. Reynolds shifts his style, drawing on the techniques of comic book art. The silhouettes are iconic, the poses are full of action and momentum. We see not the moment of impact, but the follow-through afterwards that gives the impact its sense of energy. The weapons and armour are fantastical, without much thought given to such matters as how they could be crafted, or how they work. The focus is clearly on giving each figure a unique personality, expressed in that character’s choice of accouterments. Again, this stylistic choice reflects how we play D&D, with our focus on equipment as a way to empower and differentiate our characters from others of the same class and race.

I’m not one of those who thinks Mr. Reynolds can do no wrong. His cover for Green Ronin’s Black Company RPG is a mess, the sense of perspective so off that I can make myself feel a bit motion sick if I look at it too long. But I do get excited when I hear he’s got a new piece coming out. More than anything else, I find his art inspires me to think up new ideas for my gaming, whether it be unusual places to adventure, new foes to fight, or unusual challenges to overcome. Frankly, there’s no more important talent an RPG artist can have than that.

Everything New is Old Again

So like everyone else, I've been inspired by the back-and-forth on D&D's 4th edition to poke at making my own fantasy heartbreaker. Part of my effort involved reworking combat. I was thinking about damage by class, while your choice in weapons dictated armour penetration. This was inspired by thoughts that I articulated recently over at RPG.net.

Anyway, checking Jeff's Gameblog today, I came across this:

"Why would you ever wield a two-handed sword if it was just as deadly as a dagger?" is the inevitable question. Any OD&D ref using the weapon-versus-armor chart and weapon speed rules in Chainmail can handily answer that question...

I knew that 1st edition AD&D had a weapon-versus-armour chart that nobody, not even Gygax, apparently, ever used. But I had no idea that was the default back as far as Chainmail.

I've been walking in a giant circle, so large I thought it was a straight line, that had been trod down decades ago. This, boys and girls, is why it's important to know what has come before.

Pramas on Pathfinder

Chris Pramas of Green Ronin Games, has this to say on the announcement of the Pathfinder RPG:

I'm sure that some fans will think this is a foolish move on Paizo's part. How do you fight against the 800 lb. gorilla after all? Here's the thing: they don't have to. If Paizo can peel off even 20,000 current D&D fans and make them Pathfinder fans, that's a great business for a company of Paizo's size. WotC is likely going to lose at least that number of fans anyway, so at the end of the day I doubt it'll really affect 4E. I can easily envision 4E and Pathfinder both being successful for their parent companies.

He also makes mention of this decision sending "shock waves... throughout the world of third-party publishing." That's the part that has me sitting on the edge of my seat. 3.x really isn't my game of choice. The bifurcation of D&D doesn't really affect me directly, but there will certainly be consequences for my gaming. The survival of professional 3rd edition publishing will be a chink in D&D's aura of invincibility, which it managed to regain with the publication of 3rd edition. It means more "mainstream" games on the market, each making its own little waves, trying new things, and keeping things fresh and exciting in our hobby. It also means Paizo will be unfettered to a greater extent, able to take more risks and explore new directions. They've already announced their foray into organized gaming with the Pathfinder RPG. What else will 2008 and the following years bring us?

UPDATE: Welcome, readers of Jeff's Gameblog! I've got more on the Pathfinder RPG announcement here. Thanks for the link, Jeff. :)

Make Love, Not War - The 4.0 Way!

Have I been too hard on D&D 4.0? No, it's still chock full of annoying game-isms that I'd be happier off without. But Rodney Thompson has posted a nice, long discussion of non-combat mechanics in D&D that does put a smile on my face:

We showed off skill challenges in the Escape from Sembia event at D&DXP. Basically, it boiled down to this: the heroes needed to escape from some Sembian guards, prompting a chase sequence. The heroes then had the option of using a variety of skills to escape from the guards, and the encounter was built using the non-combat encounters guidelines in the DMG. Basically, the players could use any skill they liked, so long as they had a good explanation for it, and the encounter gave rules on adjudicating those checks based on the likelihood that the attempt would be feasible. For example, one player I read about used his History skill to remember an old sewer grate from some ancient plans of the city, where he was able to had. Obvious skill choices allowed players to hide, climb on top of buildings, disguise themselves as passers-by, etc. Now, before I get jumped on, yes, these are all things you could do before. However, unless a skill check was specifically called out in the adventure, most adventures leaned back on the hard-coded skill DCs and results in the skills chapter. The difference isn't that you can do these things in 4th Edition, but that the default assumption in 4th Edition is that players should and will find creative solutions to problems, and the rules are designed not only to allow the DM to fairly adjudicate those assumptions but also to reward players for doing so.

Nice, eh? Again, notice the excessive hand-holding, though newcomers to the game will, I'm certain, appreciate the effort. Anything that nudges the game away from the stereotype of "kill anything that moves and take its stuff" is a plus in my book.

I just wish they'd included something like this in 3.x. Combined with the lack of game-isms, it would have made D&D an excellent system for running the sorts of games I prefer. Instead, I had to wait for True20 to really get the sort of mechanical support I wanted from the d20 system. Still, better late than never, and the new generation of gamers are going to have this sort of RPing supported by the rules, rather than implied between the lines. WotC deserves a big thumbs up for this.

The 2008 Fantasy RPG Wars are ON!!!

The cute goblin “fire brigade” we linked to yesterday is no longer up at Paizo. It has instead been replaced with the boldest move you’ll likely see in the world of professional RPGs this year. Paizo has opted out of D&D 4.0 for their Pathfinder adventures series.

I may be making a bigger deal out of this than it warrants, but to me, this feels like a shift of seismic proportions. Paizo has long had a strong relationship with WotC. When WotC recalled Dragon and Dungeon magazines, Paizo sharpened their focus on their very successful “adventure paths,” linked adventures that create an entire campaign in the vein of the old Temple of Elemental Evil series from the first edition of AD&D. Paizo’s reliable and extremely high levels of quality in terms of writing, the use of rules, layout, and art, combined with their emphasis on adventures of a more polished and “adult” nature, created what appeared to be the perfect partner for WotC during the launch of D&D 4.0. WotC, with their name recognition, “social networking” and Web 2.0 initiatives, and marketing muscle, could have focused on creating a new generation of players, while Paizo focused on the 3.x “grognards”, luring them into the 4.0 fold with high-quality product aimed at a playstyle marked by lots of disposable income but almost no time to create the complex worlds older gamers desire.

But now that’s clearly not to be, and WotC has nobody but themselves to blame. Seriously, by now, we should be hearing how the Paizo and WotC staffers are playtesting their products together to ensure a seamless launch of a new generation of Pathfinder adventures, tailored to maximize the benefits of the new 4.0 rules set. We should be hearing how WotC is considering adding Pathfinder-focused options and tile sets for D&D Insider. Instead, in spite of the new edition having been announced to the public in August, the details of the new Game System License, that would allow third-party companies to produce adventures and rules compatible with the new edition of D&D, still have not been released. In order to learn anything about the new rules, Paizo employees had to attend the D&D Experience convention last month. In short, their first good look at the game system was the public unveiling. And in spite of that, they still haven’t seen the GSL, and still haven’t been offered a chance to really dig into the new rules to see how they work.

Considering Paizo’s business model, did they really have any other choice? Unable to even see the rules in time to create a Pathfinder series anytime near the launch of 4.0, or possibly even within the first half of 2009, Paizo was going to be stuck riding the 3.x horse after the launch of 4.0 regardless. Making lemonade out of these lemons by creating their own version of D&D 3.75, called the Pathfinder RPG, is only the logical next step.

I’m going to take a moment to tell you what I’m not saying in this post: I am not saying that Paizo’s Pathfinder RPG is a potential D&D killer, or even a D&D 4.0 killer. The only folks with the clout and power in the RPG market to deal D&D a mortal blow are WotC themselves. Unfortunately, that statement is not as facetious as it might seem. They’re eagerness to part with certain tropes of traditional D&D, both cosmetic and mechanical, has alienated a certain segment of their players. This has only been exacerbated by clumsy (some have even gone so far as to call it insulting) marketing. Changing the OGL to the GSL last month, a full half-year after they’d announced that 4.0 was in the works, coupled with their inability to actually produce a written license agreement that people could sign on to after declaring they’d charge “early adopters” $5,000 for the privilege, indicates that WotC is still uncertain what, exactly, they want their new license agreement to do. The digital versions of Dragon and Dungeon have failed to live up even to the standards of their print versions, forget the potential of the online medium. They are certainly not the best sources of information on the upcoming 4^th edition: ENWorld retains that crown, largely unchallenged. Even worse, without Dragon and Dungeon magazine in newsstands and book stores, any D&D players who don’t frequent gaming web pages might not even be aware yet that a new edition is coming out later this year!

In short, everything seems to point towards hesitation, uncertainty, and confusion over at WotC. We don’t see a company forging ahead into the future, creating a new and exciting gaming experience for its customers. Instead, we see strong dead-tree periodicals replaced by anemic web pages, marketing derided as clumsy and sometimes even insulting, and a lack of action that has already transformed one potentially strong partner into a full-on competitor.

WotC can, of course, still turn things around. As the books go to print, I fully expect more resources to be devoted to D&D Insider, and there’s no reason why it couldn’t come to outshine both Dungeon and Dragon magazines. D&D remains the three-hundred-pound gorilla in the market. A sturdy, fun game could wipe away any lingering bad feelings between fans and WotC, and render the assistance of third-party publishers largely redundant. The promise of a streamlined gaming experience and flexible, powerful online tools has the potential to bring back lots of folks who have felt they couldn’t be involved in RPGs anymore, while a new edition is the perfect time to bring in a whole new generation of players.

Time will tell if WotC is up to both the challenges and the opportunities that 2008 offers.

In the meantime, there’s a lot of reason to be bullish about Paizo and what they are up to. They’ve already released the first document of their “alpha” version of the Pathfinder RPG. As to be expected, it’s a lovely document, expertly laid out, easy to read, and fun. (Putting Wayne Reynolds’ cute rampaging goblins at the top of the chapter describing how the playtesting would be done was a stroke of genius.) They’re encouraging their players to get involved now, which means by the time 4.0 is finally released, players will already have three months of Pathfinder under their belts. Their completely open playtesting process also allows them to leverage one of Paizo’s core strengths - their loyal and knowledgeable fan base - and stands in marked contrast to the tight-lipped behavior of WotC. With Wayne Reynolds also doing their cover art, Paizo’s books will look at least as good as WotC’s. Working with an existing framework of rules, and inviting an Army of David’s to playtest for them, Paizo is also less likely to publish a broken or unpolished game. And with their partnership with Necromancer Games, Paizo keeps one foot in the new edition. After all, if 4.0 does turn out to be a supremely popular and superior game, they can always convert Pathfinder over in 2010.

RPG.net already has a quick review of the first release of the Pathfinder RPG’s alpha-test rules. So far, things look promising.

Strangeness at Paizo

So if you try to hit anything on the Paizo web page today, you get this.

Does it mean anything, beyond maybe a server crash or reset? I doubt it, but who knows?

The Pros and Cons of IRC-style Gaming

IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat, and for quite some time was the way to communicate with your friends on the net. It's a live-chat bulletin-board type system, where what everyone types shows up immediately on the screen for all to read. The possibilities for RPGs should be obvious.

Over at the Fear the Boot forums, Yaotl was curious how well this sort of thing works. Blindeye's response is worth posting in its entirety:

OpenRPG you say? I've used miRC for 10 years to roleplay. But here's the pros and cons to chatroom roleplaying:

Pro: Each line of description and dialogue will be more well thought out.

Con: Everything takes twice as long to do thanks to non-instantaneous internet transferring and the time it takes to type a message rather than speak it. Also... Typos.

Pro: Dice programming mean rolling goes really quickly

Con: Not being able to see your group's sheets, or having to keep track of them yourself can be confusing.

Pro: OOC can take place in a separate chat room entirely, clearly separating IC and OOC and keeping things more immersive.

Con: Real Life can disrupt it more easily, as can computer error. "brbs" and "afks" come in, random disconnects can be frustrating, and all sorts of things that you don't have at the physical table.

Pro: You don't need to worry about having people close by, all they need is a computer.

Con: Game attendance seems a little less for certain. You're just crossing your fingers that everyone shows up.

Pro: You can log the entire sessions really easily, and review it later, or be able to go back and check things from previous sessions.

Con: Descriptions can be harder to get across, it's not as easy to quickly doodle what a room looks like, or use your hands to illustrate things. There are ways around this, but it requires file sharing, and a bit more legwork. No Grids to run off of, no miniatures or anything. It all needs to be communicated through text.


I think that's all I'll get into. I don't know what OpenRPG is capable of... I'll have to look it up. this is all based on mIRC alone.

OpenRPG is a great little program that has built-in dice rollers and white-board/table-top-style miniatures support. And it's free, so you really can't beat that.

For myself, I prefer some of the more common IRC programs, and find many of the bells and whistles of OpenRPG to be distracting. But that's just me.

And if typing isn't for you, there's always Skype, which allows you to talk over the internet, without the fees of long-distance phone calls and all of that. Why Skype isn't replacing most people's land-lines for long-distance telephone communication is beyond me.

In any event, distance is no longer an issue when it comes to getting the old group together for a few hours of RPG fun.

Casanova, His Times, and Your Game

Balbinus posted this at RPG.net back on '03. The thread has recently been subject to a bit of necromancy. Still, I think his original post is worth quoting, in total:

I'm presently reading The Story of my Life by Giacomo Casanova.

For those in the back row, Casanova was an Eighteenth century Venetian who was famous for his romantic exploits, thus giving rise to the term casanova.

Anyway, the book is tremendously well written. Extremely witty and erudite. It's also in places very surprising.

Sex per se forms a relatively small part of the book, despite what people might imagine. But social attitudes of the time are well depicted, if sometimes unconsciously. Some of those attitudes relate to sex in ways which are unexpected (this is heading to a gaming point, don't worry).

Casanova speaks on a couple of occasions about homosexuality, usually in the context of an anecdote where some guy has made a pass at him or he is mentioning that someone is gay. Casanova's view seems to be that homosexuality is not a moral issue, that is to say he sees nothing wrong with it. Indeed, he explicitly condemns the practices of countries which make it illegal or which pour scorn upon homosexuals. He sees such bigotry as essentially barbaric.

The only time Casanova has an issue with someone being gay is when a guy hits on him repeatedly and won't take no for an answer. He isn't bothered by the suggestion he might indulge, he knows his tastes don't run that way, he is rather bothered by the fact he is being pestered by someone he perceives as behaving rudely in not accepting defeat gracefully.

If he were fictional a modern reader would imagine that contemporary PC attitudes were being put onto the character. But this is a memoir written by Casanova himself. The surprising fact then is that an Eighteenth century rake was in fact more tolerant of homosexuality than most people today. Not what most would expect I think.

In another part of the book Casanova sleeps with two sisters on consecutive nights. One aged 11 and the other 12. Casanova is plainly no paedophile, he simply draws no great distinction between a girl of 11 and one of 21. Nor does anyone else in the book draw much distinction, including the girl's mother who knows about the affair. Casanova expresses surprise that a girl that young is interested, but once he knows she is there is no issue that she might be too young. The idea seems literally alien, it simply doesn't even arise.

Now, back then of course modern notions of childhood and adolescence simply didn't exist. You were either a child or an adult and as far as Casanova and everyone else was concerned if she was old enough to be interested she was clearly an adult for those purposes.

This is to modern sensibilities incredibly alien. An 11 year old today is seen as clearly being a child. That someone would make no distinction between her and a 21 or 31 year old makes no sense to the modern mind. He would in fact be arrested.

What struck me with this was quite how different his culture was, even in very basic things. There is no concept of the adolescent, most people know that but the practical implications of that fact are rarely so explicitly set out. In some things he is more modern than we are, in others he behaves in ways most people today view as not just morally repugnant but possibly even as a form of mental illness.

This is just 200 years ago and we're dealing with a Westerner.

Most games essentially have cultures which are America Lite, perhaps The West Lite if you prefer. There are cosmetic changes, people are loyal to a king instead of democracy, to many gods rather than just one, but fundamental moral assumptions of the modern day tend to still hold good. You don't sleep with 12 year olds in a fantasy game and homosexuality is rarely if ever mentioned.

Some try to depart from this. But generally most don't even bother.

Which leads to the issue of what we miss out by not even trying to put ourselves in another culture's heads. Heroic Greek rpgs rarely address the topic of Greek homosexuality. Western games usually try not to include racial attitudes of the day (often by the simple expedient of basically dropping all black people from the game). But these cultures aren't a huge stretch. I've summarised major differences in Casanova's attitudes from contemporary ones in one internet post, it's not impossible to put yourself in his head.

My impression is that most gamers like only cosmetic differences, elves aren't really alien, they're just Americans with pointy ears. But surely one of the great possibilities of roleplaying is exploring what it would be like to live in another time, another place. What's the point if when we go there everyone is just like us?

The short answer is, of course, that players can really only handle so much change from what they know. You can build on that slowly, but even then, you're going to lose some people. Even in the best group I ever played with, my college group, some of the players just couldn't get it through their heads that elves were polygamists who considered most of the human customs of marriage bizarre and deviant. The further you deviate from standard, the harder you have to work to reinforce these alterations in your setting, and the more frequently you must remind your players of them.

Still, I always push as far as I feel I can safely go, and then a tiny bit further. It makes my games memorable, and adds a hint of the fantastic to the worlds we play in.

Free Inversion

Catherine Asaro's Primary Inversion is the latest offering over at the Baen Free Library.

A Ronin Reviews D&D 4.0

Via the Velvet Dicebag comes word that Chris Pramas of Green Ronin, the classiest guys in RPGs, has posted his thoughts on D&D 4.0. He has a lot to say, and most of it is thought-provoking. Just to prove it, here are some actual thoughts:

I really felt that 3.5 was just more complicated than it needed to be and I hoped that 4E would simplify things. While it does fix many of the ongoing issues with 3.5, my feeling after today's session is that it's just complicated in a different way. It's not something I think experienced gamers will have a huge amount of trouble with, but it does seem that 4E may be even more unfriendly to new players than 3.5 was. It looks like 4E requires newbs to make too many choices and track too many things to make it truly accessible. Since D&D has always been the entry point for most RPG players, this is my most serious concern.

This is pretty serious stuff. I’ve heard that WotC is planning a beginner’s boxed set. Hopefully, they’ll be able to simplify things enough that new folks don’t have too many issues. Moldvay’s Basic was complex enough for me way back in 2^nd grade. That should be the level of complexity they shoot for.

And since the rules seem to have been tailored to provide a very particular experience, I don't think they will make as good of a base for the variety of campaign settings D&D used to see. It's pretty clear that WotC realizes this, which explains why they felt the need to advance the timeline and have an apocalyptic event in the Forgotten Realms. I don't think many of the old campaign settings will transition over without a lot of cutting, spindling, and mutilating.

I’m very curious what he means by this. So far, I haven’t seen anything that would make 4.0 a bad fit for Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, or even Spelljammer. If you ignore the fluff, you ought to be able to make it fit even Planescape fairly well. But he’s played the game and I haven’t, so maybe he knows something I don’t. And if he does, what does that mean for Paizo and Pathfinder?

What I think WotC is going for here is what Marvel managed to pull off with their Ultimate line of comics: take the core of the IP and redefine it for a new generation. There will certainly be some longtime fans disenfranchised by this move, but I don't think there will be enough of those folks to hurt 4E. (I do think, however, that there will be enough of those for a third party company to carve out a good business for itself catering to them, but that's a topic for another day.)

Heh… Remember, this is the guy who has True20 in his stable, and the soon-to-be-released A Song of Ice and Fire RPG. So it’s not like he doesn’t have a dog in this fight.

That said, I think he’s right. I also think Green Ronin, with its stable of literature-based games and experience converting the settings of novels into settings for RPGs, is well-positioned to lay a claim to the fantasy storytelling terrain that WotC appears to be abandoning. Whether they achieve that through promoting True20 or the system they create for ASoIaF, they’ve got a good head-start on everyone else in the industry. And with the roadblocks that WotC has cast in the way of 3^rd party developers so far, Green Ronin might very well find themselves forced to pursue such goals, simply from being shut out of doing anything for D&D 4.0 over the next year.

Viewed from this perspective, WotC’s marketing campaign appears hell-bent on shooting their corporation in both feet. First, by dragging their feet in getting the licensing info out to third-party publishers, they’re almost forcing those companies to compete with the release of 4.0, either by putting out new product that is unrelated to D&D, or, even worse, by continuing to support the older editions. Second, by insisting that older versions of D&D are not fun, they seem determined to drive a wedge between the players who adopt 4.0 and those who stick with older editions.

UPDATE: Mr. Pramas has continued to play with 4e. His after action report here, and my brief take on it here.

Gary Gygax, 1938-2008

I'm searching, in vain, right now, to find a quote that fits this moment. I can't find one, really, probably because I never knew the man, never brushed shoulders with him at a crowded convention, or even wrote to him. I can't, of course, deny the impact he's had on my life. Before the Trollwife became the Trollwife, and we were dating over a distance of 300 miles, it was D&D, played over AOL or IRC, that kept us close. This game, and its many imitators, have always been there for us. When times were tough, when sanity hung by a thread and money was tight, we could always turn to our imaginary worlds for comfort, for wisdom, for inspiration, and perspective. Even before I met the woman who would become my wife, friendships were forged in both victory and defeat around dining room tables, or around the campfire.

So while I can't speak of the man, I can let his own words say what his work has meant to me: Enjoy, for this game is what dreams are made of!!

Godspeed, Mr. Gygax.

UPDATE: More here, but be patient. A lot of people are hitting it today.

Premature Pontifications

Ok, just for the record, I haven’t gotten to play 4.0 yet. I’ve not even been in the same room as someone who has. But looking at what’s come out of the D&D Experience, and playtester comments, I feel justified in making some observations about the game and the industry. I may be waaaay off base, and I’m sure y’all will enjoy making me eat crow later if I turn out to be horribly wrong.

Please bear with me as I harken back to the days of 3^rd edition D&D. With the benefit of hindsight, I’m more and more impressed with how holistically that game was managed in so many of its aspects. Even now, some of these are only coming to light. For instance, we’re all familiar with the marketing strategy embodied by the OGL. All RPG roads led to D&D, was the thought. With the OGL, WotC hoped to create synergies in the market that would tie everyone more closely to their brands. By spreading the d20 goodness as broadly as possible, it would be easier for players to move from system to system, and the more open they were to other games, especially games based on d20, the more likely they were to purchase WotC books.

But this strategy was not formed in a marketing-office vacuum. The promise of the OGL was woven into the very rules of the game. This can be seen most clearly in the eradication of verisimilitude-inhibiting game-isms.

Ok, what the heck is the Trollsmyth talking about, throwing around all these five-dollar words? Well, a classic complaint about D&D has long been that the rules had all sorts of wonky limitations in them about what you could do with your character. For instance, in just about every previous version of D&D, wizards couldn’t wear armour or learn how to swing a sword. It was simply forbidden, which meant that you couldn’t play Gandalf, clearly one of the best known examples of the archetype. The games were riddled with things like this. Probably the most bizarre was the 2^nd edition prohibition against elven druids. If any race seemed tailor-made to worship the spirits of the wilderness, you’d think it would be elves. Nope, sorry. You couldn’t do it.

The reason given for the existence of these bizarre rules was game balance. In order to balance the powers of every race and class, restrictions were needed to keep any race and class combination from dominating the game. The results, of course, were mixed, but most people understood the reasoning. Still, the reaction was the creation of a number of competing games heavily focused on simulation-style play. These games attempted to bring as much realism and verisimilitude to RPGs as possible. The best of them, games like GURPS and Traveller, are still with us today, recognized as giants in the hobby.

However, 3^rd edition needed to be all things to all people. If the OGL was to truly dominate the hobby, d20 needed to be seen as a universal gaming system. It couldn’t afford to be pigeonholed as any particular type of game. And so the game-isms were purged from D&D. Every race could aspire to every class, though some clearly worked better than others. Every race could also advance in every class as far as they wished, though at different speeds. And with 3.0, for the first time, every class could wear heavy armour and swing swords, though not always without penalty. The out-and-out prohibitions were replaced with choices and costs that retained, to a certain extent, the balance, but didn’t poke holes in setting by asking players to accept arbitrary rules that lacked any rhyme or reason within the context of the worlds we played in.

Success, of course, was spotty; just ask anyone who tried to play a ranger out of the 3.0 PHB. But most of the old criticisms of D&D were silenced. The game was positioned to straddle all different styles of play. Gamers still had their min-maxing and number-crunching victories, while simulationists were no longer forced to endure arbitrary limitations that required pretzel-like twistings of logic to explain. Those who desired a more storytelling experience were not actively catered to, but this was probably a good thing. You could still play the game for hours without touching the dice if you wanted to, while the gamers and simulationists were not forced to justify bonuses derived from eccentric behavior. And True20 proved how easy it was to bolt on a virtue/vice and “hero point” mechanics to the d20 chassis.

And, for the most part, it worked. There were d20 versions of all sorts of games created. Even the giants of simulationst games, like Traveller, and storytelling games, like White Wolf’s World of Darkness, had d20 versions. Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to tell just how much these sorts of synergies benefited the individual publishers and the industry as a whole. And some games were smashed into the d20 mold that never should have been. Star Wars, for instance, was always a clumsy match for the d20 system. So things were far from perfect, and it was impossible to tell just how much harm or good was really being achieved.

So I suppose it’s no surprise that the designers of 4^th edition have left all that behind them. D&D is returning to its roots. New arbitrary limitations are in the rules. Things like per-encounter abilities are included without any sort of verisimilitude-saving justifications for their limitations. Why can’t I use this ability all the time? The rules say so. No longer is D&D pretending to be all things to all people. Instead, it’s settling back squarely on what it does best: rollicking action-adventure, number-crunching gaming.

We can argue whether or not this is good or bad. What is undeniable is that, as D&D shifts away from its long-held middle-ground, it creates vacuums other games will fill. GURPS remains well-positioned to reclaim the simulationist crown. I expect folks who prefer modern and sci-fi gaming to return their focus back to GURPS, which has long held their loyalty.

Even more interesting are prospects on the storytelling front. There really isn’t a strong contender for the story-focused fantasy RPG. D&D’s focus on complex tactical challenges promises to make every encounter memorable, but it also alienates folks who are more interested in context and emotional arcs than 5’ maneuvers and tactically significant terrain. Honestly, I’m not sure things could be more perfect for Ryan Dancey’s storytelling game. The sour taste that 4.0 is going to leave in the mouths of these gamers will make them far more likely to cast about for something new that caters to their preferences.

The OGL may not be dead, but the marketing realities it tried to create are. As they continue to crumble, I expect to see a lot of dynamic activity in the RPG hobby. Unfortunately, it’s likely to lead to a lot more splintering as players, once united by a D&D that tried to command the middle ground by straddling all different styles, retreats into specialization, inviting other games with very different styles and assumptions to reclaim the territory WotC has abandoned.

Jeff Gets Stupid! And Retro!

Jeff of Jeff's Gameblog has posted his Incomplete Guide to the New Retro Stupid. Why would you want to read about Retro Stupid? Well, the way Jeff uses 'em, neither Retro nor Stupid means "not fun". In fact, I'd say Retro Stupid is Jeff's idea of a great time.

Most of the games Jeff talks about are free, too! So if you've been jonesing for some good ol' fashioned RPG fun, but are feeling a tad light in the wallet, this list is definitely for you.

Some Thoughts on D&D Insider

We don't know enough yet, but what we do know is not exactly encouraging. On the good side, it appears that their will be a searchable rules database, and you'll be able to search for rules that are even in books you don't own. Very cool.

On the not-so-cool side of things, you're going to have to buy your electronic monster miniatures and digital terrain. Yes, there will be very boring place-holders if you, like me, are cheap. There have been lots of howls about this. Being cheap, I can understand. But I don't think WotC is that far off-base. After all, their model has to be Magic: The Gathering Online, where you buy your electronic cards to play in the game. People have shown they are willing to shell out real money for virtual goods. Hell, Second Life is predicated on the idea. And there are other reasons to think that it might make sense. Over at RPG.net, Samhaine said:

It's also common in subscription plans that heavy users are actually a losing proposition, since they use a bunch more bandwidth and resources than average users. In this situation, these users are probably the ones most likely to shell out extra for miniatures and terrain. If it works, this will allow WotC to not cap their earning potential from their hardcore users at $10 a month.

So while I, personally think spending real money on such things is a bit silly, if it works for them, great!

That all said, I still think they've stumbled horribly in not building more of a bridge between dead-tree Dragon and Dungeon and D&D Insider. I can certainly understand WotC focusing the vast majority of their attention and resources on the core books of D&D, but I think this is one of those decisions that is going to cost them in the long run. Time, of course, will tell.

This Ain't Your Daddy's D&D

I've opined before that 4th edition is going to be very different in its game play than previous editions of the game. The information coming out of the D&D Experience convention seems to support that:

The design decision seems to have been to move away from resource management -- of any sort -- as a minigame in D&D. This really does make it "not D&D" in a lot of ways, but looking at the crunch we're finally getting, it seems like they've added in complexity in other areas to make up for it. It's a very different gaming experience, but it looks like (contrary to my earlier fears) it will still be tactically challenging.

And this from Lizard, who has been fairly negative on all the stuff he's heard so far. Time will tell, but I've gone from disinterested to intrigued, though I'm still doubtful I'll play this game.

All Sorts of D&D 4e News

Now that the D&D Experience convention is happening, there's all sorts of new information about 4th edition coming out all over the place. Via The Velvet Dicebag, we have these notes from an attendee to the seminar given on the changes coming with 4th edition. Of Dice and Dragons has a link over to a pdf on the WotC pages entitled "What You Need to Know about D&D".

I'll post my thoughts on this later. So far, I'm not seeing anything too surprising, and I like some of what I'm hearing about D&D Insider. But nothing's blown my socks off yet.

Suddenly, Ninjas Attack!

Ok, not really, but as June and D&D 4.0 approaches, things are beginning to move in the world of RPGs. First, Fantasy Flight Games appears to be jumping on the 4.0 bandwagon, and they’re looking for writers to help them out. (This via the Velvet Dicebag.)

But suddenly, from almost literally out of freakin’ nowhere, jumps Monte Cook, one of the guys who wrote 3.0, with a new book for D&D! Yeah, I know, he promised he’d left for the greener pastures of novel writing, but apparently the man just can’t help himself. The Book of Experimental Might is a collection of his houserules for running d20 games. It is, in essence, Monte Cook’s D&D 3.75. It’s interesting to note how some of the thing things mentioned, such as never letting magic-using PCs be left without any spells remaining to cast, are mirrored in the official 4.0 rules.

The incestuous world of d20 just keeps getting more interesting all the time.

Planet Stories

The Evil DM is putting out the call to all fans of pulp adventure to check out Paizo's Planet Stories line of new books. These are reprints of classic sword-and-sorcery or sword-and-planet or just fun adventure stories. Among them, you'll find the heirs of Conan, like Elak of Atlantis, and the forebear of Han Solo, Northwest Smith. (And doesn't that name also remind you of another character Harrison Ford played, Indiana Jones?)

Sorry about not mentioning this earlier. I keep forgetting that most folks don't hang out with people who live, eat, and breath books like this. Bad Trollsmyth! No cookie!

Up a Tree Without a Machine Gun. Ho-ho-ho!

Mr. Colville has posted the next installment of his series on the Pillars of Game Story.

A common mistake among GMs, at least a mistake I made commonly as a GM, is to set the PCs free upon the world and let them come up with their own motivations. I thought this empowered them. I thought this was forward-thinking, liberal…democratic.

It’s crap. We need boundaries in order to understand our options. Players want the illusion of freedom, but before they can appreciate it, they need to be forced into action. It’s all very well and good to ask the players what they want to do, but the players need a framework to understand their options. When you chase them up a tree, when you force them to react to you, you can thereafter give them a variety of options and they now have a framework for understanding the meaning of their options.

I've argued repeatedly for "situation" over "story". However, when I do, I also mean that conflict should be flying all over the place when the PCs arrive, and some of it should land on the PCs if at all possible. That's part of the situation. Yes, there might be an equilibrium of forces for the PCs to upset. But that doesn't mean life is boring and static before they ride into town. Just like the village in Yojimbo, "balance" doesn't necessarily mean "tranquil", no matter what those stoner druids try to tell you.

Remembering White Dwarf

Over on his blog The Silver Key, Brian Murphy is reminiscing about the White Dwarf magazine of yesteryear:

Pre-issue 100, White Dwarf was a fantastic magazine. Whereas Dragon very quickly evolved into a house organ for TSR and later Wizards of the Coast, and eventually covered strictly D&D, White Dwarf was a rarity in that it covered all role-playing games. Within its pages you could find articles on Dungeons and Dragons sandwiched in between Runequest columns, Call of Cthulhu adventures, Champions role-playing advice, and Traveler comics.

I also have fond memories of Dragon before it became the marketing mouthpiece of TSR. Those magazines seem to be something lost to the past, though Kobold Quarterly seems to be trying to resurrect at least some of their appeal. Still, that was a different time, when Katherine Kerr could write an article on the care and upkeep of medieval European castles and nobody would question its inclusion in a magazine about pen-and-paper RPGs.

Yeah, I'm an old fart. Now get the hell off my lawn! ;D

The Pillars of SquareMans

There's a new blog on the block and it looks like a winner. SquareMans is a blog about politics and gaming, a combination I mostly avoid on this blog, but hey, both are fun, so why not?

Matthew Colville pays the bills with his game master skills. He's a writer and designer in the computer gaming hobby. On his new blog, he's begun discussing what he calls the Five Pillars of Game Story. He's posted on two so far.

The first, entitled The Plan (scroll down if you don't see anything, the formatting on his page seems to be a bit wonky just yet), refers to what he calls the False Backbone. This is the plan of the villain, or more basically, what will happen if the heroes don't get involved. Game happens when the players start mucking with the False Backbone. They try to foil the villain's plans or save the villagers from the erupting volcano or whatever. The important realization here is that play happens when the players begin to derail things. Stuff not happening according to plan is not what makes play stop, it's when play really gets going. I think Mr. Colville and I might disagree a bit on this. You can, after all, have the "True Backbone" be firmly plotted branches off the False Backbone. I find that sort of thing icky, but it's considered necessary in todays computer gaming market.

He then goes on to discuss the Central Conflict in Ptolus is Fucking Big. The Central Conflict isn't necessarily the ones the players are focusing on, though it has an impact on what they are doing. In "Gone With the Wind", the Central Conflict might be the Civil War, but Scarlett is much more focused on Rhett. Likewise, in "Return of the Jedi", the Central Conflict is the war between the Empire and the Rebellion. But Luke, while engaged in that struggle himself, is focused on the personal struggle to redeem his father.

Read them both. They're interesting and thought-provoking, and both look like fun things to play with in your game.

The OGL is NOT Dead

But it's also not being allowed to go up a level.

The new licensing agreement that goes with D&D 4.0 is now the Game System License, or GSL. What does this mean? Well, first, everyone who was confused into thinking that the 3.0 OGL applied to anything in 4th edition will finally be shut down. I hope.

Yeah, I know, people will still be confuzzled. Oh well...

Second, well, we don't know exactly what else this might mean, because everyone who's seen the GSL is still under NDA. But from what WotC has let out, the GSL will only allow you to reference the core rulebooks, but not reprint any material in them. What does that mean? That means, the GSL will allow you to make supplementary material for D&D 4.0. You can make splatbooks and adventures. However, you cannot make a brand new, stand-alone game. No Conan, True20, Mutants & Masterminds, or Traveller d20 based on the D&D 4.0 engine.

Does that mean those games go away? No. As each currently exists, they are based on D&D 3.x's OGL, which is still in force. It means the games cannot be rewritten with direct reference to bits in the 4.0 books, however. So now the world of d20 gaming bifurcates. On one path, we have D&D 4.0. On the other, we have products descended from D&D 3.x's OGL.

This poses all sorts of interesting questions. Can games like Conan, True20, M&M, and others survive without riding on D&D's coattails? That depends on the game. Honestly, I think all three of those can do just fine without D&D. They've got a good fanbase now, and all three can be grown with or without support from the companies that created them. After all, Star Frontiers seems to still have a strong and loyal fanbase even though the rulebooks have been out of print for twenty years or so now. There's no reason to think these other games couldn't fare just as well, if not better.

And D&D 4.0? Well, I dunno, honestly. It really depends on how much synergy was created between the various games. I think this isn't as big a fumble as limiting who can publish new material for 4.0 when it's first released. But I think that fumble will come back to bite them. How hard? I can't say. But right now, I'm expecting a very strong 3.x community to exist well into 2009.

A Less Positive Dragonlance Movie Review

Rygar of Gax (now does that sound like the name of a D&D fighter or what) sends us this review of the new Dragonlance Animated movie. Not only did he not like the art, he was annoyed with how they chose to retell the story.

For those of you who read the book this will make sense. Would it still be sneaking into Xak Tsaroth if they didn't have the fight in the cauldron elevators? Would it be the same if they just walked straight up to the dragon's horde and rifled through it for the Disks of Mishakal while the dragon was sleeping, without even sneaking at all to get there in the first place?

What about the companions assault on Pax Tharkas? Would it be the same without sneaking in through the tunnels and being attacked by a group of banshees? Would it be the same if they just walked straight into the prison cells and walked back out again?

All the really cool fights inthe book are completely missing in this movie. None of the major points in the movie have the slightest bit of anticipation or risk associated with them.

Not promising, and I'm not getting any sort of vibe on how it's selling, but so far, I'd be shocked if a sequel ever got made.

Hafta Beat it off with a Wooden Stick

Is it a heapin' helpin' of bad-wrong fun? Yep, it's that, too. But it's also another angle on the reasons why I probably won't be playing D&D 4.0.

Does WotC Need to Reroll Their (Digital) Initiative?

Faerie Dragon over at the Velvet Dicebag isn't happy about what's happened to Dungeon magazine since WotC took it back from Paizo.

I'm really getting concerned. If the magazines don't stop completely sucking really soon, I may have to abandon Dungeons & Dragons Insider completely. I don't want to be the crazy conspiracy theorist, but some of the anti-4e crazies are beginning to make me think twice about even buying into the new core books. The dismal failure of the online mags to shine only reinforces that. I hope Chris manages to turn these publications around soon.

I have to agree with Faerie Dragon. So far, WotC’s digital initiative has been an unmitigated disaster. They are not selling 4.0 very well. They’re selling D&D Insider with even less skill. Frankly, the entire situation has me scared spitless.

Let’s be honest here: where goes D&D, there goes pen-and-paper RPGs. It’s the 500 lbs gorilla that dominates this market. It’s also the public face of the hobby. D&D has far more name recognition than any other game out there, or even the term “roleplaying”. And yet, turning that command into steady income seems to be beyond most people. TSR even managed to drive themselves deep into the red while owning this most powerful brand in the hobby.

WotC’s digital initiative is an attempt to break free of the publish-or-perish trap the entire industry is mired in. Trying to squeeze a few more pennies out of your market every month, after they’ve bought everything they need to enjoy playing for the rest of their lives in your core rule books, is a losing game. A D&D Insider with a $10 US monthly fee would allow WotC to break free of that trap. They could transform themselves from a publishing company into a service company, which would not only free them from the compulsion to bury their game in an endless stream of new rules and settings, but would also realign their interests with the interests of their customers. Right now, WotC wants to sell books. Their audience wants to play games. With D&D Insider, the WotC focus moves from selling books to getting more people playing the game more often.

It’s clear that Dragon and Dungeon are not getting the resources they need at this critical time when they should be migrating the dead-tree audience over to the digital media. They’re not getting the word out about how the new edition of the game is going to knock everyone’s socks off. And nobody is being convinced that D&D Insider is going to be a vital part of their games in the future. So far, we’ve been promised a fancy version of OpenRPG, and we’ve seen an anemic Dragon and a shadow of Dungeon. If things don’t turn around soon, GenCon ’09 might open with the announcement that D&D is up on the auction block.

And look! *More* 4e!

Here's a brief GamerZero interview with Sara Girard, Associate Brand Manager for D&D. Mostly, they discuss a philanthropic digital initiative to get kids into libraries. However, they also discuss exposing some folks to 4th edition at the D&D Experience convention in February. There's also a shot of the digital tabletop at about 1:17 that's just gorgeous. They're clearly putting a lot of work into making it an exceptional gaming tool, and not just your usual quick-and-dirty line-map thing.

Why You Might Want to Play D&D 4.0

So the other day I pointed out why I probably won't be playing D&D 4.0. However, that doesn't mean I feel the game will be utterly without merit. It just isn't likely to float my boat. You, however, are not me, and we're all about serving the reader here at Trollsmyth.

John Rogers, a professional writer for comics and screen, is a play-tester for D&D's 4th edition, due to be released in June. He's recently posted his thoughts on the game at ENWorld. Among other things, he notes:

I think the reason there's so much buzz around 4E combat is because that's where the most massive fun-change has come in, and so it naturally dominates discussion and perception. By the time my NDA playtest group got through our first session, we'd (unintentionally) fought three massive combats in one four hour session, many multiple opponents each time. When we finished we all kind of sat back, glassy-eyed, and went "wow." Except for the rogue. He was punching the air and cackling "More stabby! MORE STABBY!"

Because 3E combat had gotten so ... er .. gunky, combat's the first thing you notice when playing 4E. It's hard not to talk about it. A bit like if you bought a new car and got it up to 250 mph. The fact that it has a great interior, amazing safety features and a kick-butt stereo never really comes up in your first conversations about the car.

This is probably among the most informative things we've heard about the game. While others have made similar comments in the past, I believe Mr. Rogers is the first who does not stand to make any money from D&D.

Mr. Rogers has touched on a vital point for the success of D&D 4.0, I think. 3.x is slow, which is bad enough if you're a teenager with lots of time on your hands. It's a game-killer if you're middle-aged, with a job and spouse and kids and home. A quicker, sleeker game is vital for the aging RPG market. And it works great with their online gaming tools. In 3.x, if you can't devote a three or four-hour chunk of time to gaming, you might as well not bother. But with the virtual table-top and a "clean" (to use John Rogers' word) game system, it might make sense for my friends and I to log on for two or so hours on Tuesday and Thursday nights, after the kids are tucked in, for a bit of quick gaming. No fuss about driving across town, no need to find a four to six-hour block of time in our busy lives. We can log in, have some fun, and log off, which for me is about the only benefit MMOGs have over pen-and-paper gaming.

And I imagine I'm not the only one who feels that way.

Combine this with products like Paizo's adventure paths, which give us a textured, complex, more story-like experience without the DM needing to quit his day job, and you've got a winning combination for lots of fans of gaming who have been forced to abandon the hobby because they simply can't make the time for it.

Dragonlance Movie Review

I haven't had a chance to see it yet, but some reviews are starting to roll in. Here's one from "That Guy's Blog" that sums up my expectations:

The voice acting was superb, as was the score. The animation however I felt fell a little flat. The dragons were all computer generated and imposed on the traditional cell animation for the rest of the characters. The cell animation is where I found fault, as it didn’t seem sharp at all. At times it was blurry and even appeared to suffer from ghost images.

I'll link to more reviews as I see them, and hopefully I'll have a review of my own before too much longer.

Iconic Wallpapers

I'm loving the iconic characters Paizo has created for their Pathfinder and Dungeon Mastery series. The latest, Lem, can be found at the Paizo blog if you scroll down to January 22nd. Yeah, some of the write-ups have been horribly cliched, but Lem's among the best of 'em. Wayne "he's everywhere" Reynolds art really brings these folks to life. His attention to detail is amazing. I love how Lem's flute is not just a stick of wood with some holes in it, how his garments are layered, the jangle of jewelry around his neck, and that lovely, slightly snarky, slightly sweet expression on his face. This is one bad-boy halfling, who'll have you thinking his heart belongs only to you, but won't be calling back for months at a time. He reminds me very much of, for some reason, of Carla Speed McNeil's Finder.

It's interesting to see the different styles that Mr. Reynolds paints in. Typically, when you're presented with an artists work, you have a fairly good idea what you're going to get. Mr. Reynolds, however, seems to be fairly wide-ranging in his styles. His "wall-of-action" pieces for Eberron had a very strong comic-book-action vibe to them. His Paizo work has less of that, and more of a "you are there" air that reminds me of Elmore, Parkinson, and Jim Holloway.

If skimming through the Paizo blog doesn't give you enough good Pathfinder art to drool over, check out the fan-made desktops in this thread on the Paizo boards.

Why I Won't be Playing D&D 4.0

This isn’t a blanket condemnation of D&D’s 4^th edition. Just further realization on my part that D&D just isn’t where I’m going these days with my gaming. This latest revelation was instigated by this description of magic item slots in 4^th edition. Apparently, in 4^th edition you can’t use magic rings until your character reaches 11^th level.

This really rubs me the wrong way. And I know I’m being silly, and I understand why they’re doing this. This is the natural outgrowth of the CR system. In order to accurately judge what sort of challenges the PCs can tackle, the designers need a relatively accurate idea of what the PCs are capable of. Saying things like, “just hand out fewer magical items” doesn’t cut it. If your PCs don’t get the right magical items at the proper levels, they’ll fall out of sync with the CR system. The CR system is a triangle of relationships, PCs to monsters to treasure, that work in tight partnership to ensure proper challenge and proper reward at every stage of the game.

And this is what makes me cranky, especially as a DM. In order for this very cool “aid” to building adventures to work, I have to essentially let the folks in Seattle tell me what monsters I can use, and what treasures those monsters can be guarding. Yes, I can ignore that and do whatever I want, since it’s my game. But if I do, first, I’m utterly tossing out the CR system, which is one of the big selling points of the modern incarnations of D&D. Second, if my players have played a lot of D&D 3.x, they come to my table with certain expectations. One of those is that the CR system will be in place. Even if I tell them it won’t be, they won’t really listen. They’ll make decisions based on all the assumptions about challenges and resource management that go along with CRs.

This annoys me, because we didn’t use to play this way. Please indulge me while I put on my Grumpy Old Man hat. Way back when I got my copy of Moldvay Basic, our models were the myths and legends we read in school. And in those myths and legends, the heroes were almost always horribly outmatched. The cyclops was way outside Odysseus’ safe range of foes. When Sinbad was attacked by a roc, he had no chance of killing the giant bird. The first two billy goats were no match for the troll. Robin Hood was incapable of beating Little John with staves or fists.

So when I challenged third level characters with dragons or a medusa or a handful of minotaurs, nobody batted an eyelash. The players knew they might be faced with foes who could not be outfought, and that not every solution to every problem would be found on their single-page character sheets.

And weeeee liked it!

Yeah, the arbitrariness is nothing new. 4.0's wizard can’t wear rings until tenth level, and my Basic D&D magic-user was incapable of learning how to properly swing a sword. That’s annoying, but that’s not what really turns me off the game. Putting my game on the sorts of rails the CR system requires turns D&D into something I’m just not interested in playing. Does it make it an easier game to DM? Certainly. Does it make it a better “gateway drug” to the RPG hobby? Undoubtedly. But it also becomes a game that’s just not fun for me.

UPDATE: Faerie Dragon over at The Velvet Dicebag thinks that the folks at WotC may have failed to hit their stated goals as well.

The Truth about Elves...

REVEALED!

More Planetary Romance Than You Can Shake a Stick At

Lots of neat little bits of exciting news out there for you fans of Planetary Romance. First of all, Edgar Rice Burroughs is seeing something of a resurgence, almost certainly due to his work entering the public domain. You can get the scoops over at the aptly named Rebels of Mars. Not only has the long-languishing-in-development-hell Barsoom movie been picked up by Pixar, of all people, but there's also a team promising a Pirates of Venus movie for 2010.

In addition, the Evil DM has also pointed us the blog of upcoming Perils on Planet X comic book. Looks like a lot of fun!

More Book Lust: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

Yes, that Tales of Beedle the Bard. Rowling wrote these by hand, and the decorations are gorgeous. This is what the the third edition core books of D&D wanted to look like. Be sure to scroll down of the yummy, yummy pics.

A Kobold Gnawing on the Dragon's Corpse

Wolfgang Baur, the man who sent me my first professional rejection letter, has started his own D&D magazine, Kobold Quarterly. Mr. Johnson of Cinerati has many nice things to say about it.

I have to confess, I love the free-wheeling feel of this. Conversations with Wayne Reynolds on his technique and articles by Ed Greenwood feel like the Dragon I used to know and enjoy, way back when.

4e: For Those Keeping Score at Home...

Here's where the various third-party publishers have come down on taking part in the $5k, early-adopter grace period WotC is offering:

Necromancer Games is in like Flynn!

Goodman Games also is eager for a piece of the action.

Paizo, in spite of some level of partnership with Necromancer Games, is moving a bit more cautiously. However, I'll be shocked if they don't jump in early.

Green Ronin seems intrigued, but they probably have better things to do with their time.

Mongoose is cautiously optimistic.

D&D 4th Edition: Traps and Their Hidden Meanings

Ok, maybe not that hidden. If anyone is still under the impression that 4th edition is just 3.75th edition, this description of how traps will work in 4th edition should pretty much put the last nail in that coffin. Those saying that this game is shaping up to be a major departure from previous incarnations of the game are absolutely right.

From the beginning, the basic gameplay of D&D involved a series of mildly challenging encounters that would slowly wear away at the resources of the party, punctuated by serious challenges that posed a real threat to life and limb. Resource management was a core component of the game. Do we have enough spells/hit points/supplies to tackle one more room? Or, less often but far more thrilling, “Oh shit! That room was a hell of a lot tougher than we were expecting. Do we still have enough resources to get back to safety alive?”

In that game, traps were the niggling little things that plinked you every now and then. Most were not deadly, but they forced you to cast spells, drink potions, or just suck it up and deal with the loss of hit points or stat drain. They were not particularly thrilling, could even be annoying, but they also were markers that told players they were headed in the right direction.

In 4th edition, traps now seem to fall into two categories: tactical terrain features and set-piece center pieces in their own right. The tactical terrain features are the stuff of table-top wargaming. They’re used to add a fun wrinkle to the usual slug-fest of combat. They’ll be the surprise extra complication that make our heroes appear to be in over their heads, sure, but they’ll also secure flanks or offer extra protection to less reliable troops. The set-piece center pieces will be like the glorious contraptions that you find in the Indiana Jones and National Treasure movies. Chances are, you’ll know there’s a trap there. The fun will be in figuring out how it works without getting mauled by it, and getting around it, or finding a way to turn it on your foes, so you can get at the goodies that the trap guards.

(Interestingly enough, I’d say that most traps in MMOGs are far more like the traps in older versions of D&D. Those sorts of traps are easy to code: step in the wrong spot, and get whacked for a few hit points. The new traps will require a lot of specialized coding, AI design, and art to reproduce in a MMOG. In this aspect, at least, the upcoming D&D is far more unlike current MMOGs than the older versions.)

I expect to see the thief beefed up as a combatant, and the reviews we’ve seen of Races and Classes do seem to back this up. No longer a tool to minimize the resource drain of traps, the thief needs a new role to play. Making them sharp-shooting assassin types would seem to fit very well with their style. Thieves are going to be more fun to play. The DM is going to have to work harder to include traps in the dungeon, because the typical pit-with-spikes by itself will hardly be worth including. Now, a pit with spikes that must be traversed while the party is trying to hold off the advancing hordes of army ants, on the other hand…

All in all, I have to say I like a lot of these ideas, and I may very well buy a copy of the 4th edition DMG to plunder it for such notions, which is saying something. While I did buy a copy of 3rd edition's PHB, I never felt the need to get the DMG.

Book Fetish: Warhammer 40k RPG

Can you be into RPGs and not have even a mild case of book fetishism? I know I've got it bad. This would have been tempting if I'd seen it before they were sold out. Still, I can't help but think that a battered leather cover with large buckles, bronze-capped corners, and a few purity seals might have been more appropriate, and infinitely cooler.

A Deep Look Into the Unmentionable Comparison

Yep, it's time for another round of "You got your MMOG in my D&D 4th edition!" Only this time, it's from the point of view of someone who is primarily a MMOGer. Aggro Me actually does a very nice job of piecing together the clues and extrapolating the potential outcomes. It's a bit of a longer read, but definitely worth your time if you're interested in either the next iteration of D&D or MMOGs.

What? No Trollsmyth?!?

Yax over at Dungeon Mastering has listed his "completely arbitrary" top 50 RPG web sites. Even though his list is woefully inadequate, especially considering the lack of RPG artist sites or any mention of trolls what-so-ever, there's more than enough linky goodness to burn an entire holiday season of lazy, cold afternoons.

Google Ad to Art

I keep my eye on the ads that get pasted at the top of the page. Mostly, I'm just curious about the sorts of products will be returned by the algorithms' perusing of my writings. I also like to know what sort of things are being promoted on my blog. A few times I've been inspired to remove the ads altogether, but it's always been more trouble than I've had time for, and so they remain.

Just lately, there was a link to this gallery of fantasy art. It's a fun perusal, though there's not much that's new there. I was surprised to find what appears to be a (NSFW) Frazetta cover for one of the Flashman novels.

Anyway, I suggest spending a bit of time checking it out. In spite of the odd organization (like lumping Frazetta's work with Boris Valejo and Julie Bell's which, yeah, I can kinda see why, but...) it's a neat collection.

- Brian

Tieflings = Melniboneans?

Well, not exactly. Melniboneans had their pacts with the gods of Chaos. D&D 4th edition tieflings, apparently, had their pacts with devils which, in older versions of D&D, were lawful evil. This comes from ENWorld's news of December 9th:

Tieflings are not human and demonic offspring, but are the true-breeding descendants of an ancient empire that made dark and terrible pacts with the Nine Hells. Their fiendish visage is actually a manifestation of a curse, due to their progenitors' crimes. They're more closely tried to devils than demons.

I'd love to give you a direct link, but I'm not seeing how to do that just now. :p If you can find it, there's lots of neat stuff from the "Races and Classes" preview book for 4th edition D&D.

Paizo's Harrow Deck

Ok, I'll admit it: I'm a sucker for cards and tarot-based knock-offs. Paizo's working on one that is wonderfully tied into the mythology of D&D:

The Harrow deck is our fortune-telling tool for this Adventure Path. The deck itself is a 54-card deck broken down into six suits of nine cards each. While, in-game, these six suits and the card images themselves are "in character," it draws a lot of its inspiration from the mechanics of the game as well. The deck's six suits each symbolize one of the six basic attributes all characters are built around: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. And in each of those six suits, we have nine different cards for each of the nine alignments. Therefore, we have a chaotic evil Wisdom card, a neutral good Strength card, a lawful neutral Dexterity card, and so on.

Now if they can build a rules mechanic around it, I'd be in heaven. Granted, I doubt I'd ever get to play the game, just as I doubt I'll ever get to play my tarot-based mechanic for Fading Suns that languishes in rough-note form, but it'd still warm my heart to know such a thing existed.

Savage Solomon

S.S. Pequod has a nice little overview of the Savage Worlds RPG system. It was inspired by recent playing of the new Solomon Kane game.

Yep, it's REH all the time over here.